Rukmini Iyer - The Green Roasting Tin: Vegan and Vegetarian One Dish Dinners

Seventy-five one-tin recipes: half vegan, half vegetarian, all delicious.

With all seventy-five recipes in this book, you simply pop your ingredients in a tin and let the oven do the work.

From flexitarians to families, this book is for anyone who wants to eat easy veg-based meals that fit around their busy lives.

Rukmini is a food stylist and author of the bestelling cookbook The Roasting Tin. She loves creating new recipes and working on food photo shoots. When shes not styling, cooking or entertaining, she can usually be found reading by the riverside, filling her balcony and flat with more plants than they can hold, and planning her dream kitchen garden complete with pet chickens.

This book is divided into two parts, half vegan, half vegetarian. Each chapter is organised by speed, depending on whether you want dinner in 30 minutes, up to 45 minutes, or an hour so theres something for busy weeknights, as well as lazy weekend cooking. And if you want more inspiration after trying some of the recipes, the infographics in the centre of the ebook () are designed to help you build your own tin.

I was brought up in a vegetarian household often vegan, as southern Indian food tends to be. Other than pizza night, my mother rarely failed to put at least three different types of dish on the table whether it was rice, spiced potatoes and aubergines, sambhar, carrots and beans in mustard seeds and a peppery tomato rasam, or home-made mushroom quiche, roasted vegetables and a Caprese salad. Given that she worked full-time as a GP, I have no idea how she managed, unless Im sublimating the memory of a lot of potato waffles and buttery macaroni with grated cheddar (still up there on my list of favourite dinners). Food for dinner parties or birthdays was even better home-made paneer, blitzed with spices, then formed into koftas, deep-fried and cooked in a rich Mughal tomato and cream sauce, tiny stuffed aubergines, cauliflower cooked with ginger and chilli, and my favourite, pulao rice with cashews and saffron.

Weeknight cooking rarely affords the time for so many dishes, so Ive taken the principles of vegetarian cooking learned from home, and applied them to the traybakes in this book. All the dishes are packed with flavour, through spices or fresh herbs and almost always lemon or lime juice (I am considering shares in a citrus farm); and theres a variety of both colour and texture in each dish. Inspired by my mothers Indian cooking, there are a number of oven-roasted curries in the book rather than slowly frying off onions, then spices, then each vegetable and simmering on the stove for half an hour, Ive designed recipes in which everything is roasted in a single layer before adding the sauce, as with the beetroot, chickpea and coconut curry , which is a favourite among my friends.

Moving west, Ive found that orzo and bulgur wheat are all-in-one-tin heroes add enough stock, layer your vegetables on top and stick in the oven for just 1520 minutes and you have a balanced dinner that needs nothing more than a glass of wine on the side try the all-in-one roasted tomato and bay orzo ().

This book was slightly in danger of becoming the gratin and tart book, because I love both. There arent many things better than a hot, crisp, breadcrumb-topped gratin the leek and Puy lentil gratin with a crunchy feta topping () are as good for midweek suppers as they are for dinner parties.

For weekends or special occasions, there are dishes which take a little longer in the oven, but are just as low-effort: try the beautiful escalivada whole roasted aubergines, peppers and tomatoes with almonds ().

All the recipes are designed to work as stand-alone dinners if you wish youll need nothing more than a grain or some greenery for a full meal unless theyre already incorporated into the dish. But if youre feeding more people, its always nice to combine several dishes and share youll find suggested recipe pairings at the end of the book, with combinations that Ive found work particularly well together. As with my previous book The Roasting Tin: chop, kick back and let the oven do the work.

A note on tablespoons: All tablespoons mentioned are the standard 15ml measure. You dont have to be exact when drizzling oil over a tray of vegetables the amount given in tablespoons is a guideline if you want it but a 15ml measure is useful for getting the proportions just right for the dressings in this book. All the salt is sea salt flakes.

Lots of the recipes in this book feature an integral carbohydrate that goes in the tin with everything else bulgur wheat/pastry/potatoes etc. For those that dont, if you want a grain to bulk the dish out, heres a quick guide to cooking times if you need it pick one that matches the cooking time for your roasting tin. There are suggestions to jazz them all up at the end of the page. All quantities below serve 4. Serve alone or with one of the flavour mixes below.

5 MINUTES COUS COUS | PLAIN/WHOLEMEAL: Pop 200g in a bowl, pour 250ml boiling vegetable stock over it, cover with a plate, then leave to stand for 5 minutes. Fluff through with a fork, and serve.

20 MINUTES QUINOA: Rinse it really well to get rid of the bitterness, tip 240g and 500ml boiling vegetable stock into a saucepan, bring to the boil, then half cover and simmer for 1517 minutes until the grains have absorbed all the water. Turn off the heat, fluff through and leave to steam, covered, for 5 minutes.

12 MINUTES QUICK COOK FARRO: I like this, because it has the texture of spelt or pearl barley but only takes a fraction of the time to cook. Put 200g in a large pan of boiling salted water, and simmer for 1012 minutes. Drain well, and serve.

15 MINUTES BULGUR WHEAT: For the very rare occasions where I havent specified sticking the bulgur wheat in the tin with stock and all the vegetables, you can also cook 300g in a large pan of boiling salted water, and simmer for 15 minutes. Drain well, and serve.