A Broken Freezer and Chia Pudding
Things I cooked when the freezer broke
Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter is mostly an account of things I made when the freezer broke, my chia pudding era, and a few other eating notes.
A Broken Freezer and Chia Pudding
The year so far in household disasters that have cumulatively felt significant:
Rats chewed through the washing machine hose so that it flooded the kitchen. All the sockets in the house began to fuse every 4-6 hours, 24/7. Rats chewed through wires to the newly installed kitchen lights so that they began to fuse whenever they were turned on. Water from the shower began to pour through the kitchen ceiling onto the floor. Rats broke into dry store of food, so we had to throw food away. The cutlery drawer broke. The toilet seat broke. The fridge-freezer broke.
With the addition that we have all been ill most of the time since January (and still are a little) and the baby has been sent home from nursery for c 40% of the time: so far, 2025 has felt, on a domestic scale, somewhat wearying.
This is the scale of what drove me reach madly towards a product from a health food shop with some kind of wild hope. This is to say: I bought chia seeds and goji berries and elderberry immunity gummies and nuts.
In my Chia Pudding Era
Here is what I did with the chia seeds and then dishes I’ve cooked to stop meat from the freezer going to waste (I had very recently done a pay day treat order from the Wild Meat Company, which, it turned out, couldn’t have been timed worse re the broken freezer.).
In the oven in a big roasting tray on a low-medium heat, I roasted a mix of seeds and pecan nuts, walnuts and coconut flakes, turning them with a spoon every few minutes until they were toasted. I left them to cool completely and then put them in big storage jars in the fridge.
In a lidded glass jar I mixed chia seeds and goji berries with milk (a ratio of 1:4 chia seeds to milk) and a teaspoon of maple syrup and stirred it, and then stirred again after five minutes and put in the fridge overnight.
In the morning, I’ve variously added to the jar: Greek yogurt, the roasted nuts and seeds, some berries or cooked rhubarb and a bit more maple syrup. We did this for a week or two, until the broken fridge made it too tricky to leave milk overnight. I just ordered more nuts and seeds. Also, almond butter was on sale in the supermarket and we have been enjoying it on yogurt; I will put some almond butter on top of my next batch of soaked chia seeds when I eat it.
The baby has been enjoying a tablespoon or two of the soaked chia pudding mixed in with Greek yogurt and peanut butter for breakfast.
Savoury dishes made with food from the broken freezer
Sausages taken out of their casings and shaped into balls fried then simmered with sliced mushrooms, broccoli, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, water, a little sugar and some cornflour to create some texture in the sauce. Eaten with plain rice and steamed greens.
Tamarind chicken from Agak Agak recipe book I bought myself last year – sublime. A magical sauce made from very few ingredients. To achieve sauce perfection, simmer it down substantially after the initial hour, and I added extra sugar than the quantity listed in the recipe (it says to add more to taste). To have with it I made rice cooked with water, coconut milk, and fresh ginger; the sweet coconut tempered the sharp tamarind sauce.
Boiled beef and boiled potatoes and carrots – as I made in Rome, to Rachel’s recipe, with a salsa verde that I made by blitzing together 5-6 anchovies, 2 cloves garlic, a tablespoon capers, a small bunch of parsley, then stirring in two tablespoons breadcrumbs, olive oil until it was a thick sauce, then lemon juice and vinegar, salt and pepper to season.
Bread and butter pudding to use up sliced bread from the freezer. Made to a recipe in Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course book - an incredibly useful book; indispensable, I would even say. My bread slices were sized differently to hers, so I had to add extra milk, cream and sugar. It was delicious, but next time I would add even more liquid. And cottage pie. Sam made a ragu from beef and pork one afternoon and the next day I turned it into cottage pie with mashed potato mixed with milk, butter and Dijon mustard. I invited my one local mum friend and her son over to eat the cottage pie and bread and butter pudding with us for a stodgy lunch party. The two babies zoomed around together afterwards. My friend brought over the best homemade biscuits I have ever eaten, truly. Maybe even the best biscuits I have ever eaten! Sam felt the same – totally remarkable. I asked her the recipe and it’s ‘Stem Ginger Shortbread’ from an old Bakeoff recipe book; she sent me a photo of the recipe.
