Notes about Recipes in this book

• Avocado pesto

  • Ro_ on August 16, 2020

    Wow, this was so much better than I expected it to be. A really creamy flavour, the spinach doesn't come through that much, the main taste is definitely the avocado but with a number of little zingy things going on in the background. I didn't have walnuts, so I used pine nuts instead. I will definitely make this recipe again, it's a really great way to make avocados (which are expensive where I live) go further by bulking out with a few other bits and pieces. I served this on toast with cherry tomatoes and feta, and it's a breakfast recipe I'll definitely repeat.

• Sticky coconut rice with tempered pineapple

  • Ro_ on November 09, 2020

    I made this just for the quick-method coconut sticky rice, not the pineapple bit. I was very impressed with the results, especially considering the rice wasn't soaked in advance. Will repeat.

• Pruney granola bake

  • eclairea on March 16, 2026

    This exceeded my relatively low expectations! Had some prunes and granola to use up and wow, am I glad I found this simple, but flavourful cake! I did 170 g of sugar instead of 200, but if I made this again, I’d use less, maybe 150. The prunes and granola make it sweet enough.

• Tatty cakes

  • Ro_ on November 09, 2020

    We loved this: the bacon, garlic and onion in the tatty scones really gave them a kick. I wasn't even going to make the eggs to go with, but I'm glad I did because they too were delicious (and easy). My main criticism of this dish is that altogether it takes ages to make considering it's a breakfast recipe - though you could speed it up a bit by using multiple pans. Better to make the tatty scones in advance though, I think, and reheat.

• Sausage and egg sliders

  • Ro_ on November 12, 2020

    I think getting this right depends on having the perfect size roasting tin/baking tin. I was only making 4 sliders instead of 12, so used half a small tray and ended up with my sausage and egg layers being much too thick. So in the future I'd go thinner! But overall I think this was a bit too faffy for me to repeat (though I get that she's recommended making a big batch to freeze), I'd probably rather just cook some sausages and fried eggs and shove them in a bap rather than go through this whole process.

• Egg rolls

  • BeckyLeJ on December 21, 2020

    These are so easy! And easy to modify for particular tastes. I used Brooklyn Delhi’s Tomato Achaar instead of sun dried tomato paste.

• Blender beetroot

  • dprostrollo on August 22, 2019

    I used pickled beetroot and it was overpowering - too many flavours. Don't make the same mistake!

  • Ro_ on September 30, 2019

    I thought this made a really unusual pasta dish - in a good way! The beetroot, lemon and dill gave a distinct scandinavian flavour. It was really quick and easy to whip up. For next time, I'd use less garlic (since this is basically used raw blended into the sauce, the taste is quite strong), and add more lemon to the feta and dill. In fact I ended up squeezing more lemon over the top of the finished dish, and it really made it sing. I didn't have any fresh red chillis so used chilli flakes, and it gave a really nice background heat to the dish.

  • Yildiz100 on September 29, 2020

    I saw this recipe and thought, "that is probably not good, but I have to cook it." Well, I was pleasantly surprised! I had to make some changes based on what I had on hand (dried chili and dill instead of fresh) and I reduced the amount of feta per personal taste.I have tried this on both long and short pastas and I like it much better on long pastas, especially linguine.

• Tzatziki quesadillas

  • BeckyLeJ on December 07, 2020

    Very easy! Great quesadilla filling—used leftovers as baked potato filling, per the suggestion. The jalapeños make the filling a little on the spicy side, will tone down when making for our toddler.

• Lentil and orange soup

  • BeckyLeJ on December 05, 2020

    This was super easy! Great for freezing, also easy to scale up or down. Be careful not to burn the garlic!

  • Emily Hope on March 09, 2021

    Pretty good--not my favorite red lentil soup, but a nice change of pace. A few notes: I substituted ghee for oil in the tarka, and cut back to a generous quarter-cup, and even that seemed like too much. There's so much oil called for that I wonder whether there's a conversion problem with the US version of the recipe--and I am not one to shy away from using oil or butter. Similarly the amount of garlic seemed like a lot for the quantity of soup, and I'd probably cut back next time. I think the quantity said it served 6, but that would have to be as part of a bigger meal--as the main course I'd say it served 4 of us with a little leftover.

• Instant noodles

  • dprostrollo on September 09, 2019

    Made the paste to the recipe, except I ran out of chilli paste (I used chilli puree) and subbed the rest with tomato paste. Turned out delish!

  • mjes on January 18, 2021

    This is not my usual taste in cookbooks but I was directed specifically to this recipe for an instant noodle spice mix that was truly multipurpose. This is a definite success and a great way to cook for one, use leftovers, and otherwise meet my culinary values. Now I need to test how it works if one freezes cubes of the paste.

