It’s that time of year when our gardens are giving us vegetables aplenty, and I’m always looking for inspiration.
One of my favourite cooks, Rukmini Iyer (of the Roasting Tin series), published another fabulous book as short while ago: The Green Cookbook, Easy Vegan & Vegetarian Dinners.
Published by Square Peg at £25 for a beautifully photographed (by David Loftus) hardback, it’s packed with inspiration! Rukmini has created a book that you can turn to every day of the week for everything from a 15-minute pasta dish, budget-friendly batch cooking and celebratory feasts for friends. 
Half the recipes are plant based (with most of the vegetarian ones easily ‘veganisable’) half are gluten-free and all of them are great if you want to eat more veg without compromising on flavour or ease.
Rukmini’s a genius at maximising flavour, yet producing recipes that give the cook time to relax instead of standing cooking all evening.
‘At the end of a working day, I want a minimum effort, maximum flavour dinner, as hassle-free as possible, while still feeling like there’s something joyous
on my plate and my family’s too’, she says.
Discover weeknight wins that come together in only 30 minutes, use only one pot (one-pot pasta with peppers & harissa or one tin (crispy roasted tofu & aubergine with chilli peanut sauce) to make doing the dishes a breeze. The ‘cook once, eat twice’ chapter will sort both dinner today and fabulous lunchboxes tomorrow, another chapter is packed with batch cooking recipes to help you prepare for a busy week and family dinners that are designed to be toddler and child-friendly but nice enough for you to eat too – think crispy ravioli lasagne or rainbow fried rice (just add sea salt!) For evenings and weekends with friends, you’ll also find big dishes with big flavours and light sharing platters, like the addictive spiced roasted carrots and hazelnuts with silky butterbean mash.
About Rukmini
Rukmini Iyer is the bestselling author of the Roasting Tin series, which in five years has sold over 1.75 million copies worldwide. They’ve transformed the cookery space in the UK, leading the one-tin, one-pot, and one-pan revolution, and remain firm favourites among cookbook buyers who love Rukmini’s minimum fuss, maximum flavour recipes.
Rukmini makes regular appearances cooking live on morning TV and is the newest weekly columnist for the Guardian’s ‘Feast’ magazine.
She strongly believes that making time to eat well – for oneself or for family dinners – is an integral part of the day, and as a new mother with limited time but a good appetite, she’s passionate about helping other households cook great, minimum-effort dinners.
Rukmini grew up with the best three food cultures, Bengali and South Indian from her parents’ Indian heritage, and classic British 80’s mac & cheese, potato waffles and cheese and pineapple on a stick. Seeing her mum switch effortlessly between Indian vegetarian food, Delia and Jamie recipes for dinner while working full time as a GP inspired Rukmini to think about home cooking as something that should be achievable on a busy weeknight, without compromising on flavour.
At home, she’s a pescatarian, but uses her knowledge of cooking as an omnivore and her time as a vegan to create recipes that maximise flavour (and give the home- cook some time to sit down and relax rather than stand in the kitchen all night.)
As a keen amateur kitchen gardener, Rukmini has a column in BBC Gardener’s World magazine, and writes for numerous publications, including BBC Good Food magazine and major supermarket magazines. When she’s not cooking for work, Rukmini loves gardening, reading, wandering around food markets with her border collie and toddler in tow, renovating the house with her husband and entertaining friends and family.
Here are some recipes from the book to inspire you:
SPICED ROASTED CARROTS & HAZELNUTS, SILKY BUTTERBEAN MASH (VG, GF)
Serves: 4 as a side Prep: 15 minutes Cook: 55 minutes
“I could eat an entire bowl of this in front of the television, but it’s really too nice not to share with friends. The carrots roast beautifully with coriander seeds under foil, while the rich, silky butterbean mash takes just 10 minutes to put together. A substantial, flavour-packed dish which is, as my friend Alex Dorgan would say, incidentally vegan.”
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
12 small carrots, halved
45ml olive oil
45ml water
2 teaspoons agave or maple syrup
50g blanched hazelnuts, halved
Sea salt flakes, to taste
Finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, to serve
For the butterbean mash
90ml olive oil
1 lemon, zest, plus a squeeze of juice
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
3 spring onions, thinly sliced
2 fat cloves garlic, finely grated
1 x 700g jar butterbeans (or 2 x 400g tins butterbeans), drained and rinsed
Preheat the oven to 180°C fan/200°C/gas 6. Lightly grind the coriander seeds and black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar, then add them to a medium roasting tin along with the carrots, olive oil, water and ½ teaspoon salt. Cover with foil, then roast in the oven for 40 minutes.
