Day 109: a happy freezer-find

A super short one from me today: work has consumed the majority of my time this week, and my off-time has been occupied with making the most of this glorious British weather and working our way through every episode of Mare of Easttown (that alone was a rollercoaster of emotions let me tell you!). On weeks like this there can be nothing more rewarding than a happy-freezer find: something requiring minimal effort, and time, to thaw out and get into bowls, which last night for us came in the form of Nigella’s Korean Keema.

Nigella’s Korean Keema

I took the raw mince out of the freezer a few weeks ago, when I originally planned to make this, but as our (then) dinner plans changed, I just followed the steps to prepare the mince and cook it - leaving out the spring onions and petit pois - and then froze it once cool. I even portioned off some petit pois into a smaller freezer bag to ensure I would have everything to finish the recipe at a later date! At the time, I never had any honey so I used apricot conserve in its stead; I’ve been using this quite a lot in savoury cooking recently since making Nigella’s Sweet and Sour Chicken on Day 87.

Last night, after thawing the cooked mince, I picked up my copy of Kitchen and proceeded to finish making this Korean Keema: frying the spring onions and peas and making a little bit of extra sauce with the gochujang, apricot conserve, soy sauce and Shaohsing wine, before warming the cooked mince through until hot.

I even tried my hand at sushi rice! The result of which, I was very happy with!

Flavour musings

There is something so addictive and comforting about the taste of fermented foods. Whether they are sweet or sour, they have a soothing savouriness that soothes, and this shines through gently, but effectively, with the use of fermented rice wine and the fermented chilli and rice (Gochujang) paste in Nigella’s Korean Keema.