Cheating pays

I hate cooking just out of a jar. Partly because *cocks snook* I do my own cooking thenkyew, but mostly because jar sauces aren't often that great. Distinct waiver here for Patak's brilliant pastes (NB not the sauces), which if you cook them up with a tin of tomatoes, a great blob of low-fat yoghurt and plenty of spinach and coriander will do lovely things to any protein or squash of your choice. Also for really, really good pesto, which is always way nicer for me than anything I can do with a weeny pestle and supermarket basil. But these are v specific cases. I have a long ignoble (sadly hereditary) history of buying jars of fancy sauce labelled with 'sugo di...' or various French enticements, and they all taste basically the same, of salt and or sugar, and disappointment.

But this recipe looked like fun, and only needed a couple of tsps of a spice paste in amongst everything else. Besides, it's another from the Sunday Night Book, which has all my votes at the moment. And it's got a real feeling of flexibility - the recipe specifies that it'll work for leftover cooked meat or fresh, I swapped out the actual spice mix due to my Delicate Constitution, and I reckon you could follow this basic model for all manner of inauthentic but tasty Thai-ish joys.

You will need:

Meat (pork fillet, raw, in my case)

Nuts (cashew, toasted to golden in a dry pan at the start)

Spice paste (recipe says red Thai curry, I used massaman)

Alliums (a couple of long-sliced spring onions)

The balancing condiments: fish sauce, brown sugar, lime juice, soy, chilli

Some chicken stock (about 150ml total)

Cornflour, for saucing

The order is: toast the nuts, chop and reserve them; toast the chilli into the oil if you're using that. Then add raw meat to the pan with any oil that remains and cook till it changes colour. If you're using cooked meat, add it along with the spring onions, otherwise pop them in when your raw meat is fairly nearly ready for the next stage; they only need a minute or two.

Then add in all your remaining flavourings: approximately 1 tbsps fish sauce, 2 tbsps lime juice, 1tsp sugar, 2 tsps spice paste. I added the soy now but the recipe points out it's more sensible to do that at the end.

Return the nuts, stir it all around well, pour in most of the stock and leave it to cook together 10 mins.

Mix up a tsp of (ahem, rather #ArchivedIngredients) cornflour with a big splash of stock, and after the 10 mins slake it with warm sauce, then add the lot to the pan and stir well till it brings the sauce together.

Simples. I had it with rice and spinach beet, and it was joyful. Proper flavours, minimal faff. Jars, in moderation.