
Youâre reading Here, Try This â our month-long plan encouraging you to try something new every day.
For some, lockdown cooking has been a chance to flex those culinary skills â a form of escapism in troubled times. But for others, that cooking mojo was lost early on in the pandemic, and itâs been a real struggle.
Itâs hardly surprising weâve reached peak pandemic fatigue â the World Health Organisation estimates 60% are suffering from lockdown lethargy. And when it comes to cooking, the thought of coming up with three meals a day is the last thing you want to think about â never mind trying to feed your children as well. Thatâs where Rukmini Iyerâs cookbooks come in.
Her âThe Roasting Tinâ series contains recipes for traybake meals, with a âchop everything, cook it all in the same-tray and let the oven do the workâ formula. The idea stemmed from reworked, well-loved recipes that she cooked with her mum to be less labour intensive â âI wanted something tasty and fresh when I got home, but I didnât want to be standing up,â Iyer tells HuffPost UK.
âIt was essentially like, âhow can I get a fresh dinner without having to stand?ââ
Her latest instalment, The Roasting Tin Around the World, is an accumulation of recipes sheâs collected over the years from her pre-Covid travel trips, including Singapore, Sri Lanka, Indonesian, Vietnam, and the USA.
âWhat I wanted to recreate was the feeling of amazement that I had in trying dishes from abroad for the first time,â she explains. âBut, presented in a way that was accessible for easy weeknight cooking.â
Iyer seems to have cracked the code when it comes to lazy lockdown cooking. âIt sounds silly, but the hardest thing is just going into the kitchen,â she says. âThereâs almost a mental block about getting off the sofa... and if you can at least make it as far as the chopping board, then thatâs a good place to start.
âItâs about getting over that motivation hump. Thereâs nothing wrong with making a fish finger sandwich and we shouldnât demonise ourselves. Weâre expecting too much and that way we set ourselves up for disappointment.â
One way to combat the cooking blues is to meal plan, she says. Itâll save time, money and prevent food waste, and itâs a good opportunity to try something new. âFor the first time, Iâve really gotten into meal planning,â says Iyer.
âWe have a whiteboard, we make a weekly list and put a stack of books Iâve been meaning to cook from on the table to go through on a Sunday.
To help you climb over that cooking wall youâve hit, here are three recipes from Iyerâs latest cookbook to get you get inspired in the kitchen.
Slow-Cooked Pork Pibil With Pink Pickled Onions
Serves: 4 | Prep time: 10 mins | Cook time: 3 hours

Ingredients:
1 onion, roughly chopped
6 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon dried oregano (Mexican if you have it)
8 cloves
250ml orange juice (ideally freshly squeezed)
2 limes, juice only
50g achiote paste
2 teaspoons sea salt
800g free-range pork shoulder, diced
For the pickled onions:
1â2 red onion, very thinly sliced
1 lime, juice only
To serve:
Chopped fresh coriander
Tortillas and sour cream
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 140°C fan/160°C/gas 2.
2. Tip the onion, garlic, cumin, oregano, cloves, citrus juice, achiote paste and salt into a blender or food processor and blitz until smooth.
3. In a small deep roasting tin or lidded casserole dish, mix the pork shoulder with the spice paste. Cover tightly with foil or the lid, then transfer to the oven and cook for 3 hours.
4. Meanwhile, mix the very thinly sliced red onion with the lime juice and set aside for 3 hours, stirring occasionally. (The acid in the lime juice will turn the onions a beautiful bright pink by the time the pork is ready.)
5. Once cooked, remove the foil or lid and shred the pork while hot. Serve with the pink pickled onions, chopped coriander, warm tortillas, and sour cream.
Note: This dish isnât at all spicy, so itâs a good one for kids, and can be easily made ahead, frozen, and defrosted in portions.
Sâmores Rocky Road with Peanuts, Marshmallows and Chocolate
Serves: many, many people | Prep time: 10 minutes | Cook time: 10 minutes, plus 1-hour chilling

Ingredients:
200g unsalted butter
300g dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids, broken up
250g digestive biscuits or Graham crackers
150g mini vegetarian marshmallows (I like pink and white)
75g salted peanuts, roughly chopped
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan/200°C/gas 6.
2. Tip the butter and chocolate into a saucepan over a low heat and stir until both have fully melted.
3. Break up all but 4 of the digestive biscuits or Graham crackers and stir them into the chocolate butter, then stir in 100g of the marshmallows. Spread the mixture in a lined shallow roasting tin, then scatter with the remaining digestive biscuits, broken into larger pieces, the marshmallows and the peanuts.
4. Transfer the tin to the oven and bake for 5â10 minutes, until the marshmallows have just started to catch and turn golden brown.
5. Let the tin cool on the side before cutting the cake into squares. (I rather like a square or two while itâs still warm out of the oven, but for a proper refrigerator cake, youâll need to pop it into the fridge to chill for a few hours before serving, so it sets properly.)
Slow Roasted Peppers with Chilli, Lemon and Garlic Beans
Serves: 4 | Prep time: 15 minutes | Cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients:
5 vine tomatoes, quartered
1 red pepper, thinly sliced
1 yellow pepper, thinly sliced
1 orange pepper, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 bay leaves
1 large sprig of fresh rosemary
1â2 â 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes
Plenty of freshly ground black pepper
For the beans:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1â2 clove of garlic, finely grated
1â2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1â2 â 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes
1 x 400g tin of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1â2 lemon, zest only
To serve:
Rounds of thickly sliced, toasted bread
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan/200°C/gas 6.
2. Tip the tomatoes, peppers, oil, herbs, salt, and pepper into a roasting tin large enough to hold everything in one layer, mix well, then transfer to the oven and roast for 50 minutes. If after half an hour it looks as though the peppers are catching a bit too quickly, turn the heat down a fraction.
3. Meanwhile, stir the extra virgin olive oil, garlic, chilli flakes, salt, cannellini beans and lemon zest together in a bowl and set aside.
4. Once the peppers have had 50 minutes, stir through the beans, then turn the oven down to 160°C fan/180°C/gas 4 and cook for a further 10 minutes.
5.Taste and adjust the salt and pepper as needed, adding a little more olive oil if you wish, then remove the bay leaves and rosemary sprigs and serve piled on to toasted bread. This tastes even better the next day, so itâs well worth making in advance and reheating.
Recipes from The Roasting Tin Around the World â Global One Dish Dinners by Rukmini Iyer.
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