Pescatarian who can’t cook.

[Psychgrad]

I went pescatarian about 5 years ago, never looked back and don’t miss meat at all. I probably only fish about twice a month, I could eat it more I suppose.

My problem is, I can’t really cook, I can follow recipes but never know if the recipe is going to be good as I don’t know what goes together naturally. This means I’ve cooked some really good food and also some really bad food depending on where I found the recipe. I hate most recipe books as they require lots of fancy ingredients , multiple pots all at once and spending 30-60 minutes standing over the stove. Last night I found some recipe online for a veggie Tuscan stew which turned out disgusting after spending two hours waiting for it to be done ( it said 30 minutes cooking time).

I’d be keen to try a recipe book if I knew the recipes were quick and easy. Does anyone know of any for vegetarian/ Pesci recipe books or websites?

DH can cook but is lazy and won’t bother unless it’s processed/ easy food. We used to use Gousto which I found great, it got me excited about cooking and nearly all of the recipes were nutritional and tasty. We stopped though because DH hated cooking from recipes and it was expensive. Tempted to go back on them though as it meant I had meal plans ready and knew the ingredients and easy to follow recipe was there.

The jamie Oliver vegetarian book is good with a mix of recipes in terms of levels of difficulty and complexity.

In my experience, fancy vegetable stews are always a disappointment. Veg curried are better and easier.

I was going to recommend Gousto but I see you’ve tried it but I still use their recipes - just get the ingredients from your cards or you can Google them and they’re all online. Quite a lot of recipes I have most of the ingredients already in the cupboard. I buy chips and mash instead of making it from potatoes to make them even quicker.

can’t go wrong with a bit of salmon grilled and you can add a marinade or lemon and salt and serve with chips/ new potatoes and green veg.

Get The Green Roadting Tin cookbook - one pan meals for veggy/vegans:

The Green Roasting Tin: Vegan and Vegetarian One Dish Dinners amzn.eu/idsY20z

You can then always add some fish too.

Great tips, I will try these recipe books! Thanks so much!

@Triffid1 good to hear I’m not the only one disappointed with fancy stews

With regards to fish, I rarely do anything fancy with it. I like it simply grilled, or baked in the oven with simple rubs, butters, herbs or things like garlic or lemon. It's simplicity is its beauty, don't try to over complicate it. If you don't want to make your own, most fish counters in supermarkets have them, and you will find all sorts of rubs for fish in the spice section.

Try the Mob Veggie cookbook (or actually there's loads of recipes on the Mob Kitchen website). Most (though not all) of their recipes are pretty cheap and easy as their initial premise was feeding four people for a tenner, and you can filter for quick/veggie/healthy etc.

Oh great never heard of that website. And agree fish is better kept simple.

If you like Asian food, the East by Meera Sodha is a great recipe book. Some ingredients lists are long, but most recipes don’t require any specialist ingredients and I find the recipes seem really well tested, as the instructions are usually spot on for me.

Was coming on to recommend the green roasting tin recipe.
Also a really simple virtually no cook recipe is mix cooked linguine with some olive oil, lemon zest, chopped parsley and chilli and a tin of white crab meat- its delicious.

I recommend the Green Roasting Tin cookbook. Simple easy to cook tasty recipes. We've tried several out of the book and they were all delicious. I've also cooked from their 30 minute book as there's only one veggie in the house.

I learned to cook from Gousto and HelloFresh. I actually now teach cooking to others. Eventually you do learn what goes together and how to come up with your own recipes.

I used to cycle through the recipe box companies. I'd do a 4 week offer with one, then do an offer with another company, then a promo from a third company... by the time I ran out of companies, the first company was normally emailing me offers to rejoin.

BBC Good Food is normally pretty reliable with recipes. I usually go for websites that let people leave honest reviews. Read the review comments, then you can usually avoid any major pitfalls with the recipe and sometimes pick up ideas for some good tweaks.

If you like Gousto, but find it expensive then almost all of their recipes are available online. If you see a recipe in their plan for the week then you can almost certainly Google the recipe name and find it online, then buy the ingredients from your supermarket. Wouldn't solve the cooking from recipes issue though.

I do lots of variations with salmon - literally salmon plus a sauce / marinade poured over - roasted for 20 mins on 180 and served with couscous / salad / rice / noodles / wedges etc

salmon with peri peri sauce
salmon with harissa paste
salmon with sweet chilli sauce
salmon with sesame oil and soy sauce and chilli flakes… you get the picture

also do a lot of ‘crustless quiches’ basically 6 eggs with salt and pepper, and then whatever veg and and a handful of some sort of cheese - spinach, peppers and goats cheese or feta or mushrooms, red onions and cheddar, broccoli and Stilton etc - cook for 30 mins on 180 and can be eaten hot or cold as leftovers

What do you cook the quiches in? Do they come out quite like an omelette?

Haven't got a book suggestion but agree that if you liked Gousto, you could try a few of the recipes from their website.

This Honey & Harissa Salmon is super speedy.

I cook them in a glass oven dish - just sprayed with a bit of fry light first to stop them sticking. Come out like a frittata rather than an omelette

I love the Boosh veggie books. Boosh on a budget is really good.
I agree with the Mob veggie book. I use that one a lot.