🍝 Four Fast Nights

Method (30 min)

1. Shape: take the chilled kofta mix and form 12 koftas, each about the size and shape of a fat sausage, pressed around the length of your hand. Make 2 extra small plain ones for Hamish before you go any further — one for tonight, one for his lunch tomorrow.
2. Chopped salad: dice small and pile together: 1 cucumber, 300g baby plum tomatoes, ½ red onion, 1 pepper (the tired one from last week — use it up), and the last ~40g parsley chopped. Dress with juice of 1 lemon, 3 tbsp olive oil and ½ tsp salt. Everything cut to roughly the same small dice — that is what makes it a chopped salad rather than a sad side salad.
3. Garlic yoghurt: stir 300g Greek yoghurt with 1 tsp garlic paste, a squeeze of lemon and ½ tsp salt.
4. Cook the koftas hard: griddle pan or BBQ, as hot as you can get it, 1 tbsp oil. Lay the koftas down and do not move them for 4 min — they need to form a dark crust before they will release. Turn once, 4 min more. Internal temp 70°C.
5. Warm the flatbreads directly in the empty kofta pan, 30 seconds a side, so they pick up the spiced fat.
6. Build: flatbread, a swipe of garlic yoghurt, two koftas, a heap of chopped salad and its dressing spooned over, then a scatter of crispy fried onions (🟩 pantry) for crunch and a drizzle of chilli oil for the adults.

Method (25 min)

1. Crisp the gyoza first — do not boil them: 24 pork gyoza (🧊 freezer, from the new box of 30s) into a wide pan with 1 tbsp oil, flat side down, over medium-high heat. Fry 3 min until the bases are deep golden. Add 100ml water, lid on, 5 min, then lid off until the water has gone and the bases re-crisp. Set aside.
2. Broth: bring 1.8 litres water to a simmer and whisk in 2 tbsp Shimaya dashi powder (🏭 new), 3 tbsp light soy (🏭 new), 1 tbsp rice vinegar and a thumb of ginger cut into coins. Simmer 5 min, then fish the ginger out.
3. Tofu puffs: add 1 pack deep-fried tofu puffs (🥕 fridge, short life — use them) and simmer 3 min. They act like sponges and come out full of broth.
4. Noodles, cooked separately: soak 300g rice vermicelli (🏭 new) in just-boiled water for 4 min, then drain. Never cook the noodles in the broth — the starch turns it cloudy and thick, and they carry on swelling in the bowl.
5. Greens: quarter 2 heads pak choi lengthways and drop into the broth for the last 90 seconds only, so the stems keep some bite.
6. Eggs: soft-boil 4 eggs (🥚 own) — 6½ min from boiling, straight into cold water, then peel and halve.
7. Build: noodles into deep bowls, ladle the broth and tofu puffs over, then lay the pak choi, the halved eggs and the crisped gyoza on top at the very last second so they stay crunchy. Finish with sliced spring onions, a shake of furikake (🏭 new) and Lao Gan Ma chilli oil for the adults.

Method (20 min)

1. Rice on first: 350g jasmine rice (🟩 pantry) rinsed until the water runs clear, then cooked per pack. Rinsing is not optional here — you want separate grains under the sauce, not a claggy bed.
2. Vegetables, in the same pan, first: slice 1 onion, 2 carrots (🥕 fridge) into matchsticks and 150g mushrooms if any survived Tuesday. Screaming hot pan, 1 tbsp oil, 3 min hard so they char at the edges rather than steam. Tip out onto a plate.
3. Beef, in batches, fast: same pan, hotter still. Add the marinated steak in two batches and give each 90 seconds, barely moving it. Crowding the pan is what turns bulgogi grey — two batches takes three minutes and is the difference between charred and boiled.
4. Recombine: vegetables back in, toss 30 seconds so everything picks up the sticky glaze in the pan.
5. Fried eggs: 4 eggs (🥚 own) fried hard in hot oil until the whites are lacy and crisp at the edges and the yolks still run.
6. Build: rice, bulgogi and vegetables over, a fried egg on top of each, kimchi alongside, spring onions and sesame seeds (🟩 pantry) scattered over. Break the yolk into the rice as you eat.

Ocado — Tue 15 Sep, 8:30–9:30am

£51 of meal items added to an order that already held £108.75 of staples, wine and household — total £159.99, 47 items. A small shop for four nights, because the Asian supermarket delivery covers most of Thursday and Friday outright. Two decisions worth knowing: lamb mince went in at 1kg rather than 750g (Hamish's freezer range is empty — the spare koftas restock it), and the 300g houmous was out of stock, so it is two 200g tubs on a 2-for-£2.20 offer instead. The Marigold bouillon is a restock: it has been flagged gone since 2 Sep.