Cook Once, Eat Twice: Time-Saving Recipes to Help you Get Ahead in the Kitchen by Nadiya Hussain is the next book I’m reviewing on Epicurious’ list of the best cookbooks of Spring 2025. Hussain didn’t make the top sixteen but her book is on the “More Spring Books That We’re Excited About” list. I’m also reviewing her memoir, Finding My Voice, and highlighting a recipe from that book.

About the book:

Pressed for time to cook in a busy week?

Cook Once, Eat Twice is all about delicious convenience, showing how to get ahead in the kitchen by cooking more efficiently and economically.

Nadiya shares a host of creative timesavers, including trusty batch-cooking and meal-prepping ideas, clever ways to spin leftovers into new meals, simple baked treats that are easy to store and eat later, and even recipes to use up your scraps.

With recipes such as:

• Chick Pea and Chicken Tray Bake
• Sticky Honey Mustard Toad in the Hole Burgers
• Cheese and Lamb Samosas
• Courgette Spaghetti
• Cheats Biria Tacos
• Paneer Karahi
• Lemon Sherbet Loaf

….Nadiya shows how easy it is to stretch your meals, reduce your waste and make life simpler, so you always have satisfying food at your fingertips. (Book blurb taken from Nadiya’s website.)

About the author:

Since winning 2015’s Great British Bake Off in a finale watched by over 13 million viewers, Nadiya Hussain has become a national treasure. She has presented many of her own BBC2 cookery series to great acclaim, with episodes reaching on average 1.9 million viewers each week.

Born in the UK to British Bangladeshi parents, Nadiya now lives in Milton Keynes (a city in Buckinghamshire, England, about 50 miles north-west of London) with her husband, Abdal, and their three teenage children. She was awarded an MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 2020 for services to broadcasting and the culinary arts. She has written nine cookbooks: Nadiya’s Kitchen, Nadiya’s British Food Adventure, Nadiya’s Family Favourites, Time to Eat, Nadiya Bakes, Fast Flavours, Nadiya’s Everyday Baking, Simple Spices and the 2025 publication of Cook Once, Eat Twice. She is also a children’s book author, the author of the Amir Sisters’ series of novels, and a memoir, Finding My Voice.

Recently her series of television shows on BBC2 were canceled and there is a social media outcry and unapologetic responses from Hussain on “not backing down.” (Portions of this blurb were taken from Penguin Random House site and edited and added to by me.)

What I thought….

I remember Hussain from my days of religiously watching the Great British Bakeoff. Since I don’t live in the UK or watch BBC2, I had no idea she was such a celebrity in Britain. I also had no idea she had written so many books. (I am very intrigued by her memoir and the novel series….)

I had no idea about her shows being cancelled or the controversy around it until I started to try to find an author blurb. It seems her videos were everywhere.

But onto the cookbook.

In the introduction (and remember this is book nine for her), she states that as her children are in their teenage years (read almost adults), she “wanted to write a cookbook that is stripped back and has all the essentials anyone would need” (6). She elaborates that this is not just a book of instructions but is for “anyone who simply wants a taste of some of the food we love to make and eat at home” (6).

The book is categorized in an ingenious (if odd) way:

• Back to Basics includes simple recipes to build on like mashed potatoes, bread, tomato sauce, poached eggs, rice, pesto, banana bread, and roast chicken. Each of these recipes can be morphed into another recipe (but really not built upon). The basic bread recipe can be tweaked into naan; the banana bread into banana pancakes, etc.
• Lovin’ Your Leftovers are “family-friendly” meals paired with a second recipe that could use for another meal. Recipes here are everything from kebabs, traybakes, casseroles, and pasta dishes. There’s even one for Cheese and Lamb Samosas that use the remains of the Sloppy Joe recipe.
• Ready Meals are cook-ahead meals to be frozen and reheated later. Some of these seemed a bit pedestrian to be honest: Chicken Cacciatore, Cottage Pie, Lasagne Soup, Macaroni Cheese (not a typo). Others were a bit more interesting like Teriyaki Salmon with Sticky Rice, Chicken Tikka Masala and Rice, and Lime Pickle Lamb. I did wonder how well some of these would freeze like the Smoky Chicken Burritos. Some of the meals did need some prep like making the rice for the Tikka Masala before serving.
• Two Dishes is exactly what it sounds like. Make one base dish and then half it, making two dishes out of it for two different meals. This sounded like a great idea. Some of these were still pretty similar dishes. They were creative in using leftovers but I think I would have to freeze one of the base halves. I’m not sure I could get by (or want to) with serving Beef Stroganoff on day and then throwing it on top of pastry for a Stroganoff Free-Form Pie the next. The same is true of have Corn Chowder and then turning that into Corn Chowder Individual Pies. More successful recipes were the Peanut Chicken Traybake morphed into Noodle Soup and Chicken Curry into Chicken Orzo.
• Never Wasted Again shows a way to use the “most thrown away” items. This section was a bit more successful in my eyes. Use up leftover roasted butternut and turn it into a sweet tart with a shortbread pastry. Yum. I rarely have leftover bagged salad but Hussain’s ideas for turning half a bag into Chutney or a chopped Tabbouleh salad were good. (I remember some great ideas for leftover iceberg lettuce from The Everlasting Meal.) Leftover bread is a no brainer for bread puddings but what about granola? Hmmm…. I usually do freeze bananas gone bad whole but Hassain’s frozen Banana Peanut Bark sounds delicious. There are two recipes for leftover cheese, fondue and cheese & onion pancakes but there is NEVER leftover cheese here.
• Easy Bakes is a guide for basic baking, most of them having a long shelf life OR could be frozen easily. The recipes here are simple and delicious sounding—Espresso Chocolate Cake (with a ganache topping), Sherbet Lemon Loaf, White Chocolate and Caramel Brownies, Hazelnut Chocolate Cookies…. these are the “traditional” baking recipes. She includes some tarts, an ice cream, pudding pots, crumbles, and of course, a trifle.
• Waste Not, Want Not means taking food “trash” and turning it into something edible. Some of these were successful (in my opinion) and some were just weird. I just harvested my garlic so I wish I had seen Garlic Powder Salt before I composted all my peels BUT I’m not sure my peels were actually clean enough. I did not know that the tops of strawberries were called punnets but she’s a bit unclear if you use the green part too to make her Strawberry Vinegar. I do love her idea of Clementine Sugar (using dried peels) and Apple Jam (using peels and cores of 6 green apples—organic I hope). The Potato Skin Gratin had me thinking too much of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and I just couldn’t wrap my head around Banana Peel Curry. (Sorry.)

