One-pot tuna pasta

When you need a quick meal with just what you have in the pantry, this one is excellent. 

Ingredients

2 cups pasta (if you're using small sized pasta, just use 1 1/2 cups)

1 heaped tablespoon flour

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup milk

1 cup water

1 can tuna with water

1/2 - 1 cup grated cheese (to taste)

Veggies of your choice (optional; peas, green onions and spinach are good options)

Seasoning of your choice

Melt the butter in your pot and add the milk and flour. Whisk briskly to get a smooth white sauce. Keep whisking until the sauce has thickened.

Add the rest of the ingredients and stir. Cover the pot and simmer for 10 min, stirring once in a while. If it becomes dry, add more water. If it is too runny after 10 min, take the lid off and simmer for 5 more minutes. 

Add the cheese and stir through. 

Put (or leave) the lid on, remove from the heat and let it sit for 5-10min. The pasta should be perfectly cooked now with a nice sauce. 

Enjoy!

Chilli

This is so quick and easy when you have cooked mince meat in your freezer. You can also make a large batch chilli from scratch and freeze in portions and just thaw and heat when ready to eat. There are many lovely recipes online. Today I'll give you my recipe using cooked mince meat.

Ingredients
1kg cooked mince meat (click for recipe)
8 fresh tomatoes or 4-5 cups canned tomatoes
2 cans of beans (I like using mixed bean medleys, but any beans you like will do)
1 package taco seasoning or your own taco seasoning mix (many recipes online)
You can make it hotter by adding fresh chopped chillies or dried chilli flakes if you like

If you're using fresh tomatoes, chop them up and toss in a pot over medium heat and let them cook until tender.
Mix all of the ingredients together in a pot, bring to a boil and let it simmer for 30min to develop the flavours. And that's it! Serve with fresh buns, cheese and salad.

Homemade Muesli / Granola

Cereals have always been a quick breakfast and perfect for rushed mornings, but they don't fit my whole foods philosophy, so I've had to make a new plan. That plan is homemade muesli. It's so easy to make and adjust the ingredients to become a new favourite.

Basically it is just toasted oats, nuts, seeds and dried fruit. You can adjust the quantities to suit your taste.

The hardest part of this recipe is toasting the oats and that is really easy. You need a large pan, oil or fat of your choice and sweetener of your choice (optional). Large flake oats work best, but is not essential. I like using organic coconut oil and honey.

Heat your oil in a large pan and add honey to taste. Mix and add the oats. Keep stirring the oats until it starts to change colour. Now add your nuts and/or seeds (I like using chopped pecans, slivered almonds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds). Keep stirring, toasting the oats and the nuts, until the oats are crispy and fragrant. Add bite-size dried fruits (I like pears, apricots and raisins) and mix together. Let it cool and keep in an air tight container. Serve with milk or yoghurt.

Ideas for your muesli:
Walnuts
Peanuts
Cashew nuts
Flax
Sesame seeds
Desiccated coconut
Dried apple
Dried banana chips

Roast Chicken Stock

Fresh chicken stock is a staple in my freezer, because the store bought stock powders have so many strange ingredients and doesn't taste nearly as good. I use stock for a whole range of things, including seasoning mince meat (cook it down so that the liquid boils down), soups, stews, casseroles and risotto (a favourite of mine).

Stock is extremely easy to make and if you're not picky, you can basically make it from whatever you have in your fridge and cupboard.

The easiest stock is plain vegetable stock which contains whatever vegetables you like, although I recommend onions, celery and carrots as a base. You can even make stock with vegetable peelings. Just dump the veggies in a large pot and top up with water, bring to the boil and simmer for an hour. Done.

But I like a richer stock and my favourite is chicken stock. I used to make it with just leftover chicken bones or a carcass and veggies (and there's nothing wrong with that), but now I've found a flavourful recipe.

Ingredients:

6 - 12 chicken wings (more means more flavour)

2 onions

2 - 5 garlic cloves, bruised

1 leftover chicken carcass (optional)

1 carrot, chopped

1 celery stick, chopped

Season and roast the chicken wings in the oven. Meanwhile sauté the onion in a large pot until it starts to caramelize. Add the garlic, carrot and celery and continue to sauté until the vegetables are soft.

Add the chicken carcass (if using) and roasted wings to the pot. 

Deglaze* the roasting pan with water or simply scrape out as much of the sauces and bits into the pot and top up the pot with more water.

Bring the stock to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and leave to simmer for up to 2 hours.

Once done, strain through a sieve lined with cheesecloth or muslin and discard solids. 

Let the stock cool before placing it in the refrigerator. The fat with solidify on top and make it easy to scoop out before transferring to freezer bags or containers. Remember to mark the containers clearly.

To make beef stock, substitute the chicken wings and carcass with beef soup bones or bone-in stewing beef.

The great thing about stock is that you can play around with the ingredients until you find a combination that you love, but you can also whip it up with whatever you have on hand, making it cheap and easy to make and always have fresh stock on hand.

