The Lucky Chow host Danielle Chang grows the snappiest snap peas, and the views aren’t bad either.

Compost soup, a super-healthy dish she invented to make use of extra radish tops, carrot skins, and all the things that usually get wasted.

By Hilary Cadigan
Bonappetit
September 13, 2019

Excerpt:

So, five years ago, when Chang moved into a new apartment with rooftop access, she decided to try gardening herself. “It was trial by experimentation,” she says. “The first year, I’d literally sprinkle a seed packet into the soil and be amazed if I actually got anything.”

She started with tomatoes—which she recommends to all gateway growers (“so rewarding and easy”)—and herbs. First basil, then more speciality Asian varietals like shiso and perilla leaves. Next came the peas. “The more you pick, the more you grow! Now I literally sit there, pick them, water something, come back, and there are already new peas on the vine,” she says with a laugh. Then eggplant, zucchini, radishes, daikon, celtuce, several varieties of chile. Today, Chang makes sweet Asian pickles from Tokyo turnips. She shares her bumper crops with friends and local chefs, and saves all her stems, which she salts and dries for winter soups and stir-fries.

She’s also managed to work her nascent gardening skills into new projects with LuckyRice. This summer, she partnered with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey along with Nick Storrs, a rice farmer on Randalls Island, to install a unique public art exhibit in lower Manhattan. It’s a living rice paddy, planted inside two large wavy wooden structures between the Oculus and the World Trade Center. Chang started the seedlings right here on her roof before transporting them to their new public space, where she checks in on them regularly to make sure they grow strong.

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