What I learned from my three-ingredient challenge

A few years ago, as an experiment, I was asked to write a recipe for a cheap and simple dish to feed four people, using as few words as possible. Obviously I looked for something with as few elements as possible, and settled on potato frittata, which has three ingredients – eggs, onion and potato – if you don’t count the butter and salt. I remembered it being really good, poetic even, but then – like seeing one’s own double chin in a video call – I found the document. This is what I wrote:

Slice an onion and two largish potatoes, then soften in butter.

Add eight beaten, salted eggs and cook until gently set but wet on top, invert, cook until done with oozy middle.

Serve warm with salad.

Thirty-six words. Too few? Too many? Could you make a successful frittata from this? Do send me feedback by hitting reply to this email.

This is how I landed on writing a newsletter on three-ingredient recipes. They are particularly useful at this time of year, with its parade of celebratory meals and planning, but also on dozens of days throughout the rest of the year, when we need familiar, comforting food that takes very little effort to prepare.

A three-ingredient potato frittata – an equally easy variation on my potato frittata is pictured above – fits the bills on such days, especially if you use plenty of butter, let the potato get soft and keep the centre oozy. Jacob Kenedy also suggests a little seductive ooze in the centre of his three-ingredient green frittata. (Who wrote it better?)

Mashed potato is another dish that requires ooze and lots of butter, and a dash of cream, to go with sausages or fried eggs. Alternatively, spread the mash in an ovenproof dish, make four deep craters, break eggs into them and bake it for 15 minutes. Also requiring the oven – and forethought – are baked potatoes, with butter and beans, or cream cheese and paprika, or Yotam Ottolenghi’s spinach and Gorgonzola combination.

Back in the frying pan, chickpea flour pancakes are a revelation. You make a chickpea flour-and-water batter and proceed as you would to make ordinary pancakes. These ones have a nutty, creamy, savoury flavour, crisp edges and an almost custardy middle – and are fabulous with greens cooked in olive oil. A tin of chickpeas is, of course, two ingredients away from a meal: just warm them with olive oil and garlic, add three cans of water, bring to the boil, add pasta and cook until dense. Cheese and red chilli on top takes you from three to five, I know, but is worth it.

Pasta with cheese and butter is a friendly three-ingredient option for this time of year. Be generous with both, and the cheese can be parmesan, mashed blue cheese, or cream cheese or mascarpone mixed with herbs. Remember that pasta cooking water is a great help here to loosenand finish a sauce (although don’t add floods). Anja Dunk’s cumin butter tomato sauce recipe for noodles or pasta is also a wonderful meal. And Nigella Lawson’s pasta is unbeatable as a late-night supper for Marmite lovers. So is a packet of tortellini or ravioli cooked in a light stock cube or bouillon broth.

Anna Thomson’s grilled aubergine brushed with miso and honey is delightful, as is Nigel Slater’s pumpkin, butter beans and thyme. And then there is a pack of puff pastry rolled into a rectangle, spread with cheese and halved cherry tomatoes, or a mush of cooked-down onion and anchovies – a quick pissaladière in hardly 20 words, to go with a slow glass of wine.

Edible journey | In The Balkan Kitchen, Macedonian-born Irina Janakievska notes how difficult it was navigating the shifting cultural, social and political history of the Balkans to understand the food of her childhood and the state of food now. She should be extremely proud of her masterful book, because her stories and recipes take us on a fantastic journey from aubergine in walnut sauce to rich beans stews, braised paprika chicken and more.

Magic powder | The Balkan Kitchen has educated me about carob powder, made from the dried roasted pods. Traditionally a local and affordable substitute for cocoa, it is a fantastic ingredient, tasting like spiced caramel, molasses and subdued cocoa. It is wonderful in biscuits, cakes and panforte-like Christmas sweets.

Cool tool | I consider the box grater a perfect tool, even the nasty star side – the best way to grate parmesan cheese and knuckles. Imagine my shock to have my head turned, at a friend’s house, by a fancy cone-shaped cheese grater with a wooden knob-handle, which is even easier to use. So now I have both.

Space food | I have now both read and listened to the audiobook of Samantha Harvey’s awe-inspiring book Orbital (currently on BBC Sounds), the story of six astronauts orbiting the Earth, collecting data and observing. I mention it at every opportunity, including here, where it is entirely relevant for its sachets of risotto and chicken cassoulet, chocolate pudding and macaroni cheese, the dreams of Russian condensed milk candies and gulps of fresh air.