The Batch Lady: Healthy Family Favourites

TO EVERYONE WHO STRUGGLES DAILY WITH HAVING TO GET A MEAL ON THE TABLE, AND IS FOREVER ANSWERING THE QUESTION, ‘WHAT’S FOR DINNER?’. THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU, MAY IT GIVE YOU SOME WELL-DESERVED RELIEF.

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

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HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published in Great Britain by HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Text Copyright © Suzanne Mulholland 2021

Suzanne Mulholland asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 9780008373245

eBook ISBN: 9780008373269

Photography: Haraala Hamilton

Food styling: Sam Dixon, Rosie French & Rosie Ramsden

Prop styling: Sarah Birks

Design & Art Direction: Georgina Hewitt

Editor: Nira Begum

Editorial Director: Kate Fox

Project Editor: Daniel Hurst

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008373245

Contents

Cover

Dedication

Copyright

Note to Readers

Title Page

Welcome

Batch Yourself Healthy

My Batch Commandments

Three for the Fridge, Three for the Freezer

Making Ahead, Freezing & Defrosting

Batching Equipment

The Healthy Larder

Breakfasts

Banana Pancakes

Blueberry French Toast Bake

Banana & Strawberry Smoothies

Superfood Smoothies

Berry Blast Smoothies

Super Greens Smoothies

Healthy Flapjack

Apple & Plum Cornflake Bake

Rhubarb & Strawberry Compote

Stewed Apple & Blackberry Compote

Light Meals

Creamy Tomato & Red Pepper Soup

Shakshuka

Turkey & Orzo Soup

Turkey Taco Boats

Courgette Fritters

Sweetcorn Fritters

Sweetcorn Fritters With Crispy Bacon & Fried Eggs

Sweetcorn Fritters With Avocado, Crème Fraîche, Sriracha & Coriander

Sweetcorn Fritters With Poached Eggs & Tomato Relish

Moreish Minestrone

Moroccan Vegetable & Chorizo Soup

Kedgeree

Salmon, Pea & Leek Frittata

3 for the fridge, 3 for the freezer

Vegetable & Veggie Sausage One-Pan Bake

Butternut Squash & Coconut Soup

Summery Couscous Salad

Fakeaways

Sticky Asian Beef

Soy Beef & Broccoli

Lamb Koftas

Greek Lemon & Herb Chicken

Lamb Koftas With Paprika Flatbreads & Harissa Dressing

Lamb Koftas With Skin-On Chips & Salad

Lamb Koftas With Couscous, Hummus & Salad

Prawn Curry

Prawn Stir-Fry

Chickpea & Sweet Potato Curry

Turkey Keema Matar

Chinese 5-Spice Pork Loin

Chinese 5-Spice Chicken

3 for the fridge, 3 for the freezer

Sweet & Sour Chicken

Kung Pao Pork

Thai Sea Bass Parcels

Weeknights

Chicken & Chorizo Filo Pie

Cheesy Cajun-Pepper-Stuffed Chicken

Chicken, Butter Bean & Leek Bake

Pork Schnitzel

Low-Fat Chicken Goujons

Fajita-Spiced Chicken Schnitzel

Chicken Goujon Paninis With Salad & Coleslaw

Chicken Goujons With Piri-Piri Sweet Potato Chips & Corn on the Cob

Chicken Goujons Caesar Salad

Asparagus-Stuffed Chicken With Prosciutto

Turkey-Wrapped Leek-And-Cheese-Stuffed Chicken

Spiced Cauliflower Steaks

Harissa Cauliflower Traybake

Turkey ‘Shepherd’s’ Pie

Spicy Turkey Burgers

Turkey Burgers With Baked Potatoes & Veggies

Spicy Turkey Burger Salad With Mozzarella

Turkey Burgers, Pitta Bread & Hummus

White Turkey Chilli

Chipotle Turkey Meatballs

3 for the fridge, 3 for the freezer

Turkey Bolognese

Thai Chicken Noodle Soup

Lamb Meatloaf

Weekend Feasts

Moroccan-Style Lamb Chops

Herb-Crusted Lamb Rumps

Mushroom Stroganoff

Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

Creamy Salmon & Pea Parcels

Cajun Salmon Fillets

Cajun Salmon Tacos

Cajun Salmon Salad

Cajun Salmon With Mange Tout & Noodles

Creamy Turkey & Mushroom Carbonara

Cajun Turkey-And-Pepper Meatloaf

Turkey Tagine

Lamb Chops With Salsa Verde

Beetroot & Feta Orzotto

Oven-Baked Sundried Tomato Risotto

3 for the fridge, 3 for the freezer

Rosemary & Garlic Roast Potatoes

Honey & Mustard Sausage Traybake

Harissa Marinated Chicken

Sides & Sauces

