I’ve referenced the excellent cookbook Keepers in the past and recently I had another flip through it to source some new-to-me dinner ideas. All of the recipes I’ve tried from this book have been fairly quick to assemble and cook; and the only one I haven’t L-U-V loved is the chicken pot pie recipe. (That is mainly because my husband makes a really excellent one and I see no need to trifle with perfection.) I make the coconut chicken curry and Japanese-style meat and potatoes quite often and they are always great.

On Wednesday night I made the Keepers London broil recipe with chimichurri sauce (there is also a recipe for mustard butter to accompany the meat instead). I’d never made London broil before and I think my technique could use some work, but this recipe is really fast to prep and cook and it looks/tastes/seems much more fancy than it really is. I gravitated to the chimichurri recipe because I happened to have mint and parsley in my herb garden although I had to buy the cilantro because SOME of the herbs I planted this year didn’t do so well, CILANTRO.

The following night I chose a recipe for sausage and white bean gratin. Italian sausage is one of those super versatile things that, if you’re an omnivore, you should just go ahead and keep in the freezer because you can use it in pasta, on a pizza, in soups, on a bun with grilled peppers or of course in dishes like this. I also had the beans, bread crumbs and broth in the pantry and I grow thyme outside my back door, so it seemed dumb not to buy a bottle of wine and make this. (In a pinch you could also use cooking wine and just cut down on any called-for salt; additional broth would also work.) I’ll definitely make this dish again when it gets colder – and best of all, you can make it all in one pan which is always music to my lazy ears.

Clearly, there are a number of recipes from Keepers available on the internet but I do recommend buying the book, firstly because it’s just good form and secondly because there is something kind of nice about flipping through a cookbook to find something new to try. Also if you’ve ever tried to keep a laptop, phone or iPad from going into sleep mode while your hands are covered in cooking mess, you’ll understand how a book can be useful.