Cream of the Crop

Cream of the Crop is packed for Yearsley Food, a British frozen food business that supplies shops, takeaways and restaurants across the country. The range keeps to the vegetables most kitchens use every week, frozen to hold their sweetness and colour, and every bag is suitable for vegetarians.

Both packs sit in frozen vegetables, part of the frozen vegetables and coconut section of our frozen department. The garden peas are small, sweet and tender. The mixed vegetables combine diced carrot, peas, cut green beans, broad beans and sweetcorn, a ready mix that saves chopping. Both come in large bags that suit families and anyone who cooks in quantity.

The mixed vegetables are the quick way to a vegetable pulao or biryani: fry whole spices in ghee, add the vegetables from frozen with soaked basmati and a spoon of biryani and pulao masala, then cook with water until the rice is done. They also go into vegetable fried rice, rava upma, samosa filling, a Sri Lankan vegetable kottu and a quick mixed sabzi with cumin and turmeric. The peas belong in aloo matar, matar paneer and keema, and a handful brightens a plain dal, a pasta bake or a cottage pie.

Store at -18°C, pour out only what you need and seal the bag again so the rest does not freeze into a block. For tins to keep in the cupboard, see sweetcorn, peas and mushrooms, and for frozen grated coconut to finish a thoran or poriyal, browse frozen coconut.