I am possibly the slowest cook out there. On a weekend I can take a recipe that’s designed to take 30 minutes, start at 5pm, joke to Soph that we’ll eat before 7pm, and end up dishing up at nearer 8pm.

For this reason I rarely cook on a weeknight. But since Soph has started doing Pilates on Tuesday evenings, it’s fallen to me to cook things, so I’ve had to come up with something I really can cook in just 30mins.

This speedy rice is now my go-to for meals. It works with left-over rice from the weekend, or I can pre-make a batch of rice on the Monday ready to be used on the Tuesday. Plus it uses canned and frozen veg to bulk it out, which avoids any chopping (and reduces washing up!).

I find the best sort of rice for this is sticky rice: it has a tendency to crisp up in a nice way, unlike plain rice.

The recipe is incredibly simple: pre-heat oven to 200C fan, line baking tray with baking parchment, break up the the rice and put in the tray, add veg, season, cook for at least 20mins, but 30 won’t kill it (and might give it some nice extra crispness!).

The veg, as I mentioned, is generally frozen: chopped peppers, mixed veg, peas, whatever is already open in the freezer. Tonight you’ll see from the picture that there’s also tinned pineapple in there too, which adds a nice freshness to things.

I normally do this dish with frozen Quorn fillets, along with one of the many WW sauces Soph has bought but never found a use for. but today due to supermarket deal I’ve got some frozen calamari that needs using (to free up space for more garden fruits probably!), plus some lemon wedges which both go well with calamari and we have an excess off in the fridge.