After 40 minutes, remove the foil, drizzle the carrots with the agave or maple syrup, then return to the oven for a further 15 minutes to reduce the liquid and get some colour on the carrots. Put the hazelnuts on a small baking tray and pop them into the oven at the same time to toast.
Meanwhile, put the olive oil, lemon zest, coriander seeds, spring onions and garlic into a small frying pan and warm through over a low heat for 5 minutes – you’re not aiming to get any colour on the garlic, so keep the heat down.
Put the butterbeans and the infused oil, spring onions, etc. into a high-speed blender or food processor and blitz until very smooth. Add a squeeze of lemon juice, then taste and adjust the salt if needed. Warm the mash and spoon into shallow bowls, topped with the roasted carrots. Scatter the carrots with a little sea salt, the toasted hazelnuts and flat-leaf parsley and serve warm.
PEA, TARRAGON & CREAM CHEESE TART
Serves: 4 Prep: 10 minutes Cook: 30 minutes
“This simple puff pastry tart is nice enough to make when friends come over, but easy enough that you could make it for a quick weeknight dinner. Just unroll your puff pastry, top with a mixture of quickly cooked frozen peas, eggs and crème fraîche, scatter over your cheese and voilà! An easy quiche-adjacent meal. I love the background complexity from adding fresh tarragon, but if you don’t have it or aren’t keen on the flavour, just let the Boursin cheese do the herb heavy-lifting for the dish.”
250g frozen peas, defrosted
2 sprigs tarragon, leaves finely chopped
4 nice free-range eggs
100g full-fat crème fraîche
1 lemon, zest and juice
½ teaspoon sea salt flakes, plus extra to serve
150g Boursin garlic and herb cheese (or similar)
1 x 320g sheet all butter (if available) ready-rolled puff pastry
Preheat the oven to 180°C fan/200°C/gas 6.
Boil the peas in a saucepan of water for 2 minutes, then drain and rinse well under cold water.
Meanwhile, whisk the tarragon, eggs, crème fraîche and lemon zest together with the sea salt, then stir through the peas.
Unroll the puff pastry into a 20cm by 30cm roasting tin, just small enough that the pastry comes up the sides to form a lip. Pour in the pea and crème fraîche mixture, dot the Boursin cheese over evenly, then bake for 25 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden brown.
Scatter over a pinch of sea salt flakes and finish with a squeeze of lemon juice before serving hot or at room temperature.
NOTE: If you have bought a packet of tarragon just for this dish, strip the leaves into a small freezer bag and freeze for future use.
MAKE IT GF: Use gluten-free ready-rolled puff pastry.
TURMERIC FRIED AUBERGINES WITH YOGURT, BUTTER CHILLI CASHEWS AND CORIANDER (GF)
Serves: 4 as a side Prep: 10 minutes, plus 15 minutes standing Cook: 20–25 minutes
“If I had to pick just one recipe in the book that you simply must try, it’d be this one (don’t tell the others). I never get tired of fried aubergines and yogurt – it’s one of the earliest dishes I learned from my mum, and this version, topped with crunchy chilli-butter cashew nuts, is a total winner. Try it and see.”
3 long, thin purple aubergines (or 2 ordinary aubergines), cut into 1cm slices
1 scant teaspoon ground turmeric
20g salted butter
70g cashew nuts, roughly chopped
¼ teaspoon chilli flakes
2 teaspoons soft dark brown sugar
Oil, for frying
200g Greek yogurt
½ teaspoon ground cumin
Large handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped
Sea salt flakes
Rub the sliced aubergines with the turmeric and a scant teaspoon of salt. Set aside for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat and when foaming, add the cashews. Stir-fry for 5 minutes, watching them closely so they don’t burn, then add the chilli flakes, a pinch of salt and the sugar. Stir for a further 2 minutes, then transfer to a plate to cool.
Wipe out the frying pan and add a good splash of oil. Fry the aubergine slices in batches over a medium to low heat for 3–4 minutes on each side until golden brown and crisp. Remove to a plate lined with kitchen paper and continue until you’ve fried all the aubergines, adding oil between batches.
While the aubergines are frying, stir the Greek yogurt and cumin together in a bowl. When all the aubergines are fried, transfer the slices to a serving platter and top each slice with a spoonful of the yogurt. Stir the chopped coriander through the spiced cashew nuts, then scatter over the yogurt-topped aubergines. Serve immediately.
PREP AHEAD: Cook the aubergines ahead of time and warm through in the oven before topping with the yogurt and cashew nuts.
