The onions in the fridge drawer needed using up, so the other day when I pulled the celery from the polytunnel and gathered in some of my wonky carrots I set to and made a batch of veg hash.
It's something I nearly always have in the freezer and is brilliant for any recipe that starts 'chop and fry one onion'. It's simply a mixture of finely chopped onions, celery and carrots, you could also add some garlic, but I tend to stick to the main three just in case I have to cater for someone who doesn't like garlic quite as much as we do. I use this as the base for soup, stews, pie fillings and curries, it means that the chopping and messing about process is already out of the way and the meal can be put together in less time.
My food processor is just a small one, an attachment to my Kenwood mixer, so I do this in batches and then mix it all together in my big mixing bowl. It's best to do it in like with like batches as the carrots take more chopping than the onions or celery.
Normally I freeze it in some of my little plastic storage boxes but they are all in use at the moment and I thought that with the freezer being so chock a block freezing it in zip lock bags (which I seem to have lots of) would mean that I can flatten and stack them to take up less space, and of course being flat they will also thaw out extremely quickly. I use my hash straight from frozen if I forgotten to take it out of the freezer to thaw before I need it.
From my two bunches of homegrown celery, the wonky carrots and the last of the onions I managed to make six 350g bags of Veg Hash, and one portion that went straight into the soup that I made yesterday,which I will be eating for lunch today .... as long as Mavis holds on to her breakfast ;-)
The only thing left over from my harvesting and chopping were the celery leaves, I bet you can guess what I made with them.
Sue xx
