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The Roasting Tin Around the World: Global One Dish Dinners

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'The absolute best if you want easy, no-fuss, filling dinners' Ruby TandohCook delicious one-tin versions of your favourite recipes from around the world.The Roasting Tin Around the World covers all corners of the globe with brand new recipes. The greatest hits from each region are reworked into quick and easy one-tin meals. The dishes are perfect for weeknight dinners, lunch breaks and family favourites.Rukmini Iyer's vision for the roasting tin series 'minimum effort, maximum flavour'. This book really delivers with its bold, punchy, and global flavours. The perfect way to experience your favourite international flavours and bring the world to your dinner table this winter.Just chop a few ingredients, pop them into a roasting tin and let the oven do the work. Featuring 75 easy-to-make recipes that make use of your lockdown larder ingredients, The Roasting Tin Around the World is the perfect cook book for vegans, vegetarians, and meat-eaters alike.'I love Rukmini Iyer's books' Judy Murray, OBE 'So delicious. So easy' Nina StibbeINDIA EXPRESS, THE NEW COOK BOOK FROM THE MILLION-COPY SELLING AUTHOR OF THE ROASTING TIN SERIES, IS OUT NOW.

237 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 30, 2020

177 people are currently reading
269 people want to read

About the author

Rukmini Iyer

51 books43 followers
Rukmini is a food stylist and food writer, who enjoys recipe developing and styling for editorial, advertising and commercial clients. Her cookbooks include 'The Roasting Tin' and 'The Green Roasting Tin', and her next cookbook 'The Quick Roasting Tin' is out with Square Peg in June 2019.

Rukmini left the law to retrain as a chef, working for Tom Kitchin at 'The Kitchin' in Edinburgh before moving to London to do what she loves best - food styling, recipe writing and development. Her first two cookbooks, with Parragon and Quadrille, are due out early in 2016. When she's not styling and writing, Rukmini enjoys planning for an extensive organic kitchen garden from the confines of her London balcony, complete with chickens.

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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Profile Image for Lucy.
269 reviews19 followers
February 3, 2023
Hope no one is in the queue behind me for this because I seem to have bookmarked half the recipes to try out 😅
Profile Image for Amy Alderson.
80 reviews1 follower
February 5, 2022
Lovely pictures and some good ideas but unfortunately the first two recipes I tried appear to have a mistake and the third could definitely do with some tweaking as was a bit lackluster compared to similar recipes I have tried before. Anyway it hasn't been the best start so am a little bit disappointed. Feel like I may end up using this book more for inspiration and cooking times rather than the actual recipes.

For reference:

Recipe 1 Indonesian coconut rice with crispy tofu. Appears to have a mistake in the recipe for the peanut satay sauce (too much dark soy sauce). If I'd stuck to the recipe the resulting sauce would be a very dark brown, runny and very, very salty - not at all like the glossy, thick, light brown sauce shown in the picture. An easy fix but might catch others out and would really spoil the dish.

Recipe 2: All in one beef chilli with chocolate. Ground cumin is listed twice on the list of ingredients (1tsp, then further down 2 tsp) but no reference to why is provided e.g. some recipes might say something like fry onions with 1tsp then add a further 2tsps at the end of cooking. To me this means something was missed in the proof reading and I'm unsure whether it is 1. We need to add both lots of cumin 2. We only need to add one lot of cumin 3. The method is missing an instruction... Or 4. One of the teaspoons is actually something else e.g. garlic. Anyway it's not very confidence inspiring!

Recipe 3 a bit lackluster: Buffalo cauliflower. Nice simple recipe and produced a tasty dish but texturally it wasn't great (not crispy enough despite a good roasting) and it really isn't buffalo cauliflower as it does not include wait for it buffalo sauce! A similar recipe by Gizzi Erskine includes rice flour to improve crispiness and a proper sauce but is not any more difficult to make so would trump this version every time.
Profile Image for Helen French.
554 reviews21 followers
June 19, 2020
I love Iyer's Roasting Tin books and this latest is looking to be another classic.

