To steal your fave easy dinner recipe (if you tell me please)

[Chocoholism]

Need ideas for dinners for me and DP as we kind of stuck in a rut eating same dinners every week. We have a young baby so simple ideas is best for me!

A roast with lots fresh veg then you can purée some for baby at same time.

Sausage stew (I make it with Quorn sausages).
Fry chopped onions in a little oil (buy them frozen and pre-chopped!)
Add chopped sausages
Add any veg (chopped) you have to hand (courgette, broccoli, peas, carrots, squash, sweet potato are my faves)
Add a tin of butter beans or baked beans
Add a tin/carton of chopped tomatos, you can them in get different flavours so try chilli or olives etc to your taste.
Probably need a cup or two or water.
Let it simmer for 20 mins and season to taste.
Yum! Serve with microwave rice or baked potato.

peel and quarter potatoes lengthways and put them into a roasting pan.
hack up a good chicken into 8 and place the pieces on the potatoes, or use chicken pieces ready cut.
drizzle (pardon that word) generously with olive oil and lemon juice, sprinkle with salt and oregano. put in oven and leave.
delicious

or you could leave out the salt so that your baby can have some too

Take couscous. Rehydrate according to instructions with chicken stock.
Chop up most of a jar of sun dried tomatoes. Drizzle a bit of the tomato oil into the couscous.
Take a sheet of grease proof paper. Place couscous and sundried toms into the middle in a pile. Place salmon fillet on top. Sprig of rosemary if you have it. Fold the grease proof into a little parcel. Repeat for as many as are eating.
Into oven at about 200 for 20 mins or so.
OPpen parcel and scoff.
Easiest meal ever. Serve with a bag of salad if you want something green with it.

Pork
Onion
Carrot
Tin toms
Tin chickpeas
Tin sweetcorn
Smoked paprika
Your choice of seasoning/herbs
Chopped chilli if you like it

I sometimes add chorizo if I have it.

Slow cooker for 5-7 hrs (or casserole for 2-3)

When you have leftover chicken from a roast (tastes nicer than cooked from raw in this recipe)

Put on a pan of pasta - something that holds sauce like twists.
In a sauté pan, put mushrooms, mixed herbs (Italian season in works well) and lemon juice and rind into hot oil and fry off for a few minutes.
Add the cooked chicken and make sure it is fully reheated and well covered in the lemon/herbs.
When the pasta is ready drain off the water, pour in 1/2 pint of cream to the meat and mushrooms mix (we tend to use double) and then add the pasta.

Pure indulgence!!!

Other veg that might go well in there would be sweetcorn, sprouting broccoli chopped into small pieces or small julienne of carrots.

Easiest ever.....pack of diced beef, bag of frozen casserole veg, onion, some stock.....lob it all in the slow cooker and leave all day.

Or

Boil some potatoes, then cube them up. Fry onion and garlic and add the potatoes, some sliced sausage and some sliced chorizo and warm through......delicious, although possibly not suitable for baby yet.

3 tablespoons each of soya sauce, balsamic vinegar and honey. mix together. marinade some veg or meat in it then stir fry for a sticky sauce. we add fresh chilis to it, or herbs or garlic or whatever and it is always scrummy. alternatively buy the good food magazine or similar and resolve to do a new recipe every week. its all in the planning. you cook the same things because you have the same ingredients in the house.

Frittata (baked omlette)

Great for using up all the 'bits' in the fridge, delicious, nutritious and quick. Take 4 or 5 eggs, whisk and season, add knob of butter. Chop/shred/grate whatever odds and ends you have in the fridge and combine in a baking dish and pour the egg mixture over. Pop in oven on low heat for 20 mins - done!

Suggested ingredients include: odds and ends of cheese (goat, blue, grated - whatever you've got!), ham, spinach, onion, tomato, tomato puree, asparagus, courgette, kale, pepper... whatever you've got knocking around the fridge.

i do nigella'sdealer's recipe often but add carrots, onions, tomatoes, aubergine, courgettes - stuff like that. and eat it with fresh bread. yum!

Dd loves lentil cottage pie and has eatten it since she was first weaned. Tastey and relitivly quick to make.

Boil 250 g of red split lentils in 700 ml of vegetable stock until tender, substituting 100 ml of stock for white wine is lovely too. While lentils are cooking fry an finley chopped onion, 2 cloves of minced garlic, a carrot and a stick of celery. When carotts start to soften slightly add 2-3 tbsp on tomato puree and cook for a 5 minutes. Add the mixture to the lentils and cook for a few minutes. Transfure to an oven proff dish, top with mash potato and grated cheese and bake until golden.

Chopped mediterranean veg (peppers, courgettes, etc) ,with halved baby potatoes. Toss in olive oil, mixed dried herbs, garlic. Roast in hot oven. I crumble feta over this as I'm vegetarian but you could roast some chicken or fish at the same time.

Not my recipe but this is always a winner at home. I use whatever veg needs to be eaten (cabbage works well), and the recipe is healthy.

broccoli pasta soup

Roast garlic cherry toms onion in roasting run
Add risotto rice chicken breast cherizo and enough chicken stock to cover. Bake at 200 for 35 mins. Check and top up from kettle if drying . Yum

omg all these sound delish!