• Instant noodles: beef and kimchi

  • dprostrollo on September 09, 2019

    Made mine a little bit re-mixed - used the paste (which is lovely) and some vermicelli rice noodles with spring onion and beef jerky. The rice noodles took a little too long to get soft from dried, so I'm not sure I'd use those again and the jerky loses its "jerky" flavour after soaking (however, that's not a negative... just a fact).

• Crustless spinach quiche

  • dprostrollo on August 22, 2019

    This was really tasty, definitely better the second day. More custard-y than a lot of quiches I've made and a bit of weeping.

• Pecan Brie brûlée

  • BeckyLeJ on December 21, 2020

    So good! Looking forward to trying the chicken recipe with the leftover chili pecan mixture!

• Asian aubergine wedges

  • Ro_ on November 26, 2020

    As an aubergine fan, and a lover of Chinese flavours, I really enjoyed this quick, simple and cheap recipe that gave something sort of akin to Fish Fragrant Aubergines. Obviously it's not as good as that dish in terms of depth of flavour or texture, but for a quick microwave version with fewer ingredients I thought it was pretty good. Sadly my other half, who is not an aubergine fan, wasn't very enthused about this dish so I'll probably only make it again if it's just me eating it.

• Creamy marinara chicken

  • Ro_ on September 29, 2019

    This was OK, but not something I'd go out of my way to repeat. Not sure how much the humuss really added to it: if you don't have humuss you particularly need to use up then adding the equivalent amount of cream cheese or just cream would probably have the same if not better effect.

• Potato skins five ways: bacon + bean

  • BeckyLeJ on December 21, 2020

    I love potato skins! Wanted to use the Heinz beans here but discovered I didn’t have any on hand. Busch’s were ok.

• Potato skins five ways: pesto

  • Ro_ on December 03, 2020

    Not bad, but a bit too involved to be something I'd really make for lunch as suggested - easier to just do the toppings separately. Maybe as part of some kind of Saturday night picky treat dinner?

• Coronation tuna

  • BeckyLeJ on December 21, 2020

    Oh, man this is so good! Not sure I’ll eat tuna any other way now! I’ve always used curry in mine, but the chutney and the raisins add such a great sweet hit!

  • Emily Hope on March 09, 2021

    Loved this--great twist on a tuna salad, and will definitely repeat. Made as written except for the cinnamon--I'm willing to try a lot of flavor combos, but apparently not cinnamon in my tuna...

• Prawn Malay rice

  • dprostrollo on August 22, 2019

    Super yummy! Forgot to fry an egg, but was totally fine without.

  • Beth891 on February 14, 2025

    I skipped the chilli and made roughly half quantities to feed 2 hungry adults and a 4 year old. The rice seemed like a crazy large amount so I did 200g (basically one full mug that I usually use for rice) plus 2 mugs boiling water. This was pretty spot on in both amount of water and finished amount for the 3 of us. Id maybe add slightly less honey next time and cook/warm the prawns separately so they don't get so chewy but it was really tasty and id make again.

• Savoury French toast

  • Ro_ on September 29, 2019

    This is a fantastic recipe for a savoury breakfast treat, probably my favourite recipe that I've tried in the whole book. It's already one of our weekend breakfast staples: delicious and really filling.

• Baked bean falafel

  • Ro_ on September 29, 2019

    Found the falafels quite dry. The coleslaw was good though: I would potentially make this again but wouldn't serve them in a floury bread roll (too much dryness), rather in a wrap with lots of yogurt as well as the coleslaw. Also, the recipe made waaay more falafels than it was suggested it would. And I don't think I could have made them any bigger due to forementioned dryness issues, which would have been exacerbated.

• Paneer pitta

  • dprostrollo on August 22, 2019

    Really tasty, would be really good in a nice pitta but unfortunately mine broke to pieces!

• Black pepper poke salmon bowl

  • Ro_ on November 16, 2020

    Delicious and simple recipe. I loved the quick marinade for the salmon - I didn't have sriracha, so used a mix of various other spicy things I had in my fridge. The method for the sushi rice worked well. The only element I didn't love was the carrot, I guess it added colour but I'd probably leave this out next time and replace with maybe radish or cucumber.

  • EmilyR on May 11, 2022

    We all appreciated how simple, fresh, and filling this was. I used cooked salmon and people could adapt their bowl to their liking.

  • gootenbeez on January 21, 2026

    I used this as more of a template. I loved the sauce and appreciated the balck pepper. Instead of salmon I used imitation crab.