Yes, the more she releases the more you get some ingredients cropping up a lot (sweet potatoes, chipotle, lots of lime) but she can hardly conjure new ones out of the air. And the ones that roast well, roast really well.

Out of this one so far we've made (and enjoyed):
Smoky chipotle chicken with black beans, feta and lime
Jerk chicken with sweet potato, pineapple and lime
Crispy kale and bacon mac n cheese
S'mores rocky road
Crispy Pesto chicken, roasted fennel and courgettes

There are lots of less meat-heavy recipes too but there's four of us to consider so we haven't got to them yet!
Profile Image for Honey.
516 reviews19 followers
April 3, 2022
Even better than The Quick Roasting Tin. This absolutely made me nostalgic of travel and how food can be a universal language. Whilst there are a number of handy shortcuts, it’s nice to see ingredients from a global pantry. I appreciate the author’s candour on her recipes not trying to be authentic, but as close to authentic as they can be for those with busy schedules.

Really enjoyed the ESEAN inspired recipes, especially the Malaysian and Nyonya ones. BUT, I can not forgive the butchered vegan adobo recipe. NO, just NO.
Profile Image for MichaelK.
286 reviews18 followers
March 23, 2023
I first encountered Rukmini Iyer's recipes via some cuttings from The Times that my mum gave me, and on the strength of one of those recipes (Indonesian style roasted aubergines), I asked my family for some of her Roasting Tin cookbooks for my birthday. I duly received this one and two others, The Quick Roasting Tin and Green Roasting Tin, and have been working through the recipes in them since.

The books are well designed. Most of the recipes are accompanied by a full-page photo of the dish shot from above, against a solid colour background that makes the dish pop from the page. It gives the books the feel of an artsy catalogue, encouraging browsing - they could easily double up as coffee table photobooks.

Each recipe gets it own neatly structured page. The wording is clear, to avoid confusion, and concise, to emphasize simplicity. There's plenty of empty space around the text, so the pages don't feel crowded or overwhelming, further reassuring the reader that the recipes are simple and easy to use. It also means there's plenty of room to leave your own notes next to the recipes.

Unfortunately, there is the occasional typo or omission. For example, in the chilli recipe (p36), ground cumin is listed twice in the ingredients, but only used once in the method; the 'shrimp and gritz' recipe (page 56) is described as 'garlicky', but there is no garlic in the ingredients list (though it is easy enough to intuitively add it). These are not grave mistakes but they do bring the quality of the book down a bit.

A minor annoyance is that the page numbers are distinctly absent from the contents pages at the start of each section, which is less than ideal for navigation. It is a curious and unpractical omission, but I expect it made sense from a design perspective, making the contents pages cleaner. The recipes are listed in the order they appear, so it it easy enough to find the recipe you want by flicking through the section. There is also a comprehensive index.

The recipes are all fantastically and deceptively simple, given the quality of the finished dish. All involve whacking a mixture of things into a tin, putting it in the oven, and doing a bit of garnishing at the end. Sometimes you need to make a paste from certain ingredients beforehand, sometimes you need to add things to the tin at different times throughout cooking. You don't learn fancy and challenging cooking techniques from Iyer, but you do learn an awful lot about the wide range of flavours and textures your meals can so easily have.

I am not sure whether this is the fault of the recipes or my oven, but some of the more liquid recipes - for example the Indian Rice Pudding (pg112) - did not cook properly in the time given, or even with extra time, and so I started heating these dishes up to simmering on the hob before transferring them to the oven.

After getting accustomed to Iyer's style, I looked through various famous/popular cookbooks at Waterstones and friends' houses, and in many of them I was struck by the badly worded and overcomplicated recipes, the cluttered and unpleasant pages, and the inconsistent quality of the photography. It made me better appreciate how thoroughly well designed the Roasting Tin books are; they are user-friendly, practical, and aesthetically very pleasing. All those involved in putting these books together should be immensely proud of the results (Pene Parker is credited with the art direction in the acknowledgements - I hope they have an incredible career).

