Weekday dinners: back home late, get a takeout or dive into the freezer for a ready meal? No - I've hardly ever done it so neither must you, unless I'm SO not representative of working/cooking population. Planning the weekly shop is essential to be fair, rather than a haphazard pop-into-the-shop on your way home. But only so much so that you have foundations for meals: several bits of meat or fish if you eat them, pasta/rice/beans/tortillas either way, veg that won't wilt overnight, store cupboard, and that's pretty much it. Here's a bunch of weekday meals that don't take longer than 20 minutes to prepare, are not nearly as complicated as Jamie's famous 5-minutes-that-really-last-an-hour - and they're mostly low on carbs as a bonus.
Pan fried fish fillet - any white, not too huge fish will do: bass or bream, hake or snapper, even salmon if off the tail end. The secret is dry skin and hot pan - nothing else to it. Fish another way? Cook a salmon fillet with oyster sauce or bake it with maple syrup.
Chicken alla fiorentina is really quick and massively rewarding; so is my creamy chicken with leeks/mushrooms/broccoli/anything. Or grilled lamb neck fillet - cooks in 10 minutes, rests another 5 while you whip up fresh cabbage salad.
There's nothing wrong with shop-bought filled pasta if it's decent quality (you can never tell what taste the filling is anyway) but how about cooking it like potstickers? And you can do worse (and take longer) than this ratatouille served over rice for a veggie supper.
So then after a week of cooked from scratch, quick dinners, you can look forward to making something more involved - pizza! And this is the very best go-to pizza recipe for a wood-fired oven baked replica, using a frying pan and grill. Have a good week!