Fancy cooking something a bit different from my usual fair on Friday night and wondered if STW had any suggestion. I am a pretty good cook but do have some requirements:

1. I don’t have an oven or a grill at the moment so whatever it is I need to be able to do it on a hob
2. No nuts as I have an allergy
3. Reasonably quick to prepare and cook, I’m doing it after work so 30 mins I can deal with, 45 is just about OK, much more than that and I will get too hungry and raid the biscuit tin.

Thanks in advance.

Takeaway.

spiced lamb kofta in tomato sauce

Koftas is not a bad shout actually.

Spanish tortilla

Chicken / Beef / Veg stirfry plenty of chili and seasame oil (or are you alergic to seasame seeds?)

30 minute meals you say. This man has recently given us a book of some examples.

However, this man is a liar. 30 minutes? Pah! Yeah right! If you’re a chef maybe? Oh….. you are. Some samples here….

this man owns a time machine

Yeah my wife got that book for Christmas (I don’t know why, I do all the cooking). I took one look at it and said ‘I don’t see any meals in there that I could cook in 30 minutes’.

Loads of good ideas in Jamies book. We do them quite often for weeknight teas.
I find that if you want to be done in 30 minutes then usually just the main dish is do-able. If you wannt to do all the trimmings that go with it then youre looking at quite a bit longer!

How about Fajitas, thats always a good friday night tea, only needs a hob and goes awesome with a couple of bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, a regular friday night favourite here!

This book is full of genuine 30 minute recipes. They’re bloody good too

Invest some time on the thursday night and prepare a homemade curry of choice…reheat on friday night, wash down with lager/ale of choice…

Conchiglie alla burrino.

Cooking chorizo
Onion
Frozen peas
Passata
Salt & Pepper
Glass of white wine

Stick pan of water on for pasta
Chop sausage into 1/4″ rounds, simmer in glass of white
Chop onion medium fine, slowly soften in deep frypan
When soft add passata and big handful of frozen peas
Add the chorizo with the wine, simmer with lid on while pasta cooks
Black pepper

Job done, top dinner, quick and under three quid too

The Nigel Slater 30 min book is great – best described as suppers, simple single course (usually single pan) meals for two and very comforting relaxy food. And the 30 mins is a max, some of the dishes are more like 5 mins.

The Jamie one is good too although it pushes the 30min envelope a bit, you could cook them in 30 mins the third of forth time you tried them, but because there a 3 courses to be juggled you spend too much time looking at the instructions the first time. They’re a bit more about entertaining as they are presented but I tend to take one dish and cook that, rather than try and juggle the whole meal.

The recipes in the Jamie At Home book are generally quicker to prepare than the 30 min book

Lots of Jamie Oliver recipes can be found online I usually google whatever key ingredient I’ve got plus Jamie Oliver – sometimes from the supermarket isle when I find something nice.

This is gobsmackingly lovely even though its totally off-brief and uses an oven. I’m sure you could jury-rig some sort of stove based version though

What is “Cooking chorizo” is it not all the same?

Heres a good one

Acapulco chicken

I can’t find the exact recipe I use. Follow this one but add kidney beans while its cooking. And serve it with tortillas and soured cream dusted with cayenne pepper. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

What is “Cooking chorizo” is it not all the same?

“cooking” anything just means cheap stuff, no?

What is “Cooking chorizo” is it not all the same?

its raw, uncooked chorizo sausage, rather then the cooked ready-to-eat cold variety. You won’t find it on the shelf next to regular stuff as cooked and uncooked meats are rarely displayed together, so if you can find it it’ll be with the regular sausages

Usually, but not this time.

Cooking chorizo

inch thick sausage, comes whole for you to cook with

Sandwich chorizo

2 1/2″ dia sausage, sliced thin for salads and sandwiches

naaaaa. pic at the top is the same stuff as the slice stuff at the bottom but un-sliced.

The un-cooked stuff is packed in the same way as regular bangers, and the sausages themselves are raw and squishy – I have some in the fridge just now actually, haven’t used them before.

But for the purposes of the recipe above the unsliced, rather than raw chorizo seems more apt. Its nice chopped into chunks and fried into sort of meaty crutons. it flavours and colours the oil and you can chuck both over a salad

Cooking lager:

😀

I used to cook with lager – pasta with tomato, lager and creme fraiche. Better lager than that though – Stella is good

fresh scallops in a cream and lemongrass sauce with potato rosti
prawns on a barbecue with some kind of lemon dip