Duck, lentil, orange salad, with quick pickled shallots, rocket, and vinaigrette. Delicious! I was deep in sorting out the freezer and overwhelmed by things breaking in the house and bought a sachet of cooked lentils for this and they were great for this salad. I cooked duck breast skin side down, starting in a cold pan, for ten minutes until the fat was rendered and the skin crisp. Then I put the pan in the oven on a medium heat for 8 more minutes and rested well. It was pink. I sliced it and mixed into salad with rocket, cooked green lentils, a segmented orange, shallots soaked in vinegar, water and sugar for 30 minutes, and a vinaigrette (a tablespoon Dijon, a tablespoon wine vinegar, salt and pepper, whisked with olive oil to taste).
For a lunch I simmered the broth from boiling the beef with grated ginger, garlic and some soy sauce, and added sliced mushrooms, greens and heated slices of beef through in the broth. Then added cooked noodles. The beef still so soft! The quite plain but very delicious beef broth is so versatile - you can transform it with a few aromatics.
I made raspberry jam to the Chez Panisse Fruit Book recipe and blackcurrant Jam to the Delia Smith Complete Cookery Course recipe with some amendments made as per the Chez Panisse recipe for raspberry jam. Both very delicious though the raspberry is a touch more set than I prefer - as the freezer was not at all cold I could not get a plate chilled enough test the set of the jam.
Tamarind chicken again! With ginger coconut rice again – and thickly sliced cucumber, which was an excellent addition, adding freshness.
This was the last of the meals I made from the freezer. I managed to pass a few things to my mum to cook - she made a goat curry and froze it, pork mince noodles, and lamb patties from Claudia Roden New Book of Middle Eastern Food.
Since giving up on the freezer I have cooked:
Egged and breadcrumbed fried aubergine slices dusted with parmesan, cooked spinach with olive oil, garlic yogurt, and tomato pepper olive anchovy salad made to this recipe.
Bucatini with a sauce of 5-6 chopped anchovies, two garlic cloves, 2 tablespoons tomato paste, all fried gently in 4 tablespoons olive oil, stirring and not letting anything catch, until the oil is red, then add chickpeas in their liquid and simmer while the pasta cooks, when it’s ready stir in a handful of pitted black olives, a handful of parmesan, and then toss with spaghetti and a ladle or two of pasta cooking liquid, tossing as you do, until saucy, serve immediately with extra parmesan.
Peeled and thickly sliced potatoes and onions cooked with old bay seasoning and some hot smoked paprika in the oven. Then I made a sauce with garlic cloves fried in olive oil, sweet smoked paprika, and 300ml passata. Then I fried eggs. I served the potatoes with the tomato sauce on top, a fried egg, sour cream, finely diced onion and red chilli and fresh coriander. Sam was in raptures.
Tuna melt made with tuna, a few tablespoons of finely diced onion, one of finely diced cornichon, diced green chilli, a few tablespoons of mixed grated cheese, a heaped tablespoon of couple of mayonnaise. Mayonnaise spread on either side of the bread, cooked in the frying pan with a weight on.
Sushi rice from the rice cooker with butter and soy sauce, steamed sugar snap peas, half an avocado, two hard boiled eggs, toasted black sesame seeds.
Baby food
The baby has been up and down recovering from vaccinations and fevers and antibiotics and teething so eating has been a bit patchy.
She has recent passion for hot cross buns with butter which have cheered her up when feeling down.
She had a lovely time trying sushi on a day out with Sam.
A recent successful baby dish: tinned sweetcorn blitzed and folded through mashed potato. Fried up as a hash in butter with tuna and spring onions.
She had fun eating cannellini beans with smoked mackerel, sweetcorn, spring onion greens and tomato with her fingers.
We had a companionable lunch eating scrambled egg with avocado and tomato together. Another morning for breakfast she ate most of my fried egg from my plate. She loves to point and make a noise indicating that she wants to eat something.
That tuna melt looks DIVINE.
I have also recently entered my chia pudding era! And I'm very pleased to see that boiled beef, it looks very German.