FWIW, Pizzas are a terribly inefficient way to eat italian food. I don't really want to lecture you, so here's my freezer spag bol recipe if it takes your fancy:
Makes:
About half a dozen portions of spag bol, if you eat it like I do. Your limiting factor, other than freezer space is probably going to be you frying pan size. If you've only a small/medium pan, I'd probably try to halve everything in this recipe, but that's going to present problems for your mince portion. Get a proper sautee pan.
Ingredients:
3 sticks celery, washed
3 medium onions - or 1.5 large, peeled, washed
About half a root of garlic in cloves - or a whole root if you use single clove garlic.
1 medium/0.5 large carrot - if you have a sweet tooth (omit if not), peeled
A pack of mince; I favour pork mince, but I guess beef would be traditional; about 500g worth in this country I think
A little mild olive oil or vegetable oil
About a pint/0.5 litre of meat stock. I generally make my own from meat or poultry bones, but that's even more faff than this recipe, so if you used stock cubes I wouldn't blame you.
Two tins of peeled plum tomatoes in tomato juice - usually a little more espensive than the chopped tomato cans but so much tastier.
Equipment:
- A chopping board or some sort. A bread board would just about do in a push, or maybe even a plate but I'd be worried in that case about scratching or even cracking the plate using the sharp knife.
- A sharp knife, especially for chopping the garlic.
- A cheesegrater (for carrot!)
- A large frying pan or sautee pan.
- A spatula or at a push, a wooden spoon.
Method:
1. Chop the celery into strips about 5mm wide then dice that finely. Do similar with the onions - I use a delia smith method which is to leave the root on but chop the top growth off, chop in half through the root, then lay each half down in turn and cut a fan of cuts through the body of the onion, ending at the middle of the onion but not chopping through the root if you can avoid it. Once you've made the cuts, all perpendicular to the surface, simply chop and slightly under 1cm slices off the end, and you'll end up with diced onion. Throw away the remaining root when you've chopped enough off to be happy.
2. Heat the oil in a pan until it's runny. Meanwhile chop the garlic finely; I favour crushing them under the knife to get the skin off, then cut roughly rectangular from the far edge from the root without cutting through the root or the far edge of the clove in about 3mm slices, turn and do the same from above, then finally slice paralled to the root plane in the same interval to end up with a pile of diced garlic - but I can understand if you'd rather use a garlic press.
3. Add the onion and celery and keep stirring until the celery is evenly distributed in the onion and vice versa and largely indistinguishable (about five minutes), then add the garlic, mix in and plonk your frozen mince on top. I usually leave the paper, which is there to stop the mince sticking to the plastic if it's not frozen on for now. If it's not frozen, add the mince a little after you add the stock.
4. Add the stock. Just pour it in while it's hot, and if your frying pan is big enough it'll take the whole pint on top of the mince and bouillabaisse mix it'll take it since it'll be off the boil.
5. Grate the carrot into the mince; I usually use the large holes in the mincer since it doesn't really matter how fine it is, and it'll be messy enough at that size anyway with sweet carrot juice. Scrape it off the top of the frozen mince packet.
6. Start peeling back the paper which is probably still on top of your mince. You might need to peel a bit back and splash it with your vegetable and stock mix to melt it a bit better. You might even end up turning the whole frozen mince block over to put the paper near the hot bottom of the pan for a while, then turning it back over and trying to peel more off.
7. Once the paper's off and scraped of any desperate bits of mince and been thrown away, keep at it with your spatula or spoon. With spatula you can use it like a knife and keep slicing it off and dropping it into the stock mix. Add a little hot water from a kettle if it seems to be boiling off quicker than you can use it, but I have never personally found that a problem. With a wooden spoon you'll be limited to generally worrying it or scraping it, which'll tend to mash it together but what can you do.
8. With everything subsumed into a fairly level slightly boiling thing, leave it to cook and reduce. You want it just bubbling in the main, and as the liquid gets absorbed or boils off it'll start to be ready. I use the scrape test whereby a scrape back the mix and see how long it takes to flood back with tomatoey vegetabley juices. As soon as it can hold a dry patch for more than about ten seconds it's ready.
9. Let it cool then spoon it onto containers and freeze. I use plastic pots that came from packs of glace cherries or pasta sauce once upon a time, which are a bit of a faff not being rectangular in the freezer, but you can generally fit them around things without too much trouble. My portions are three heaped desert spoons per portion. If I run out of pots you can also double up portions, but it's a bit of a faff.
To reheat:
1. Boil your spaghetti or random ethnically correct pasta on the hob in a pan of boiling water.
2. As it's nearly done (should take a little over ten minutes for most types or dried pasta, but the packet will tell you for sure), put your frozen chunk of bolognese mix upside down over a bowl. Zap it for about a minute (for a 700W machine) and it should have fallen out into the bowl. If so, remove the plastic and smush the slightly warm bit so it doesn't stick above the rim (matron) then cover with a plate to stop it spitting.
3. At this point, add your herbs. Any will do really, basil is best but I'm currently working through all of the out-of-date dried herbs in the cupboard; coriander leaf, parsley, anything vaguely promising to have once been green. I'm currently working through a pot of dill which is certainly fruity, but does the job if you don't sniff to deeply. I try to grow fresh basil but that's only really available in the summer. You can shred it and freeze is inside ice cubes, but judging quantities is always difficult and so far I've only done that with parsley, which can last all winter and start growing again next year if taken indoors (or grown indoors all year round).
4. Zap it until it's steaming hot and looks like the surface of the red planet (and the underside of the plate is covered in splashes). Be careful of the steam when lifting the plate to inspect it. It should now be above 70 degrees C which is enough to sterilise most nasties that might have grown during your last defrost of the freezer.
5. Give is a few tens of seconds for luck as you take the pasta off to drain it.
6. Dump the bolognaise mix on top of the drained pasta in a bowl, and top it with a little grated cheese (cheddar will just about do, but I favour about the cheapest italian hard cheese I can find, or grana padano if the cheap stuff isn't available).
7. Bit a black pepper never goes amiss.
Blimey, that turned out to be a bit of an epic. It feels like just an hour with this and that in the kitchen, but I guess I've got all the equipment to hand already and most of the ingredients around. And you only need to do it every few weeks because once you've frozen it it'll last for months if you don't eat it straight away.
