You’re in social isolation and opportunities for shopping might be limited. But you have a well-stocked store-cupboard and freezer and it’s still possible to get most food if you look in the right places.
Those ready-cooked pouches of rice are a godsend. I always have a few in my cupboard, ready to microwave in two minutes when time or energy are short. I’ve been slow to realise that they also make a great improvised risotto and the more they are at the cheapie...
What do you feed veggies at a festive event? They will shudder at the meat options and sometimes will self sacrificingly say they will be happy with ‘just the trimmings’. This leaves everyone feeling uneasy. The usual solution is to make a nut roast, fine if you like...
These quickly pickled red onions couldn’t be more different from the dense crunchiness of the traditional pickled onion. They will be ready to eat in a few hours but will also keep for weeks in the fridge. They are a great accompaniment to any hot or cold dish where a...
Those big meaty Portobello mushrooms lend themselves so well to a quickly assembled light supper. The secret is to balance moist with drier ingredients and then to bake them in a hot oven. I was alerted to this type of recipe by my friend and colleague Carolann...
As a naïve young student in Bristol I came from a Welsh household where the word ‘pasta’ had never been spoken, let alone cooked. What a joy it was to discover the world of Italian cooking in a family-run restaurant in Park St, cheap enough for a student on a grant to...
All day, while latched to my computer on Zoom calls, I could smell the delicious aroma of my lamb korma, simmering away in the slow cooker (if you don’t have one it cooks in the oven just as well). Korma is a gentle curry from North India, often made with nuts and...
How I hated sprouts as a child and how I wish my Mum had known this brilliant and simple way of cooking them as it takes away all bitterness, replacing it with a sweet, nutty, moreish flavour. My friend Leni served sprouts this way when she gave me supper a few days...
This quick, easy dish is an excellent compromise when one person in the household likes spicy food and another does not. It’s a good way to introduce children, very gently, to the whole idea of ‘curry’*. This is not a curry in any real sense even though it uses a few...
This Indian takeaway and restaurant favourite is easy to make at home. It works best with waxy potatoes that will keep their shape and ‘bite’. There are many alternative ways of cooking the potatoes including roasting them coated with the spices, but here I have opted...
This is the aubergine season where the market stalls are begging us to buy three for the normal price of one. I did. I used the biggest one, a plump shiny purple wonder, to make a richly coloured and flavoured sauce for wholemeal spaghetti, as this usually needs a...
Summer is the season of tomato gluts. Beautiful, sharply-flavoured fruit at give-away prices, sometimes literally free when your keen gardener friends suddenly have more tomatoes than they can deal with. This recipe assumes that you will use the tomatoes within a few...
This simple dish is so easy to make and a good way of using courgettes now that they are so cheap and you may even have an abundance of them in your garden. It’s a bit like finding out that you’ve been speaking prose all your life, I discovered that cooking courgettes...