Five dinners from a nearly empty cupboard

There's a particular kind of Wednesday. I get in late, the fridge contains a jar of lime pickle, two eggs and half an onion wrapped in cling film, and S is standing in front of it with the door open as if more food might appear if he waits long enough. It never does. The supermarket at the end of our road is technically open, but it's raining sideways and I've already taken my shoes off.

This post is for that Wednesday. These are the five dinners I actually make from the cupboard, in roughly the order I reach for them. None of them are clever. All of them are better than toast eaten standing up, which, I'll admit, has been dinner more often than a food blogger should confess.

Each recipe serves two, because that's what we cook for most nights. They double without drama. Where something is optional, I've said so, and I've tried to be honest about which bits are non-negotiable and which bits are me being fussy.

The cupboard heroes

• Tinned tomatoes and pulses: chickpeas, red lentils and, yes, a tin of baked beans. The base of half the dinners below.
• Rice and dried pasta. Cheap, filling, and they keep for months.
• Eggs. Protein in minutes, and they turn leftover rice into an actual meal.
• An onion, or half of one. Most of these recipes need a little, so one onion can carry you through two nights.
• A short row of spices: cumin seeds, ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, chilli powder or flakes, garam masala. If you have those six, you can cook most of the food I grew up eating.
• Soy sauce, stock cubes, tomato purée and garlic. The flavour shortcuts.

1. Red lentil dal with a garlic tarka

This is the one. If I had to live on a single cupboard dinner, it would be a thin, golden masoor dal poured over rice, the kind my nani called patla dal. Thin is the point. It isn't meant to be a thick, spoon-standing purée. It should run into the rice and soak it, and the tarka (whole spices and garlic sizzled in hot oil, then tipped over the top) does all the heavy lifting.

The only way to ruin it is the tarka. Garlic goes from golden to bitter in about the time it takes to answer a WhatsApp from your mum. I know this because I've done it twice, both times while answering a WhatsApp from my mum. Take the pan off the heat the moment the garlic is pale gold, because it keeps cooking in the hot oil.

Ingredients (serves 2, with rice)

• 150g red lentils (masoor dal)
• 750ml water, plus a splash more if it thickens
• ½ tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp salt, or to taste
• 2 tbsp neutral oil or ghee
• 1 tsp cumin seeds (or panch phoron, if you have it)
• 1 dried red chilli, or a pinch of chilli flakes
• ¼ onion, thinly sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• Cooked rice, to serve

Method

1. Rinse the lentils in a sieve until the water runs mostly clear. Put them in a saucepan with the water and turmeric and bring to the boil.
2. Skim off the foam, turn the heat down and simmer, partly covered, for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring now and then, until the lentils have completely collapsed. Whisk briefly for a smoother dal. Add the salt and loosen with a splash of water if you like it thinner.
3. For the tarka, heat the oil or ghee in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Add the cumin seeds and dried chilli and let them sizzle for about 20 seconds.
4. Add the onion and fry for 5 to 6 minutes until golden. Add the garlic and fry for about a minute, just until it turns pale gold, then take the pan off the heat straight away.
5. Pour the sizzling tarka over the dal, stand back for the hiss, then stir it through. Taste for salt and serve over rice.

2. Chickpea and tomato curry

The other quarter of the onion goes here. This is the dinner I make when I want something that feels like a proper curry but I have exactly two tins and a spice row to work with. The trick, which S finds deeply unsatisfying because it isn't technical enough, is to mash a few of the chickpeas into the sauce at the end. It thickens everything and makes it taste like it's been going for an hour instead of fifteen minutes.

Don't rush the onion and spices. Two extra minutes of frying is the difference between a curry and warm tomatoes with chickpeas in them.

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 1 tbsp neutral oil
• ¼ to ½ onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, grated or crushed
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• ½ tsp ground turmeric
• ½ tsp chilli powder (more or less, to taste)
• 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 x 400g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 100ml water
• ½ tsp salt, or to taste
• ½ tsp garam masala
• Rice or flatbreads, to serve

Method

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan or deep frying pan over a medium heat. Fry the onion for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring, until soft and turning golden.
2. Add the garlic and fry for 1 minute. Add the cumin, coriander, turmeric and chilli powder with a splash of water so they don't burn, and stir for 30 seconds.
3. Tip in the tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes, stirring, until the sauce darkens and thickens and the oil starts to show at the edges.
4. Add the chickpeas, water and salt. Simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Mash a spoonful or two of chickpeas against the side of the pan and stir them in. Add the garam masala, taste for salt and serve.

3. Masala beans on toast

Every British Bangladeshi kid I know grew up with a version of this. In our house, beans on toast came with fried onion, green chilli and a bit of turmeric, and I was well into university before I clocked that baked beans don't come like that out of the tin. When I first made my housemates plain beans on toast, I felt like I was serving them something unfinished.