You can also season stock the way you like: salt, pepper, bay leaves, rosemary, oregano, etc. Some people prefer not to season stock at all so that they can play around with the seasoning of the dish they use it in eventually. I always season mine with salt and pepper.

*Deglazing: heat the pan and add some liquid (water, wine, etc) while stirring and scraping to loosen all the fragrant pieces and juices left in the pan.

Bolognese Sauce

This is a lovely sauce that is used in a lot of Italian dishes. You can use it for just about any pasta dish. Or toss it with pasta as it is and it's a meal. So easy! That's why (and because my husband loves it) I keep lots of it in my freezer.

Recently Bolognese sauce evolved to be a tomato based meat sauce, while if you look at its history, you'll learn that it is a meat sauce that is supposed to be flavoured with some tomato. We all know it as a red sauce, but in fact it's not supposed to have that much tomato in it at all. That's if you want it to be authentic, of course.
I've adapted my old tomato-packed recipe so that it more closely resembles the authentic recipe.

Ingredients
olive oil (for frying)
1 cup chopped bacon
4 cups chopped onion
3 cups grated carrot
2 cups chopped celery
6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2kg mince meat (preferably beef)
4 bay leaves
3 cans tomato or about 10 large tomatoes
1 cup red wine
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a large pot and fry the bacon until cooked through. Turn the heat down to medium low and add the onions, carrots and celery. Sauté until the onions are soft. Add the tomatoes. If you are using fresh tomatoes, let them soften, otherwise just let them heat through before blending it until smooth. Set aside.
Using the same pot, add cooking fat of your choice and the mince meat. Stir-fry until the meat starts to brown and add the tomato base back into the pot. Add the wine, bay leaves, salt and pepper and stir.
Turn the heat down to low and simmer for two hours, stirring occasionally.
Check the seasoning and adjust f needed before you leave it to cool for freezing.

And there you have it! (Almost) Authentic bolognese sauce! Use it with just about any pasta dish you can imagine, like layering a lovely lasagna. It's perfect for those days when you really don't know what to cook: just thaw, cook some pasta, mix and serve.

Marinara Sauce

Marinara sauce is a tomato based sauce from southern Italy. It is lovely just as is with pasta and parmesan or it can dress up numerous other dishes.

Tip: to make cheat's Bolognese sauce, mix some of the freezer mince with marinara sauce.

Ingredients
4kg tomatoes (fresh (chopped) or canned)
4 cups diced onions
2 cups grated carrots
2 cups diced celery
4-8 cloves of garlic, chopped
Salt, pepper and other seasonings to taste

Sauté the onions, carrots and celery in a large pot, adding the garlic once they start to soften. Once the onion mix is soft and fragrant, add the tomatoes and seasoning, put the lid on and let the tomatoes simmer on low-medium heat. If you're using canned tomatoes, just let everything heat through. When the tomatoes are soft (about 10-20min), transfer the mixture to a blender in batches, or blitz with a stick blender until smooth.
Return to the pot and simmer on low heat with the lid on for 30-60min. This just intensifies the flavour and softens the texture even more. Remove form the heat and let cool to room temperature before dividing into containers to freeze. I like storing my marinara sauce in 1 cup containers.

Note: You can spice up your marinara sauce by adding some wine (red or white), italian herbs, olives, red peppers, chillis, beetroot and other veggies you may find on sale or have in the fridge. Just keep in mind that the colour of the vegetables will effect the colour of your sauce. I recommend sticking to reds, oranges and purples and avoiding greens.

Meatballs

Another staple in my freezer. Meatballs can be frozen raw or cooked first and then frozen. Either way, they are easy and quick for any meal. I like putting raw meatballs in the slow cooker with whatever sauce I want and the meatballs turn out delicious, juicy and very soft.

Ingredients
3kg mince meat
2 cups grated carrots
3 cups diced onions
2 cups diced celery
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 eggs, beaten
6t salt
pepper and other seasonings to taste

You'll notice that this recipe is just about the same as my mince meat recipe, it only adds eggs. For this reason I sometimes mix everything together, except the eggs, and split into two: one for meatballs, one for the meatballs and add the eggs to the meatball mix. This significantly cuts down on my preparation time and makes it all easier to handle.

Mix all the ingredients together and roll into balls. You can decide how big they should be.
Place the balls onto a baking tray. You can either put them in the oven now to cook or place them in the freezer until frozen. Once frozen, transfer to freezer bags. This helps to only pick out the few meatballs you need instead of thawing the whole batch at once.
If you decide to bake, place the meatballs in the oven at 180 C (350 F) for 25-45 min (depending on how big the meatballs are). Let them cool completely before freezing.

Notes: Play around with the recipe. You can add more vegetables, add parmesan, maybe roll the meatballs around a block of mozzarella for a gooey, cheesy centre, and so on. Be creative! Cooking could be or become a chore if you don't make it fun for yourself.
Kids can help rolling the meatballs - get them involved in the cooking process and help them learn how fun and delicious it is to make your own food.