Bombay Potatoes

Paprika Hasselback Potatoes

Lighter Dauphinoise Potatoes

Boulangère Potatoes

Low-Cal Cheesy Mash

Cauliflower Rice

Skin-On Chips

Piri-Piri Sweet Potato Chips

Lighter Creamed Spinach

Sliced Carrots With Garlic & Tarragon

Light-And-Easy Naan Breads

Light-And-Easy Paprika Flatbreads

Harissa Dressing (Or Dip)

Low-Fat Blue Cheese Dressing (Or Dip)

Low-Fat Caesar Dressing

Low-Fat Ranch Salad Dressing

Easy Stir-Fry Sauce

Sweet Chilli Sauce

Lighter Cheese Sauce

Lighter Parsley Sauce

Tomato & Chilli Sauce

Homemade Pizza Sauce

Smoky Sauce

Desserts

Gin & Tonic Ice Lollies

Raspberry Lemonade Ice Lollies

Pina Colada Ice Lollies

Raspberry Daiquiri Ice Lollies

Lighter Chocolate & Raspberry Pots

Chocolate Mini Milks

Frozen Yoghurt & Berry Cupcake Bites

Strawberry & Peach Frozen Yoghurt

Mango & Lime Sorbet

Raspberry & Strawberry Sorbet

Lighter Banana Bread

Banana & Honey Frozen Yoghurt

Jam Jar Blueberry & Lemon Cheesecakes

Semifreddo Eton Mess

List of searchable terms

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Welcome

Or, for those who know me from my first cookbook, The Batch Lady, ‘Welcome Back!’. Either way, whether you’re a seasoned batcher who is familiar with my method or someone just dipping their toe into the world of batching for the first time, I’m thrilled to have you! And, for those new batchers, ‘Hello and welcome to the world of batching – I promise it’s going to revolutionise your time spent in the kitchen!’

So, a second cookbook! Who knew? I loved writing The Batch Lady, although as it was my first book, I was very nervous to see if people understood the concept and enjoyed the recipes. The good news is that I shouldn’t have been worried and it’s been amazing to see all the photos, messages and emails being sent in by everyone who has been ‘getting their batch on’ and telling me how much more time they have to do the things they love now that they’re not shackled to the kitchen night after night.

My first book was packed full of hearty recipes that were sure to be hits with the whole family. The focus was on filling your freezer (and your belly!) with tasty food that could be on the table with as little fuss as possible. So, what’s different this time round? I’ve kept the focus on family cooking at the heart of this book and, as before, each meal serves 4–6 and can be scaled up or down to suit the size of your household. (Plus, if you do end up with extra, that’s just another meal that can be on standby in the freezer to save you cooking on another night!)

The one key difference is that these recipes have more of a focus on health. When putting food on the table for my kids, making sure that I am providing a balanced plate of food is always at the front of my mind, but as a mother and wife who’s responsible for getting a family meal on the table, I am often pulled between trying to feed everyone in the house the same thing and trying to eat healthily. My children, who seem to grow taller by the day, need a nutritionally dense diet containing a good range of healthy fats. My husband and I, both in our mid 40s, can’t match their metabolisms, so need to keep more of an eye on what we eat. With that in mind, the recipes in this book offer the same comforting family favourites, but with twists and tricks to make them just that little bit healthier.

Each recipe contains both ‘family’ and ‘lighter’ serving suggestions, so you can easily cater for everyone sitting around the table. While the kids might opt for rice and naan bread with their curry, the adults might prefer cauliflower rice and a dollop of yoghurt instead. Elsewhere, I’ve made simple substitutions to ingredients and methods of cooking that won’t impact on taste or nutritional value, but are kinder on calories; for example, baking instead of frying or using turkey mince instead of beef.

