With work, life admin and the mountain of TV-watching on our plates, it’s increasingly difficult to find the time and energy required to create interesting midweek dinners. As a result, it’s easy to fall into the trap of resorting to the same uninspiring dishes – pesto pasta for the third night in a row, anyone? 

It’s high time we reclaimed the joy of a great midweek meal. The good news is that you can do that without having to dedicate hours on end to the graft of cooking. 

A Splash Of Soy: Everyday Food From Asia by Lara Lee delivers 80 delicious, modern Asian-influenced dishes, ranging from bigger-effort celebratory meals to easy-peasy quick-to-table recipes, all packing major flavour into every bite. 

Ahead, we’ve got three of the speediest recipes from the book, all waiting to be prepared in under 30 minutes. Take your pick, get cooking and say goodbye to blah. 

Lee says: “In this Indonesian-inspired recipe, you need only a handful of kitchen staples to create a spectacular dish bursting with warmth and salty sweetness. Chillies and garlic form the sambal base, fried in oil until the chilli begins to caramelise and wrinkle. Taking a cue from the Indonesian vegetable dish sambal goreng buncis udang (fried sambal with beans and prawns), the green beans come to life, blistering in the pan and bathing in the rich, intensely flavoured sauce. This dish sits on the crunchier end of the green bean spectrum: they’re cooked to a vibrant green, with just enough crunch to stimulate the appetite.

“The textures are wonderful, thanks to the flaky coconut and snappy cashews, but it’s the combination of kecap manis and gentle burn of the chilli that has my fork scraping the plate for more. Good-quality frozen prawns are one of the greatest emergency freezer-raid ingredients, bringing their meaty, juicy flavour and distinctive smell of the sea to any dish, which is why I always keep a stash in my freezer.”

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 25g desiccated coconut
• flavourless cooking oil (such as sunflower or grapeseed) or coconut oil
• 20 medium raw prawns, peeled, tails on, defrosted if frozen
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed, or 2 tsp garlic paste
• 4 long red chillies, deseeded and finely diced
• 200g green beans, trimmed and cut into 5cm lengths diagonally
• 1 tbsp kecap manis
• ½ tsp coconut sugar or brown sugar
• large pinch of fine sea salt
• 60g roasted salted cashews

Method

Toast the coconut in a wok or large frying pan over a medium heat for about 2 minutes, shaking the pan frequently, until golden. Transfer the coconut to a plate.

Wipe out the pan and heat 1 tablespoon oil. Add the prawns in a single layer and cook for 1–2 minutes each side, or until they are just cooked through. Remove and set aside on a plate lined with kitchen paper.

Heat another tablespoon oil in the wok or pan, still over a medium heat. Add the garlic and chillies and cook, stirring continuously, for 3–4 minutes, until the chillies have softened and are starting to wrinkle.

Add the green beans along with 1 tablespoon water, the kecap manis, sugar and salt. Cook for another 3 minutes or so, stirring regularly, until the green beans are just cooked through with a crunchy bite.

Stir in most of the toasted coconut and cashews, reserving a little of each for garnish, and return the prawns to the pan. Toss everything together. Transfer to a serving plate and sprinkle with the remaining coconut and cashews.

Lee says: “The next time you’re lacking inspiration in the kitchen, reach for a jar of shop-bought tom yum paste. I’ve used it to rescue dinners for most of my adult life. The paste brings a distinctive sweet, sour and spicy profile to anything it touches.

“Combined with stock, you can easily create a speedy version of tom yum soup in under 15 minutes from first chop to first slurp. It’s an iconic hot-and sour-soup from Thailand with a heady fragrance of lemongrass, lime leaves, galangal and chillies. ‘Tom’ means boil, and ‘yum’ describes bringing fresh ingredients together to achieve a sour, spicy and sweet flavour. It’s often made with prawns, but it works just as well with other proteins.

“The amount of tom yum paste I recommend here is a guide; some pastes will be spicier, others will be more fragrant or citrusy, so season the broth with paste to your liking. To make it vegan, omit the eggs and check that your jar of tom yum paste is vegan.”