I make a mean spaghetti puttanesca with anchovies, garlic, capers, olives, tomatoes and tuna. It's a Jamie Oliver recipe from 30 minute meals.

Put some live oil in a rkasting tin/dish.

Add chicken thighs, rub skin side in oil. Add a chorizo chopped into largish chunks. Add new potatos cut in half if large. Sprinkle with a chopped red onion, oregano and the grated zest (?) of an orange. Roast til cook (baste halfway through)

Serve with large green salad.

'olive' oil and 'roasting' tin....

Super easy 'tagine'
Tin toms
Tin chickpeas
Two or three large roasted red peppers from a jar
Put in saucepan and heat up, add paprika, cumin, coriander, chili, pinch cinnamon, salt and pepper.
Add a good handful of green olives thought chopped.
Rehydrate couscous using stock.
Done!

It isn't exactly proper cooking, but tesco finest fish cakes at 2 for £5 are really nice. Take 20 mins or so in the oven. Served with broccoli if you have any, or frozen peas or orther green veg or salad. Can also add a tin of new potatoes with some mint sauce on if you think you'll be hungry after just fish cakes and veg. I'm fine with 2 fish cakes and veg but DP likes potatoes.

Beans and chorizo:
Really decent slug of olive oil in a large pan.
Add 2 garlic cloves and some dried rosemary or thyme.
Fry diced chorizo.
At the same time lightly cook some frozen broad beans, or edame (soya) beans or peas. Or cook a bag of spinache or kale.
Add in 2 tins of butter beans into the chorizo and mix around.
Add in the greens and give a good mix around.
Salt and proper.
You want everything to be covered with the chorizo oil.
Done. That take < 10 mins and the only chopping is the chorizo.

If you have a food processor veggie chilli is easy as you can grate all the veg in that.

Sweet potato and chorizo hash.
Cube up chorizo.
Cube some sweet potatoes.
Do a red onion in reasonable pieces.
Some garlic cloves whole and in skin (2 or 3 each).
Mix with oil, salt, pepper, paprika and maybe oragano.
Put in a big roasting tin and roast. When nearly done crack some eggs in (2 per person) and cook until they are done to your liking.
Serve with kale or spinach or salad or green veg.

Or filled pasta and sauce you can get for £5 from th suoermarket plus a bag of salad.

Or Google "Jamie Oliver chicken breast parcel oven". You should get some great receptors where you chick chicken, herbs, wine or stock or cream, veg or beans into a parcel and oven it for 25 mins.

pulled pork - take a joint of pork, mix a teaspoon of whole grain mustard with about a table spoon of maple syrup and a little bit of tomato puree, rub into the pork. Sear on each side, put in a big pan with a bottle of cider and put in oven on a low heat for 4-5 hours or longer (I'm doing this tomorrow so will start it after I've cleared up from breakfast, this stage takes about 5 minutes, it then just sits in the oven for the rest of the day).

around 20 minutes before you want to eat, 'pull' it apart with 2 forks and shred the pork, at the same time, stick the pan with the juices, cider, mustard rub on a high heat to reduce down to a sticky sauce. Put pork in a big bowl, pour over the sauce.

Serve with bread rolls, coleslaw, salad and BBQ sauce, possibly jacket potatoes, which you can also shove inthe low heat oven, but not as long, I'd put those in after lunch. Actual effort time is less than 30 minutes, when you serve it people act like you've made the world's most complex dish.

Wow some real lovely suggestions here, making me hungry reading them! I will keep this thread saved somehow and try a few for sure, might start with frittata as anything goes and sounds super easy, can't believe I haven't tried it before.
Thanks all :)

Oven baked risotto

Fry chopped onion with bacon
Add correct qty of rice
Add glass of wine (optional)
Transfer to casserole dish
Add stock (I do 500ml for 200g rice 400ml if I've added wine)
Add halved cherry tomatoes
Cover and bake for 25 minutes at 200.
Once cooked stir in Parmesan

what a great thread. Just what I need

salmon and noodles

griddle the salmon, if you like drip over soy/sesame/lemon or lime juice, make sure the pan is really hot and do it skin side down first....ideally the skin will be quite charred. If you like your salmon well done turn the salmon over, and turn the griddle off, the top will cook in the heat.

boil kettle and deal with noodles.

You can just serve the salmon with plain noodles, but if you have the time or the inclination use a wok and cook some crushed garlic, grated ginger, few finely chopped bits of chilli and some spring onions

Once that is cooked then put the noodles in and wok them about (it's what we call the shakey flingy thing you do) add some soy/fish sauce and do a bit more wok-ing about

then tip them in the dish and plonk the salmon on top

Also works for chicken!

If you have left over chicken, then put the bits into the noodles at the wok-ing stage with a quarter cup of water or stock, clamp on a lid and as the stock boils away it will heat the chicken as well.

Pesto chicken and pasta is the same sort of principal
or swap in cous cous instead for the carbs.

or for leftovers mix your chicken or salmon with cous cous and serve in pittas.