It takes ten minutes and it's the most comforting thing on this list. A slice of cheddar melted on top is not traditional in my family, but S insists, and on this one point he's right.

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 1 tbsp neutral oil or a knob of butter
• ½ tsp cumin seeds
• ¼ onion, finely chopped
• 1 green chilli, finely chopped, or a pinch of chilli flakes
• ¼ tsp ground turmeric
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• 1 x 415g tin baked beans
• A pinch of garam masala
• 4 slices of bread, toasted
• Grated cheddar, to serve (optional)

Method

1. Heat the oil or butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Add the cumin seeds and let them sizzle for 20 seconds.
2. Add the onion and chilli and fry for 4 to 5 minutes until soft.
3. Stir in the turmeric and ground cumin for 30 seconds, then add the beans. Simmer gently for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring, until piping hot.
4. Stir in the garam masala and pile onto hot buttered toast. Add cheese if you're on S's side.

4. Egg fried rice from yesterday's rice

This only works with cold, cooked rice. Fresh rice is too wet, and it turns into something closer to a savoury porridge. Ask me how I know. (S made it with rice straight off the hob on our second date, and we still talk about it.)

The bigger point is safety, because rice is one of the leftovers you have to take seriously. Cooked rice can carry bacteria whose spores survive cooking, so cool any leftovers quickly, ideally within an hour, then keep them in the fridge and use them within a day. When you fry it again, get it steaming hot all the way through, and only reheat it once. If the rice has sat out on the hob all evening, it goes in the bin, not the wok.

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 2 tbsp neutral oil
• 3 eggs, beaten with a pinch of salt
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 100g frozen peas
• About 300g cold cooked rice (from roughly 125g uncooked), cooled quickly and fridged
• 2 tbsp soy sauce, plus more to taste
• Spring onions or chilli oil, to serve (optional)

Method

1. Break up any clumps of rice with your fingers before you start.
2. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wok or large frying pan over a high heat. Pour in the eggs and stir until just set, then tip them onto a plate.
3. Add the remaining oil, then the garlic and peas, and stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes.
4. Add the rice and stir-fry for 4 to 5 minutes, pressing it against the hot pan, until every grain is steaming hot all the way through.
5. Add the soy sauce, return the eggs, and toss together. Taste, add more soy if needed and serve straight away.

5. Tuna, tomato and chilli pasta

The last resort, and honestly one of the best. A tin of tuna, a tin of tomatoes and some pasta. I make this when I've been so tired that I've stood in the kitchen reading the back of a tin as if it were a contract. It needs about fifteen minutes, mostly the time the pasta takes to cook.

Keep a mug of the starchy pasta water before you drain. It turns a slightly thin tomato sauce into one that clings, and it's the single thing that makes this feel like a recipe rather than an emergency.

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 200g dried pasta (spaghetti, penne, whatever's open)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• ½ tsp chilli flakes
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 x 145g tin tuna, drained
• 1 tbsp capers or a few chopped olives (optional)
• Salt and black pepper

Method

1. Cook the pasta in a large pan of well-salted boiling water according to the packet. Scoop out a mugful of pasta water before draining.
2. Meanwhile, warm the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium-low heat. Add the garlic and chilli flakes and cook gently for 1 to 2 minutes, until the garlic is fragrant but not browned.
3. Stir in the tomato purée for 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes. Simmer for 8 to 10 minutes until slightly thickened.
4. Flake in the tuna and capers or olives and warm through. Season with pepper and a little salt (the capers and tuna are already salty).
5. Toss in the drained pasta with a few splashes of pasta water until the sauce coats it. Serve.

Swaps that work (and some that don't)

• No red lentils? Yellow split peas or chana dal work for the dal, but soak them first and expect them to take much longer to soften.
• No tinned tomatoes? 2 tbsp tomato purée loosened with 300ml water makes a thinner but perfectly decent curry base.
• No chickpeas? Any tinned bean works in the curry. Kidney beans from a tin are fine, as they're already cooked. Dried kidney beans are not a shortcut: they need soaking and a hard boil before they're safe.
• No eggs? The fried rice is still worth making with peas and a fistful of whatever frozen veg you've got.
• No fresh garlic? ½ tsp garlic granules per clove, added with the ground spices so it doesn't scorch.
• Tinned tuna swapped for tinned sardines in the pasta: S loved it. I'll be honest, I needed the window open.

None of these will win a dinner party. That isn't the job. The job is getting something hot, filling and properly seasoned onto the table on a night when you'd otherwise eat crackers over the sink, and on that brief, all five deliver.

Cook it with Jan

Want to make pantry dinner tonight? Jan will scale it for your crowd and walk you through every step.

Let's cook!

• Quick weeknight dinners
• Student budget
• Store cupboard
• Vegetarian options
• Desi