Help me pout with simple food please

[drivin_me_nuts]

PH, I need your help please. I am coming home very late at the moment and am subsisting on bugger all other than hosital sandwiches and crisps. I am devoid of a) imagination b) interest, but need to eat something simple and more importantly nutritious.

Can you please suggest ANYTHING that I can eat that takes no more than 10/15 minutes to prepare and takes bugger all cooking, but is not ready meal slop and can keep a day or two.

[Stu R]

drivin_me_nuts said:

PH, I need your help please. I am coming home very late at the moment and am subsisting on bugger all other than hosital sandwiches and crisps. I am devoid of a) imagination b) interest, but need to eat something simple and more importantly nutritious.

Can you please suggest ANYTHING that I can eat that takes no more than 10/15 minutes to prepare and takes bugger all cooking, but is not ready meal slop and can keep a day or two.

Stir fry! It's the best meal ever IMO as it can be so varied. Loads of great sauces out there, it's pretty healthy when done right, it's filling and you can cook it every night and never have the same stuff twice. There's loads of nice veggies out there you can use and there's no shortage of good sauces ( I'm rather partial to Wagamamas of late.)

Pasta is always a winner too, and quite a lot of soups can be prepped in 10-15 minutes if you use a blender, you could chuck together a nice big pan of chilli (only takes 10-15 mins to prepare though it'll take a while to cook, maybe do it the day before?), shed loads of curries (though add a bit more time on for cooking again) Beauty of making a massive pan full of chilli is is you can freeze it in set portions.

salads - warm and cold ones, doddle. 10-15 minutes gives you time to cook some bacon and/or poached/boiled eggs too (and an easy way to use up any spare pasta)

As for veggies, you can steam most of the popular ones like carrot, broccoli and so on in 10 minutes or less. For stuff like potatoes you can chop them up, steam them and finish in a pan or something if you're pushed for time. This gives you plenty of time to prepare a piece of fish or pan roast a chicken breast.

There's no shortage of half decent meals at supermarkets these days either. I appreciate you don't want 'ready meal slop' but there's some pretty decent stuff out there that requires only heating. I try not to make a habit of it as I much prefer home cooked stuff, but it's there as an option when you just can't be chewed to cook - same goes for pasta dishes, there's loads of nice ones that require only 5 minutes in boiling water, draining and a pot of sauce chucking over them, or of course you could make a simple ragu.

Edited by Stu R on Monday 27th September 07:17

[CommanderJameson]

Risotto.

Can make it out of just about anything as long as you've got an onion, some stock (Knorr stock pots are surprisingly good, OXO cubes are a bit too salt for my palate) and some arborio rice.

I like to do the following variants:

1. Spicy tomato. Couple of finely chopped red chillis and a can of cherry tomatoes. Or just half a pound of cherry tomatoes and a decent glug of passata/chopped tomatoes/whatever tomatoes float your boat.

2. Chicken & bacon. (self explanatory I hope)

3. Mushroom & garlic. This is my comfort food. Loads and loads and loads of quartered chestnut mushrooms, enough garlic to stun a horse. Marry with a couple of robust bottled beers (e.g. Hobgoblin) and a few hours of brain-out telly or films (Shaolin Soccer/CSI/Without A Trace/Kung Fu Hustle/etc) and the worries of the world melt away. (And you stink afterwards, but hey ho)

Make twice as much as you need and freeze the other half.

[ali_kat]

Get a slow cooker, chuck stuff in it

Cone home

Hot meal

[CommanderJameson]

ali_kat said:

Get a slow cooker, chuck stuff in it

Cone home

Hot meal

^^ This.

Specific lazy recipe:

Buy cheap scraggy cuts of beef, chop up. Buy chopped or get butcher to do it if you're really not in the mood.

Jar of Loyd Grossman curry sauce

Bung in, stir up.

Set slow cooker to auto

Go to work and don't worry about being late home because later = more tender.

Done. All you have to cook is the rice.

Again, it keeps and freezes.

Edited by CommanderJameson on Monday 27th September 07:54

[drivin_me_nuts]

Thanks for the ideas - stir fry and risotto are old faves of mine that I completely forgot about.

