Through mass production, a lot of perfectly good veg is wasted. One of the most ludicrous reasons is that a vegetable is superficially ‘ugly’ or ‘the wrong size’. Supermarkets have only themselves to blame by creating this ironic dystopia where everything must be perfect.

We sourced our veg from Fareshare. Fareshare is an amazing charity that receives vegetables from supermarkets that are short date and redistributes them to disadvantaged people in the community.

We trawled through tonnes of donated veg at Fareshare and managed to find some real gems; Organic spring onions, celery, crisp courgettes, and cucumber, asparagus and aubergines.

You can make this at home with whatever veg you like, Mediterranean veg is really tasty char-grilled and goes superbly with babbaganush.

Ingredients

Various vegetables - we found spring onions, celery, courgettes, cucumber, and asparagus.

For the babaganush:

1 large aubergine
1 lemon
1 clove of garlic
2tbsp of mild tahini
½ tsp cumin, coriander

Method

Canapes for 8. Prep time 30mins. Cook time 15mins

First prepare the babbaganush. The best way to cook the aubergine is on charcoal, so light a bbq and let it die down to white coals. If not you can cook them directly on a griddle.

Place the aubergine on the grill whole and cook each side till its charred rotating every few minutes. When the aubergine is very soft to the touch it is cooked. If you feel any hard bits leave it on a bit longer. Leave to cool.

Squeeze the lemon and mince the garlic.

When the aubergine is cool enough to handle, peel them, discarding the burnt skin. Take any clumps of large seed out also and compost. You will be left a creamy beige pulp.Chop this roughly on a chopping board or pulse in a blender but be sure to keep some texture.

Now, in a bowl season the aubergine with the lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. Then add the tahini with a little water and stir in. Now adjust the flavourings to your taste.

Cut all the vegetables into batons, char-grill the Mediterranean veg very briefly so they hold there integrity when dipped. Keep the crispest vegetables raw. We dressed them with a little lemon juice and poppy seeds which gave them another level of flavour.

Serve on platters.