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Singer and actor Liv Austen has turned a health issue into a passion for cooking, by taking control of every ingredient that goes in to her meals. Every week she shares something she has learned from cooking from scratch, and goes through a recipe she loves, so you can cook alongside the podcast. Cook from scratch - your body will thank you.
Flying the flag for batch cooking
Nutrition
An oven tray with falafels
No - understandably you don’t want to eat the same thing several days in a row, or fill up your entire freezer with one dish. But is there a different way of approaching batch cooking, that can help you save time and energy?
A different approach
A while back, I asked a couple of my single friends who live on their own what kind of stuff they’d like to see from a food website like mine. They both answered “meals for one - that don’t involve batch cooking”. I totally get it - and I’m totally going to do more specific recipes with this in mind in the future, but it got me thinking about batch cooking and how we feel about it. Maybe some of us associate it with school meals, or the meals in the staff canteen where we used to work - boring, same old, predictable and repetitive. Lasagnas, pies, pasta bakes, chillis… I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love all of those types of dishes and make them a lot. But just because you are busy and need to make practical choices in your cooking doesn’t mean that you are necessarily always up for the type of food that lends itself to batch cooking. Or indeed, to even plan ahead of time what it is that you want to have for your meals!
After becoming a mum, I really learned the value of batch cooking - I had planned to do lots of it in my last month of pregnancy, however, that last month never happened. My little guy arrived early and there was no food prepared in the house. For anyone who’s had a newborn, you’ll understand why this is a problem. You literally have zero time, not only zero time to yourself, but zero time with two hands free. But not only parents need to make batch cooking their friend. My two friends I mentioned at the beginning? They very often opt for a takeaway. And I get it. Cooking for only yourself can be boring and not as motivating. If it’s delicious, who is going to give their compliments to the chef? Who will say “oh you cooked so I’ll clean!” - it’s all on you and that sucks. Plus, many of us are incredibly short on time, working long hours, doing after work or school activities, commuting… Having something ready on those busy days can be such a weight off your shoulders.
So how do we do it then - if we don’t want to just cook a huge chilli and eat it for the rest of the week?
I know that in my intro I mentioned that you may not want to fill your freezer with one dish. Fair enough! But - you could do a few servings of it. Make a big batch of something you really love - bonus points if it scratches the itch of something you are at risk of ordering from a restaurant, like a curry or a Chinese style meal - and have portion sized boxes or bags of it in the freezer. On the days where you don’t have time or motivation to cook, you can quickly grab one and reheat it, much quicker than you’d get something delivered. By the way, freezing is brilliant for bread, both dough and cooked. So if you make a batch of naan dough, you can even have that - homemade and fresh! Not bad, eh? The same goes for pizza. You can have pizza dough, or even rolled out and cooked pizza bases in your freezer, and then all you need are some simple toppings for a wonderful meal - I’ve literally topped an entire pizza with a quarter of a red onion, two mushrooms and a handful of olives and that was plenty topping in addition to a tomato base and some cheese.
And here we are starting to touch on what I think is the best batch cooking hack. And I guess, we’re venturing into meal prep territory here perhaps - batch and meal prep kind of overlap, don’t they? - you don’t have to batch cook an entire meal. What is it you can’t be bothered to do, which part of cooking a meal puts you off it? Is it chopping up onion with tears streaming down your face? Do one big onion chopping session (you can run a whole bunch in a food processor even!), and then freeze in smaller bags. You can batch-chop garlic, chillis, ginger… Things you often use in your cooking. For things like garlic, you can spread the chopped up bits thinly in a freezer bag, so when you need a bit, you can just open the bag and break a piece off - much easier than trying to ice pick a bit of garlic out of a frozen block, like you’re trying to sculpt something out of a rock.
You can batch cook tomato sauce, and use it for a whole bunch of different things. Make a batch of homemade pasta and freeze it as dough in portion balls. You don’t have to batch cook the finished meal, you can prep the things that make it hard to cook fresh on the day.
Why not set aside a couple of hours one day to batch cook and prep so that your next few weeks will be tons easier? These are just some ideas to get you started and I’d love to hear what your batch cooking and meal prep suggestions are! Please do share them with me!
Tuna or other fish works beautifully with the tangy Caesar dressing - I’ve added some crunchy and fresh vegetables as a nice contrast to the soft tuna texture. A quick and lovely version for lunch or dinner!
Seaside Caesar
…try saying that three times fast! I love a Caesar salad, and you may have already seen my chicken Caesar and Caesar dressing recipe. This is just a more seaside-y version of this, born out of wanting to use up some tinned tuna I had! I added some veggies that you may not traditionally find in a Caesar salad but hey, the most important thing for me is that you use stuff you love and that is available to you, and to be honest the star of the show is still the dressing. Try this, but feel free to make it your own! I loved having it with tuna!
Tuna Caesar Salad
For 2 people
Total time: Roughly 20 mins
2 small or 1 large romaine lettuce hearts
1 large handful of croutons
1 large handful of cherry tomatoes (I don’t know if this is “authentic”, but I love tomatoes in my Caesar!)
1/2 cucumber
a handful of radishes
2 tins of tuna (ideally in spring water, but in brine or in oil is fine too. Or of course, fresh (cooked) tuna.
A small tin of anchovies in olive oil (again, you can omit this, or you can use a bit of anchovy paste, my new favourite!)
Parmesan to garnish
For the dressing (you can of course experiment too!):
1/3 cup of mayonnaise (I have recipes for regular and vegan versions!)
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 cup grated parmesan (vegan works too)
1 clove of garlic
A bit of the oil from the anchovies, or if using, a dash of anchovy paste (can omit)
1 dash of black pepper
A tiny dash of honey (or maple syrup)
Instructions
Rinse the lettuce leaves well in cold water (this helps keep them crispy as well as clean! If they need to be revived a bit, leave them in a bowl of ice cold water for a bit and they will crunch right up). Pat them dry and place on two plates. You can cut them up or leave as large leaves. Rinse and halve the tomatoes, chop the cucumber up small and slice the radishes thinly and sprinkle the veg over the lettuce on the plates, and then top with croutons.
Cook the tuna and let it cool if you are using fresh fish, or open tins and drain the liquid. Fluff with a fork to get smaller pieces.
For the dressing, crush the garlic clove and mix in with mayo, lemon juice, vinegar, parmesan, black pepper and honey/syrup, and tip a bit of the oil that the anchovies come in into the dressing (trust me!) and mix everything well.
Place the tuna on top of the salad, chop up the anchovies and sprinkle them over the salad, and top it off with lots of lovely dressing (you can toss the whole salad together with the dressing if you really want to spread it out) and some shaved parmesan. I recommend not adding a lot of salt to this dish, because parmesan is salty and flavourful enough in my opinion, and anchovies are usually salted too!
Enjoy!
Did you make the Caesar salad? Did you like it? Share on Instagram and tag @TheFromScratchBody and hashtag #TheFromScratchBody so I don’t miss it!