Collections, with notes.
Short lists picked by hand from the library, with a sentence on each recipe about what it really asks of you. Sorted the way you would actually choose: by effort, by heat, by the clock, by how long the shopping list is.
Dinner from six ingredients or fewer
8 recipesEight real dinners whose whole ingredient list fits on the back of a receipt. No pantry raid, no specialty aisle.
Soup night, around the world
8 recipesFrom an egg drop soup that takes ten minutes to a Polish chicken soup that simmers for two hours. Sorted from fastest to slowest.
Curries, mild to fierce
8 recipesEight curries in rising order of heat, from a dal a child will eat to a Thai green curry that means it.
A Spanish table, start to finish
8 recipesTwo tapas, a tortilla, two rice dishes, croquetas and a crema catalana. Enough for a whole evening from one cuisine.
Thai and Vietnamese weeknights
8 recipesNoodles, fried rice, a grilled pork bowl and a sandwich. Eight Southeast Asian dinners that are mostly prep and then very fast cooking.
Breakfast worth getting up for
8 recipesTwo kinds of pancake, a shakshuka, a full English, a kedgeree and a hollandaise. Sorted from easiest to the one that needs a whisk and patie…
Lid on, walk away
8 recipesEight stews and braises where the real work is the first twenty minutes. After that the pot does it alone. Sorted from under an hour to a fu…
A Nigerian table
8 recipesNigerian cooking is the second largest cuisine in this library. Eight dishes to start with: three fried snacks, a steamed bean pudding, two …
Pasta night, fastest to slowest
8 recipesEight pastas sorted by how long the sauce takes: a carbonara that is done when the pasta is, through puttanesca and clams, to a bolognese th…
Desserts you make the day before
8 recipesEight desserts whose recipes tell you to chill them for hours, so the work happens the day before and the evening is just plating. Mousse, c…
Bread for a slow weekend
8 recipesEight breads sorted by how long they take, from a skillet cornbread with no yeast in it to a fried Hungarian flatbread whose dough proves ov…
Vegetarian mains, not sides
8 recipesEight meat-free dinners that stand on their own: a risotto, a parmigiana, two Indian pots, an Ethiopian lentil stew, rice and lentils with f…