Time to Eat: Delicious Meals for Busy Lives: A Cookbook

by Nadiya Hussain

Overview

From the host of the beloved Netflix series Time to Eat and winner of The Great British Baking Show come over 100 time-smart recipes to tackle family mealtime.

Nadiya Hussain knows that feeding a family and juggling a full work load can be challenging. Time to Eat solves mealtime on weeknights and busy days with quick and easy recipes that the whole family will love. Nadiya shares all her tips and tricks for making meal prep as simple as possible, including ideas for repurposing leftovers and components of dishes into new recipes, creating second meals to keep in the freezer, and using shortcuts—like frozen foods—to cut your prep time significantly.

In Time to Eat, Nadiya teaches you to make recipes from her hit Netflix show, including Peanut Butter & Jelly Traybake, Instant Noodles, Egg Rolls, and zesty Marmalade Haddock. Each recipe also notes exactly how long it will take to prepare and cook, making planning easy. Helpful icons identify which recipes can be made ahead, which ones are freezer-friendly, and which ones can be easily doubled.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593233535
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	11/10/2020
Edition description:	Illustrated
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	243,947
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Nadiya Hussain wrote Time to Eat as the cookbook companion to her Netflix series Time to Eat. She won the The Great British Baking Show in 2015 and lives in the U.K. with her husband and three children. Her second Netflix series, Nadiya Bakes, premieres in February 2021.

Read an Excerpt

How to Use this Book


This book is unique and special because it introduces you to my world, my way of cooking, which can become your world and your way of cooking. It will help you become a time-smart cook without even really realizing it. I’m so excited to share all this with you. There are recipes that show you how to batch cook and how to use—and really appreciate—the space in your freezer. You can spin leftovers into whole new meals and make beautiful food that can be put together in very little time.

I don’t want to appear condescending, I really don’t. Or look like I know what I’m doing. But I kind of do! Not because I’m an expert, but because I know what it’s like to have just one head and one pair of hands. We are all human. Cluttered minds, to-do lists that never seem to get smaller, stuff to do, and still only four limbs. We can only get to our destination as quickly as our legs can carry us. We can only prepare the family dinners that are needed with the two hands we have and whatever time is left at the end of the day. Yet life seems to treat us like we are octopuses, with eight limbs to juggle the laundry, the chores, wiping down surfaces, tying laces, shoveling in food, typing, swiping, clicking.

I haven’t got it all figured out. I still don’t know how to do the YMCA and knead bread at the same time. It’s a work in progress, but I will do it! I’m not saying my way is the best way. But it’s pretty good. This is the way I have been cooking for a decade and it really does work. All you need is a willingness to change how you cook a little, and to make a little freezer space. It’s definitely not foolproof. It takes time and a little extra thinking, but ultimately when I cook like this, what happens is I get my cooking fill, I get to be creative and cook delicious food. I get to cook in advance. By spending just a little more time in the kitchen (and by little I mean not that much more), it means I'm cooking extra and freezing and saving for the week ahead. By the time I have done this for a few weeks, I find myself with a whole week free to do other things. Like have a bath, do some work knowing dinner is sorted, simply enjoy putting one foot in front of the other without worrying about the speed at which my feet are moving. Leaving me happy to be human and less envious of our eight-legged sea creature. I don’t want to be the octopus, I want to cook him, eat him, freeze him, and enjoy him again the following week without breaking a sweat, without thinking.

This book has over 100 delicious recipes for you to choose from. Some take a little less time and others take a little more time, but there’ll be a reason for it—you’ll be creating a second meal to keep in the freezer, or you’ll be using a component of the meal you are making to spin into something completely different tomorrow that won’t require any preparation. Some are perfect for when you have no time to spare and others for when you have plenty of time. The difference with these recipes is that you have options. You can use frozen onions or fresh. You can use fresh veg or canned. You can make one recipe now and know that you have dinner in the freezer ready for the weeks ahead. You can make more sauce than you need for that dessert now and make a hot chocolate later.

In my first few weeks of cooking like this, I found I was busy cooking one week, cooking more than I needed, stocking my freezer and giving myself a week free of cooking, but safe in the knowledge that my family was eating home-cooked food. But after a few months I found I had food stocked up for weeks, so much so that I had to stop cooking for a while just to empty the freezer out. After six months, I was ready for every situation. Cake to take to a party? I had one in the freezer! Late home one night? It didn’t matter because dinner just needed to be taken out and heated from frozen. Unexpected guests? I always had something to whip up fast. Late night? There was always something in the back of the fridge for when we got the munchies. If you want to test the theory, turn up at my home and I will have something for you—but I won’t be slaving or panicking over a hot stovetop and a noisy oven.

Editorial Reviews

11/30/2020

Great British Bake Off champion Hussain (Nadiya Bakes) makes a strong showing with 100 recipes intended to teach home cooks how to be a “time-smart cook without even really realizing it.” Dishes are modern mash-ups of recipes drawing on Hussain’s South Asian heritage, vibrant global flavors, and classic British fare. Time-saving tricks (like prepping breakfast pastry dough the night before using it) appear throughout, and Hussain is a proponent of quashing mealtime doldrums (“I don’t see why we can’t have French toast for lunch”). For breakfast there’s an impressive olive and rosemary crown bread and spice-infused masala porridge. Lunch features lentil and orange soup and pizza parathas. Tarts and pastry-based dishes such as beef pasties or a puff-pastry wrapped meatloaf roll (“like meatloaf meets Wellington meets sausage roll”) are abundant. The dinner chapter showcases rosemary and rhubarb glazed butterflied leg of lamb, while dessert options include twists on s’mores, handmade pies, and tarte tatin. Hussain also has ample advice on batch cooking and proper freezing techniques, such as always being sure to let food cool completely before freezing so as not to melt items already in the freezer. This cornucopia of delights is sure to please. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

01/01/2021

A companion to the 2019 BBC series of the same name (now available on Netflix), the latest book from The Great British Bake Off star Hussain promises "delicious meals for busy lives." Broken into sections covering breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, and basics, Time to Eat features more than 100 recipes to help cooks prep and save time by always having a little extra left over. In addition to the recipes, Hussain includes a chapter explaining how to use the book to become a "time-smart cook," along with strategies to maximize freezer space for storage. A "basics" section provides extra guidance for those who prefer homemade to store-bought (think spices, curry paste, butter), and Hussain's concept of active vs. recipe time gives home cooks a real sense of how long it takes to complete a given dish. An ingredient-based index makes it easy to find recipes based on what one has on hand. VERDICT Great for home cooks who want to reduce waste and streamline effort. Plenty of family and budget-friendly options, British classics, and recipes that work for meal prep.—Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib., Miami

Library Journal

The recipes work . . . Hussain is a star - - The Times

Nadiya Hussain has crafter over 100 delicious time-saving recipes to take the stress out of cooking and put the joy back into every meal, without breaking the bank - - Pick Me Up

All hail cookery's new queen - - Sun

From the Publisher