Alice Hart’s book Vegetarian has a handy section of ‘fast’ meals, and it happens to be the most thumbed section in my copy of the book. A favourite ‘fast’ recipe of the husband and I is Alice’s cashew fried rice. It’s quick, filling and pretty tasty too.

The key to a good fried rice, according to Alice, is preparation, and that means cooking the star of the show – rice – the day before to allow it to be properly cooled before it’s fried. Be warned, if you try to skip this step you’ll end up with a congealed bowl of fried rice – I know from experience.

Once the rice has been cooled, it’s simply a case of blanching your vegetables of choice – I use tender-stem broccoli, mange tout, baby corn and peas – stir frying cashew nuts, garlic and ginger, adding the rice and veg to the pan and heating through thoroughly, then pushing the whole lot to one side while you cook and 2 egg omelette and then break it up and mix it into the rice. Finally, you add soy sauce to taste and serve with some a chilli jam. Really simple, but it definitely hits the spot.

I veer away from Alice’s recipe on a couple of occasions; I make two one-egg omelettes, roll and slice them and serve them on top of the rice (as per my picture above). And I’m yet to make Alice’s chilli tomato jam, so use my old favourite Thai chilli dipping sauce instead.

The verdict from the husband: ‘I love this dinner.’