Quick Cooking for Easy Dinners

Back to school, back to work, back to crazy schedules - how much time is left for cooking dinner? Well, all you need is 35 minutes or less to make these healthy and tasty meals.

Making meals from start to finish requires dedication and a fair bit of time. Once the school year restarts, time and dedication to cooking gets whittled down as other priorities take centre stage.

These 35-minute meal recipes will make the September transition easier. Plus, if you double or triple the recipe you can make enough for lunches.

Another great habit that will take the stress off cooking is doing meal prep on weekends. I promise this won’t take up all your weekend time. If you spend one hour on the weekend chopping vegetables, cooking rice or quinoa, boiling some eggs and planning your meals and lunches for the week, you will gain back more time during the week for all the other things you have to do. Try it. You will be pleasantly surprised.

Spicy Mexican Salad

Serves 4

4 chorizo sausages

1 cup (250 mL) mayonnaise

8 pickled jalapeños, roughly chopped

1½ Tbs (22 mL) pickled jalapeno juice

1 (425 g) can black beans, rinsed

8 cups romaine lettuce, cut into

2 cm pieces

2 cups corn, fresh or thawed from frozen

12 grape tomatoes, halved

2 green onions, thinly sliced

2 ripe avocadoes, cut into 1 cm pieces

1 lime, cut into 4 wedges, to serve

½ cup fresh cilantro leaves, roughly chopped

Note: To cut the romaine lettuce hearts into 2 cm pieces, cut each heart in half lengthwise and then cut each half lengthwise into quarters. Finally, cut each quarter crosswise into 2 cm pieces.

Weekend Prep: chop romaine, slice green onion, make jalapeño mayo.

1. Preheat a large sauté pan over medium heat.

2. Slice the sausages into 2 cm pieces and add to the pan. Let cook 10 - 12 minutes, or until cooked through.

3. Whisk mayonnaise, jalapeño and pickled jalapeño juice together in small bowl.

4. Add beans to the sausages to warm through (approximately 3 minutes).

5. Add romaine to a large bowl and toss with the jalapeño mayo.

6. On a large platter, add the romaine, sausages and beans, corn, tomatoes, green onion, avocado slices, lime quarters, and cilantro (if desired).

Feta & Chickpea Quinoa Salad

Serves 4

2 cups previously cooked quinoa

1 can (425 g) chickpeas, drained and rinsed

12 cherry tomatoes, halved

½ cup cucumber, diced

12 kalamata olives

¼ red onion, thinly sliced

1 tsp garlic, minced

1/3 cup (80 mL) extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp (5 mL) apple cider vinegar

½ lemon, juiced

1 tsp oregano, roughly chopped

¾ tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp sea salt

¼ tsp black pepper

¼ cup feta, crumbled

½ cup parsley, roughly chopped

1. Pull quinoa out of the fridge.

2. Add quinoa, chickpeas, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and onions, to a large mixing bowl. Toss until everything is combined.

3. Make vinaigrette dressing by combining the garlic, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, oregano, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, to a jar with a lid and shake to combine.

4. Add the vinaigrette, feta and parsley to the mixing bowl and gently stir to combine.

Note: You can still make this salad even if you don’t have quinoa cooked. It only takes 25 minutes to cook from dry. While the quinoa is cooking you can prep the other ingredients.

Weekend Prep: make quinoa, dice cucumber, slice red onion, make vinaigrette.

Cauliflower Rice and Salmon

Serves 2

2 Tbs (30 mL) olive oil (divided)

4 cloves garlic

½ tsp dried thyme or 1 tsp fresh

3 cups cauliflower rice (see note below)

2 Shanghai choy or baby bok choy, ends trimmed

1 Tbs butter

2 fillets salmon

½ lemon, juiced

1 tsp capers

To taste sea salt and pepper

1. In a sauté pan, over medium-low heat, add 1 Tbs (15 mL) olive oil.

2. Add garlic and thyme and cook 1 minute then add the cauliflower rice. Cook for 4 minutes.

3. In another sauté pan, over mediumlow heat, add 1 Tbs (15 mL) olive oil along with 1 Tbs (15 mL) water and the Shanghai or baby bok choy. Cook for 4 minutes.

4. In a small sauté pan over medium heat, add the butter. Lay the salmon, skin side up in the hot pan and cook 4 minutes.

5. Flip the salmon and cook skin side down for 3 minutes or until salmon is cooked through to your preference. Remove salmon pieces from the pan.

6. Add the lemon juice and capers (you can add another knob of butter if you like) and cook 1 minute. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

7. Serve the cauliflower rice with the salmon on top drizzled with the lemon caper sauce and the Shanghai choy on the side.

Note: You can buy cauliflower rice in the grocery store or you can make your own: In a food processor, add roughly chopped cauliflower and pulse till it is the size of rice grains. If you don’t have a food processor, you can roughly chop the cauliflower with a knife until you have small pieces of cauliflower the size of rice grains.

Weekend Prep: make cauliflower rice.