British recipes

Pies, roasts, crumbles and the tray bakes that go in and get left alone. Much of it is cold-weather food built around an oven doing the work while you do something else.

It has a reputation for blandness that the cooking does not deserve; what it is genuinely short of is acid. A spoon of vinegar in the gravy, mustard in the cheese sauce, or lemon over the greens fixes most of what people complain about.

This section earns its place because a lot of readers here cook Indian food four nights a week in a British kitchen. These are the other three nights, and they use the same oven and the same shopping.