• Teriyaki salmon with mango salsa

  • Ro_ on October 01, 2019

    The flavours in this were lovely, I had been apprehensive about the combo of mango and salmon together but both partner and I enjoyed it. Main complaint was that (even following Nadiya's instructions to save half the sauce for later) there was so much teriyaki sauce in the pan that the salmon was basically poaching in it so the outside of the fish didn't go caramelised and crispy the way I wanted. Next time, would probably cook the salmon with just a little bit of the marinade in the pan instead of the whole lot, then once the salmon finishes cooking, take it out before adding the rest of the marinade to reduce down before drizzling over the finished dish. Although this was good, there are so many nice salmon recipes out there that it'll probably be a while before I cook this again. It was good but not OMG good.

• Bengali bangers and hash smash

  • dprostrollo on August 22, 2019

    Really tasty. The hash brown mash is really unique, partner loved it.

• Marmalade haddock

  • lilham on May 18, 2022

    This was very sweet and none of us liked it at all. The problem could be I used a rindless marmalade. (They are sweeter than normal ones). I won’t be cooking this again.

• One-tray peanut chicken

  • dprostrollo on August 22, 2019

    This was fine, flavours were nice, but a little extra clean up than I want in a weekday

• Lamb dansak

  • Ro_ on September 29, 2019

    The flavours of this curry are good. I made it with lamb neck and the cooking time necessary was much longer than the recipe suggests.

• Lava fries

  • BeckyLeJ on December 21, 2020

    The beef mixture is amazing! We made these with tater tots, no fries on hand. It was super rich and incredibly good! Loved the garlicky sour cream sauce!

  • Ro_ on January 18, 2021

    Really nice beef massala-chilli type thing. I think I went a bit overboard on the quantity of beef to chips, next time I'd hold back. I'd potentially use this recipe as the basis for a chilli too, as suggested. Only criticism is that I never usually buy oven chips because I find them tasteless, but I made an exception for this recipe yet my expectations were confirmed. Next time I'd make my own potato wedges and serve the masala mince with those.

• Grandmama's curry

  • Ro_ on November 01, 2020

    I was in two minds whether to add this to my Favourites list or not, but finally decided in its favour. Things I loved: the overall cooking method of using a whole chicken, stripping the meat from the bones, and the combination of mange tout and baby corn as the veg, still deliciously crunchy. The consistency of the sauce, with the dessicated coconut, not too liquidy, was also great. Weirdly my least favourite thing about this curry was the most important element - the paste. I think the amount of salt stated is too much, I ended up having to thin out the sauce a lot with water because it was overwhelmingly salty. I also think that it lacked a bit of complexity of flavour - no fish sauce, shallot or herbs in the paste or curry. But it was still a decent paste, and overall I will use this curry method with some tweaks again.

• Paneer kofta with vermicelli rice

  • Pandan on April 02, 2024

    I liked the kofta. Had to swap out half of the chickpeas with white beans, because I only had a small tin. Still turned out fine. Expected a bit more from the rice. Made way better Indian spiced rice dishes with less butter. Also I didn’t really like the sauce. Would have been nicer without the curry powder, ginger als maple syrup, so maybe a simpler garlic-yogurt sauce. My toddler loved the koftas without Chilis.

• Chorizo fish stew with garlic bread

  • mondraussie on November 09, 2022

    Perhaps a little too much chorizo, but the stew is a nice easy recipe for a weeknight meal. I didn't bother with the garlic bread, but made my own cheats version using up a few old pieces of bread brushed with olive oil and garlic and crisped up in the pan.

• Chicken shawarma

  • dprostrollo on August 22, 2019

    So easy and so yummy.

  • Fyretigger on July 04, 2020

    I find the spice level a bit excessive, both in heat and an excess of the baking spices.

  • Yildiz100 on July 16, 2020

    Easy and good. We served with our usual shawarma toppings and did not make her broccoli slaw topping. Watch the salt- we reduced it to 1 tsp and it was plenty. (She calls for 1 Tbsp.) Also, she calls for 1 tablespoon of cayenne. In the show she says it sounds like a lot but "cayenne is actually quite sweet." So now I am wondering if the cayenne powder on the market in the UK is processed to make it milder? My cayenne is hotter even than the chili I get at the Indian market labeled "extra hot", so not what I call sweet. We reduced the cayenne to 1/2 teaspoon and it still had a bit of a kick, but was mild enough that the kid could eat it.

  • Ro_ on November 15, 2020

    The chicken itself was very tasty, we really liked the spice mix and it had the perfect level of heat. I didn't have a loaf tin so I had to kind of squish it up in half a roasting tin, and it wasn't quite cooked through after 40m, I gave it an extra 10. I found the broccoli slaw a bit of a letdown - I think the mustard seeds got a tiny bit burnt, but aside from this a) it's not the kind of thing my teens want to eat with their shawarma (it was rejected) and b) it just didn't taste all that yummy. Overall, I'd make the chicken component of this again, but not the slaw, and I think I'd serve it with a mix of accompaniments eg salad, different sauces, lightly pickled cabbage etc, rather than just one thing.

