It was one of those weeks where the thought of doing a food shop was a bit too much. Not least because Storm Eunice was battering the flat, making the thought of venturing outside seem pretty grim, but also because we’d booked flights for a friend’s wedding in Italy in September and were feeling a bit strapped. Rob was also out every night – it was time, I decided, to do a freezer week.
I started doing freezer week when I got my own place, and had a whole fridge freezer to myself for the first time. Without having to share three shelves among six people, I was able to use it with a bit more thought. One drawer is for leftover portions of anything from chili con carne to butternut squash curry. They go in the cheap takeaway containers, which are able to handle changes in temp better than clip-top ones (I find the clips snap after exposure to cold). Here is where I also keep freezer bags of gyoza and fish fingers. The second drawer is for spillover from the fridge – when I get a pillow-sized bag of kale for 60p in Lidl, I’ll stuff fistfuls of it in sandwich bags and freeze them in this drawer so that, if I need some greens in a pinch, I’m set. There’s currently a chicken carcass there, too, in a massive freezer bag, that I’ll use in stock soon. I also have my bag of literal scraps – veg peelings, smashed garlic gloves, leek trimmings, roughly hewn bits of carrot or potato peel and a few nubs of ginger – these go with the carcass to make a really good leftover stock (I’m doing a whole newsletter on this – watch this space).
All of which is to say that, more often than not, there’s a lot of stuff in the freezer ready to be used. When I did an inventory on Monday, I found three chicken thighs, half a packet of pork mince, a garlic ciabatta (that was dunked liberally in tomato soup one lunchtime), and some leftover colcannon croquettes back from the first issue of Scraps.
This issue features some of the highlights. One thing about this method is it kind of reduces the risk of stuff going off in the fridge – I know I’m not going to eat a whole pack of sausages in a week, so half goes in the freezer and I know that we could do a kind of spicy sausage ragu in a pinch one week. The freezer is also so efficiently run that it does mean if you want to cram it with Haagen Das you really need to make room, which is to say, I’ve made enough room this week to stock up on ice cream.
1. Spicy sambal pork noodles
The first thing I found was about half a pack of pork mince in the freezer – I defrosted it in the morning and spent most of the day thinking what I could do with it. I settled on frying the pork, then adding some aromatics like ginger, shallots, and sambal (a sort of chilli-garlic paste) before tossing it through some instant noodles. in my head, it was a quicker, porkier version of this really good sesame chicken dish from the New York Times. Then I realised there was literally a recipe on Bon Appetit for sambal pork noodles so I kind of made a lovechild of the two; the simplicity of the sesame noodles, with the flavour profile of the sambal noodles.
The trick to a good noodle dish for me is tons of different textures. Fried onions are a must, as are sliced chilli, spring onion, a drizzle of hot sauce or chilli oil, and some herbs. This BA recipe is not fiddly – it relies on chilli paste, vinegar, soy, as well as aromatics like ginger and garlic, but I think you can kind of wing it, like I do. In fact, I rooted around the vegetable drawer and found a red pepper and a broccoli stalk – both got sliced thin and chucked in after the pork, where they took on that salty, porky flavour and caramelised on the edges. I also added some pickled sushi ginger, which I’d picked up recently – it has literally transformed everything from fried eggs and anchovy toasts for me.
2. Garlicky chicken thighs with rice
When people tell me they don’t like cooking at home, or they can’t ever think of anything, I tell them about the way I think about meals. It’s not original and it’s not ground breaking, but I try and get three elements in every dish: something proteiny, something carby, and something green/fresh. It makes the process so much easier; there’s always rice, pasta, potatoes etc in the cupboards. And the freezer usually has a couple of pieces of fish or meat. When I do a weekly shop, it’s to get fresh stuff – a big bunch of greens, some broccoli, maybe some weird mushrooms I can sautee in butter and drizzle with vinegar.
While rustling around the freezer, I found a pack of chicken thighs and I had enough in to make this dish – I think it’s one of the easiest things you could make. You place the chicken thighs skin-side down in a puddle of oil on a medium heat, and leave them so the fat renders and the skin crisps. After ten minutes, flip the thighs over for another 6-8 minutes. To the pan, add a whole head of garlic – I like slicing the bulb through the middle, placing each half face-down – once the garlic cooks it kind of wriggles out the skin and you can just squash the cloves into the chicken fat. It’s so good. Add salt and pepper, lime juice, soy sauce, and a cup of water, then bring it to a simmer, before turning the heat down and cooking the chicken for a further 15-20 minutes. In fact, go the full 20 minutes here – there is nothing like thinking a chicken thigh is cooked, pulling it out the pan, and cutting into it only to find it wobbling slightly in the middle.
This week is soundtracked by the gorgeous Q.
I served this with fluffy white rice and spooned the rich sauce all over it. You can debone the thighs first if you want, but the bone is useful for the cooking process (it conducts the heat).
In the spirit of versatility though, you could make this sauce by itself in a sauce-pan (oil, garlic, cook until golden, add the rest, simmer, etc) and pour it over roasted salmon fillets. I think it would be great drizzled over some oven-seared florets of cauliflower. And if you’re not in the mood for rice, it would be great with noodles or a big pile of steamed spinach.
3. A reader asks: where are your (actually nice) storage containers from?
Yeah, we have two tahinis. A two-tahini household. Purely an administrative error, promise.
A fan of the newsletter (OK, my friend Warwick) got in touch asking where I got my storage jars from. The long answer is I have tons of old kilner jars from TK Maxx, but actually i have been buying these Habitat storage jars from Sainsburys recently and they’re really good because they’re square, not round, so you can fit more in a rectangular cupboard. Also they have these vacuum seals that are pretty great? Who knew I was so interested in storage!
But as I said earlier, keep the cheap takeaway stuff for the freezer, and the nice stuff for the cupboards.