You know how you go through phases, with clothes, where you wear something loads and loads and then don’t put it on again for a long time. Or with music, when you get obsessed by an album and listen to it on repeat play…. I know this could just be me of course and I don’t want to drag you along with my weirdness unnecessarily! But I have the same with things I cook. In the summer it tends to be salads with some of the same ingredients like rocket, roasted sunflower seeds and feta and in the winter it varies a lot. I have to always make a big effort not to get stuck in a rut when it comes to variety – I mean, if I had my way and calories counted for nothing I would have nice bread and cheese for every meal! Clearly I can’t indulge my fantasies so I try to mix it up a bit. Regardless of this most of my store cupboard ingredients do stay the same.
People are really snobby about frozen food and I don’t know why. I am obsessed by chopped frozen garlic, chilli, onions, ginger, lemongrass coriander and lemon zest. Again it may be seen as lazy buying things ready to use and frozen but why the heck not. I think it encourages those who may not otherwise cook, to use healthy ingredients and make things from scratch. Flavour isn’t compromised and tbh there are so many bits of shrivelled up fresh ginger and chilli at the bottom of my vegetable drawer in the fridge they would taste gross! My fav and best value for money item is definately
the frozen lemon zest. I hate zesting lemons it’s a faff and I am not great at it. Lemon is one of my all time big flavours I LOVE it,when it’s already been zest it’s perfect to just shove into a cake batter, a tagine. Or my new fav none food thing to make right now – bath bombs.
If you haven’t given any of these frozen bits a try, please do – it’s no weirder than buying a bag of frozen peas! They are sold in most supermarkets at roughly £1.50 each. And, yes it would be cheaper buying a few bulbs of garlic but who likes chopping it up and have fragranced hands for the rest of the day
For example, you can literally whip up some tomato soup in a matter of minutes with the help of frozen herbs:
Heat up some olive oil in a pot, bung in a handful of frozen onions, a generous sprinkling of the garlic a squirt of the cheats chilli paste and dried basil. Fry it all off until its browned. If I have any random bits of bacon I will fry those off too to give some flavour. Then squirt in a carton of passata, chuck in a veggie stock cube and let it cook out for about 10 minutes on simmer. Lastly bung in a heaped tablespoon of pesto. Depending how thick or tomatoey you like your soup add water accordingly.
Hey presto. it probably takes the same time to make this as opening up a tub of bland “fresh soup” you heat through in the microwave.
