Adams Kaye - Nadia & Kaye, disaster chef: simple recipes for cooks who cant

If you love food, but you dont love cooking, this is the book for you. And me. And Disaster Chefs everywhere. I have no pretensions to becoming a MasterChef like Nadia, but what a joy it would be to shout Dinners ready! without the kids narrowing their eyes and asking, Did you make it?

Im in awe of Nadias cooking skills. Its not just that the end result is invariably delicious, its the ease with which she produces it. I will never cease to marvel at the way she instinctively moves around a kitchen whisking, chopping, laughing, drinking. And more drinking. She is so clearly in her element. I, on the other hand, crash around the worktops like a bad-tempered giraffe on roller skates, constantly re-reading a stained recipe card, cursing frequently whilst hissing at the kids to let me concentrate!

The die was cast early on. My mother is a formidable woman who taught me many wonderful things, but feeding a family wasnt one of them. Neither she nor Dad had the time or inclination to be in the kitchen much. My brother and I got by on a hearty school lunch and, for tea, something-on-toast. As we got older and ate in restaurants, we learned to appreciate good food; just not how to make it.

My twenties were junk-food years, swiftly followed by the fish-finger years when the kids came along when I also developed my dangerous tendency to improvise with anything I could dislodge from the back wall of the fridge. But its never too late to learn and I thank Nadia for helping me without bashing her head against the bread board. Much.

What you have here is lots of family-friendly meals and snacks plus a few ta-da! dishes, all easy to follow with a bit of extra help on the tricky bits. I also asked Nadia to keep the list of ingredients down. Nothing frustrates me more than choosing a recipe and then finding I am right out of chervil!

And finally, all the recipes have been Disaster Chef tested. Go forth and make a pie!

Kaye Adams, Disaster Chef

Kaye and I often laugh about when we first met because, quite frankly, neither of us thought much of each other. I thought she was a bit up herself, superior even, and she thought I was a loud-mouthed drama queen with no substance and a lot of hair. I think we were both silently hoping we wouldnt ever have to see each other again

In retrospect, we were actually both right. And wrong. We did indeed have those unsavoury traits, but we became great friends in spite of them. In fact, Ive come to realize, over the years, that our differences are what make our friendship. Kaye loves sport; I utterly despise it. I love to dance on tables; Kaye quite simply doesnt. Kaye loves to ice skate; I love putting ice in my ros. Thats right, dead common, me. Kayes guilty pleasure is Newsnight; mine is The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. And, of course, the biggest difference of all: I love (in fact live) to cook and our very own Disaster Chef does not.

But thats not the whole story. Its not just that she doesnt love cooking; she doesnt even understand that anyone else could like it. For Kaye, being romantic about food is about as daft as it gets. Whereas I can sing songs about perfectly ripe avocados, Kayes idea of romance with food is mashing a potato (badly).

So, as far as Im concerned, Im on a mission with this book to help those of you who are just like Kaye. I cant bear the thought that there are thousands of you out there who, night after night, have to gird your loins, take a deep breath, and force yourselves to create (or cremate) something to feed your family. Disaster Chefs of the world, fear not! A MasterChef is here, riding on a white steed to try and take the pain away. Contained herein are more than 80 recipes, specially designed with this premise in mind: if Kaye can cook it, you can cook it!

Nadia Sawalha, Celebrity MasterChef Champion

KAYE: When Nadia suggested including instructions for how to make the perfect boiled egg in this book, I thought she was having a laugh. I might be a self-confessed Disaster Chef, but even I know how to boil an egg! And I have churned out mountains of mashed potato in my time, not to mention a few gallons of cheese sauce.

But I have to concede that seldom do these basics turn out the same every time. Some nights, the gods conspire to help me produce wonderful, creamy mash. Other nights, its grey and lumpy, worthy of a bit part in Prisoner: Cell Block H . Sometimes, my egg is gloriously runny. Other times, it could leave an egg-shaped hole in a double-glazing unit.

What I have realized, over the many happy nights I have spent twiddling a glass of wine while Nadia cooks, is that she seems to instinctively know a whole load of tips and tricks that have just passed me by.

It was a revelation to me to learn you should dry tatties off before mashing, for instance, or warm the milk before you make a cheese sauce, or even turn off the heat under a saucepan and set a stopwatch to get the same results for a boiled egg every single time.

Its not rocket science, as they say, but it is crucial to learn the basics and apply them. I guess its the cooking equivalent of learning to walk before you can run.

If you dont want to be a Disaster Chef all your life, this chapter is a very good place to start.

NADIA: Kayes cutlery drawer used to put me in a place of abject misery. Blunt knives, rotting wooden spoons, and melted plastic spatulas were the only things I could ever find. Her cupboards were no better. Dark, sad caverns packed full with next-to-useless old tins, all bent up, smashed, and rusty.

A graveyard of OAP frying pans, every one of them with wonky melted handles like a Salvador Dal painting, and, most terrifyingly of all, peeling Teflon (I swear her daughters and her hubby must all have stomachs lined with Teflon, because theres none left on her pans.)