29 November 2013
We’re all busy, rushed off our feet, dashing from boardroom to classroom, from work activity to school nativity. In short, we mums juggle, and I don’t just mean the three ball type juggling. I mean the all-singing, all-dancing, fire-throwing, show-stopping juggling that leaves you awestruck. Some might take exception to the “we mums” bit but all I can say is that in my experience this juggling act is very much a female dominated preoccupation, and the perennial question is how to do it? How to do the right thing – for the family, for the career, for yourself – and still keep sane? Food has always been high on my agenda because I am just not willing to give up, cut corners and feed my children readymade, processed food… however busy I am. And so I developed the Big Batch Cook.
I started doing my Big Batch Cooks probably around a decade ago when my two oldest boys were very little and I was juggling my then career in academia alongside looking after two boisterous toddlers. Then, around eight years ago, when my third son was just a little baby, I set up a weekly online shop which is entirely automated: it orders what I want (probably around 80% accurate) and delivers it on a pre-set day, which happens to be Saturday evening – you’ll see why in a minute. If I’m out, the babysitter has the happy task of unpacking the shopping and trying to decide where to put it. Interesting decisions have sometimes been taken on that front.
Having retrained in pregnancy and postnatal fitness following the birth of my youngest boy, I became even more determined to ensure that the family ate healthy, tasty, home cooked food every day, despite the fact that I was working my socks off setting up my Leicestershire pregnancy and postnatal fitness service, Zest4lifeUK. Let’s face it, if you don’t walk the walk, then who’s going to want to listen to you?
So what I’d like to do is share with you my Big Batch Cook method along with giving you a one week Big Batch Cook plan, recipes and all. It might look daunting but give it a go and you will be converted forever. Moreover, as your family grows in number and the children’s appetites grow in size, your workload will remain exactly the same.
So if you are ready, sit tight, read through this and then be brave and give it a go!
1. Start off by biting the bullet and setting up your weekly automated online shopping. I do mine with Ocado – it’s a weekly list that is automatically generated and which gradually becomes more and more accurate as the system figures out your preferences.
2. Set the weekly delivery slot for a Saturday. I have mine delivered in the evening so that I am either in, or the babysitter is there. But find a time on Saturday which suits. Why Saturday? Because the Big Batch Cook needs to be done on Sunday, ready for the start of the working week.
3. The Big Batch Cook consists of three main dishes being cooked every week, so they need to be nutritionally balanced and substantial – you’ll be rotating them from Monday through to Friday. Try to choose a combination of one vegetarian dish, one meat dish (sometimes lean red meat but mainly chicken) and a recipe with fish in it.
4. On Fridays you will need to plan what your three dishes for the following week are going to be and then edit your shopping order accordingly. Remember to order enough green vegetables to accompany ALL your meals. In terms of quantity I would suggest aiming to fill a third of everyone’s plates with greens – broccoli, curly kale, savoy cabbage, cavolo nero, chard, spinach etc.
5. Invest in a food processor and a slow cooker – they’ll make life so much easier.
Not everyone’s cup of tea but I prefer to get up early on Sunday and do my cooking whilst the rest of the household is still snoozing in bed. Having said that, my children are older now and so they quite happily lounge around on Sunday mornings. When the boys were little I used to do the batch cooking in the evening once I’d finally got them all safely tucked up in bed. Take your pick!
The joy of batch cooking is that you really can save time by, for example, whizzing up enough onions in the food processor as a base for all three meals, if that’s what’s required. Handy – three times faster! Anyway, let’s get to the nitty gritty by having a look at a real meal planner for a weekly batch cook. Here’s what’s on the menu for this week:
• Buffalo and root vegetable cobbler
• Seafood risotto
• Leek, mushroom and greens cannelloni
If that looks in any way too adventurous for your children I’d say that from my experience the more you expose them on a very regular basis to flavours and foods from around the world, the more receptive they become. So go for Italian, Mexican, Thai, Indian, Middle Eastern, Spanish, Moroccan… and never give up.
Quantities I leave largely up to you. Go with the flow!
For the cobbler scones:
- A bag of frozen tiger prawns
- Or a bag of frozen mixed seafood
- A couple of salmon filets
- A piece of thick cod loin
Pick and mix!
1. Throw both onions (needed for the risotto and the cobbler) into a food processor. Whizz until quite finely chopped.
2. Place half the onions into a heavy-based saucepan with a chunk of butter and cook over a low heat with the lid on. This is for your risotto.
3. Place the remaining onions into a slow cooker with a bit of olive oil. If you don’t have a slow cooker, a heavy based saucepan is fine.
4. Whizz up the cleaned leeks (try and include as much of the green tops as possible) in the food processor until finely shredded. Throw them into a very large heavy based cooking pot with a good layer of olive oil at the bottom of it.
5. Now process the cleaned mushrooms making sure they don’t turn to a squish. Add them to the pot with the leeks.
6. Repeat with the washed greens and combine with the leeks and mushrooms.
7. Place the lid on the pot and cook gently, stirring every now and then as the vegetables gradually reduce in size.
8. Now add all the ingredients for the cobbler stew (except the ingredients for the scones to top it!) into the slow cooker and add some water too so that it isn’t dry. Set the slow cooker on a high setting and ignore it for the next 8 hours or so. You might want to give it a bit of a stir after a few hours but other than that you can leave it unsupervised.
9. In the meantime, keep checking on and stirring the mushroom, greens and leek mix. It’s ready when it has softened completely. If it’s in any way watery, simply cook with the lid off for a while. Once cooked set aside for later.
