Store Cupboard Risotto – Spinach, Mushroom, Butterbean and Brazil Nut Rice. Also: The wonders of a freezer.

More than once my kitchen has been referred to as a health food shop: it is pretty well stocked. I don't think this is overly luxurious, I think it makes my life a lot easier when I come in tired from work and haven't had a chance to plan a meal and buy fresh ingredients for it. This recipe's ingredients are all things that can be kept for a long time and can be used in so many different ways. I recommend that you challenge your definition of ‘stock essentials’. Goodbye sliced bread and frozen chips, hello canned spinach and frozen rice.

This recipe involves:

Olive oil

Garlic (NEVER run out of garlic. This is an unimaginable situation.)

Frozen sliced mushrooms

Dried mushrooms

Vegetable stock powder (again, ABSOLUTE essential)

Canned spinach

Oat cream

Frozen brown rice

Frozen butterbeans
Grated brazil nuts

Freshly ground black pepper

Fry crushed garlic in olive oil for a few minutes, then add the mushrooms (having soaked the dried ones first). Stir in some veg stock when they’re soft then add the spinach, oat cream, rice, butterbeans and brazils. Keep it simmering until you can’t bear it anymore. Stir in the pepper then serve with a bit of grated brazil nut on top to make it look fancy.

Sure, this would be amazing made with fresh ingredients, but sometimes a busy life means a lack of fresh ingredients. Fortunately, a busy life can still be once with tasty and interesting cooking in it.

A word on freezing: make friends with your freezer. Frozen foods are truly  liberating for someone who follows a diet which makes eating out a little difficult sometimes. I’ve recently acquired three whole shelves of freezer all for myself, which means that I can have plenty of choice at any time, and can cook large batches of foods to access in the future. This means less time spent waiting for things to cook and more time being spontaneous. Pulses are perfect for this – cook three saucepans at once then freeze them in portions which can be thrown into sauces where they’ll defrost in minutes. I’ve been experimenting with freezing sauce bases too: curries, chillies, herby sauces… To my mind a sauce base is a load of flavours to which you just add some sort of liquid ingredient, e.g. water / tinned tomatoes / plant milk / peanut butter etc.

The frozen rice in this recipe above is just that: a portion of boiled brown rice frozen in a sandwich bag. It’s good to label foods with a date, as bacteria can still multiply at those temperatures, just at a much slower rate than at room or fridge temperatures. Rice should be cooled very quickly and put in the freezer as soon as it is lukewarm because it can harbour a particularly nasty type of food poisoning which is really best avoided. Some people avoid it by doing things like cooling rice by spreading it on a baking tray or running it under the cold tap. The number of times I have survived reheated rice not treated in any special way demonstrates that this is probably unnecessary, but just be extra careful whenever using pre-cooked rice.

Lovely bags of frozen foods in my freezer

My freezer contains:

• ·         Lots of packets bread and crumpets that were reduced to 10p each in a supermarket I am ashamed to have a slight fetish for. Oh, ASDA, delight of the yellow label whore. *sighs*
• ·         Frozen berries – perfect for smoothies, and MUCH cheaper than fresh
• ·         Smilies (Just like potato waffles, you can cook them in the toaster and they’re oh so satisfying with baked beans at the end of a night out)
• ·         Sauce bases
• ·         Tofu. As plain tofu is so much cheaper than that with stuff added, I like to add my own stuff en masse then freeze it in bite sized chunks. After being frozen, tofu’s texture alters considerable to be harder and more chewy. I guess this is due to it losing water. I love the way it comes closer to resembling meat in bite and mouthfeel, but some people prefer to keep away from meatlike foods… It’s a matter of opinion. Try it and see what you think
• ·         Sorbet
• ·         Processed things, e.g. mushroom kievs, nut cutlets (Good Life, excellent company)
• ·         Linda McCartney’s veggie sausages (£1 for 5 in Iceland. Go Iceland!)
• ·         Portions in sandwich bags of various pulses and grains. Most plain for cooking with at will, some in sauces so that they can be taken out of a morning and eaten at work for lunch. Chickpeas for batches of hummous is particularly exciting
• ·         Frozen veg. My favourites are peas, spinach and mushrooms
• ·         Ice. It’s a sad day when you make a gin and tonic and there’s no ice. It’s also a good way to fill your freezer cheaply if you don’t have food in it. This keeps the freezer’s energy usage down as there’s less airflow when you open the door which means less need to cool down the freezer each time you open it
• ·         Herbs. All right, I admit it: this is a lie. But I fully intend to freeze some fresh herbs and use them in cooking soon. My mission in the next few months is to get good at herbs. Bring it on basil! Come on coriander! Stand back sage! I am ready to take you all on.

So what do you use your freezer for?