Issue 9: The Big Freeze
Helping out your future self, and rediscovering an old favourite...
A half week this newsletter thanks to a very spoiling few days in Oman where I ate my body weight in guacamole and tortilla chips and drank out of coconuts and swam in the sea and was generally just an insufferably smug holiday person. You might be pleased to know, I am that person no more.
I actually enjoy a reset after a holiday; emptying out the fridge of weird wilted things and mystery Tupperwares, refilling it, and using my freezer stash to get back into the swing of things.
I’ve mentioned my freezer before, interesting person that I am, and how it used to hold nothing more than ice cream and vodka and now plays a tragically important part in my day-to-day life – I don’t actually know what I would do without it.
I like to think of the things in my freezer as gifts from present me to future me. When I add a Tupperware of chicken stock or a ramekin of cottage pie, I don’t benefit that day, but future me will be so grateful I was such an organised and thoughtful person.
Things come and go in freezer land – at the moment I’ve got a supply of sourdough waffles that I reheat in the toaster for snacks or breakfast. Sometimes I have a chicken pie in there, sometimes meatballs, sometimes ratatouille or homemade fish goujons, but here are some things I always have in my freezer:
Homemade Pesto. Frozen in little baby-sized portions, this is one of the most useful things I have in there. I melt them straight into hot pasta – no need to defrost – and can have a delicious meal on the table in as long as it takes for the pasta to cook.
Homemade tomato sauce. I make this when I have a spare 20 minutes or so and it is so worthwhile – I sweat some chopped onion in olive oil, add a sliced clove of garlic, followed by a tin of whole plum tomatoes. Reduce, maybe add some basil leaves, some salt and pepper, and blitz with a stick blender. I like to freeze these in small pots and, like with the pesto, just add straight to hot pasta.
Chicken Stock. If you’ve roasted a chicken then you’ve done most of the work already, so you might as well! I replenished my stock (lol) the other day by throwing some chicken wings (excellent for extra wibbly wobbly stock) in a pot with celery, onion, carrot, parsley, bay leaves, and peppercorns and left it simmering away for four hours while I went and faffed about somewhere else – I basically didn’t even do anything and my reward was a vat of deliciously jiggly stock. I freeze some in large ice cube trays – about 100ml per cube – and larger amounts in freezer pouches.
Peas. The Queen of the Freezer Veg. A freezer is not complete without peas, in my opinion.
Pitta breads. I buy freshly baked pittas from the bakery section of our local supermarket and freeze them. They reheat in the toaster straight from frozen. Very good when you have forgotten to buy bread and realise there isn’t any for breakfast. Also good for lunches – I like to pop some halloumi, cucumber, and yoghurt in there or turn my Greek Salad into a sandwich.
Sweet potato fries. These have saved me on a number of uninspiring cooking days; they take the same amount of time to cook as those nice chunky fish fingers, so they can go into the oven as a pair. Waitrose do a pretty good own-brand version that doesn’t have any crazy ingredients like emulsifiers or stabilizers or weird E-numbers.
Fish fingers. See above.
Soup. Whenever I make soup, I make extra specifically to freeze for last-minute lunches or suppers.
Butter. Firstly because it’s a pain to run out of butter. Either when you’re about to spread some on your toast and no one has mentioned they used the last of it or when you’ve reached the part in the recipe where it says ‘250g cold unsalted butter’ and you have precisely 0g. Keeping it in the freezer also has the added bonus of being extremely useful when making pastry – just grate it straight into the flour!
Chillis. Whenever I buy a packet of chillis, it is usually because I need a single chilli. Probably not even a whole one, actually. And there I am with four or five chillis that will spend some time getting weird in the fridge before moseying on over to the bin. So now I freeze the spares! You can either let them defrost ahead of time (does not take long) or grate straight into your dishes from frozen.
Friday
Ginger Soy Chicken with Rice and Cucumber Salad: This was a firm favourite for a long time that we ate so much, we got sick of it. Now we’re in love again. Super quick and unfussy, this is a deliciously sticky, perfectly sweet and savoury meal with not a lot of ingredients. Smitten Kitchen, where this is from, is like a terrific encyclopaedia of recipes (all for free, by the way, though she does also have a few cookbooks) and very family-friendly and easy to put together.
Saturday
Sausages and Mash with Roasted Cabbage and Peas: I had plans to make sausages and lentils, but then we had lentils for lunch, so I pivoted. I cooked some sausages and pre-heated a sheet pan (slicked with a little olive oil) in the oven for a minute or two before adding the cabbage wedges. Once they got nice and browned (about 10 minutes) I turned them over, cooked for a further 5 minutes, and grated some parmesan over to finish. Served with mash and peas.
Sunday
Bolognese: Because it’s a classic. From my freezer stash, incidentally.
Until next time!
xx