Domestic gods

So I was surprised to find that Birds Eye’s salmon in dill sauce, which I had with steamed vegetables, was delicious. Both were from Birds Eye’s new SteamFresh range, available in the freezer sections of good supermarkets. The fish tasted really fresh and flaked nicely under the fork and the sauce was buttery with a herby tang of dill. The asparagus was perfect: crunchy but not chewy; the beans and carrots were fine.

I served them with frozen vegetable rice (complete with those pesky peas) which, after a little light simmering, slipped down quite inoffensively. Considering this was a meal prepared in seven minutes — I microwaved the fish and veg and boiled the rice at the same time — it was pretty damn tasty. According to Birds Eye, this scrumminess is down to its new SteamFresh technology. The microwave boils the water in the bag, inflating it with steam which is then released in a controlled way through a “self-venting valve”. In effect, it is a gentle pressure cooker in a plastic bag. Because there is a constant release of steam, the product cooks evenly, and the fish retains lots of moisture and the maximum nutrients.

However they do it: bravo! I was sent a double pack of salmon and ate one of the fillets for this piece. I liked it so much that the next night I ate the other fillet, with broccoli, sweetcorn and boiled rice — but absolutely no peas.

DIET DOCTOR SAYS: The proportion of calories that come from fat in this meal is a healthily low 20 per cent. However, the salt content is a whopping 3.2g: 60 per cent of the daily salt intake in one meal.

MARKS & SPENCER COOK!

The concept: a fully-prepared meal that you cook for yourself

Fresh salmon fillets with herb, lemon and paprika butter: £2

Carrot batons, broccoli and beans: £1.47

Basmati rice (from the store cupboard)

Total cost per serving: £3.47

Preparation: 5 min

Cooking: 15 min

Washing-up: results pending

SEB MACKENZIE-WILSON: In manly society, when the footy’s on down the boozer, the phrase “eating’s cheating” holds sway: food detracts from the serious business of drinking. But snatching a quick bite in the interests of stomach-lining may not be such a bad idea and Marks & Spencer’s Cook! range offers a convenient but appetising way to do this.

The meal, in my case “Scottish salmon fillets with a fresh herb, lemon and paprika butter”, comes ready prepared — but it’s still up to you to take it out of the fridge and cook it. Onerous stuff.

Under cellophane the fish fillets looked pleasantly pink, although on opening there was quite a lot of unappetising fishy water sloshing around. Cooking was a cinch but, if I had followed the instructions to place them in a hot pan with a touch of olive oil and fry for 15 minutes, they would have been well overcooked. I fried them for half that time. Dropping the pats of herb butter into the pan at the last minute gave the fillets a luxurious finish. Even more so when arranged on a bed of healthy steamed rice.

The only real disappointment came with the accompanying vegetables. These are prepared and sealed (in Kenya, apparently) in little packs. They are ready-diced, sliced and washed. I emptied several into a steamer and cooked for a few minutes. The fine green beans and tender-stem broccoli turned out OK. The real problem was the carrots. Before I started they looked haggard; by the time they were tender enough to eat, they had an grey hue, feeble texture and tasted of nothing.

All in all, my “Cook!” experience is to be recommended. It produces an appetising meal that takes only 20 minutes. And, as everything is prepared, some pans and a plate are all that is needed. I was just about to do the washing-up when I received an urgent call with loud background noise requiring my presence in the pub.

DIET DOCTOR SAYS: This meal has too high a fat proportion (76 per cent of the calories come from fat) but it is lower in salt than Birds Eye’s dish and the veg provides healthy amounts of vitamins C and A.

FRESHLY PREPARED

The concept: simple home cooking

6oz organic salmon steak: £1.50

Onion: 10p; dill: 20p; cucumber: 39p; cream: 28p

Rice (from the cupboard), bay leaf (from the garden), wine (leftover in the fridge)

Mushrooms and pepper: found wilting in the fridge

Total cost per serving: £2.47

Preparation: 10 min

Cooking: 20 min

Washing-up: it’s the wife’s turn

JOHN NAISH: Well of course home-cooked food is going to taste better. And it thrashes the others spiritually, too. My wife Kate and I don’t have a microwave and we never eat pre-prepared, prepacked stuff. Smug? Yes. How do we find the time? We don’t have television.

Instead we commit to cooking in turns for each other; we eat together, slowly, after a simple grace (“For what we are about to receive, may we be truly grateful”) and a clink of wine glasses. And we talk. Sickening, perhaps. But the food rocks.

We have to make space for shopping, too. But that usually works. This time I managed to fit in a detour to see my brother and swap news. Shouldn’t this be what food’s all about? Not tearing around, bolting ready-masticated produce, failing to digest it either physically or emotionally? And if you do wean yourself off pre-packed, you soon find that you can never go back. There’s this preservativy taste that they all have, even the “gourmet” items. Sorry.

In my bachelor days, I ensured that I cooked for myself all the time, as a survival technique. Single men sit at the top of a multitude of slippery slopes and microwaveable grub is a toboggan. There you are, sloping home, slumping in front of the telly with tins of beer and uninspiring factory-formed comestibles, busily laying down lard for future trouble. Is that any life for a young chap? Cooking is good for the male brain, too, as it makes you multi-task, strengthening otherwise dodgy (“For Gawd’s sake do I have to do everything?”) neural connections as you attempt to grill, sautée, chop, whisk and steam — and listen to the radio — at the same time. This time I had a photographer to keep entertained as well. I managed to stay civil.

This isn’t my kind of recipe at all, though. Kate does all the Euro-style bistro food. My side of the bed is curries, Chinese and Thais. Chillies! At least this dish involved rice. But for the rest of it, I had to take an emergency browse through the darkest dusty reaches of the cookbook shelf until I found this old Delia recipe, in One Can Be Fun. It was easy, done in a turn and very yum. The steaks were meltingly juicy, the slightly odd cucumber ‘n’ cream combo was pleasantly piquant. And, of course, I juiced it generously with the white wine. Just one worry, though. Why does my wife still harbour a copy of One Can Be Fun?

Recipe: organic salmon steak sealed in foil with a sliced onion, bay leaf, splash of white wine, smear of butter, garnished with dill, seasoned with pepper and medium-grilled for 20 mins.

Sauce: 3oz cubed organic cucumber, sautéed for five minutes in a knob of butter, then five minutes with a third of a small carton of low-fat organic cream, dill and a splash of white wine. Fish juices added after cooking.

Rice: basmati, cooked in a sealed saucepan, one part rice to one-and-a-third parts water. When left to rest, two finely sliced mushrooms and third of a chopped red pepper mixed in so that they steam-cook.

DIET DOCTOR SAYS: The home-cooked meal is the lowest in salt — 0.6g; a tenth of the daily intake — and it also provides superior amounts of vitamins A, C, E, B1 and B12. Clearly the healthiest option.

Catherine Collins, our diet doctor, is the chief dietitian at St George’s Hospital, South London