Product Description

Tired of deciding what to cook? Want to maximise your meals, with minimum time in the kitchen? Recent surveys have shown that around a third of the food produced in the UK for human consumption ends up in the bin. This means that every adult is wasting hundreds of pounds-worth of food a year! So the time is right for a kitchen revolution. This is the life-saving cookbook you've been waiting for - home cooking using fresh, seasonal produce, with weekly planners, recipes and shopping lists that will enable you to maximise the weekly shop for you and the family. It's the 'back to basics' approach, minimising waste through thoughtful shopping and a little preparation.Each week, you'll have the opportunity to cook: Big Meal from Scratch - a delicious, filling meal for the whole family, e.g. poached chicken with elderflower and new potatoes; Something for Nothing - two easy meals that use leftovers in a tasty and inspiring way, e.g. new potato, asparagus and egg salad; Seasonal Supper - a quick, simple supper made from seasonal ingredients, e.g. spiced grilled lamb chops with radish and orange salad; Larder Feast - for when the fridge is bare, a whole meal just from store cupboard ingredients, e. g. beef and mushroom stroganoff; and 2 for 1 - a comforting meal that freezes well so that you can eat half immediately, and store half in the freezer, e.g. oriental pork and spring onion dumplings.Using this fantastic system, Rosie Sykes, Polly Russell and Zoe Heron have come up a recipe for every single day of the year. With foolproof recipes for every kind of occasion, they'll guarantee that you're making the most of your cooker, fridge, freezer and store-cupboard to create healthy and economical meals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10884 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Press Association
'This is the book that Delia should have written... the recipes leap off the page - it's inspiring, imaginative food'

Review
'If you mean to change your life in the New Year, arm yourself with the Kitchen Revolution'

Review
'Genuinely original'

Customer Reviews

Delicious, interesting food - and I've saved money
This is a fabulous book. I am doing a week from May this week because the recipes sounded particularly scrummy. We had Pot Roast Caribbean Pork last night which was really tender. We substituted a few things from the recipe (I don't like coriander) and it still came out fabulously. Tonight we're looking forward to Goats' Cheese Flatbreads with a chicory and hazelnut salad - using the left over sweet potatoes from yesterday. Initially the shopping list looked daunting - but even though we had to stock up on some larder goodies and basics which we didn't have it still all came to less than £40 (and we did get organic meat). All in all, I think it's a brilliant idea. I can see that if I did live by it, I would certainly save money. What's great is that it doesn't matter if you don't live by it in whole weeks. You can still use it like a 'normal' cookery book and do whatever you feel like -- and you'll save money, eat healthily and seriously widen your repertoire of delicious dishes. What more could you ask for?

Stop wasting food
If you hate wasting food you will love this book. Each week comes with a shopping list, which you can download from The Kitchen Revolution website. This is a real time saver and takes all the misery out of trawling round the supermarket. Instead of impulse buying or getting suckered into buy-one-get-one-free offers, which often end up in the bin, you come away with the ingredients for a week's worth of really delicious meals.

It's so easy to end up cooking the same old dishes week in week out but with this book you end up trying all sorts of exciting new recipes and nothing gets wasted. I really can't recommend it enough.

Not so good but not so bad either!
On a positive note, I used this book for three months straight and I can honestly say there are some very good recipes. My husband and I tried many new foods that we had never eaten before, some we liked, some we didn't, but generally the recipes were pretty good with the odd exception. My husband also said many times that he had not expected to like a dish but it was actually very nice. I had not previously used fresh herbs much and found that really they made a huge difference, but of course they do add to the shopping bill. I had to make everything for two people as my teenage son would not touch most of the meals, they were a bit too adventurous for him on the whole. I don't think making them for two made any difference to the end results though.
On the negative side, unfortunately I found that the weekly shopping estimate of £50-60 was a a bit on the low side, maybe this is because of rising food prices generally, maybe it is due to not living within easy disance of a good local market. Also you have to consider that this price is for Main meals only, it's not a full weekly shopping list, I think this is something most people had not taken into account and so their weekly bill was much higher than expected. Personally I found that ours was probably around £40-50 and we were only cooking for two. So a bit disappointing. Another problem was that I suddenly found I was spending much more time in the kitchen than I had been doing, using unfamiliar recipes can take a bit more time. another problem I found was that a few of the 'Something-for-Nothing' recipes really were not! I don't see how you can say it's a 'free' meal if you use leftover potatoes but have to buy smoked mackerel etc!
On balance I would say that we have given up using the book week-in, week-out, but we have a few favourite recipes from it that we will be making regularly. The 'Big Meals from Scratch' were generally very good and I did learn a few things about using leftovers to avoid waste and save money, also I will definitely continue with the fresh herbs!