Home cooking isn’t as time-consuming or difficult as many people assume, cookbook author, TV host and Good Food columnist Adam Liaw believes.

In the time it might take us to order a takeaway or home-delivered dinner, we could usually whip up a simple, healthy family meal.

“It is absolutely possible to make quick meals that are nutritious and also taste delicious. In fact, it’s not just possible – it’s what normal cooking was for centuries,” he writes in his latest recipe collection, Time for Dinner.

The cookbook shines the light on quick woks, “under 10s” and recipes that cut back on washing, chopping and shopping. Here’s four to try at home.

Baked Tuscan chicken

If you want an endorsement for this dish, here’s one from my seven-year-old daughter, Anna. Her review: “Wow, Dad! That’s actually pretty great!”

INGREDIENTS

• 6 chicken thigh cutlets (bone-in, skin on)
• salt and black pepper, to season
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 onions, sliced
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• 200g sun-dried tomatoes, sliced
• 60g baby spinach leaves
• 300ml thickened cream
• ½ cup (50g) grated parmesan cheese
• 2 tsp dried Italian seasoning, or 1 tsp each dried oregano and thyme

METHOD

1. Heat your oven to 180C fan-forced (200C conventional). Season the chicken well with salt and pepper. Heat a heavy ovenproof pan over medium heat. Add the oil and fry the chicken, skin-side down first, until nicely browned on both sides. Remove from the pan. Add the onion and garlic and fry for 3 minutes until lightly browned.
2. Add the tomato, spinach, cream, parmesan and Italian seasoning and place the chicken on top, skin up. Transfer to the oven and bake for 25 minutes, uncovered, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce is thickened and reduced.

Serves 6

Tip: A good rule of thumb is that if a dish has the name of a place in the title, it’s not from that place. This is no exception. It’s an American dish, and it’s named “Tuscan chicken” presumably because of the Italian-ish ingredients and the fact that Tuscany has kind of a nice vibe.

Tomato and capsicum penne

A simple tomato pasta is fantastic as it is – simply cooked tomato passata (pureed tomatoes) tossed with pasta and olive oil and finished with parmesan and perhaps a bit of basil. But if you want to level that up a little, this blended sauce of capsicum and tomato is a great choice.

INGREDIENTS

• 500g penne
• ½ cup (125ml) olive oil
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 1 red capsicum, roughly chopped
• 6 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 1 bird’s eye chilli
• 700ml tomato passata (pureed tomatoes)
• ½ cup (50g) freshly grated parmesan cheese
• 75g butter, cold and cubed

Smoked paprika oil (makes extra)

• 1 cup (250ml) olive oil
• 2 tbsp smoked paprika
• 2 tsp gochugaru (Korean chilli powder)

METHOD

1. To make the smoked paprika oil, heat the oil in a small saucepan over low heat until warm and add the paprika and chilli. Cook for about 10 minutes, taking care not to burn the spices. Strain through a fine sieve and discard the solids. Set aside.
2. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Add the pasta and cook according to the packet directions, checking about 2 minutes before the time recommended on the packet.
3. Heat a large, lidded frying pan over medium heat and add the oil, onion, capsicum, garlic and chilli. Fry for about 5 minutes, then add the passata and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Carefully transfer to a high-speed blender, add the parmesan cheese and blend to a smooth puree, adding the butter a few cubes at a time to emulsify into the sauce.
4. Return the frying pan to the heat and add the pasta and sauce along with about ¼ cup (60ml) of the pasta water and mix until the sauce thickens and coats the pasta. Transfer to a serving plate and drizzle with plenty of the smoked paprika oil.

Serves 4-6

Tip: Don’t skip the smoked paprika oil. Flavoured oils are one of the easiest ways to add flavour to a meal, and you could use this for all kinds of things, from drizzling over barbecued prawns (shrimp) to adding an accent to a salad.

Mushroom cacciatore

Cacciatore is a “hunter”-style braise popularly made with chicken or rabbit, but there’s not a lot of hunting that goes into this mushroom version.

