When I had DC1, and started weaning him, I then started to be more aware of what everyone in the family ate. DC1 would only eat home cooked things, not a single thing out of a jar (however much I tried to disguise it, for ease sometimes) and I cooked the whole repertoire of Annabel Karmel’s recipes for him. He now eats pretty much everything and loves to cook. I’d only ever cooked a curry and a lasagne (which, looking back, was not good) from scratch before.
The Roasting Tin Cookbook by Rukmini Iyer is great, but the Quick Roasting Tin Cookbook is better, I’d say, for someone in your position. Everything is done in less than half an hour (sometimes the prep will mean that it takes longer than 30 minutes, but not much). And it all cooks in the oven, so once it’s in there, you can walk away, no need to stay at the hob.
That said, if you’re looking for more of the basics of cooking recipes than this, I’d say you can’t beat Delia Complete Cookery. It’s been around for years.
Jamie Oliver’s Five Ingredients recipe book is good if you’re not confident, as there isn’t much to manage in the recipe. And cheaper, due to fewer ingredients. You could start with his quick and easy carbonara.
The BBC good food website is brilliant. I only ever cook something that has high ratings, and I look through the comments to see what people have done to adapt the recipes. And you could just search ‘Easy’ for easier to prepare things.
as well as carbonara, is my easiest dinner to cook in ten minutes: lemon prawn and chilli linguine. Boil the linguine/spaghetti in one pan. And in another (bigger) pan, warm a tablespoon or so of oil. Add two crushed cloves of garlic (if you have garlic oil, put that in the pan and warm it). Add the prawns. If they’re uncooked, you’ll need to cook them in the oil, which won’t take long, if they’re cooked already, you’re just warming them through. Add one finely chopped chilli, or chilli flakes instead if that’s what you have. Add lemon juice, quite a lot of it (you can buy bottles of lemon juice much cheaper than fresh lemons). Add a salt and pepper. By now the linguine is cooked, so drain that and add it to the sauce you’ve made and toss it around so that it’s all covered. Ta da! Taste it. Does it need more salt? More pepper? More lemon? Add whatever you think.
You can do half prawns and half crab if that’s what you like, or just crab. But if you’re doing just crab, add some crème fraiche.