Go forth and multiply

MONITOR: Instead of cooking every evening, why not cook in batches and fill the freezer to save time and money

IT’S HARD TO avoid the austerity of January. Diets abound, good intentions are voiced and reigning back seems all the rage. It’s all rather boring. How can it not be after the excess of December? I’ve toyed with the idea of not drinking, but it’s so glum outside a glass of something red and warming is too hard to resist. Vegetarianism is often another thought, but in January? It’s so dominated by brassicas and root vegetables which, with the best will in the world, need cheering up.

And then there are the offers. Restaurants are trying hard to woo us out into the cold weather with early this and that, two for ones and all manner of cut-price incentives, as are the supermarkets. It’s hard to see through the hype, but I cannot help but feel I am being played with. If deals can be cut so easily, what is going on for the rest of the year? Super-profits?

Keep an eye out for the operators who carry on giving value all year – these are often local shops and the kind of restaurants and cafes that have been around for a long time and which you use regularly anyway. These are the ones that need your support and an austerity drive just doesn’t allow for that badly needed mid-week cheer-up.

My resolution has actually been to cook more. Some call it batch cooking and it does involve using a freezer, but there are benefits. Cost is the first. Cooking once and providing several meals is cost-effective, not just in terms of ingredients – deals on bulk buying are well established – but also in utilities. Whether gas or electricity, firing everything up from scratch every night is expensive.

This route also saves on time – a venison casserole for eight or 12 takes only a little more time than one for four and it is marginal, as the only real difference is in sautéing the meat. Sure, if you scale up too far, things get out of hand, but not for double or even triple the quantity.

And then there is the variety. This takes a bit of banking but very soon you are able to offer a choice of what to eat. It has become the daily question, the answer allocated to one member of the family to choose. But while you might wonder whether it will be a Thai curry, lamb casserole or fish tagine choice, the range actually becomes much wider as all the other “quicker” options are also there – pasta, fried chicken, a piece of grilled fish.

So how to measure success? I am a willing cook, seven nights a week, along with weekend lunches (which for some reason always seem more of an event than during the week), but I hope to cook four nights a week for January and February. A warm fire and a good book have become welcome substitutes, made all the more surreal by the smell of cooking slowly wafting through the house even though I am nowhere near the stove.

And in March? Well as things brighten up the books are put to one side. It is an indulgence I know, maybe even a weakness, but shopping for one meal at a time is pretty much all I can manage. By then the freezer is empty and as the salads and lighter foods come into play, I feel the austerity of winter is really over. It’s daffodil season and while we might still get the odd snow flurry, it’s time to hit the stove full-time again and indulge. All the way through to Christmas.