Yahoo News This £11 Cookbook Is Turning My Tins and Spices Into Incredible Healthy Meals
In these Strange Times, we all find ourselves seeking solace in some of the things knocking about our homes. Aside from the obvious essentials – the box of eggs you finally managed to buy yesterday; a pack of loo roll at long last – you might have a luxury item that's wound up being worth its weight in gold.
In new series Keep Calm Kit, staffers at WH share the one thing that's helping them out. Here, features director Nikki Osman on the £12 book that’s become her handbook during self-isolation.
My approach to making food in normal times is best described as functional. I batch-cook soups and stews so I have something to eat come lunchtime that requires little more labour than pressing ‘start’ on the microwave while ticking off a few of my five-a-day.
But these aren’t normal times. And if for you, like me, cooking has become an activity to eke out as long as possible, while simultaneously being an exercise in creative resource management, I can’t recommend this book enough.
In East, chef and Guardian columnist Meera Sodha has achieved a feat of prophetic proportions. Her recipes meet the #stayhome brief of being appropriately challenging while also being absurdly delicious and requiring ingredients you probably already have in your cupboards.
Sodha's peanut butter and purple sprouting broccoli pad thai has injected new life into my nut butter collection and her katsu curry transformed an on-the-turn aubergine and back-of-the-cupboard tub of panko breadcrumbs into an experience you usually have to go to a restaurant (remember them?) to enjoy.
Each of the 120 recipes in the book are vegetarian and vegan, and straddle South, East and South-East Asia. It means spices like turmeric – the anti-inflammatory properties of which are well-documented – and ginger – the bioactive compound of which, gingerol, is a famous antioxidant – feature heavily.
That the book spans recipes and cooking techniques from Japan to South Korea also presents an opportunity to stretch your skills in a way that feels enjoyable as opposed to feeling like lockdown homework. Less: learning Spanish and launching a podcast from your living room. More: bao buns.
If this book proved useful before I went into self-isolation, it’s become a lifeline since. Despite having a well-stocked spice rack and relatively-full fridge, no longer having the option of popping to the supermarket made creative cooking all the more essential.
As I write this, my taste buds have gone AWOL, along with my sense of smell – a widely-reported but at the time of writing not official symptom of Covid-19 - rendering my cooking efforts completely redundant. With my appreciation of flavour reduced to wet/dry/hot/cold, leafing through cookbooks – like scrolling through your old travel pictures and watching videos of your pals – has become a form of self-care; a wistful reminder of all we took for granted, as well as how we much have to look forward to.
Cut through the noise and stay healthy in both body and mind with the Women's Health Newsletter . Get practical, expert advice, home workouts, easy nutrition and more direct to your inbox.
You Might Also Like