  • stricklinhome on January 26, 2021

    Very good, will definitely make again, but two notes: reduce the salt to 1 tsp (we could barely eat the dish made with 1 Tbsp without drinking water between every bite) and reduce the cayenne to 1 tsp if using cayenne from the US. It's an awful lot of trouble to get the kind of cayenne Nadia uses, which is much milder, imported from the UK, so just reducing the amount of US-available cayenne is much simpler!

  • mondraussie on September 16, 2022

    Very easy and tasty.. but yes, reduce the salt... didn't make the broccoli slaw, served with lettuce, tomato salad and yoghurt tahini sauce.

  • Fyretigger on June 09, 2023

    Cooked multiple times. Tasty and quick as others have noted. Also as noted, mind the heat.

  • omnivore on March 26, 2024

    I should have read the notes first - even half the salt was too much. Next time I'll double the spices, but not the cayenne.

  • chaffinski on January 27, 2026

    This way of cooking chicken results in very moist tender chicken, and will definitely repeat. Wasn’t a fan of the broccoli slaw, and probably would change the chicken spice mix - but definitely putting this chicken cooking method in my pocket for the future! Also, this much salt is fine if it is maldon crystals, but would be way too much if it is the fine grained stuff.

• 'Tandoori' oven chicken with burnt butter rice

  • Ro_ on October 03, 2019

    Well I made some mistakes in cooking this recipe (I was in a rush): I misread the ingredients and thought the recipe was for 4 chicken breasts. When I ended up with an enormous ratio of sauce to chicken, I belatedly realised it had been for 4 chicken breasts and 4 thighs, which explains a lot but it was too late by then since it was in the oven. Aside from that, I think the main thing I'd do differently if making again would be to whizz the sauce up in a blender rather than just 'stirring to combine' as Nadiya suggests. It turned out quite lumpy and its texture was quite odd. I might use less chickpea flour too. I also found that the sauce-coated chicken didn't brown and char on the outside in the alloted time (as shown in the photo, and for me an essential aspect of tandoori chicken), even after I turned the oven up to full and gave it an extra 10 minutes. The apple and onion salad was overall probably the only thing I'd repeat from this dish. (I didn't make the burnt butter rice).

  • Many2Books on September 26, 2023

    Favorite week day dinner. We prefer all thighs to a mix, I always have the tandoori spice mix in my pantry, and I use Greek yogurt (it’s what I keep in the fridge) and I short the yogurt and make up the difference with milk to thin it out.

• Gingerbread melt-in-the-middles

  • Ro_ on January 25, 2021

    I love chocolate and ginger, and I like that these could be made in advance and frozen before cooking. But the finished product was a little disappointing - the biscuit coating was a little tough, and the quantity of chocolate inside was not very much. Above all, the hard biscuit and the liquid chocolate didn't come together very well texturally - I'd have much preferred a cake-y exterior. Won't repeat.

• Choc chip pan cookie

  • Ro_ on November 15, 2020

    First time I'd made a cookie in a frying pan! It was quite confusing knowing a) how much to cook the sugar over the heat (she says "until dissolved" but obviously sugar goes through various stages when you do things to it over heat so I wasn't sure) and b) that the overall batter seemed quite oily and weird before I started the final stage of cooking. Ultimately though, it turned out well, with the correct cookie texture so I was pleased! My chocolate chips did all bleed into each other a bit, but that didn't matter. Warning: this is EXTREMELY rich and filling, I massively overestimated the size of an individual portion (served with ice cream as suggested) and none of us could finish ours!

• Preserved lemon traybake

  • Ro_ on November 26, 2020

    I made this to use up some preserved lemons and a tin of condensed (yes, not evaporated as stated in the recipe) milk. The traybake itself was lovely, a really good texture, colour, taste and rise. The preserved lemon topping itself I was less convinced with - that salty note is just a smidge odd and I prefer a traditional lemon drizzle I think for this type of cake. I might repeat the sponge with a different topping.

• Banana tarte Tatin with malai ice cream

  • Ro_ on November 09, 2020

    I'm not really a lover of this kind of dessert, but my partner is and requested it as a treat. It was fairly simple to do, but I should have paid more attention to cutting the bananas into equally height-ed chunks, for presentation. Also, I did have some issues getting it flipped out in one piece, I lost an edge. Taste-wise it was nice, and my partner really liked it. However he said he'd maybe have preferred less nuts, and I agree (or maybe I should have chopped them finer). My favourite element was the ice cream - had never made ice cream before but this was easy and delicious.

• White baps

  • Ro_ on November 12, 2020

    Very tasty baps. I did my second prove overnight in the fridge so that I could bake them from fresh first thing next morning, and it worked well. My only issue was that they were slightly too crusty on the top, I wanted more to have soft baps - maybe next time I should try cooking them lower in the oven, or else cover the tops partway through cooking?