This is about the simplest one I’ve made to date - not in terms of total elapsed time, but simplest in preparation effort. Please note that it finishes fairly spicy.

Ingredients

• 400gm tin tomatoes
• 400gm tin red kidney beans
• tablespoon Moroccan Spice Mix
• teaspoon dried chilli flakes
• teaspoon minced garlic
• large handful chopped cacciatore salami (hot), chopped into small cubes
• half cup rice
• 200gm sliced roast beef
• Four eggs

Method: Combine tomatoes, beans, salami and spices in a saucepan. Simmer until beans start to fall to bits, add rice and beef. Simmer, adding water as needed and stirring until the rice is cooked. Add mixture to tajine, crack the eggs over it, then cover with tajine lid. Cook until eggs are solid, serve.

Easy Tandoori Chicken
This is, well, easy. Take 500gm chicken thigh fillets and rub half a jar of Tilda Butter Chicken simmer sauce into them. Leave for 4 hours to marinate (and this probably doesn’t have too be this long, it is just the time I used today). Cook over coals. Your cooking time may vary, but on a Weber directly over the coals it took around 10 minutes - and finished incredibly juicy and tender.

Texas-Rubbed Steak
This is hardly any more trouble than the Chicken. Take 500gm of eye fillet and rub the following mixture into it then refrigerate (I left it for a couple of hours, it may not take that long).
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons white sugar
1 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon dry oregano
1 tablespoon Italian herb mix (containing basil, oregano, dried capsicum and pepper)
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon granulated garlic
Note: I adapted this from a recipe on CD Kitchen that had a lot more sugar in it.

Oyster Corn Chowder

Ingredients:
1 85gm tin Smoked Oysters
1 Massel Beef stock cube
1 teaspoon Nam Prik Klang Dong (Thai dried chilli shrimp, available from some Asian grocers)
Handful flat white rice noodles (the larger ones, as sometimes used for pad thai)
Boiling water (sufficient to cover the noodles)
1 310gm tin Creamed Corn
1 teaspoon Valcom Red Curry Paste

Boil the water in a medium saucepan, and add chilli prawn, red curry paste, stock cube and noodles. Stir. A minute or so later, add the creamed corn. When the noodles are soft, add the smoked oysters (and any oil in the tin). Stir for another five or so minutes and serve.

Serves two ordinary folk (or one hungry bugger)

Blend, drink. All worries leave you far behind, because basically you are soon too wasted to think

I don’t mind herring and onion myself - there was a tin of herring in the cupboard - and I was making congee (rice porridge, basically) this morning and decided to put this story to the test. Would eating herring and onion for breakfast make me fit to fight on a rolling deck? Or would it make me ill?

The recipe was:

200gm tin Herring in Tomato Sauce
1 cup rice
1 Massel™ stock cube (chicken)
3 small-ish pickled onions, chopped roughly
water
A handful chopped baby English spinach

I boiled the rice with the stock cube until it was falling to bits (just over 30 minutes), turned the heat down, then threw in the spinach and onion. A couple of minutes later I added the herring (broken up in the tin into smaller pieces). Left to warm through for 5 or so minutes, and served shortly thereafter.

The result? I think it tastes great - Donna less so. I’ll make it again (depending on how rambunctious and bellicose it actually makes me feel later ).   I do feel warmer for it.

Some notes:

• I kept the water up to it to stop it glugging up and burning.
• I probably wouldn’t add a lot more onion.

It is incredibly easy, very tasty (if you like aperatifs that contain herbs) and works (hence the name, a contraction of my own concoction - Let’s Get F*cked Up or LeGFU).

1 part Jaegermeister

2 parts Stones Green Ginger Wine

Mix in a scotch glass, add ice, drink, repeat, fall over. Simple - the very heart and soul of faux cuisine

1. Chuck some diced tomatoes, cumin, garlic, onion, diced capsicum, coriander, chilli salt and pepper in the bottom of the crockpot. You can add beans to add bulk
2. Put a FROZEN beef roast on top.
3. Cook for 4 hours on low.
4. Take roast out and shred
5. Put back in, mix, add more spice to taste and cook for another couple of hours
6. Then place in tortilla, fold and bake with salsa and cheese on top.
7. Serve with honey and lemon salad.

I have a great (and so easy) recipe for ice-cream. Everyone thinks you have slaved over all that beating, freezing, beating, re-freezing palaver that most homemade ice-cream needs, but this recipe you just chuck it all together, freeze and that´s it, and its really creamy. You can make all sorts of different flavours and I have often frozen it in a loaf tin with 2 different flavours in layers, turned it out and cut into slices. Two berry flavours is good for that serving method, then whip up a berry coulis (mashed up frozen berries and icing sugar) and drizzle it over - it looks so impressive and is so incredibly easy. I also make the cinnamon version and chop up all the leftover Christmas Pudding into little chunks and mix that in before freezing. Oh, and you can chop up chocolate bars or whatever and mix them through too! So many possibilities…

Here´s the recipe

1 tin condensed milk
300ml whipping cream
500g crème fraiche (or use a combination of sour cream and thickened cream - but creme fraiche is preferable)

Mix ingredients and flavouring together with electric hand beaters.

This is the basic recipe, you can make it whatever flavour you like – eg vanilla (2 teaspoons vanilla essence), cinnamon (2 teaspoons ground cinnamon), chocolate (melt 1 block chocolate with cream before beating), berries – (blend frozen berries with other ingredients)

Olive oil
1 medium onion (finely chopped)
250 grams of salami {diced}
100g diced bacon
1 teaspoon crushed garlic {from a jar}}
!/2 teaspoon crushed chilli {or to taste, again a jar}
2 x 400g tin of Roma tomatoes
1/3 cup wine {red or white, either will do}
2 teaspoons sugar
500 gms pasta

Put water on for pasta
Heat oil, sweat onion, garlic, chilli, salami and bacon until onion is transparent. Add tomatoes, wine and sugar, bring to a medium simmer. Once water is boiled add the pasta. By the time your pasta is cooked, the sauce will have boiled down to a decent thickness.
Serve with fresh crusty bread and the rest of the wine

It’s enough for the 2 of us for dinner and we can both have lunch the next day as well…if it’s only for one the ingredients would need to be adjusted. Everything can be added to or taken from depending on taste.

I take 500gms of diced chicken
handful of diced bacon
cup of frozen peas and corn
1 packet of Continental Macaroni and Cheese

Stirfry the chicken and diced bacon till cooked while making up the Macaroni Cheese pasta packet, as per directions, in the microwave. Zap the frozen peas and corn in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Chuck the whole lot in together in an oven proof dish, grate over some extra cheese if desired or toss on some extra bacon bits then place in moderate oven for 20 to 30 mins.

This can be made ahead up to the chuck everything together stage and put in the fridge until needed. It freezes and reheats reasonably well too.

Easy peasy. I’ve had people ask me for the recipe and be shocked that it was thrown together from a packet mix