Five ingredients, ten minutes

[CountessOfRule]

Spinning off from the food tech thread...

How many balanced, nutritious, tempting meals can we collect which have no more than five ingredients and which take ten minutes or less? In other words, quicker than a ready meal or pizza delivery, but not requiring a complicated shop or extensive store cupboard.

I'll start with:

Macaroni and broccoli cheese (pasta, broccoli, milk, cornflour, cheese)

Toastie (bread, cheese, ham, onions, served with fresh tomatoes)

Spanish Omlette
three eggs per person
any leftover veg / cheese / cooked meats from the fridge
an onion, chooped

fry the onion in a big non stick pan
cut all leftovers except cheese into pieces under 1cm
add to pan and fry till hot
beat eggs
add to pan and stir till all mixed
turn down and cook till teeny bit brown round edge and barely wobbly
put a plate on top
invert pan to empty the omelette onto plate, slide back into pan to cook other side

grate scheese onto top and add pepper
once cooked solid, slice onto plates and serve with bread and salad

vary depending on time of year / contents of fridge / mood

Pasta, bacon and eggs

Get pasta cooking
cut up bacon and fry
beat eggs
grate cheese

once pasta cooked, drain, return to pan, stir in bacon, then stir in eggs and stir until eggs cooked
serve with cheese

but mainly, buy this book
www.amazon.co.uk/French-Cooking-Ten-Minutes-Adapting/dp/086547480X

it is FULL of ideas for proper multi course meals in ten minutes start to finish

or watch the video from when it was made into a lovely TV series

Spanish omelette
Home-made fishfingers (flour, egg, fish, beer, breadcrumbs)
Jacket potato and anything
Tuna-patties (tin tuna, mayonnaise, sweetcorn/peppers, egg: mix, shape into patties and lightly fry both sides)
Veg pasta sauce (onion, pepper, courgette, tin tomato) and pasta
Stir fry with/without protein (carrots, onion, peppers, sugar snap peas or beans plus or minus chicken/salmon/tofu/egg/random fridge leftovers)
Fried/scrambled eggs on cheese on toast (eggs, bread, cheese and even better with a thin scrape of mustard under the cheese)
'Salmon on sticks' (salmon fillet cut into chunks, mixed with soy sauce, honey and garam masala, on skewers and under grill for 1 min/side)

...I have loads

Queen of the last-minute dinner, me :)

Do we count olive oil?

Prawn and chorizo pasta, ;- onion, bag of uncooked prawns, half a chorizo sliced, chopped tomatoes, garlic, spaghetti
(Damn thats six and 7 if you add basil leaves at the end .). Anyway one of my favourite extremely quick pasta dishes

Ok how about Pasta a la Norma ? Onion, aubergine, tin tomatoes garlic, spaghetti (though i also add some chilliand basil leaves to mine).

This one really is only 5.. olive oil, garlic , spaghetti, basil, parmesan cheese
or
Tortilla
onion, potatoes, olive oil, eggs S&P

and my favourite 5:2 dish.. broccoli, bag of uncooked prawns, soy sauce , noodles, chilli

Onion , tin tomatoes , lardons, garlic, pasta ...

Ottolenghi turkey burgers ..minced turkey, grated courgette, cumin, chopped parsley & mint (egg to bind)

Catherine could we have this moved to Food do you think? Would be an interesting one to bookmark but not if it's going to disappear

Ok, so this one is fairly specialist, but if you are near a Waitrose they do a jar of something called alio, olio e pepperoncino. Which basically is garlic, olive oil, sun dried tomatoes and a bit of chilli all chopped together. So, assuming you can get hold of a jar of this divine stuff, that's your first ingredient. I am ignoring anyone who says that that's 4 ingredients because it's just NOT, alright? It comes in a jar, it's therefore 1.

So, a couple of spoons of that per person, gently fried in a pan while your linguine is cooking, stir through the cooked linquine with some defrosted rawns, topped with rocket and fresh parmesan. Utter heaven. Seriously, you can serve this for guests and it's done in 10 minutes.

Cheddar cheese , butter, pickle, bread, beer ... or substitute if you want to use that posh Forrin cheese (for the Mums only of course, dear social worker )

The kids can have spaghetti hoops, toast, butter, milk , chocolate biscuit (or fruit of choice if you really insist on being healthy)