RACHEL ALLEN

Every week, only in LIFE

Following on from last week’s initial piece on Food for the Freezer, I cooked this delicious, mildly spiced chickenthigh recipe, pictured right. It’s the kind of comforting, luxurious supper that you’ll be delighted to have in the freezer, just waiting to be defrosted and heated up, and served with a big bowl of steaming rice or orzo (see Rachel Recommends, opposite) and a green salad on the side.

This recipe is just as easy to make in a large batch as a small one, and depending on the amount of people in your house, it might be worth freezing it in lots of smaller quantities that serve one or two people, rather than one big lot.

When you’re cooking something specifically for the freezer, particularly if it has cream in it, or indeed bacon or smoked fish, it’s important to go easy on the salt. Food — and for some reason the aforementioned foods especially — can sometimes taste a little more salty after they’ve been frozen than before.

To many people, there will never be anything as comforting as a fish pie. It has all the ingredients for comfort: mashed potato, bacon and even frozen peas. This fish pie, below right, keeps it quite simple, with most of the distinctive flavour coming from smoked haddock. The eggs are a favourite of smoked haddock, as is the bacon — though if I’m making this pie for the freezer, I’ll leave out the eggs, as they won’t thank you for freezing them. You can easily make this dish the day before and it will keep, unbaked, in the fridge, making cooking it the next day supremely easy.

This deliciously simply puy lentil soup, far right, is one that can be adapted according to what you have in the fridge, and what’s in season. Some bacon lardons added in with the onions at the start will bring a rustic meatiness to the soup, as will chopped-up chorizo sausage. Parsnips or celeriac will work instead of the carrot if you wish, and a healthy handful of chopped kale or spinach would be happy thrown in one minute before the end of cooking.