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Low-calorie recipes

Under 350 kcal per serving, without the sad-diet energy. Real flavour, careful fat, plenty of vegetables — the kind of light cooking you actually want to make again.

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Hot Chocolate with dark chocolate, whole milk and cocoa powder — France recipe

🇫🇷FranceEasy

Beverages

Hot Chocolate

Real dark chocolate melted into hot whole milk with a spoonful of cocoa powder and a pinch of salt. The combination of actual chocolate and cocoa powder is what separates this from a packet mix — the chocolate gives body and creaminess, the cocoa sharpens the flavor. The French version, chocolat chaud, is served thick enough to drink slowly. This sits between that and the thinner American style: rich and smooth, not something you gulp down.

15 min310 kcal2 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick

Hot Cross Buns with bread flour, yeast and butter — UK recipe

🇬🇧UKAdvanced

Flour and Confectionery Products

Hot Cross Buns

Hot cross buns go back to 14th-century England — a monk at St Albans Abbey made spiced, fruit-studded sweet buns with a cross cut into the top and gave them to the poor on Good Friday. The cross meant something then. Now they mean spring, and they still smell extraordinary coming out of the oven. The dough is enriched with butter, eggs, and warm milk; spiced with cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg; and loaded with plumped currants and orange zest. The cross is piped on with a simple flour paste before baking, then the finished buns get a sticky apricot glaze and an icing cross on top. Eat them warm, split and buttered, with tea.

180 min285 kcal12 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Hummus with chickpeas, tahini and lemon — Israel recipe

🇮🇱IsraelEasy

Sauces and Dips

Hummus

Creamy homemade hummus from chickpeas, tahini, lemon, and garlic — blended until impossibly smooth. Ten minutes from can to bowl, and it beats every store-bought tub I have ever tried.

10 min170 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick🌾Gluten-free

Iceberg Lettuce Salad with Blue Cheese and Herbs with iceberg lettuce, blue cheese and buttermilk — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAMedium

Salads

Iceberg Lettuce Salad with Blue Cheese and Herbs

Iceberg gets dismissed as the lettuce with nothing to say, which misses the point entirely: it isn't there for flavour, it's there for cold and crunch. Cut into thick wedges and left whole, it stays icy and snapping under a thick buttermilk and blue cheese dressing that would flatten any softer leaf. Chives, dill, cherry tomatoes, and raw red onion do the talking. It's a steakhouse salad that needs both a fork and a knife.

25 min290 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick🌾Gluten-free

Iced Matcha Latte with matcha, milk and honey — Japan recipe

🇯🇵JapanEasy

Beverages

Iced Matcha Latte

Three ingredients and five minutes. Matcha whisked with a small amount of hot — not boiling — water, poured over ice and milk. The result depends almost entirely on the quality of the matcha powder: good ceremonial-grade matcha is sweet, grassy, and vivid green; cheap culinary-grade matcha is dull, bitter, and yellow-green. Buy the better one. The milk is a matter of preference — oat milk is naturally sweet and works well, whole dairy milk is richer, almond milk is thinner. There is no wrong answer.

10 min95 kcal2 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free

Imam Bayildi (Turkish Stuffed Eggplant in Olive Oil) with eggplant, tomato and onion — Turkey recipe

🇹🇷TurkeyAdvanced

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Imam Bayildi (Turkish Stuffed Eggplant in Olive Oil)

Imam bayildi means 'the imam fainted' — from delight, or from the sight of how much olive oil went in, depending on which legend you follow. Whole eggplants are softened until collapsing, split open, and packed with slow-cooked onion, tomato, and a startling amount of garlic, then braised in olive oil until everything melts together. It belongs to the zeytinyagli family, dishes cooked in olive oil and eaten cool, and it's better the next day.

90 min310 kcal4 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free🌿Vegetarian

Insalata di Finocchi e Arance (Sicilian Fennel and Orange Salad) with fennel, oranges and black olives — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyEasy

Salads

Insalata di Finocchi e Arance (Sicilian Fennel and Orange Salad)

Insalata di finocchi e arance is a classic Sicilian salad of thinly sliced fennel and oranges, dressed with olive oil, salt, and black pepper, with black olives. It is the contrast of sweet, juicy orange and crisp, anise-scented fennel — bright and refreshing. It comes from Sicily, where most of Italy's citrus is grown, and the orange salad is a legacy of the Arab rule of the island (9th-11th centuries): it was the Arabs who brought citrus into Sicilian cooking. It is a winter dish, since oranges (especially blood oranges, tarocchi) are in season in winter, served as an antipasto or contorno through the cold months. The salad is a fine example of Sicilian agrodolce, sweet and salty: the sweetness of the orange balanced by salty black olives and crisp fennel. Technical keys: peel the oranges to the flesh, cutting away the bitter white pith; slice the fennel very thinly; let the acidity come from the orange, not vinegar; black olives for the agrodolce contrast; blood oranges for the classic Sicilian version; and good fruity olive oil, since there are few ingredients. Save the orange juice that runs out — it is the base of the dressing. Serve at room temperature, the best winter citrus, sliced thin, with excellent oil.