Of the three, the Around the World book has been my favourite, and is the cookbook I would give to anyone wanting to broaden their diet with minimal effort (so long as they were omnivorous and didn't have strict dietary requirements). The recipes are arranged by geographical region, which made it easier for me to flick through to find a recipe that suited what I was feeling, and the sense it gives of exploring the world through food made working through the recipes rewarding and exciting, especially as I encountered dishes and flavour combinations that were new to me.

By contrast, in the Green book, the recipes are organised by Vegan/Vegetarian and then Quick/Medium/Slow, while in the Quick book they are organised into vague categories, such as 'Worknight Dinners' and 'Date Night'. I appreciate that others might benefit from this organisation, but for me the geographical grouping was more inspiring.

Over the past year or so I've made 53/75 recipes in this book, some of them multiple times. The range of flavours and textures in the dishes has completely transformed my appreciation of food and cooking. It is worth mentioning that many of the recipes, having been adapted for oven cooking, are doubtless inauthentic and untraditional, but they thoroughly showcase the range of food flavours available around the world.

Even though my move to making better and more exciting food was a gradual process (which coincided with things like moving to a house with a better kitchen, working more regular hours, learning which foods I have an intolerance for and therefore to avoid, etc), the impact of the three Iyer cookbooks I received for my birthday, and this one especially, has been colossal. The earlier years of my life now seem in retrospect to be a vast culinary desert, and I can barely remember most of what I used to eat.

Some personal highlights from the Around the World tour:

In 'Central and South America' (8/12 recipes made), I had various dishes served in warm tortillas, including a Mexican slow cooked pork pibil (pg26), and smoky roasted sprouts (pg46). I've always thought of sprouts as the grim over-boiled vegetable served at Christmastime due to perverse and masochistic tradition, but Iyer's various roasted sprout recipes have given me a new appreciation of a vegetable I thought I hated.

However, my absolute favourite recipe from this section was the Brazillian black beans & rice with avocado & radish salsa (p30). The fragrancy of the lime and coriander made this very refreshing and lively, while the mix of greens, beans, rice, radish, avocado, and peanut was a textural delight. I made this for an evening meal and then very happily had the leftovers for both lunch and dinner the next day. I felt like I could eat it forever.

In 'USA and the Caribbean' (6/11 recipes made), I was blown away by the Baked polenta with prawns / Shrimp & Gritz (pg56). This dish is so quick and so satisfying: the baked polenta is like a cheesy mash potato cake, and makes a very satisfying combo with spicy seasoned prawns and the explosions of flavour from roasted cherry tomatoes. Baked avocado with walnuts and blue cheese (pg62) made for an extravagant-feeling and intensely flavoured lunch. The sweet and salty dark chocolate S'mores Rocky Road (pg76) was incredible, and quickly devoured when I took it to a work fuddle.

I made all but two of the recipes in 'Asia' (12/14). The jackfruit avial (pg88), mushroom and saffron pilau rice (pg92), spiced paneer and potato curry (pg98), and whole butter chicken (pg104) were standouts. Many of the Indian dishes from this section I served as part of an Indian Feast alongside dishes from the previously-reviewed Indian Food Made Easy.

From 'Africa and the Middle East' (8/12), highlights included the lamb tagine (pg120) flavoured with orange zest and juice, Ugandan black-eyed beans (pg130), and the saffron pearl barley (pg140). The Persian love cake (pg146) was absolutely demolished and received a lot of compliments when I took it to a work fuddle.

