Aromatic Chilli Beef Noodle Soup. Seared Salmon With Singapore Noodles. Charred Peppers and Fresh Corn Polenta with Soy-Cured Yolk. Meatballs with Orzo. Hummus With Seared Lamb and Toasted Pinenuts. Lime and Coriander Chicken. I often, uncharitably, think that chicken breast fillet is the default choice of eating-averse fatphobes.
I'm not sure I've ever looked down a restaurant menu and thought "Yes! That is just what I want. " But I find ready zest for this. The supercharged acidity of the lime does double duty, tenderising the meat beautifully and infusing it with fierce fragrance. My plan of action - and one I recommend - is that you buy breasts with the skin still on. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list. Cheesy Chilli. I can't count how often I find myself stirring a pan with some mince in it, day to day.
Not that this is anything to apologize for: it's easy, quick and comforting. I could probably measure out my life in chilli bowls, and that's no bad thing either. This recipe draws again on a favourite time-saving practice of mine, which is to start off with some paprika-piccante chorizo sausages that give off a fiery orange oil in which to sear and season the mince. Tex-Mex custom decrees that chilli be eaten with - among other embellishments - a handful of grated cheese thrown on top. This is merely an impatient rendering of the same, whereby you simply chop or tear some mozzarella and stir it in to the chilli in the pan, just long enough to let it melt into the meat. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list. Sweet Potato, Ginger And Orange Soup. Pasta With Onions and Anchovies.
Meatballs. The trick to these meatballs is to keep them small. Don’t actually use a teaspoon, but use about a teaspoon’s amount of mince to roll each ball. If there are children around, so much the better; they tend to like making these. But otherwise, they’re easy enough, and the slow repetitiveness of the action can be rather calming. To go with these divine meatballs, I like tagliatelle.
De Cecco, Spinosi or Cipriani brands are all very good, but making fresh pasta is an experience worth trying. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list. Noodles With Mushrooms and Mangetouts. Crumbed Sardine Sandwich. Sake Steak and Rice. For gluten free: use gluten free Dijon mustard instead of English mustard and tamari instead of soy sauce. Check also that the Worcestershire sauce is suitable as some brands contain malt vinegar (made with barley).
The real thing to take from this, too, is the cooking method. This easily translates to bigger cuts as in my quick-cook longrested fillet: when I've got people coming round and I'm not sure exactly when we'll be eating, I cook a large contrefilet or fillet of beef - about 2.25kg / 5lb for eight, or ten if you're a good carver.
New Orleans Coleslaw. Risotto Bolognese. Breakfast Bruschetta. Chicken With Spring Onions, Chilli and Greek Yogurt. Lamb Cutlets With Mint, Chilli & Golden Potatoes. If you put halved baby potatoes on to steam before you get started on the lamb chops, you can fairly effortlessly rely on a proper meat-and-potato supper in around 20 minutes (plus a little marinating time). Steaming the potatoes is, for me, an important stipulation: a steamed spud is a sweet spud; more than that, cooked this way, rather by boiling, the potatoes are dry when done, which makes them easy to fry to crisp bronzedness, without spitting, later. It's important, though, that you don't fill your pot with too much water first.
If new potatoes aren’t around, then use a couple of baking potatoes, cut into 1cm / ½-inch dice. Steaming here would be obligatory rather than merely desirable, as the potato chunks would dissolve into mush in boiling water. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list. Read more. Spanish Chicken With Chorizo and Potatoes. Much as I love to have a pan bubbling away on the stove, I often feel that the most stress free way to feed people is by taking the oven route. When I'm frazzled, I firmly believe that the tray-bake is the safest way to go. Enjoy the easefulness of the oven: you just bung everything in, and you're done. Moroccan Vegetable Pot and Couscous with Pine Nuts and Dill. Beef Shin, Chestnuts, Polenta and Gruyere. Italian Roast Chicken With Peppers and Olives. Duck Breasts With Pomegranate and Mint. Rack-Roasted Chicken with Gravy Potatoes.
Speedy Seafood Supper. Chicken, Mushroom and Bacon Pie. Even the word pie is comforting. But then, it would be hard to deny the very real lure of pastry, especially when, as here, you know you're going to dunk it in gravied juices till its luscious lightness has become deliciously, soggily heavy. I concede, however, that making and rolling out your own pastry is not necessarily the speediest option, so I use bought, all-butter ready-rolled puff pastry and feel fine about it. And if you don't have the garlic oil that I suggest cooking the bacon in (and I know a teaspoon doesn't sound like much, but the streaky bacon should yield enough of its own glorious fat) simply use a teaspoon of olive (not extra virgin) oil and then mince in a small clove of garlic when the mushrooms are all but cooked. I make the pie even easier, by browning the chicken and making the sauce all in one go. Saffron Scented Chicken Pilaf.