If you are watching your calories, I have included a breakdown of the calorie and carbohydrate content of each meal at the top of page, so that you can easily factor those in when planning your meals. In this way, I hope that you can cater for your entire family and rest assured that, as well as being tasty, everyone is getting a well-balanced plate of food that ticks all the boxes for their individual nutritional needs.

Over the last year, I have tested these recipes night after night and have truly loved the headspace and freedom of knowing that I can eat a healthy, calorie-controlled diet, while also feeding the whole family a meal that gives them everything they want and need. I no longer have to worry about cooking two separate meals, and with the power of batching, I can have it all ready-made in advance of the week ahead to free-up my precious evenings to do the stuff I really enjoy.

As life gets ever busier, it can be hard to find time for the things that really count. As many of us deal with busy schedules, mounting work stress or feel the pull of the purse strings, planning our weekly meals can feel like an impossible task. My hope is that this book will take all that stress away with meals that are economical, waste-free, healthy, can be made ahead and, most importantly, taste great.

Believe in the batch!

Batch Yourself Healthy

To people who have never batch-cooked before, planning your meals ahead and cooking in large quantities can seem like a lot of work, but the truth is that cooking in this way is a massive time-saver. With this book, you have the added benefit of knowing that the food you are preparing is also healthy, balanced and ticking all of the nutritional boxes for you and your family, which will give you back both time and headspace to spend on the things you love.

THE BENEFITS OF BATCHING

Batching is, quite simply, the act of making more than one meal at a time. It’s a great way of saving time and money and you don’t need to have any specialist equipment, or even a large freezer. My first book, The Batch Lady, focussed on batch cooking family favourites, and this book follows many of the same principles, however, this time I have kept health at the front of my mind when planning the recipes.

For many of us, life is a juggling act, and planning what we are going to cook in the evening is just one of many balls that we are trying to keep in the air at any one time. As a parent, with multiple diaries to keep track of, just knowing who is going to be sat around the dinner table from day to day can seem an impossible task. And catering for different appetites and dietary requirements on top of that can quickly push you to overload. The good news is that following my method and batch cooking your meals will free up your mental load and mean that you always have a freezer full of delicious and nutritious home-cooked meals ready to access whenever you need them.

I like to sit down at the beginning of the week and plan my meals, regardless of whether they’re being made from fresh, using up what I already have ready to go in the freezer or even when I’m giving myself a night off and ordering a pizza or a curry. Once I have my plan, I can do all my shopping and spend an hour or two doing the bulk of my prep and cooking for the week. Once that’s done, mealtimes are a doddle and I don’t have to spend any more of my precious time worrying about what I am going to cook when. Sounds good? Let’s get started.

THE RECIPES

As with all my recipes, those in this book are simple and easy to follow. They are split into chapters on Breakfasts, Light Meals, Fakeaways, Weeknights, Weekend Feasts, Sides & Sauces, and Desserts.

Where my recipes differ slightly to those in a ‘traditional’ recipe book is that each recipe contains different instructions depending on if you want to cook the recipe to serve now, prepare it for the freezer to eat on another day or are reheating it from frozen. This might sound complicated, but it couldn’t be simpler. Simply follow the numbered method as far as you can and then jump to whichever of the three columns at the bottom of the page matches what you want to do. If you are cooking it to serve, just follow the ‘To Cook’ instructions, if freezing, jump to ‘To Freeze’, and so on.

These are designed to be family meals serving 4–6 people, and I have always kept the whole family in mind when writing the recipes. Where dishes contain spice, I have always kept it on the milder end of the spectrum, so as not to blow any tiny tastebuds! If you’re a family of spice lovers, simply adjust the seasoning to suit your tastes.

Because this a book of family cooking, another factor that I always have tried to consider is cost. You’ll notice, for example, that I use a lot of turkey mince in these recipes, as opposed to beef or lamb. Turkey is a brilliant sub to make because it is both cheaper, leaner and lower in fat than other types of mince. Plus, once it’s cooked into a tasty chilli or Bolognese, no one will notice the difference.

