Healthy Speedy Suppers by Katriona MacGregor

A food obsessive and trained cook who started under the tutelage of Clarissa Dickson-Wright, Katriona MacGregor recognised how easily we forget the importance and ease of eating well day-to-day as even she, in the throngs of a full-time job, resorted to  ready-made meals.

Her book Healthy Speedy Suppers: Quick, Healthy and Delicious Recipes for Busy People is a collection of recipes that are low in wheat and dairy, focusing on replacing processed carbs for wholemeal where possible. Despite being more healthy, it doesn't make the recipes any less delicious - it simply showcases good quality whole foods that are paired intelligently. 

Dishes are categorised into soups and salads, poultry, meat, fish, grains pulses and vegetables, and dips sauces and dressings for easy navigation and for those restless nights where you know what sort of thing you’re hankering for but you need that bit of inspiration. It’s refreshing to flick through a cookbook where everything seems so accessible and un-daunting and it’s even more refreshing to discover that you’re not void of the endless ingredients needed to make it. She advises you stock your cupboards with the staples so that a red lentil and chicken saag, is only three fresh ingredients away.
 
Recipes span several cuisines and all seasons, touching on such diverse dishes as roast carrot tomato and dill soup, squid and courgette salad with chorizo, pheasant coconut and tamarind curry, one-pot chicken with bacon leeks and peas, venison sausage with kale and red wine, sea bass ceviche with chicory, stir-fried beef with peppers, smoked haddock and gruyère omelette and a broad bean and freekeh risotto.
 
I recently made the lamb leg with bashed peas and a tomato and mint salsa, a Sunday evening dinner for one, and it just summed the book up for me – quick and easy to cook, full of wholesome ingredients, while still feeling like a treat.
 
Healthy Speedy Suppers by Katriona MacGregor is published by Nourish, an imprint of Watkins Media Limited, and is available from Amazon.co.uk for £13.51 (hard cover).
 
Luci Lyne