Introduction

The idea of one-pot cookery is as old as time. The minute our ancestors worked out that food tasted better cooked and started stuffing ingredients into a deer bladder to boil, it was up and running. To this day the world is full of people who for reasons of economy or limited fuel still cook their daily meals in a single pot. When China passed its per capita fuel emission tests it was due almost entirely to the wok!

Now that the recession, rising fuel costs and - to a lesser degree, if you’re truthful - the future of the planet have made us concentrate on saving resources, this is perhaps the time to think of one-pot meals again. Leave behind you the era of celebrity chef, with its multiple pots and pans and huge expenditure of fuel, where everything is for show and display and not necessarily about flavour, and return to the single pot. It isn’t boring and it’s certainly both cheaper and easier on the washing up (more fuel saving and less use of chemicals).