Recipes

Chops, spuds and beans in one pan — and about four minutes of washing up

The trick to a real one-pan dinner is the order of operations. Brown the chops first, so the lamb fat flavours everything that follows. Potatoes into that same fat, cut-side down. A splash of stock, a lid on, and the pan does the work while you set the table. The chops go back on top at the end with the beans, so nothing overcooks and every drop of flavour ends up in the pan juices. Fifty minutes, one pan, dinner done — that's the whole pitch, really.

The classic French spring stew — chops braised until tender, then baby vegetables added late so they stay bright

Navarin is spring on a plate, the dish French cooks make when the first young vegetables arrive. It's peasant cooking with a light touch — chops browned and braised in a glossy tomato-flecked broth until yielding, then baby carrots, turnips and peas dropped in near the end so they keep their colour and bite. Nothing here is difficult, but the sequence matters, and that's what makes it feel like a proper project. Serve it in shallow bowls with bread for the broth. It's the sort of dinner that turns an ordinary night into an occasion.

One pot, a raid on the spice drawer, and couscous to catch every drop

This is tagine cooking without the tagine — lamb shanks simmered in one pot with cinnamon, cumin, a spoon of honey and a tin of chickpeas until the meat gives up and the sauce turns into something you'd happily eat on its own. That's the quiet genius of the chickpeas: they drink up the spiced, marrow-rich braising liquid and become half the meal. Twenty minutes of proper cooking at the stove, then the pot minds itself while the kitchen fills with the sort of smell that brings people wandering in asking how long.

The recipe that closes the loop on the bones add-on

Here's where all that homemade lamb broth in your freezer earns its keep. Ladle it, warm and rich, into a risotto and it does something a vegetable stock never could — the rice drinks up real body and a gentle lamb savouriness, and the spring pairing of sweet peas and fresh mint keeps the whole thing bright rather than heavy. This is proper risotto, which means twenty minutes at the stove with a wooden spoon and a bit of attention, no walking away. But it's the payoff dish for anyone who's made the broth: nothing wasted, everything delicious.

The midweek casserole that forgives every distraction

Some nights you want dinner to look after itself. This is that casserole — cubed blade steak, carrots, potatoes and stock, stirred together in one dish and slid into a low oven. There's no browning, no standing at the stove, and nothing that needs timing to the minute. Two hours later the beef is spoon-tender, the potatoes have drunk up the gravy, and the kitchen smells like someone's been cooking all afternoon. Nobody needs to know it was the oven doing the work.

One heavy pot, one rack of ribs, and dinner sorted under a single lid

This is old-fashioned cooking in the best sense: ribs browned in a heavy pot, potatoes and onions tucked in around them, stock poured over and the lid clamped on. In the oven, everything trades favours — the bones and meat flavour the juices, and the potatoes drink them up until they're quietly the stars of the whole show. There's ten honest minutes of work at the stove, then the pot takes over. Bring it to the table as-is and let everyone dig for their favourite bits.

The Japanese table hotpot that turns one steak into a feast for the whole table

In Japan, sukiyaki is built on paper-thin slices of well-marbled ribeye — which is exactly what a scotch fillet is, minus the slicing. The trick is your freezer: half an hour firms the steak just enough to shave it into ribbons with an ordinary sharp knife. Then it all happens in one shallow pot — a sweet-salty broth of soy, mirin and sugar, tofu and mushrooms and wombok simmering in their own corners, and the beef laid over the top at the last minute, where it cooks in seconds and melts in your mouth. Dinner becomes an event.

The whole Sunday dinner from one heavy pot — and one thing to wash

Melissa worked this one out years ago: the fight after a roast dinner is never about the cooking, it's about the washing up. So here's the Sunday roast rebuilt inside a single Dutch oven — the beef browned in the pot, onions cooked in its juices, then potatoes and carrots tucked around it while the whole lot braises to tenderness in what becomes its own onion gravy. It goes from oven to table in the pot it cooked in, and the sink stays almost embarrassingly empty.

Nan's dinner, back where it belongs — piled on thick buttered toast

Some dinners don't need reinventing. Savoury mince kept half of Australia fed for the best part of a century — mince, onion, carrot, a good slosh of Worcestershire and a handful of peas, simmered until it makes its own gravy, then spooned over thick buttered toast. It was the after-footy-training dinner of my childhood, and it disappears just as fast today. Twenty-eight minutes, one pan, and made with grass-fed lamb it comes out richer than the beef version Nan used to make. She'd approve, I reckon.