Food&Drink
Chef cooks up simple tasty meals – all for less than a quid per serving
Delicious meals – for less than a pound!
Fenugreek, wasabi, acai berries, harissa and daikon – how many times have you opened a new cookbook only to be faced with a list of unusual ingredients you’ve never heard of, let alone know how to pronounce?
And how many times have you dutifully popped down to the supermarket, stocked up on wild Himalayan tree root powder, only to use one teaspoon before it languishes in the back of your cupboard?
Well, chef and author Miguel Barclay is about to change your life.
Focusing on simple ingredients and straightforward recipes, Miguel is the creator of One Pound Meals, the popular YouTube and Instagram accounts which show home cooks how to whip up inventive dishes that cost, you guessed it, less than £1 per person to make.
Aiming to inspire more people to cook quicker and healthier meals from scratch, Miguel believes homemade doesn’t have to mean hard work.
He explained:“Whenever I speak to people about cooking from scratch at home, the number one excuse I always hear is,‘I don’t want all that washing-up’ – and I totally get it.
“If you’re only cooking one portion of food and it takes longer to wash up than it takes to eat it, then I’d also be tempted to order a takeaway or buy a ready meal.
“So, the challenge for me, in my mission to get more people cooking from scratch at home, was to eliminate as much washing-up as possible.”
And the Londoner’s third cookbook, Super Easy One Pound Meals, does just that.
Filled with vegetarian, meat and seafood dishes, each designed to make just one portion, the cookbook is especially relevant for many people currently living on their own during lockdown.
And it also features lots of hacks and cheats to ensure
you make the most of store cupboard ingredients.
What’s more, Miguel says he’s managed to take traditional recipes and remove some of the complicated, time-consuming and frustrating steps that put many everyday chefs off from trying something new.
“I’ve taken all those traditional long-winded recipes that chefs and home cooks have been faithfully following for centuries and well and truly thrown them out of the window!
“I’m dreading what my Spanish grandma will say when she sees my 10-minute paella made with couscous,” explained Miguel, whose new book, Prep-Ahead One Pound Meals:
Over 80 Batch-Cooking Recipes to Save You Time And Money, is published later this year.
“Who wants to spend three hours in the kitchen after a hard day’s work?
“I write realistic recipes for people who still want to cook from scratch using fresh ingredients, but just don’t have much time.”
He added:“By cooking from scratch, we are able to control our salt, sugar and preservatives intake, and this is an important aspect of One Pound Meals because cooking from scratch is a way more healthy alternative to eating convenience and takeaway foods.”
Miguel Barclay’s Super Easy One Pound Meals is out now.