PORTRAIT: KATE WHITAKER
When time is of the essence in the run-up to Christmas, recipes that are impressive yet require less effort come into their own. Making cooking simpler became Rick’s aim while he was recuperating from open heart surgery in summer 2022. After “a lifetime making ingredients from scratch”, he embraced readymade ingredients, delighted at how high-quality they’d become. He worked on simplifying his sauces and cutting out unnecessary steps, and discovered the wonders of tinned beans and frozen fruit and veg. The result is new book Simple Suppers, from which these recipes come. And when Rick Stein does simple, you know it’ll still be special
Tomato, mozzarella, black olive and artichoke faux pizza
PHOTOGRAPHS JAMES MURPHY FOOD STYLING AYA NISHIMURA AND JAN SMITH STYLING PENNY MARKHAM
A deep red wine vegetable stew with thyme dumplings
“I tried to come up with a vegetarian version of boeuf bourguignon, but all I ended up saying to myself after a couple of experiments was, where’s the beef ? So I decided to use an old trick of mine for giving sauces for fish a bit of beefiness and used dried porcini in the stock, along with more wine. Everybody who’s tried this loves it, but really the secret of the dish is just that there’s something so satisfying about dumplings”
Garlic and chilli prawns on puréed butter beans
Serves 2
Hands-on time 30 min
For the butter beans
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 400g tin butter beans, drained
• Juice 1/2 lemon
For the prawns
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• Handful flatleaf parsley leaves, chopped
• 50ml olive oil
• 1/4 tsp chilli flakes
• 225g raw peeled (or with tails on) sustainable prawns
• Crusty bread to serve