INGREDIENTS

• 1kg button mushrooms
• ½ cup (125ml) olive oil
• 2 onions, thickly sliced
• 3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 1 red capsicum, sliced
• ½ cup (75g) sun-dried tomatoes, finely chopped
• 400g tinned whole cherry tomatoes
• 125ml red wine
• 1 tsp vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp tomato sauce
• 3 bay leaves
• 3 thyme sprigs
• salt and black pepper, to season
• ½ cup (80g) pitted kalamata olives
• ¼ cup (15g) finely shredded parsley, to serve

Polenta

• 1 cup (150g) fine polenta
• 75g butter
• ½ cup (50g) finely grated parmesan cheese

METHOD

1. Heat your oven to 200C fan-forced (220C conventional). Microwave the mushrooms for 5 minutes (see tip). Heat a wide casserole dish over medium heat and add the oil. Fry the mushrooms for about 5 minutes until lightly browned, then remove from the pan, reserving any liquid.
2. Add the onion and stir for a few minutes until lightly browned, then add the garlic, capsicum, sun-dried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, wine, stock, tomato sauce, bay leaves, thyme and season well with salt and pepper. Return the mushrooms to the pot and add the olives. Place in the oven uncovered for 30 minutes, then rest for 10 minutes.
3. To make the polenta, bring 5 cups (1.25 litres) water to the boil in a large saucepan and whisk in the polenta. Whisk for a couple more minutes then reduce the heat to very low and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes. Whisk in the butter and parmesan. Thin with a little water if too thick.
4. Spoon the polenta on to plates and top with the cacciatore. Sprinkle with parsley to serve.

Serves 4

Tip: Microwaving your mushrooms is a great time saver. This method collapses the air spaces in the mushrooms so they don’t absorb too much oil and can fry much more quickly.

Beef pad see ew

Pad see ew is just one of a number of flat rice noodle dishes around South-East Asia, like char kwai teow and beef chow fun, that taste best with a bit of wok hei (the breath of a wok) to them. My advice is to heat the noodles (using hot water or a microwave) so they don’t suck too much heat from the wok, and only cook one serving at a time.

INGREDIENTS

• 200g beef topside, thinly sliced
• 600g fresh flat, wide rice noodles
• ½ cup (125ml) vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 1 small bunch gai lan (Chinese broccoli), thinly sliced
• 6 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• white pepper, to serve
• thinly sliced bird’s eye chilli, to serve
• lemon wedges and extra Golden Mountain sauce (see tip, below), to serve

Marinade

• ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp Golden Mountain sauce
• 1 tsp vegetable oil
• pinch of sugar

Pad see ew sauce

• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• 2 tsp Golden Mountain sauce
• 1½ tbsp sugar

METHOD

1. Combine the beef with the marinade ingredients and set aside.
2. To make the pad see ew sauce, combine the ingredients in a bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar. If you need to, separate the rice noodles by pouring hot water over them and standing for a minute or two before draining and gently separating them with your hands.
3. Heat a wok over high heat, add about 2 tablespoons of the oil and fry the beef until just cooked. Remove from the wok and set aside. Rinse out the wok.
4. Return the wok to high heat and add half the remaining oil. Crack 2 eggs into the oil and mix. Add half the gai lan and one-quarter of the garlic and toss until just softened. Add half the noodles and fry until lightly charred. Add half the beef and sauce to taste and toss to combine. Remove to a serving plate and sprinkle with a little white pepper. Repeat for the remaining ingredients.
5. Serve with some sliced chillies mixed with lemon juice and Golden Mountain sauce.

Serves 4

Tip: Golden Mountain sauce is a savoury seasoning used in Thai and other South-East Asian cooking. It’s similar to Maggi seasoning so you could substitute that instead.

This is an edited extract from Time for Dinner by Adam Liaw, published by Hardie Grant Books, RRP $49.99