Ice Queen: Scottish social media star The Batch Lady tells us about her second cookbook

Fill your freezer with the help of Scottish Borders based author, Suzanne Mulholland

Suzanne Mulholland

“When I started batching, I had a small three-drawer freezer”, says Suzanne Mulholland, 45. “Nowadays I have two large catering-sized ones”.

Mulholland lives on a farm in the Ettrick Valley in the Scottish Borders.

To her friends and family, she’s Suzanne, but to her followers, she’s The Batch Lady, with a following of 120k over Instagram and Facebook, and a second recipe book, The Batch Lady: Healthy Family Favourites out now.

While Instagram is flooded with profiles of twenty-somethings going on ill-advised lockdown jaunts to the Maldives, Mulholland offers something more practical.

She’s like the Marie Kondo of the kitchen - showing her followers how to make and stockpile meals.

The new book features over 80 recipes, including the shakshuka, below.

If it’s anything like her first read, The Batch Lady: Simple, Freezable and Budget Friendly, which came out in March 2020, her frugal dishes will strike a chord in lockdown.

“After the success of my first book, people got in touch to say they loved batching, but if I wrote another, could it be filled with healthy calorie-controlled recipes,” Mulholland says. “Quite often it’s my amazing followers who guide me in the direction of what they want to see next”.

Many of her fans also watch her YouTube cooking demonstrations.

These vlogs include; “Cook two family fish pies in two minutes”, “freezeable omelettes”, or “Ten family meals in one hour” with 34k views.

In contrast to, say, an Ottolenghi book, which is designed to appeal to those for whom cooking, shopping and eating are hobbies, The Batch Lady’s manifesto is time management.

Shakshuka

That’s certainly more realistic if you have a big family or work late and don’t want to rely on takeaways and ready-meals.

“Cooking a recipe from a normal recipe book may give you instant gratification, “ Mullholland says. “However, batch cooking helps you enormously in the days, weeks and months ahead - you become your future self’s friend, reaping the rewards of being so organised. The main comment I get from most is that my method is ‘life changing’. With batching you realise you can cook when you feel like it, not when you have to”.

It’s not as easy as just cooking anything and sticking it in the freezer, either.

Not everything would survive, including vegetables with high water content and some dairy products, both of which are susceptible to altered textures, or contracting freezer burn.

Blueberry French toast

However, as well as her two children, Mulholland has plenty of willing guinea pigs who are happy to try out her experiments with freezing and defrosting.

“I have test families who try the recipes before they make it near a book or online,” she says. “ I’m very conscious that a recipe must work perfectly. My own family also test everything and the majority of recipes pass with flying colours. Although, for this book, I decided to test all the vegetarian recipes at once, so the family were eating them for weeks. They enjoyed them but were relieved to see me move onto the meat sections”.

If Mulholland’s family ever want a break, we’re happy to stand in.

The below is extracted from The Batch Lady, Harper Collins, £20 hardback, out now

SHAKSHUKA

PREP: 10 MINS COOK: 25 MINS SERVES: 4 SUGAR: 17G KCAL: 334

This makes a wonderful lazy weekend brunch or lunch and the vibrant flavours will really set you up for the day ahead. Keep an eye on the eggs in the oven and try and remove the shakshuka just at that sweet spot when the whites are cooked but the yolks are still nice and runny. Don’t worry if you do overcook them though - the dish will still taste delicious.

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil

115g frozen chopped onions

1 tsp frozen chopped garlic

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp ground cumin

350g frozen sliced peppers

140g white mushrooms, sliced

1 tbsp tomato puree

2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes

½ tsp chilli flakes (optional)

1 tsp runny honey

4-6 eggs

100g low-fat feta cheese

small bunch fresh coriander, chopped

1. Add the oil to a large, stove-and-oven-safe casserole dish and place over a medium heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring continuously, for 2-3 minutes, until soft and translucent.

2. Add the smoked paprika, cumin, peppers, mushrooms, tomato puree, chopped tomatoes and chilli flakes, if using, to the pan and stir to combine. Bring to the boil, then reduce the temperature to a gentle simmer and leave to cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.

3. Remove the pan from the heat and press 4-6 dimples into the surface of the tomato mixture. Crack an egg into each dimple, then transfer the casserole dish to an oven preheated to 180°C/350°F/ Gas Mark 4 and cook for around 10 minutes, until the egg white is cooked through but the yolks are still runny. Crumble over the feta cheese and garnish with chopped coriander, then serve.

4. To freeze, remove the pan from the heat and set aside until the tomato mixture has cooled to room temperature. Transfer to a large, labelled freezer bag and freeze flat for up to three months.

5. To defrost, remove the tomato sauce from the freezer and leave to fully defrost in the fridge, ideally overnight. Transfer the defrosted tomato mixture to a large stove-and-oven­ safe casserole dish and place over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, for around 10 minutes, until piping hot all of the way through. Continue cooking the shakshuka as per the above instructions.

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