Alex Hollywood - Alex Hollywood: Cooking Tonight: Simple recipes to put the joy back into weekday suppers

Alex Hollywood Cooking
Tonight
www.hodder.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company Copyright Alex Hollywood 2017
Photography Dan Jones 2016 The right of Alex Hollywood to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library Ebook ISBN 978 1 444 79925 5 Editorial Director: Nicky Ross
Editor: Susan Fleming
Project Editor: Kate Miles
Design & Art Direction: Alice Moore
Photographer: Dan Jones
Food Styling: Gee Charman and Lizzie Harris
Food styling assistants: Tamara Vos and Leonie Sooke
Props Styling: Holly Bruce
Shoot Producer: Ruth Ferrier
Proofreader: Margaret Gilbey
Indexer: Caroline Wilding Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
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London EC4Y 0DZ www.hodder.co.uk Page after page of family favourites, not a gram of pretence, just full of unadulterated delicious joy. MICHEL ROUX JR To my husband Paul and my son Josh for you both X CONTENTS A while ago I came across a box of recipes and magazines belonging to my husbands grandmother, and it made fascinating reading. Weeks worth of menus mapped out for the family to consume from morning to night: grilled kippers, toast and marmalade for breakfast; stuffed loin of mutton and roast potatoes for lunch, and tuna-stuffed tomatoes followed by coffee layer cake for pudding.

Another booklet suggested hot stuffed eggs, boiled fowl with spinach and gooseberry tart with mock cream for a Tuesday meal in September! Reading these made me think of how fiddly and time-consuming dinner preparation must have been for our grandmothers and how lucky we are now to have so many more unusual, colourful ingredients to play with to spice up our meals. Well times have certainly changed since then and we may be able to source exotic unusual produce all year round but we are also time poor and the question I hear again and again during the week is What are you cooking tonight?. Its the main topic of conversation on my early morning dog walk with friends, its a question my lovely agent Jan often asks me whenever we speak on the phone and its the first question my son asks when he gets in the car on the school pick-up run! So this got me thinking. No matter how many cookery books we buy everyone tends to grab the same ingredients for those Monday to Friday meals chicken, sausages, mince, fish, chops etc. But because we have so little time to plan mid-week, most of us tend to churn out the same dishes again and again and this is when boredom rears its ugly head and cooking becomes a real drag So I decided to write a book based on those basics you have already bought with your weekly shop the chicken, mince, sausages and chops that are always in your fridge and freezer and create some quick, easy and delicious recipes that can be thrown together and send you a little bit off piste without it costing an arm or a leg. More importantly you can usually do them in super-quick time or with a little planning you can make those delicious, long, slow one-pot wonders that are ready for you when you want to sit back, relax and enjoy a meal with the people you love! Many of these recipes use leftovers and theyre mostly versatile enough for it not to matter if you dont have all the right ingredients.

The book is based on your weekly shop with chapter titles such as Beef, Sausages and All Things Porky, Mince and Meat-free so that you can check your fridge and freezer first, then choose a dish that works around whatever you have to hand. Try my Quick Hungarian Goulash with Paprika for instance which is great for cold wintry weather or my Chipotle Chilli Chicken Bake, perfect for that lone pack of chicken legs or drumsticks. The little Beef Bourguignon Pies are fab for some mid-week poshness and my absolute favourites when you just want a little something special are toasties: the Guinness Toasties with Cheddar, Ham and Mustard are not to be missed and as for the Grilled Sourdough, Chocolate, Brie and Basil enough said! Mealtimes should always be when the family can sit together even for a short while to unwind and relax and enjoy good food. So I hope this book will give you new ideas to bring the oomph back into your mid-week cooking! Bon apptit. X Mid-week cooking can be a challenge, especially if you come home late from work or are stuck on the school run, collecting from footie or tennis practice. Having a well-stocked larder is your back-up: all those herbs, spices and cans can be grabbed at a moments notice to jazz up a lonely chicken breast or pack of sausages.

With a little planning and forethought you can create some delicious and stress-free meals with minimum effort and those dinner plates on your table will be scraped clean! Im a firm believer in using what you already have and my recipes are straightforward, simple to follow, and packed with flavour. Shortcuts are a must mid-week. Use up that can of custard: who says you have to make your own pastry from scratch? And the Sunday roast beef is epic sliced with leftover vegetables and stuffed into spiced yoghurt wraps for a meal in minutes. Larder Necessities I listed many of these in my last book but the same principles apply here so I hope you dont mind a bit of repetition. Anything goes and the more flavours, herbs, spices and cans you have, the more versatile your recipes will be! CANS Salmon, tuna, anchovies. Beans, chickpeas, lentils, peas, sweetcorn, chopped tomatoes, various chillies.

Lots of fruit (peach halves, apricot halves, cherries). Coconut milk, custard. BOTTLES Oils (olive, vegetable, rapeseed, sesame). Sauces (sweet chilli, oyster, soy, dark and light, Worcestershire, chipotle, smoked chipotle paste). Vinegars (balsamic, cider, malt, sherry and wine). JARS Mayonnaise, mustard (French, English), sun-dried tomatoes, tomato passata, jalapeno peppers (and other chillies), capers, miso pastes.

I also have many small jars of dried herbs and spices which I use (and replace) regularly. Jams, jellies, honey and marmalade. PACKETS Flours (plain, self-raising and wholemeal, cornflour). Grains (rice, couscous, quinoa, oats). Pulses (dried beans, lentils, etc). Microwave lentils/rice.

Nuts and seeds. Pasta (of all types, long and short). Dried noodles. Dried fruits. Sugar (brown and white). Buying Sensibly This book is for you to glance at when youre out of ideas and need some inspiration but the first thing youre going to need to do is shop a little more creatively until you have the basics of a well-stocked larder and freezer.