I did enjoy this cookbook. If you are a U.S. baker and a beginner you might have a bit of problem translating—caster sugar, bicarbonate of soda, cornflour, etc. Concerning some of the main dish recipes, I was surprised that they did not call for specific cuts of meat. The Beef Stew and Dumplings called for 1 lb. of beef “chunks” and the Mongolian Beef called for simply beef “steak.” Maybe this is a British thing but I am used to recipes calling for stew meat, chuck, flank steak, skirt steak or sirloin.

In light of Hussain’s current situation, I hate to give this book a bad review so the caveat is that this might make more since if you’re British. I also have not read any of her other cookbooks. I will say that her baking/dessert section was probably the best which makes since.

What I made…

I made nothing. I had the best intentions but life happens, you know? I am having to make trips to two different states (Iowa and Missouri) to check on parents. The Missouri parent is not on the way to the Iowa parent. Anywhoo, I seriously thought I had made one of her dishes before I took the book back to the library. When I finally returned home, I had nothing in this post and no photos saved. It may have sounded like her book wasn’t my cuppa but I really did want to make the Cheats Biria (sic) Tacos. Maybe I will pick up the book again.

So instead, let me lead you through a review of Hussain’s memoir, Finding my Voice (2019). I read it in conjunction with the cookbook.

This book is 288 pages but it honestly seemed longer. It is heartfelt but I wondered at times if she was wanting to focus on being funny or being honest. Maybe one can do both but it came off a bit disjointed at times. If anything, Hussain is definitely resilient and driven. She opens each chapter (mostly) with an original poem followed by her telling of her life experiences. The chapters are long and end with a recipe. So instead of focusing on a recipe from the cookbook (that I no longer have), I decided to try one of her recipes from her life.

Some of the recipes in Finding My Voice are definitely comfort food and would have never made an appearance on Bake Off, things like Special Leftover Chips and Eyebrow Rocky Road.

I decided to try her Madeira Cake (230). This is the cake that her husband loved and may have led her down the road the the Bake Off.

Nadiya’s Madeira Cake

By Nadiya Hussain (I have converted the ingredient amounts to represent what we use in the U.S. and I adapted the instructions a bit.)

Ingredients

• 6 T. unsalted butter, softened
• 1 c. sugar
• 4 medium eggs, beaten
• 1 2/3 c. self-raising flour
• 1 t. baking powder
• 4 T. whole milk
• Options: zest of one lemon or lime or “a few drops of flavouring extracts of your choice or a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste” (230)  I added 1 t. of pure vanilla extract.

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Line and lightly grease a loaf pan

2.  In a stand mixer, cream the butter and the sugar until light and very pale (about 5 minutes). Add the eggs, one at a time, until they are well-incorporated. 

3. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour and the baking powder. Add the flour to the butter mixture along with the milk and mix until just incorporated. (Add any mix-ins at this time.)

4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until the cake springs back and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
5. Remove from oven and leave in pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out and leave to cool on a wire rack. 

Yield: 6-8 servings

The cake was a simple affair to make but it was delicious. It is not a super sweet cake so would be great for strawberry shortcake or with a scoop of chocolate ice cream.

I served it with a “Winter Fruit Compote.” More about that recipe but it was a great combo.

Hussain deals honestly with her early family life, an incident of abuse, marrying a stranger (even though she “picked” him), her anxiety and motherhood. It is a heartfelt story but I have to say the telling of it drug on at times.

I am glad I read it.

Like I mentioned, stay tuned for the Winter Fruit Compote.