Cooking for the Freezer..

INGREDIENTS FOR FILLING :

1kg mince
1inch cube of ginger root grated
4 cloves of garlic grated
2 medium onions chopped

(for measuring spices for 1kg meat I use one level baby formula scoop, but a heaped teaspoon should be roughly the same)
1 scoop of each - salt, chilli powder, whole cumin seeds, ground coriander, paprika.

Fry all the ingredients together in pot on medium heat for approx 40 minutes without any oil. Turn up the heat near the end of the cooking time to ensure that all water in meat has evaporated and that you have a fairly dry mixture. Add some fresh chopped coriander and a level teaspoon of garam masala. Set aside and allow to cool.

You can also add some frozen peas or some diced boiled potatoes to mixture if desired. If not HOT (SPICY) enough add a few chopped green chillies.

INGREDIENTS FOR PASTRY :

500g plain flour
125g butter
175ml of warm milk

Put flour in a bowl and rub in the butter. Mix in the milk gradually to form a dough. Form the dough into small balls, flatten the ball in the palms of your hands, dip in plain flour and roll out quite thinly. I normally place a side plate on the dough and cut round it then cut the circle into two halves. Repeat until all the dough is used up. Make a sticky mixture using flour and water. Make each half of dough into a cone shape using sticky mixture to seal the sides together. Scoop in filling and seal the top of cone using sticky mixture again. Repeat until you run out of pastry/filling.

Once all the samosas are ready I normally partly fry then in batches in the deep fat fryer at 180 degrees for about 10 secs a batch and then allow them to cool completely. I do this to prevent them from sticking together when you put them in a carrier bag to freeze.

When you bring them out of freezer either allow them to defrost at room temperature for a few hours or defost them in microwave for few minutes before deep frying them again until they are golden brown.

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FOR VEG SAMOSAS, fry the onions along with a few chopped leeks and spring onions in a little oil until brown, add the spices (about 3/4 of a scoop of each) and fry for a few minutes. Do not use garlic or ginger in the veg samosas. Then add approx 1 kilo of veg - a mixture of boiled diced potatoes, frozen peas and sweetcorn. Add some fresh chopped coriander and a level teaspoon of garam masala and allow to cool.

It sounds more complicated than it actually it can be time consuming to make. Try if poss to get someone to help at the filling stage ie) you roll out the the samosa halves while someone else fills them. GOOD LUCK AND ENJOY:D .

I'm pretty sure I've seen the chefs on tv frying up stuff like this in 2-3" inches of oil in a deep wok, so can't see why not

Yes they would still work this way. I just deep fry them for speed.

We have successfully frozen cooked homemade pizza, we wrap in in kitchen foil and freeze individual slices, you can just pop them frozen in a hot oven to defrost & re-heat.

We freeze lots of sauce based dishes, eg bolognaise, chilli, lentil sauces, curry, these are so easy to defrost and heat up and can be served with anything (baked potato, rice, pasta, salad). We don't normally bother freezing the pasta, just freeze the sauce then decide what we want to eat with it and cook that while we re-heat the sauce.

Have also frozen home-made bean-burgers.

We also use our freezer for bread (snap up the reduced items and bung them in the freezer) and also in the summer we have a lot of veg ( home-grown thanks to mum's allotment!) which can be blanched and put into freezer bags.

Having some "ready-meals" (cheap home-made versions of course!) in the freezer is so handy, you can whip them out the night before to defrost then you've got a lovely home cooked meal waiting for you the next night.