What to cook if you don’t want to cook? If you’d rather be doing something else, like for instance NOTHING? Oh no, don’t reach for the takeaway menu, that’s a bad move. Michael Pollan has been arguing since 2013 that home cooking beats eating out in terms of health, family bonding and financial benefits. How about putting a salad together instead of mindlessly gawping at Insta-dishes while waiting for that over salted (and over-everything) pizza delivery? I bet it won’t take you any longer all in all.
Fancy a pizza? Why not slap up some all-day-breakfast quesadillas instead? The satisfaction levels will be actually higher as you’ll be nowhere as bloated as after a Domino's thin crust.
Fancy a Chinese? Here you go; five spice shrimp salad with crispy noodles is the answer. About half an hour from start to finish and frozen prawns are fine. Or do the stir fried ginger vegetables while plain rice is cooking.
There’s easy, and there’s cheese on toast. But you’ll make it much more interesting if you bake it in a little dish, sprinkled with seeds, with good bread toasted in the oven at the same time; baked scamorza is the recipe that will help you along. Use provolone, mozzarella, even Cheddar instead of scamorza if it sounds too hard to get.
Effortless and healthy – here’s the bacon and blue cheese wedge salad. Or the three-trick asparagus pasta where you can play with the ingredients as your fridge allows.
Get a ready-roasted chicken on the way home and put together a chicken couscous salad; you can even skip cooking the red peppers and add them in raw. Buy a bag of good quality filled pasta and cook it potsticker-style.
I’ll even add a cake recipe: officially the easiest, stir-the-ingredients-and-bake island buttermilk cake with fresh or frozen raspberries. And for a cake that will double up as breakfast, go for the coconut loaf – toasted and buttered slices are the best breakfast imaginable with the absolute minimum effort, you’ll see.