10. You now need to get the fish for the risotto cooked: take a large piece of aluminium foil and make a little boat-shaped parcel out of it. Place the salmon and or cod into the contain and seal at the top. You might need to make two “boats” for your fish. Place the fish in the oven at 180ºC and get on with your other dishes. The fish is cooked once the flesh flakes apart with a fork and the salmon comes away easily from the skin.
11. Once the onions in the other saucepan have softened without browning, add the crushed garlic and cook very gently to avoid burning. Then add the risotto rice – don’t worry about quantities! - and mix thoroughly with the onions and butter.
12. The rice will go slightly translucent - throw in a good slosh of dry vermouth so that it sizzles and eventually evaporates and absorbs into the rice. Now start ladling simmering water into the rice, bit by bit, stirring regularly and only adding more water when the previous quantity has been fully absorbed. Don’t let it stick to the bottom or it will be a nightmare to wash the pot!
13. You can add a couple of teaspoons of Bouillon powder for flavour if you don’t mind the fact that it is salty.
Now you need to start multitasking… but you’re a mum so that’s OK!
It’s time to make the white sauce for the cannelloni but you ALSO need to keep watch over the risotto, stirring regularly, and adding more water as and when is needed.
1. Place a good chunk of butter in the base of a saucepan and melt gently.
2. Add a substantial sprinkling of flour and mix into the butter with a handheld whisk.
3. Now start to gradually add milk, whisking very well after each addition, so as to avoid lumps. Don’t worry if lumps start to form. Just keep whisking and they’ll go… eventually.
4. Keep going until you’ve got a white sauce which is neither too thick nor too thin.
5. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.
You haven’t forgotten the risotto have you? I hope not. It’s cooked when the rice is soft with a faint bite at the centre. If you cook it for too long and add too much water you’ll end up with a sloppy mush. Not nice!
The answer is, not too much. You are well on the way. So here’s what’s left to do.
1. Fill your cannelloni tubes with the leek, mushroom and greens mix. Use a teaspoon and then a round tipped knife to push the filling down into the tubes.
2. Place them side by side in an big oven dish. If they don’t all fit, simply add a second layer
3. Smother the cannelloni in the white sauce
4. Now sprinkle the parmesan over the top
5. Pop into the oven at 180ºC. They’re ready when a skewer passes effortlessly through the pasta tubes and the top is golden brown.
1. Once the rice is cooked, add your frozen seafood mix or frozen tiger prawns and cook thoroughly over a low heat.
2. Stir in the bunch of chopped parsley – I like my risotto very green!
3. Finally, carefully add cooked fish broken up into large chunks. Try not to over stir the mixture or the fish will disintegrate. Chunky fish is just so much more appealing.
1. You can leave the stew to keep cooking in the slow cooker. As mentioned, 8+ hours are probably necessary, otherwise the buffalo will be tough and the puy lentils crunchy.
2. In the meantime, get your scone mixture ready for when it’s needed.
3. Chop the butter into chunks and add to the flours.
4. Mix it in thoroughly with your fingers until it is completely incorporated and resembles fine breadcrumbs.
5. Add the milk and mix with a flat bladed, wide knife, gradually bringing the mixture together into a dough.
6. Add the mustard and parsley and then knead the dough gently with your hands, ensuring that all the flour round the edges of the bowl is incorporated.
7. You will find yourself with a ball of soft, elastic dough.
8. Wrap it up in cling film and set aside until your stew is ready.
Once the stew is ready you only have a few jobs left to do:
1. Transfer the stew to a big oven dish.
2. Roll out the dough until it is just over ½ inch thick
3. Use a round cookie cutter and cut out rounds of dough.
4. Place them over the top of the stew
5. Brush with the beaten egg and pop into the oven at 190ºC. Keep an eye on it – you’ll be able to tell when the scones are cooked simply by looking at them: they will be golden in colour and they will have risen.
So there you have it – your first ever Big Batch Cook. It might well seem more than a little overwhelming but once you get into the routine, you’ll find that a typical batch cook takes between 2 and 3 hours to complete, and that even includes washing up! Now consider how much time you spend over the course of a week cooking and washing up after every cook-up.
I am not a fan of cooking different things for different members of the family. It’s a waste of precious time and completely unnecessary. Children need to learn to enjoy the same “grown up” foods as we do. Similarly, you might be thinking “but I’m on a diet and this food is not exactly “light”. No it isn’t. You are right. But it’s tasty and enjoyable. So what’s the solution? It’s simple: portion control alongside lots and lots and lots of vegetables! The seafood risotto? Pile your plate high with steamed veg and then top it with a moderate portion of risotto. Do the same with the cannelloni. The buffalo and root veg cobbler? Lots of greens, a bit of stew and give your portion of the scones to the kids! They’re growing and you’re not!
Lots of pots and pans! Hmm, well washing up is not much fun but one thing you can do with a batch cook is reuse certain saucepans without washing them up between one dish and another. If the flavours are compatible then why wash the pot up? Clearly if you’ve just cooked a curry in a pot and now plan to cook spaghetti Bolognese, then washing up can’t be avoided!
Once you have cooked your three main dishes, leave them to cool completely at room temperature before covering tightly with cling film and placing in the fridge. They will last until Friday or even Saturday of that week.
On week days all you will need to do is steam lots of vegetables – make sure that they are varied throughout the week – and heat up portions of whichever meal you are serving. Some weeks you will be making main dishes which require a staple such as rice or pasta to be cooked as well. Although this is a little more effort it is still nothing in comparison with having to prepare an entire meal from scratch every day.
So be brave, bite the bullet and give it a go! Then let me know how you get on…