Cooking the Week

This weekend, let’s cook some good things to set us up for the week ahead. An hour or so of power to make a roast chook (or two), a big pot of beans, a couple of salad dressings, a slaw, and a peach cobbler.

The video above runs for about an hour, and the idea is (if you like), you can hit play and cook along so that at the end, we’ll both have made lots of lovely food to spin into six, maybe more, meals (depending on how many you’re cooking for, appetites, etc., but you get the gist…). Or you can skip the video and just cook one or two or however many of the below you fancy.

Ok let’s do this!

Step one is to download the shopping list and recipes (below), then get out everything you need, put aside an hour (give or take some pausing, washing up etc), hit play on the video and cook up this 👇🏻

Roast chicken and summer veggies
A big pot of beans
Avocado yogurt dressing
Salsa verde
Carrot, kale and red cabbage slaw
Peach cobbler

Dinners you can make from the above

• Roast chicken with beans and roasted veggies, salsa verde on the side.

• Chicken risotto (using the stock and any leftover chicken, shredded).

• White bean gratin (using the stock and beans) with salsa verde slaw*

*Recipe for the gratin is in my book What Can I Bring?, if you don’t have it send me a message and I’ll flick to you!

Lunches

• Beans tossed with salsa verde and roast veggies (tip the beans and veggies into a frying pan on high and toss around until cooked through). Transfer to a bowl and top with a dollop of the salsa verde.

• Roasted veg with quinoa, feta and the salsa verde. See above.

• Slaw with avo yogurt dressing and a can of tuna and/or boiled egg

• Green chicken sandwich - shredded chicken tossed with the avocado, yogurt dressing on your favourite bread.

More ideas

• Blitz the hot roasted vegetables with some of the (hot) chicken stock until you have a beautiful soup. Serve with lovely bread.

• Smear some of the avo dressing on a plate, top with a boiled egg, a few sliced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and maybe some dukkah or toasted almonds for crunch?

• Heat a couple of glugs of olive oil in a frying pan on medium-high, add a handful of the kale and a finely chopped garlic clove and toss, wilting the kale until it’s soft and deep green. Pour in a cup of the stock and add a cup of the cooked beans, bring to a simmer and cook for a few minutes until everything is hot. Serve these delicious brothy beans with a good squeeze of lemon, a drizzle of olive oil, chilli flakes to taste and some Parmesan. As per above.

• Make a white bean puree; combine a cup of cooked beans with some of the stock (or water if you haven’t made stock yet), juice of one lemon and good pinch of sea salt. Blitz until you have a lovely smooth consistency, adding more liquid as needed. Check the flavour, I like to make this really lemon-y so might add more of that here, you could also stir through some lemon thyme leaves if you have them. This is delicious warm as a bed for the roast chicken or cold as a dip for crunchy vegetables or the slaw.

• Make a double batch of the cobbler scones and freeze, then cook from frozen with or without the fruit whenever you need a gorgeous, buttery, sweet treat. Great with yogurt for breakfast or brunch. Lovely with cold cream or ice cream for dessert.

Roast Chicken with Mustard and Soy Sauce