Rachel Allen - Rachels Everyday Kitchen: Simple, Delicious Family Food

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

FIRST EDITION

Photography by Tara Fisher
Design by Louise Evans

Rachel Allen 2013

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007462377
Ebook Edition SEP 2013 ISBN: 9780007462384
Version: 2013-08-23

WE ALL LEAD SUCH HECTIC LIVES, and as a busy working parent I understand how challenging it can be to cook wholesome food for your family every day. During my many years as a cookery teacher I have tried and tested family friendly, hassle-free recipes on my children so that you too can easily cook for your family without ever compromising on flavour.

Cooking for yourself and for your family is such an important thing to be able to do. Eating good food has a profound impact on your health, energy and outlook. It may take a little longer than heating up a ready-meal or ordering a take-away, but it is the only way of ensuring you know where all the ingredients come from. Cooking ensures your familys meals are nutritious and delicious but can also be creative and fun!

In this book, I hope to show you how to make the most of your time in the kitchen and how to make best use of the ingredients that you buy. With a bit of forward thinking, you can turn one meal into several different dishes, keeping waste to a minimum. If youre going to buy the best ingredients you can afford, then its vital that nothing is wasted. Cooked potatoes left over from lunch could be made into a delicious and comforting tartiflette for supper on another day, for instance, while roasted butternut squash enjoyed hot at the table could be transformed into a tasty salad for a packed lunch.

Buying fresh ingredients that are in season asparagus and rhubarb in the spring, for instance, or plums and squash in the autumn will ensure youre getting maximum value and flavour from what you eat. Cooking in bulk can save both time and money, too. As youll see, Ive included lots of recipes that are just as easy to make in a slightly larger quantity and then freeze the extra portion. Stews, soups, pies, along with many other recipes, can all be doubled up and frozen for another day. So rather than resorting to a ready meal, you can defrost something homemade instead guaranteed to be more nutritious and much tastier!

Just a few small adjustments to your weekly routine could reap big rewards for you and your family, with delicious, healthy meals and more time spent together enjoying them. With its straightforward recipes and lots of practical, thrifty tips, I hope this book will go some way to achieving just that.

MEAL PLANNING

Menu planning for the week is really worth doing if youre a busy person, particularly if you have a family to feed.

If you have time to spare on a Monday, for instance, then how about making a rag sauce (see on Tuesday, when you know youll be home late and will appreciate an almost-ready meal. The roast chicken carcass, of course, will make a wonderfully nutritious (and virtually free) stock, which can be used in a myriad different recipes, including many in this book. Its really satisfying, as well as hugely important, to use up every morsel that might otherwise get thrown away.

That said, having a very specific plan for your meals isnt always realistic. Its easy to find yourself out shopping without a list either because youve forgotten it or because you didnt have time to write it in the first place! Thats why its so important to have a really well-stocked store cupboard, fridge and freezer. Then, when you find yourself listless when out shopping, you can buy a bit of meat or a few fresh vegetables in the knowledge that you have enough at home to make a full meal out of them.

Even though the price of food seems to be going up all the time, you dont need to spend lots of money to produce delicious, nutritious meals. You can still be thrifty without compromising on quality or having to settle for inferior produce. One of the best ways to save money is to buy cheaper cuts of meat, usually the less popular parts of an animal. They may require a little more care in the kitchen long slow cooking, for example but can result in better-tasting dishes than ones made using more expensive cuts. is very affordable, too, and makes for a fabulous-tasting dish.

The same applies to eating fish that are less popular, such as whiting, pollock and ling. Used fresh, these types of fish are often just as good as cod or haddock and work so well in the .

Vegetables are almost always cheaper than meat, so a vegetarian meal is usually more affordable while still packed with flavour, especially if the vegetables are roasted, as in the . You can save money on vegetables, too; by buying local produce that is in season, youll not only be eating it at its most delicious, but not paying for all those road or air miles included in the price of vegetables from further afield.

Then there are leftovers, of course, which you can simply reuse cold, reheat or use as an ingredient in a completely new dish. Mashed potato, for instance, is endlessly versatile and can be used as a pie topping or as the basis for .

COOKING AHEAD AND IN BATCHES

Cooking will always take a little time, if perhaps not as much as you think, but there are many ways of saving time in the kitchen or prepping ahead so you dont have to watch over a dish from the beginning to the end of cooking it. Throughout the recipes youll find tips to help you with this.