The most recent dish I made from this section was the roasted squash with pomegranate and dukkah (pg138), which was such a delightful mixture of flavours and textures that I am very excited to make it again and for friends. Over the past few weeks I've made several of Iyer's Persian-style dishes, made with pomegranate seeds and molasses, and copious amounts of herbs. The intensity of the flavours - the sweetness, the savouriness, the herbiness! - has been revelatory.

I made everything except the steal & ale pie (pg160) from 'South East Asia & Australasia' (12/13). This section contains the recipe I first encountered via the Times cutting: Indonesian-style aubergines (pg168), which I've made multiple times and for various friends, many of whom wanted the recipe afterwards.

Other highlights include Malaysian coconut and lemongrass roast chicken (pg158), Peranakan-style mushroom and squash curry (pg164), and roasted aubergine with chilli and peanut (pg154), which is so easy it has become something I make when I 'can't be bothered to cook'. The salted chocolate and raspberry Lamington cake (pg180) was another work fuddle hit.

Highlights from 'Europe and North Asia' (8/13) include the chicken and chorizo paella (pg186), which I made on Boxing Day and would happily eat constantly; croque monsieur gratin (pg194), a savoury French bread and butter pudding made with croissants and an extreme amount of crème fraiche (Iyer says, 'It will look like you have far too much crème fraiche'); rosemary and hazelnut salmon with roast potatoes, asparagus, and lemon yoghurt (pg198); 'porcupine' meatballs (pg200) with rice in the meat mix, served in a tomato and sour cream sauce, which is now my favourite meatball recipe; and the stilton, pear, and walnut tart (pg208), which was another extravagant-feeling and flavoursome lunch.

In the introduction, Iyer says,

What I wanted to recreate in this Roasting Tin book was that feeling of amazement that I had in trying dishes from abroad for the first time, but presented in a way that was accessible for easy weeknight cooking.


For this reader at least, Iyer's objective was very thoroughly accomplished.
1,714 reviews1 follower
March 13, 2021
Some good recipes that I'm going to try next week.
Having tried them, I found I needed a longer cooking time on e.g. the roasted cauliflower. Also, you need to read the recipe before deciding to do it, as some you have to be around to do things to the dish e.g. the oven baked paella.
Profile Image for Jeanette.
1,129 reviews62 followers
August 1, 2020
I was invited to dinner recently, where i enjoyed a recipe that was made from another of Rukmini Iyer's books. Up until then, i was not familiar with this author and her one dish dinners. I have since come across 'The Roasting Tin Around the World' at my local library. Many interesting recipes and was pleased to see several vegetarian dishes that i will make when my sister comes to stay. I have cooked the crispy kale and bacon mac n cheese recipe from this book. Delicious!
Profile Image for Alicia Bernaldo de Quiros.
210 reviews
July 9, 2023
Book arrived yesterday and I had a quick look through it. The first few recipes didn’t look very interesting.

“Ropa vieja” means old clothes, not old rope

Did you even taste the squid ink pasta before you sent it back???? Seems very narrow-minded for an international recipe book author

NEVER NEVER NEVER put chorizo in a paella

Why so many recipes with chicken??

This book is not what I imagined: I’m sending it back
333 reviews44 followers
Read
April 17, 2021
Bought this for 99p on Kindle- I was intrigued to see whether I'd get much from this book as a vegetarian who eats mostly vegan (as such I'm not going to rate this). Has a few vegan/veggie recipes but not enough for me to want to buy a physical copy - very excited to buy Rukmini's new book though! I also really enjoyed seeing the range of foods from different world cuisines.
Profile Image for Judith Rich.
548 reviews8 followers
January 18, 2022
Just bought this having got "The Roasting Tin" for Christmas and made some nice things from it.
Really looking forward to trying some of these recipes - I think they look even better!
Profile Image for Martin.
137 reviews
February 2, 2024
Some terrific recipes in this. Loved the Venezuelan Bavette.
Profile Image for Rin.
16 reviews
June 1, 2024
Full of fresh, delicious, approachable and highly cookable recipes for anytime including busy weeknights
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews