Time & effort
15 minutes recipes
Start to plate in a quarter of an hour.
Fifteen minutes is the total from a cold start, including whatever chopping the dish needs, and every recipe tagged here has been written to fit it rather than trimmed to claim it. That constraint decides what is possible: high heat, few ingredients, nothing that has to rest, and nothing that needs an oven to come up to temperature. Where a dish depends on something being prepared in advance, it is not in this section — a recipe that takes fifteen minutes plus an overnight marinade is an overnight recipe.
47 recipes
Whisky Sour
Whiskey, lemon and sugar shaken with egg white until it wears a thick pale collar, with bitters dotted across the foam.
Wet Brine for Chicken and Pork
A five per cent salt brine for lean chicken and pork, chilled hard before the meat goes in, with the timings that stop it going spongy.
Spaghetti Aglio e Olio
Garlic sliced thin and taken slowly to pale gold in olive oil, emulsified with pasta water into a sauce that is nothing but those two things.
Soft Scrambled Eggs
Eggs cooked slowly over low heat and stirred constantly, so they set as small soft curds instead of dry rubbery sheets.
Singapore Sling
Gin, cherry brandy and pineapple built long over ice — the hotel-bar drink that survived a century of people getting it wrong.
Simple Green Salad
Nothing but leaves and vinaigrette, dressed the moment it goes to the table so it arrives crisp rather than limp and watery.
Salsa Verde
Tomatillos and green chilli blitzed with coriander and lime — sharp, loose, and made in the time it takes to boil a kettle.
Painkiller
Dark rum with pineapple, orange and coconut cream, shaken rather than blended, and finished with far more grated nutmeg than seems reasonable.
Mayonnaise
Egg yolk, oil and acid whisked by hand into a thick emulsion, with the drop-by-drop start that decides whether it holds or splits.
Gambas al Ajillo
Prawns cooked hard in garlic oil with chilli, served still bubbling, with bread that exists to mop the pan.
Everyday Vinaigrette
A mustard-emulsified dressing built on three parts oil to one part acid, a ratio worth memorising so you never need the recipe again.
Daiquiri
Three ingredients and nowhere to hide: white rum, lime and sugar, shaken hard and drunk cold and straight up.
Classic French Omelette
Three eggs cooked in under a minute in a hot buttered pan, stirred hard then rolled, so the outside stays pale and the centre soft.
Cherries Jubilee
Cherries in a light syrup flamed with kirsch and spooned burning over vanilla ice cream, which is a dish and a performance at once.
Caesar Salad
Whole romaine leaves coated in an emulsion of coddled egg, anchovy, garlic and parmesan, tossed at the table and eaten with the fingers.
Blue Hawaii
Rum, vodka, pineapple and blue curaçao — a drink invented to match a colour, and none the worse for admitting it.
Caribbean Rum Punch
A jug punch on the old sour-sweet-strong-weak ratio, spiced with nutmeg and Angostura and made to sit on a table rather than a bar.
Zombie
Three rums, two juices, falernum and absinthe over crushed ice — the strongest drink on any tiki menu, and built to taste as though it is not.
Piña Colada
Rum, pineapple and coconut cream blended with ice until thick enough to hold a straw upright.
Mojito
Mint pressed rather than pounded, with white rum, lime and soda over crushed ice, so it tastes of the leaf and not of the stalk.
Mai Tai
Aged rum, lime, orange curaçao and almond orgeat, shaken over crushed ice — a rum drink with no fruit juice in it beyond the lime.
Fried Plantain
Very ripe plantain sliced on the diagonal and fried until the sugars caramelise at the edges and the middle goes to custard.
Waldorf Salad
Apple, celery and walnuts in a lemon-slackened mayonnaise, kept crisp and served cold on a leaf of lettuce.
Ti' Punch
Rhum agricole, cane syrup and a squeezed disc of lime, served without ice and mixed by the person drinking it.
Sidecar
Cognac, orange liqueur and lemon shaken cold and served up, sharp and clean, in a glass with a sugared rim if you want one.
Shrimp Cocktail
Cold poached prawns hung over the rim of a chilled coupe with a horseradish-sharp tomato sauce, and nothing else on the plate.
Rum Swizzle
Two rums, two juices and bitters churned with crushed ice until the glass frosts and the drink turns cloudy and cold.
Planter's Punch
One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak — the old rhyme, built on dark Jamaican rum and drunk long over ice.
Paloma
Tequila lengthened with grapefruit soda and lime over ice — the drink Mexico actually orders, rather than the one it exports.
Old Fashioned
Whiskey, sugar and bitters built over one big piece of ice — the original definition of the word cocktail, and still the test of a bar.
Negroni
Equal parts gin, sweet vermouth and Campari, stirred over ice and served with orange — the bitter aperitivo that needs no shaking and no adjusting.
Michelada
Cold lager with lime, hot sauce and a salted rim — savoury, sour and far more refreshing in heat than it sounds.
Margarita
Tequila, lime and orange liqueur shaken hard and served in a glass salted on one side only, so you can choose.
Manhattan
Rye whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters, stirred and served up with a cherry — the older, richer cousin of the martini.
Hurricane
Dark and light rum with passion fruit and citrus, sweet and red and considerably stronger than it looks.
Garlicky Greens
Greens wilted in garlic oil in a single wide pan, on the table in under ten minutes and the default side for almost anything.
Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri
White rum, lime and frozen strawberries blended to a thick slush that holds a straw upright.
Frozen Melon Colada
White rum, melon liqueur, pineapple and coconut blended into a thick pale-green frozen cocktail with a clean lime finish.
French 75
Gin, lemon and sugar lengthened with champagne — a sour that arrives in a flute and drinks far more easily than it should.
Espresso Martini
Vodka, coffee liqueur and a fresh shot of espresso shaken hard enough to build a proper crema on top.
Dry Martini
Gin and dry vermouth stirred down cold and served straight up, with a lemon twist or an olive and nothing else in the way.
Dark and Stormy
Ginger beer and lime with dark rum floated on top, so the first sip is rum and the last is ginger.
Crisp-Skinned Salmon
Salmon fillets cooked almost entirely on the skin side in one pan, which crisps the skin and leaves the flesh barely set.
Caipirinha
Whole lime muddled with sugar and cachaça in the glass it is drunk from, with the peel oils very much part of the drink.
Bushwacker
A frozen chocolate-and-coconut rum drink from the Gulf coast, closer to a milkshake than a cocktail and unapologetic about it.
Bahama Mama
Two rums with coconut, pineapple and grenadine, shaken and poured tall over ice so the red sinks through it.
Aviation
Gin, maraschino, lemon and a measure of violet liqueur that turns it the pale grey-blue the drink is named for.