15 min180 kcal4 serves

🌱Vegan⚡Quick🌾Gluten-free

Italian Bagna Cauda (Piedmontese Hot Anchovy and Garlic Dip) with garlic and anchovy fillets — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyMedium

Sauces and Dips

Italian Bagna Cauda (Piedmontese Hot Anchovy and Garlic Dip)

Bagna cauda — Piedmontese dialect for 'hot bath' — is the ancient warm dip of olive oil, garlic, and anchovies that defines Northern Italian conviviality. Slowly melted into a single silky emulsion, kept warm at the centre of the table in a terracotta fujòt over a candle, surrounded by raw and cooked seasonal vegetables and crusty bread for dipping. Origins trace to medieval Piedmont and the Strada Salis (the salt road) that brought anchovies and salt from Provence and Nice into landlocked Piedmontese valleys, fueling a cuisine built on cured fish far from the sea. In 2005 the Asti Delegation of the Italian Academy of Cuisine officially registered the recipe with a notary in Costigliole d'Asti. Every November-December Asti celebrates Bagna Cauda Day. This domestic balanced version uses milk-poached garlic for elegance, salt-packed anchovies for depth, and a finishing knob of butter for silky texture. Active 25 minutes plus 15 minutes milk-poach. Yields about 300 ml, serves 6 as a centerpiece dip.

40 min350 kcal6 serves

🌾Gluten-free🥑Keto

Italian Salsa Rossa (Piedmontese Bagnet Ross Tomato Sauce) with tomatoes, onion and carrot — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyAdvanced

Sauces and Dips

Italian Salsa Rossa (Piedmontese Bagnet Ross Tomato Sauce)

Salsa rossa — known as bagnet ross in Piedmontese dialect — is a slow-cooked tomato sauce from Piedmont in northern Italy, traditionally spooned alongside bollito misto, the region's winter dish of mixed boiled meats. This version keeps to a plain vegetable base: ripe tomatoes, onion, carrot, celery, and garlic simmered until thick, then balanced with sugar and red wine vinegar. Many Piedmontese households build a richer version with roasted bell pepper and a pinch of cinnamon and clove, closer to what's sold as salsa rubra, but the tomato-and-soffritto core stays the same either way. Let it cool for about an hour before serving. Naturally vegan and gluten-free.

100 min110 kcal10 serves

🌾Gluten-free🌱Vegan

Italian Salsa Tonnata (Piedmontese Tuna Sauce, Pellegrino Artusi 1891) with canned tuna, anchovy fillets and capers — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyEasy

Sauces and Dips

Italian Salsa Tonnata (Piedmontese Tuna Sauce, Pellegrino Artusi 1891)

Salsa tonnata is the Piedmontese emulsion sauce of canned tuna, anchovies, capers, hard-boiled egg yolks, olive oil, and lemon juice — a creamy savory cream that defines the iconic vitello tonnato (cold sliced veal under tuna sauce). Origins go to 18th-19th century Piedmont as a way to use leftover meat; the modern form was codified by Pellegrino Artusi in his 1891 cookbook 'La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene', where he added tuna and capers to an older anchovy-oil base. Before Artusi the dish was known as vitel tonné, sometimes mistakenly attributed to French origins via Savoy linguistic mix. By the 1980s vitello tonnato became a must-have on Italian restaurant menus. This classic Artusi version uses hard-boiled yolks rather than raw — safer and historically authentic. Beyond veal: tomato tonnato, egg tonnato, pasta salad, sandwiches, vegetable dressing. Active 20 minutes plus 1-2 hours rest. Yields about 350 ml, serves 8 as a sauce or dip.

20 min180 kcal8 serves

🌾Gluten-free🥑Keto⚡Quick

Italian Salsa Verde (Piedmontese Bagnet Verd Green Sauce) with parsley, anchovy fillets and capers — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyEasy

Sauces and Dips

Italian Salsa Verde (Piedmontese Bagnet Verd Green Sauce)

Italian salsa verde — known as bagnet verd in Piedmontese dialect — is the punchy raw green sauce of Northern Italy. Built on flat-leaf parsley, anchovies, capers, garlic, hard-boiled egg yolk, vinegar-soaked bread, and olive oil, it is the obligatory condiment for bollito misto (mixed boiled meats), the wintertime ceremony of Piedmont. It is listed among Piedmont's traditional food products (P.A.T.); local tradition places its birth at the Savoy court of King Carlo Alberto in the 19th century. Bright, salty, sharp, herbaceous — designed to cut through the richness of long-cooked meat. Versatile far beyond bollito: spoon over grilled fish, roasted vegetables, soft cheese, hard-boiled eggs, or crostini. About 30 minutes of work by hand, less with a food processor, plus about 1 hour of resting for the flavours to integrate. Yields about 250 ml, serves 8 as a condiment (about 2 tablespoons each).

30 min130 kcal8 serves

⚡Quick

Jamu (Indonesian Turmeric Ginger Tonic) with fresh turmeric, ginger and water — Indonesia recipe

🇮🇩IndonesiaMedium

Beverages

Jamu (Indonesian Turmeric Ginger Tonic)

Jamu is the general name for Indonesian herbal drinks; this version follows kunyit asam, which in Indonesia is fresh turmeric boiled with tamarind, palm sugar and a pinch of salt. Some cooks there add ginger, as here; black pepper, honey and coconut oil are not part of the Indonesian drink and are optional. Serve it warm on a rainy morning, or over ice in the afternoon.

25 min65 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free⚡Quick🌿Vegetarian

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