Asparagus, Radish and New Potato Salad. Chicken In A Pot with Lemon and Orzo. This is a dish, a family favourite, that I cooked moreorless straight after I’d got off the plane after two months on the road, to signal and celebrate that I was truly home.
It’s a simple one pot dish that brings comfort and joy, and it is my pleasure to share that with you. It’s so hard to be utterly precise and specific with this kind of cooking: if you’re feeding small children, for example, you may not want to add the chilli flakes. Similarly, you may want to use just one lemon, rather than the two I like. Your chicken may weigh more or less: the ones I get tend to vary between 1.5kg and 1.7kg / 3½lb and 3¾lbs.
Fig and Olive Chutney. Mauritian Prawn Curry. Spaghetti With Marmite. I came across this recipe in Anna Del Conte's memoirs, Risotto with Nettles. Now, there are so many recipes I could borrow from her, and many I have, but this is the one I have to show you here. She introduces it as hardly a recipe, but I wanted to include it because I haven't as yet found a child who doesn't like it. I know the combination of pasta and Marmite sounds odd to the point of unfeasibility, but wait a moment, there is a traditional day-after-the-roast pasta dish, in which spaghetti is tossed in stock, and I have eaten shortcut versions of this in Italy (recreated guiltlessly in my own kitchen) which use a crumbled stock cube, along with some butter, olive oil, chopped rosemary and a little of the pasta cooking water to make a flavoursome sauce for spaghetti.
If you think about it, Marmite offers saltiness and savouriness the way a stock cube might. Vodka Marinated Steak. Egyptian Tomato Salad. Linguine With Chilli, Crab and Watercress. Salmon, Avocado, Watercress and Pumpkin Seed Salad. Cauliflower, Garlic and Turmeric Soup. Mustard Pork Chops. Korean Calamari. Tortellini At Midnight by Emiko Davies. Hot and Sour Beef Salad. Chowder With Asian Flavours. This is the perfect supper on those days when a knife and fork seem like just too much work. It's instantly comforting but spirited enough to make one feel invigorated rather than stultified by eating it. And although, to many, replacing the regular milk with coconut milk, dispensing with the flour and butter - the roux - altogether and taking the southeast Asian route rather than the traditional one, might seem an abomination, I love it so much better than the anyway-more-laborious-to-prepare original.
Children may prefer the lime juice reduced and the chilli removed. I think it is perfection as it is. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list. Read more. Slow Roast Pork Belly. There are a few meals I can say I'm making that will make my children excited (or pretend to be), and this is one of them. Alongside there must be Pie Insides (which is what my daughter has always called leeks in white sauce) and for ultimate gratification, roast potatoes although I usually use goose fat for roast potatoes, I feel the pork belly allows, indeed encourages, the substitution of lard. I'm not convinced that with all that fabulous crackling you do need roasties as well, but I like to provide what makes people happy. Rice and Vegetable Aash with Puy Lentils. Pasta Salad Primavera.
Rapid Ragu. Roast Rib of Beef With Port and Stilton Gravy. Chorizo and Chickpea Stew. Maple Chicken 'N' Ribs. The Taste of Home. Tomato, Date and Chickpea Tagine. Chickpeas With Rocket and Sherry. Steak and Kidney Pudding. I often double the quantities for the meat filling, then freeze half, so I'm only a defrost away from another pudding. Traditionally, oysters were added to steak and kidney pud; I thought a little oyster sauce might be an appropriate contemporary adaptation, and it was, rewardingly so. And I happened to find some beer called Oyster Stout which seemed entirely right for it too, but it's hardly essential: any stout in a storm... I always cook the meat filling a day or two in advance: the flavours deepen wonderfully and the whole thing seems less of a performance. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list. Read more I often double the quantities for the meat filling, then freeze half, so I'm only a defrost away from another pudding.
I always cook the meat filling a day or two in advance: the flavours deepen wonderfully and the whole thing seems less of a performance. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list. Naan Pizza. Scallops and Chorizo. Pappardelle With Butternut and Blue Cheese. Beer-Braised Pork Knuckles With Caraway, Garlic, Apples and Potatoes. Thai Yellow Pumpkin and Seafood Curry. It's a good idea to have something up your sleeve that you can cook quickly, and simply, when you've got friends coming over to supper midweek after work.