I've never used a slow cooker before - presumambly you just throw in stuff ane leave it and that'll be things like red meat and veggies - i'm thinking bugs here, so no raw chicken etc?

[CommanderJameson]

drivin_me_nuts said:

Thanks for the ideas - stir fry and risotto are old faves of mine that I completely forgot about.

I've never used a slow cooker before - presumambly you just throw in stuff ane leave it and that'll be things like red meat and veggies - i'm thinking bugs here, so no raw chicken etc?

I do chicken in mine.

Prep the night before.

turn on at 6AM when I get up.

Cooked for ~11 hours, it's not yet caused an outbreak at Chez Jameson.

[Don]

drivin_me_nuts said:

Thanks for the ideas - stir fry and risotto are old faves of mine that I completely forgot about.

I've never used a slow cooker before - presumambly you just throw in stuff ane leave it and that'll be things like red meat and veggies - i'm thinking bugs here, so no raw chicken etc?

It's fine to slow cook chicken. I even do whole ones in the slow cooker. The LOW setting on the slow cooked gets the food up to about 87-90C. More importantly it keeps it there for hours. Bugs don't survive that.

Just make sure the chicken is good and fresh when it goes in. Yes during the cooking it will go through the "danger" temperature where bugs thrive - but it soon gets further up to the point where the feckers expire.

[Simpo Two]

Help you pout with simple food? Shove a quarter of an orange sideways in your mouth!

[drivin_me_nuts]

Simpo Two said:

Help you pout with simple food? Shove a quarter of an orange sideways in your mouth!

cheeky bugger, that put a smile on my face sans orange ...

Thanks for the tips re slow cooker - any brands suggested. I've looked into the 'ccatalogue of dreams' this morning and they seem to vary so much. Does £40 sound about right?

[littlegreenfairy]

drivin_me_nuts said:

Simpo Two said:

Help you pout with simple food? Shove a quarter of an orange sideways in your mouth!

cheeky bugger, that put a smile on my face sans orange ...

Thanks for the tips re slow cooker - any brands suggested. I've looked into the 'ccatalogue of dreams' this morning and they seem to vary so much. Does £40 sound about right?

Yes - the Tefal rice and slow cooker is very good. I made a chicken casserole last night in it. And then you can do the rice to perfection too.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tefal-Automatic-Slow-Cooke...

[captainzep]

Can only agree with slow cooker idea.

Compared with high power requirements of microwave/oven blast the slow cooker is very cheap to run too.

Lots of good recipes around and you'll work out your favourites. However, one of the best uses I've found is to bung in the left-over meat from the roast, left over gravy, last inch of yesterdays left-over wine left in the bottle, couple of handfuls of veggies, spoonful of wholegrain mustard and bit of stock to cover. Tastes better than you'd ever belive with a thick doorstep of bread and butter.

The other thing is multi-use tomato sauce. During a day off, find the best deal on fresh tomatoes that you can. Ideally a greengrocer's tray full. Chuck in several chopped cloves of garlic, plenty of olive oil, veg stock cubes, couple of glasses of red wine, bit of sugar and a lug of vinegar. Basil/thyme optional. Boil down slowly for a few hours. Whizz up thoroughly to a smooth thick sauce. Check seasoning. Freeze into portions, about 2 mugfuls, depending on how many people you'll be feeding.

Now you have a base for 15 minute:

Pasta & sauce
Curry
Chilli
Chicken casserole
Sausage casserole
Poach off fish in it (you can even bung in those frozen blocks of cod/haddock)
Quick french bread pizza
Morrocan lamb
You can even stir-in a bit of cream and make bread dunkable comfort food tomato soup.
etc

All the above require additional ingredients/spices and won't taste quite as good as a the dedicated dish. But they'll taste better than ready meals, take less time to cook and cost feck all relatively speaking.

[H_Kan]

Frittata is quite easy to make.

Whisk up some eggs, season and I usually bung a little cheese in.

In a pan, lightly fry some veg then bung the egg in on top. Finish off under the grill.