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 100g dried rice noodles
• 2 eggs
• fine sea salt, to taste
• 5 tbsp tom yum paste, or to taste
• 100g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 50g beansprouts and/or 1 spring onion, cut into thin matchsticks
• Your choice of short-cook vegetable: 100g oyster mushrooms, torn into bite-sized pieces, or 100g shiitake mushrooms, stalks removed and sliced wafer thin, or 100g broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets
• Your choice of hero ingredient: 180g peeled raw prawns, or 100g smoked or marinated tofu, patted dry and sliced, or 180g shredded leftover cooked chicken

Method

Boil the kettle and soak the noodles according to the packet instructions. Put the eggs in a saucepan and top with cold water until just submerged, along with a generous pinch of salt. Cover and bring to the boil, then reduce to a cheerful bubble and cook for 6 minutes. After 6 minutes, run the eggs under cold water, then peel and cut in half. Cook for 2 minutes longer if your eggs were fridge-cold. Set aside.

Fill another saucepan with 750ml of boiling water, add 5 tablespoons tom yum paste and stir to dissolve. Taste the soup and add more tom yum paste until your desired flavour is achieved, as different tom yum paste brands will have different intensities.

Bring the liquid to a boil. Add the cherry tomatoes along with your short-cook vegetables, bring to the boil and simmer for 2–3 minutes.

Add the hero ingredient and cook at a steady simmer until warmed through, about 1 minute. The prawns, if using, will poach gently for 30 seconds until pink and just cooked through. The tofu or chicken, if using, should already be cooked and just need to be warmed through.

Drain the noodles and divide between two bowls. Pour the soup on top of the noodles and top with the beansprouts or spring onion and egg. Serve immediately.

Lee says: “There are pasta dishes; there are kimchi dishes. Then there’s Cheesy Kimchi Linguine with Gochujang Butter, a dish that flies the flag for sweet-spicy-salty-umami-fermented flavour. It’s rich, loud, crimson and glossy.

“That it comes together in just 15 minutes with store cupboard ingredients makes it even more special. Key to balancing the dish are the garnishes: flakes of crispy seaweed and spring onions are sprinkled on top, layered with a squeeze of lime and a crispy fried egg whose all-important runny yolk is broken into and tossed together with grated Parmesan for a bowl of sheer decadence.

“Like wine, the quality of your kimchi can make or break a meal. A good-quality kimchi is paramount to the flavour of the dish, anchoring the sour funk that is so vital to the noodles’ flavour, so look for the fresh, artisan varieties and buy the best you can afford.”

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 200g dried linguine or spaghetti
• 120g kimchi, roughly chopped
• 30g unsalted butter, cubed
• 40g gochujang paste
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed, or 2 tsp garlic paste
• 2 spring onions, sliced into thin matchsticks
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp flavourless oil, such as sunflower or grapeseed
• fine sea salt, to taste
• 2 tbsp crumbled crispy seaweed (such as nori sheets or seaweed flakes),
• lime wedges, to serve
• 20g Parmesan, grated

Method

Bring a pan of water to a boil, add the pasta and cook according to the packet instructions (usually 8–12 minutes).

While the pasta is cooking, prepare your ingredients. Place the kimchi, butter, gochujang, soy, garlic and half the spring onions in a large, cold non-stick frying pan (don’t worry about mixing it for now).

Drain the pasta, reserving a little of the pasta water. Put the pasta straight into the frying pan with 2 tablespoons pasta water on a high heat. Cook, tossing everything together, for about 3 minutes, or until warmed through and well coated. Remove from the heat and transfer to serving bowls.

To fry the eggs, wipe out the pan. Add the oil on a medium-high heat. Once the oil is shimmering, crack the eggs into it. Cook for 2–3 minutes until the whites are partially cooked and the edges are becoming crispy. Turn the heat down to medium-low and continue cooking until the whites are cooked through but the yolk is still runny (or cooked to your liking). Season with a pinch of salt.

Top each pasta bowl with the crispy seaweed, the remaining spring onions and the fried eggs. Squeeze a wedge of lime over each bowl. Dust with the grated Parmesan and serve with extra lime wedges.

A Splash of Soy: Everyday Food from Asia by Lara Lee (Bloomsbury Publishing, £22, Hardback) is out now.
Photography: Louise Hagger; book image courtesy of publisher