This is that something. Don't let the length of the list of ingredients put you off. You really could go to the supermarket at lunchtime and buy everything you need. What's more, most of it keeps: salmon, raw prawns, lime leaves and lemongrass in the deep-freeze (and all but the salmon can be used from frozen); curry paste in the fridge; the coconut milk, fish sauce, fish-stock concentrate and turmeric in the cupboard. One Pan Sage and Onion Chicken and Sausage. Moroccan Vegetable Pot and Couscous with Pine Nuts and Dill. Salmon Fishcakes. Matzo meal is widely available at supermarkets, and well worth keeping in store. I use tinned salmon here because I think, strangely enough, that's how they taste best (if it's good enough for Marguerite Costa, it's good enough for me) and it means you can have the wherewithal for these about the place at all times.
I do have to warn, though, that, the unfried mixture smells absolutely vile. Just hold on to the thought that, once cooked, it tastes wonderful. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list. Read more. Lamb Cutlets With Mint, Chilli & Golden Potatoes. Hearty Wholewheat Pasta With Brussels Sprouts, Cheese and Potato. It is not quite normal to feel as joyous as I do when saying the words “Brussels sprouts”, but this recipe does not merely use said much-denigrated ingredient, it also celebrates it. Sprouts are nutty, fresh, gorgeous, and I regard this recipe as their seasonal showcase. Not Italian, you might say. Well, my inspiration for it is the one authentically defining dish of Valtellina, in Lombardy, up towards the Swiss border. Beef and Beans With Pasta. This comes from the children’s food chapter of How to Eat, but it should certainly not be confined to the Kids’ Menu.
Breakfast Bruschetta. Spanish Chicken With Chorizo and Potatoes. Lamb With Rosemary and Port. Meatzza. Lentils with Tamarind and Dates. Warming sweet potato and ginger soup. Bulgar Wheat Salad With Pink-Seared Lamb. This bulgar wheat salad is loosely based on tabbouleh, only using coriander in place of the parsley, lime in place of the lemon and omitting the tomatoes and adding the chilli and some raw, diced courgettes.
Coriander is so much more headily aromatic than parsley that I've made the ratio to herb and grain skewed differently from traditional tabbouleh: that's to say, this is a herb-flecked grainy salad, rather than a herb salad into which a few grains have been tossed. Because the bulgar wheat is so strongly flavoured and aromatic you can leave the lamb as it is: no marinade, no nothing, just sweet and pink and warm against the green-flecked cracked wheat. If you want to serve the lamb on top of the salad, I find that two loins of lamb are plenty, but if you want to serve the meat on a separate plate, then I'd go for three. This may sound mad, but really it does seem to make a different to how people eat. Linguine With Lemon, Garlic and Thyme Mushrooms. Potato, Parsnip and Porcini Gratin.
Cooking potatoes for large numbers of people is not always easy.
Mushroom "Steak" Sandwich. Crepes Suzette. Tarragon Salmon. Beef and Beans With Pasta. Pumpkin and Goat's Cheese Lasagne. Roast Rib of Beef With Port and Stilton Gravy. Sweet Potato Macaroni Cheese. Coq Au Riesling. Linguine With Mussels. Tagliatelle With Chicken From the Venetian Ghetto. I have the estimable Claudia Roden to thank for introducing me to this, and my gratitude is immeasurable. It is such a crucial part of my life. Spaghetti With Marmite. Scallops on the Shell. Linguine With Clams. Kale With Chorizo and Poached Egg. There is something so of-the-moment about this recipe, which is odd since it comes from a book published 20 years ago. I seem to remember also that I did a lot of wistful complaining in How To Eat about how unfashionable kale had become. I had virtually been brought up on it. I certainly never would have foretold its hipster blossoming.
Sesame Peanut Noodles. I always make a large vat of these since they're lovely to pick at in the fridge. Lamb Ribs With Nigella and Cumin Seeds. Beef cheek ragù recipe. Gemelli with Anchovies, Tomatoes and Mascarpone. Chicken Schnitzel With Bacon and White Wine. Warm Spiced Cauliflower and Chickpea Salad With Pomegranate Seeds. Italian Roast Chicken With Peppers and Olives. Slow-Cooker Lamb and Pasta. Courgette and Chick Pea Filo Pie. OFM’s classic cookbook: Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat. How to Eat is easy to find on my bookshelf.
It is the book in tatters. The one whose spine is torn, whose pages are smeared, smudged and scorched. The book that has clearly done service for 20 years. You can tell from the title this is more than a recipe book. From the first entry for roast chicken (stick half a lemon up its bottom) to the last – Marmite sandwiches (cream the butter and Marmite together as if you were making a cake) – the book is clearly the work of a roll-your-sleeves-up cook. Turkish Eggs. Nursery Fish Pie. Chicken Traybake with Bitter Orange and Fennel.