Japanese curry is both easy and a crowd pleaser. I saute whatever veggies I have on hand and just add curry mix and water to it (S&B medium spice is my go to brand). Serve with flatbread or rice. It’s very forgiving and customizable to personal taste.

Pork chops in garlic-butter sauce with mushrooms. I usually serve them with mashed potatoes and steamed fresh green beans. If you don’t do pork, you can do the exact same thing with chicken breasts.

3-4 thick-cut pork chops, preferably bone-in

1 cup mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

4 tablespoons butter

2-4 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon fresh oregano, OR 1 teaspoon dried

1 tablespoon fresh thyme, OR 1 teaspoon dried

1/2 cup flour

3/4 cup milk

2 cups chicken broth

Salt and pepper to taste

Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. In a large oven-proof skillet, combine the butter, garlic, herbs, and mushrooms over medium-high heat.

3. When the butter has melted, push everything to the sides and add the pork chops. Sear until golden on both sides.

4. Spread the mushrooms evenly over everything, and put skillet in the oven. Bake for around 35 minutes, or until the pork chops are at 150-160 F.

5. Remove from oven and set the pork chops aside to rest. Tent foil over them to keep them warm. You can remove the mushrooms too if you want, but don’t take away too much of the fat in the pan. You need whatever is in there for the gravy.

6. Put the skillet over low heat and whisk the flour into the fat in the pan. No lumps! Cook for 1-2 minutes to cook the flour and keep whisking. Whisk in the milk and chicken broth and cook until gravy is thick. Keep whisking the entire time. Flavor with salt and pepper to taste. If you want, you can add a pinch (1/8 teaspoon-ish) of red pepper flakes. It balances out the richness of the butter. You can also just put hot sauce on table, if you have spice-averse guests.

Steak. Medium. Mashed potatoes. Onion and garlic in the oven. Chopped sour salty salad.

Simple to make. All parts are ready at the same time if you prepare it in the right order.

Pasta aglio, olio, peperoncino.
Literally “pasta with garlic, oil and chili peppers”: easy to learn, hard to perfectionate.

Pho. Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. It’s my favourite meal in the world. Healthy, cheap and incredibly easy to make.

Buy pho powder/ tablets. Put in water.

Add onions, chillis and a bit of lime.

Cook rice noodles.

You are done. It also freezes well. For all you lazy bastards out there. Try it once! You will add it to your weekly shopping list.

Shakshuka. One of the tastiest foods ever.

Babish’s Panko Crusted Salmon.

It’s stupid easy & relatively quick. The hardest part for me was the egg white. Had never done it before.

If you’ve never done it before, & break the yolk on the first try… don’t dump the egg, just save it for breakfast. Yes, I dumped the egg.

Link to video, I think it’s the second dish, towards the middle.

Link to recipe is in the video description.

Edit: PipedBot shamed me.Link to recipe if you don’t want to go to YouTube.

Chinese home cooking is great for this. One of my favourites:

• Cook some sort of long noodles. You can go fancy with this, but spaghetti are fine.
• for each person, put a bit of soy sauce at the bottom of something like a large cereal bowl, add warm-ish noodles.
• put a little pile of thinly sliced scallion greens and chili flakes on top.
• heat some vegetable oil to almost smoking and carefully pour it over — just enough to fry the chili and greens, and lightly coat the noodles.

Quick and simple, super tasty (and even vegan friendly if that matters to you).

Spaghetti with Salmon.

Chicken Tikka with a Carrot Biryani. You marinade the chicken overnight for all the flavour and then pan sear it for a few minutes and oven in a covered dish for 25. The biryani is basically just garlic, chilli, onion and grated carrot with some turmeric and garam massala, with rice dumped in. Frozen peas and fresh coriander optional.

Both take about 30 mins cook time, prep can all be done beforehand, always turns out nicely and gets compliments.

A combination of these two recipes with some tweaks. https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/carrot-biriyani https://butteroverbae.com/chicken-tikka-recipe/

Gyoza and chicken onigiri, neatly and cutely arranged of course

Usually a sausage ragu and Brian Lagerstrom’s foccacia. Honestly the foccacia is the real star, I make it for every guest the first time they come over for dinner, even the 2 hour version is delicious. The dough requires a little bit of work but it’s straight forward and I’ve never had a bad result. Main course just needs to be something Italian or Italian adjacent that doesn’t need the oven, since I try to have the bread ready a few minutes before serving. Ragu’s a staple for us because you really just need five ingredients (pasta, crushed tomatoes, onion, garlic and italian sausage) and it’s mostly just sitting around waiting for things to cook, so you have time to talk to your guests.

Wings

We have an air fryer so they come out super crispy without deep frying, and you can use different sauces to finish so that everyone is happy

If I’m not air frying I’m using my Asian wing recipe where the coating has garlic and ginger powder and brown sugar. It burns so you have to bake them, then sauce with a mixture of hoisin, sriracha, mirin. It hits a lot of delicious notes at the same time

Chicken schnitzel. Can’t really mess it up and it’s always good.

I can make a mean stir fry. Basically anything on a grill or stovetop