Dinner Time: Deeply Delicious Meals – Zena Kamgaing is a passionate recipe creator with a highly engaged global audience (over 1 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, plus 500,000 monthly readers of her blog).
DINNER TIME – published by Bloomsbury Publishing earlier this month – is her debut cookbook and is packed with vibrant, affordable and easy to recreate recipes. One of the things I love about the book (as well as the recipes of course) is the way it’s split into time zones for creating the recipes: 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes. There’s a meal for any time of the day, quick midweek pick-me-ups as well as roasts, stews, ragus and curries…taken to the next level. It’s a lovely hardback book, at £22 with photography by Yuki Sugiura. Here are some recipes to give you a flavour of what’s in store if you buy the book.
CURRY BUTTER PRAWNS 15 Mins (Serves 4)
“Rich, buttery and outrageously delicious, this is the kind of dish that makes weeknight cooking feel effortless. Juicy prawns are tossed in a velvety sauce spiked with curry spices, garlic and the deep sweetness of tomato purée. It’s indulgent, easy and perfect with rice,
crusty bread or simply on its own. Hosting a dinner party? Use head-on, shelled king prawns for extra flavour and a show-stopping presentation!”
60g butter
30g double-concentrate tomato purée
1 tsp curry powder (mild, medium or hot)
2 garlic cloves, finely grated or minced
500g deveined raw king prawns, tail on
60ml boiling water
1 small handful of fresh
coriander, leaves and stems roughly chopped
Lemon wedges, to serve (optional)
Heat a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the butter and cook, stirring occasionally, until it just begins to foam and brown (2–3 minutes). You’ll notice the sound shift from loud bubbling to a quiet sizzle.
Add the tomato purée and cook, stirring frequently, until it begins to darken (2–3 minutes).
Add the curry powder and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute, then add the prawns and toss them to coat them in the sauce. Pour in the boiling water, stir and cover the pan. Let the prawns steam until cooked through (4–5 minutes).
Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the coriander. Transfer the prawns to a shallow bowl and serve immediately, with some lemon wedges on the side, if you like.
’NDUJA CONFIT TOMATOES WITH WHIPPED RICOTTA 60 mins or more (Serves 4)
“I love slow-roasting cherry tomatoes. They soften, burst and slowly collapse into a thick, sticky sauce that’s sweet, sharp and savoury all at once. Here, we take things a step further by confiting them – cooking them low and slow in plenty of olive oil spiked with ’nduja, which brings heat, depth and a little funk (the good kind!). I like to pile the whole thing over whipped ricotta and serve it with crusty bread, but it’s just as – if not more – delicious stirred through pasta.”
75ml extra-virgin olive oil
80g ’nduja
500g sweet, ripe cherry tomatoes
6 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tsp sugar
1 small handful of fresh basil leaves, half thinly sliced,
half left whole (small ones if possible)
250g ricotta
Crusty bread, or pasta, to serve
Heat your oven to 180°C/160°C fan.
Add the olive oil and ’nduja to a cold, large frying pan or sauté pan – ideally one that’s ovenproof, but if not, you can transfer the tomato mixture to a roasting dish later.
Set the pan over a medium heat. As it warms, the ’nduja will start to melt. Use a wooden spoon to break it up and stir it into the oil to create a punchy red paste.
Add the cherry tomatoes, garlic and sugar. Season with salt and pepper, then toss everything together so the tomatoes are well coated in the spicy oil. If your pan isn’t ovenproof, tip it all into a roasting dish.
Roast for 35–45 minutes, or until the tomatoes are blistered, juicy and bubbling. Stir through the sliced basil and leave it all to cool slightly.
In a bowl, whisk the ricotta until smooth, then season with a little salt and whisk again. Spread the ricotta on to a serving plate, then spoon the confit tomatoes and garlicky ’nduja oil over the top.
Finish with whole basil leaves and serve with crusty bread for mopping or stirred through your favourite pasta for something more substantial.
The Seasoned Gastronome
Extract taken from Dinner Time by Zena Kamgaing (Bloomsbury Publishing, Hardback, £22). Photography © Yuki Sugiura.