VEGETARIAN RECIPES

One of the things I get asked for a lot by followers on my social media channels is more vegetarian recipes. Many people have also said that they struggle with feeding the vegetarians in their house because their family is made up of a mix of vegetarians and omnivores. Making two meals to cater for different diets is a huge amount of extra work, so I have tried to include veggie meals that even the most determined carnivores would be happy to eat. All of the vegetarian recipes in this book are marked with a green ‘V’ symbol in the top corner, so are easy to identify.

The other thing to note is that many of these recipes can easily be adapted to suit a vegetarian diet by subbing in, for example, a plant-based mince instead of meat or using veggie stock instead of chicken. Even if you and your family aren’t vegetarian, do give some of the veggie recipes a try as they are some of my favourite in the book.

WORKING IN PAIRS

Just like my first book, all of the recipes in this book have been put into pairs. These are dishes that lend themselves to being cooked at the same time, as they have similar ingredients or methods. In many of the recipes you will see a coloured bar running through the method. These bars give instructions on how to jump between the two recipes if you are making them both together. If, for example, a sauce on one recipe needs to bubble away for 10 minutes, that might be the perfect time to hop over to the second recipe and get it started. This is a great time-saving way of making two meals at once, and often means that you can make two meals in the time it would otherwise take you to make just one. If you want to make the meals in isolation, then that’s totally fine, too – just skip past the instructions in the coloured bars when working through the recipe.

NO-COOK MEALS

Do you ever rush into the supermarket looking for a fast-fix dinner and pick up one of those little foil trays with, say, two stuffed raw chicken breasts wrapped in bacon? While these can be a tasty and quick solution to an empty fridge, they are often expensive, especially if you are feeding more than two people. The ‘no-cook’ recipes in this book are my version of these, but they are far cheaper to make than to buy!

The benefit of these recipes, especially if making them to store in the freezer, is that all you need to do is put all of the uncooked ingredients together in a freezer bag, then freeze and you have a ready-assembled meal prepared for another day.

These recipes are easy to spot as there is often no numbered method in the recipe itself, just the ‘To Cook, To Freeze, To Cook from Frozen’ instructions at the bottom of the page. This isn’t a mistake – it’s just because the dish is so simple to prepare that you don’t need to do any actual cooking before it goes in the freezer! I often pair a ‘no-cook’ meal with a more complicated recipe, so you can quickly assemble one while the other is bubbling away. These are also the perfect place to start for anyone with mobility issues or who is heavily pregnant, as they can be made sitting at the kitchen table.

DOUBLE BUBBLE!

If you are going to make one, then you may as well make two! Once you’ve got the hang of using my method to make two meals at one time, the next step is to double the volume of the recipes you are making, so that at the end of your cooking time you will have four family meals ready for the fridge or freezer. Doing this generally only adds 5 minutes extra time to your cook, so is a great way of maximising your time and filling your freezer in the process! Equally, if you’re not cooking for a family, you can easily halve the recipes in the book and put one portion in the freezer for another day.

LIGHTER SERVE VS FAMILY SERVE

In order to make it as simple as possible to feed the whole family the same meal, I have kept each main recipe relatively light and given two options for sides. This means that if you’re trying to count the calories but want to give the kids something more substantial, you can easily make one main meal and switch up the side dishes so that your plate of food is just a little bit lighter.

As an example, the Low-Fat Chicken Goujons gives the following options:

Lighter Serve: Green leafy salad and Low-Fat Caesar Dressing

Family Serve: Piri-Piri Sweet Potato Chips and peas

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?

When deciding on the definition of ‘healthy’ for this book, I had to weigh up who was going to be sat around the dinner table eating these meals. This is family cooking, so it was important to me that it didn’t read like a diet book. Rather than focussing on just calories or fat content, I have tried to design the meals so that they are nutritionally balanced and provide everything a growing child needs and satisfies their appetite. That said, I was also aware that some people cooking from this book will be watching their weight, which is why I made the decision to include the amount of calories and sugar at the top of each recipe. These figures are per portion and include the main meal, but not any side dishes. I have also made some changes to the types of ingredients used in the recipes. These are small changes that will never be noticed in the final dish, but that make a big difference in terms of lightening the nutritional load for each recipe. For example, swapping out oil for low-calorie cooking spray or low-fat margarine for butter, and using low-fat cheese and yoghurt, and low-sodium stock throughout. These are easy changes to swap back, so just do what feels right for you and your family. Your meal, your choice.