Bite magazine: Dinner in a dash

Chicken with ginger rice and Asian greens recipe by Bevan Smith. Photo / Tamara West

Find all your favourite bits from today's Bite magazine, online. Follow the hyperlinks in Jo Elwin's editor's letter and lose yourself in bite.co.nz.

We regularly revisit our 5.30 theme (five ingredients in under 30 minutes) in Bite to help satisfy the constant demand for quick, easy recipes that help put good food on the table every day of the week.

We are a little loose on the 5 ingredient component - allowing things such as oil, seasonings and fresh herbs in addition to the five main ingredients - because, well, quick should never mean tasteless or boring. We are more strict on the under 30 minutes component because we want you to be assured that, for those times you step in the door half an hour before you are putting dinner on the table, you can rely on these recipes to deliver. I have made all of Bevan Smith's chicken with ginger rice and Asian greens and grilled sole with roast cauliflower this week and deliver they do. His glazed apples with sticky maple walnuts have me re-thinking my "no-time for cooked desserts during the week" statement because they are quick, delicious and fruit-based.

Nadia's glass noodle salad with citrus soy dressing and tamari-roast butternut salad have a few more ingredients but are chock-a-block full of goodness and extremely kind on the budget, thanks to TEAR fund's Live Below The Line campaign.

Convenience foods such as packets of mussels, clams and hot-smoked salmon also help in the creation of successful weeknight meals and Warren makes delicious work of them in his healthy mussel and brown rice salad, mussels in white wine sauce, mussel, buttercup and apple soup and clams, bacon and fettucini. Kathy Paterson's Monday night dinner is salmon linguine with citrus dressing.

For more food visit bite.co.nz.