[CommanderJameson]

H_Kan said:

Frittata is quite easy to make.

Whisk up some eggs, season and I usually bung a little cheese in.

In a pan, lightly fry some veg then bung the egg in on top. Finish off under the grill.

That's an omelette, surely?

[captainzep]

CommanderJameson said:

H_Kan said:

Frittata is quite easy to make.

Whisk up some eggs, season and I usually bung a little cheese in.

In a pan, lightly fry some veg then bung the egg in on top. Finish off under the grill.

That's an omelette, surely?

Officially it depends on the extent to which you beat the eggs. Frittata has more air beaten into it and becomes fluffier and more 'cakey'.

I always think of Frittata as a bit more, rugged fill you up peasant food which fills a frying pan and has lots of ingredients. I tend to think of an omelette as slightly finer dining with more emphasis on getting fewer eggs just cooked, softer, bit more finesse.

[H_Kan]

captainzep said:

CommanderJameson said:

H_Kan said:

Frittata is quite easy to make.

Whisk up some eggs, season and I usually bung a little cheese in.

In a pan, lightly fry some veg then bung the egg in on top. Finish off under the grill.

That's an omelette, surely?

Officially it depends on the extent to which you beat the eggs. Frittata has more air beaten into it and becomes fluffier and more 'cakey'.

I always think of Frittata as a bit more, rugged fill you up peasant food which fills a frying pan and has lots of ingredients. I tend to think of an omelette as slightly finer dining with more emphasis on getting fewer eggs just cooked, softer, bit more finesse.

I'd agree with that differentiation.

Omelette is another good shout though.

[CommanderJameson]

H_Kan said:

captainzep said:

CommanderJameson said:

H_Kan said:

Frittata is quite easy to make.

Whisk up some eggs, season and I usually bung a little cheese in.

In a pan, lightly fry some veg then bung the egg in on top. Finish off under the grill.

That's an omelette, surely?

Officially it depends on the extent to which you beat the eggs. Frittata has more air beaten into it and becomes fluffier and more 'cakey'.

I always think of Frittata as a bit more, rugged fill you up peasant food which fills a frying pan and has lots of ingredients. I tend to think of an omelette as slightly finer dining with more emphasis on getting fewer eggs just cooked, softer, bit more finesse.

I'd agree with that differentiation.

Omelette is another good shout though.

I thought that there were more dairy products (e.g. cream and parmesan cheese) in frittata.

The last time I made one it resembled a quiche filling more than an omelette (and was seriously crispy on the bottom - excellent!).

And now I want one.

[RichyBoy]

Any pizza express pizza + bag of mozzarella to spread all over + drizzle with olive oil

[AndrewW-G]

Another idea, would be to look at your oven and see if it has a timmer function that will turn the oven on at a specific time, having been in a similar situation I used to put all the bits in you need for a roast dinner etc and come home to a nice cooked dinner

[captainzep]

CommanderJameson said:

H_Kan said:

captainzep said:

CommanderJameson said:

H_Kan said:

Frittata is quite easy to make.

Whisk up some eggs, season and I usually bung a little cheese in.

In a pan, lightly fry some veg then bung the egg in on top. Finish off under the grill.

That's an omelette, surely?

Officially it depends on the extent to which you beat the eggs. Frittata has more air beaten into it and becomes fluffier and more 'cakey'.

I always think of Frittata as a bit more, rugged fill you up peasant food which fills a frying pan and has lots of ingredients. I tend to think of an omelette as slightly finer dining with more emphasis on getting fewer eggs just cooked, softer, bit more finesse.

I'd agree with that differentiation.

Omelette is another good shout though.

I thought that there were more dairy products (e.g. cream and parmesan cheese) in frittata.

The last time I made one it resembled a quiche filling more than an omelette (and was seriously crispy on the bottom - excellent!).

And now I want one.

Sounds about right. I think the aim is for it to be sliceable, as part of a packed lunch, whilst you sit in the shade on a summers day after working in some Mediterranean setting, casually gazing at some dusky filly in a summer dress, picking oranges or something.

And now I want one.