Easy peasy sweet chilli peanut noodles with sweetcorn and carrot fritters (Nigella Lawson/Rosie Lovell)

This recipe is a little different from what I usually cook, as I've probably said before, I tend to gravitate towards Italian dishes. However, this recipe is something with a more Asian inspired feel, with a kick of spices and it definitely wins for overall easiness. If I need something that's going to fill me up, be interesting and full of vegetables, then I always go back to this, it's taken from Nigella Lawson's Nigella Express, a cookbook full of quick and easy dishes. This recipe also allows you to really play around with what you put in it, you have the basis of noodles and dressing but the types of vegetables (and even choice of meat) you include are completely optional. So the vegetables I have included here aren't the ones that are on Nigella's recipe, but the link above will take you to her recipe if you want to see what ingredients she uses.

The sweetcorn and carrot fritters go beautifully with this dish, and they are great as meal accompaniments or just as snacks to have in the fridge, to warm up when you feel like one. This is taken from Rosie Lovell's, Spooning with Rosie, one of my all time favourite cookbooks. It was when I was just starting to get into cooking and my sister bought me this for Christmas. Her recipes are always so well thought out, featuring a huge range of different ingredients and she knows what foods go so perfectly with each other, I've made a few recipes from this book and there's definitely plenty more I want to try!

Ingredients - Sweet Chilli Peanut Noodles (serves 2)

Dressing:

1 x 15ml tablespoon (sesame) oil

1 x 15ml tablespoon garlic oil

1 x 15ml tablespoon soy sauce

2 x 15ml tablespoon sweet chilli sauce

100g crunchy/smooth peanut butter (Nigella recommends smooth, but I absolutely love crunchy and that's what we've always got in the house - I think it gives a better texture to the dressing)

2 x 15ml tablespoon lime juice

1 x 15ml tablespoon mirin wine (this is completely optional, but I had some in the cupboard and thought it added something extra!)

2 large tomatoes, chopped (the tomatoes make the dish juicy!)

100g mushrooms, roughly chopped

3 spring onions, finely chopped

1 red pepper, roughly chopped

100g spinach

Packet of dried noodles/ ready prepared egg noodles (use as many or as few noodles as you wish!)

20g sesame seeds/sunflower seeds - whatever seeds that are around and that go well, just to give the dish more of a crunch!

And now prepare for the simplest recipe method ever!

Chop up all of the vegetables.

Mix all of the dressing ingredients in a bowl together and then leave to one side.

Cook the noodles to the packet specification, then once cooked (it takes around 5 minutes!), drain and add back to the pan. Add the dressing, vegetables and mix well so everything is coated in the yummy sauce. Scatter the sesame seeds over and serve. Simple!

Ingredients - Sweetcorn and Carrot Fritters (serves 3-4/makes around 10 small fritters)

2 medium eggs

3 tablespoons cornflour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 spring onion, chopped

1 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced

A small handful of fresh coriander, chopped

1 x 285g tin of sweetcorn, drained

1 carrot, peeled and grated

3 tablespoons peanut (or vegetable) oil

Start by cracking the eggs into a bowl and whisk. Add the cornflour and baking powder, and mix so that the ingredients form a smooth paste.

Add the chopped ingredients; the spring onion, the garlic clove, and the fresh coriander, mix together well. Then add the drained sweetcorn and fold in with the other ingredients.

Heat the oil in a frying pan until hot, then add a tablespoon of the mixture so that it forms a medium sized pattie. Allow the mixture to spread, and bubble, when you see the patties crisping up at the sides, flip over quickly. Then when cooked, remove from the heat onto a kitchen towel so the oil is soaked up.