5 Cosy Recipes You Don't Need to Scroll For

A small confession to start. Most food blogs make me genuinely unhappy and not because the recipes are bad. The recipes are very often great, that is not the problem. The problem is that the website turns into a triple-deep advertorial about the author's magical childhood weekend at her grandmother's lake house in Wisconsin where she first tasted the dish, followed by a section about her SEO-optimised feelings on autumn, followed by an affiliated kitchen tools section, followed eventually (fourteen scrolls down past nine pop-up ads) by the actual recipe.

Here are five seasonal, doable, cosy recipes with no backstory, no hike, no childhood lake-house, just the dish. Print them, pin them to the inside of a kitchen cupboard, cook one this week.

1. The easiest dal you will cook all winter

Serves 4-6, takes about 35 minutes.

You will need: - 1 cup red split lentils, rinsed - 1 onion, finely chopped - 4 cloves garlic, crushed - A thumb of ginger, grated - 1 tsp turmeric - 1 tsp cumin - 1 tsp ground coriander - 400g tin diced tomatoes - 400ml coconut milk (the full-fat kind) - 2 tbsp olive oil - Salt - Juice of half a lemon - A handful of coriander to finish

What to do: 1. Heat oil in a big pot. Cook the onion for about five minutes until soft. 2. Add the garlic, ginger and spices. Stir for a minute. 3. Tip in the tomatoes, lentils and coconut milk, plus a cup of water. Stir. 4. Simmer for twenty-five minutes, stirring occasionally. The lentils should be soft and the sauce thick. 5. Salt to taste. Squeeze of lemon. Coriander on top.

Eat with rice or naan or a hunk of bread. Leftovers freeze well for up to three months.

2. One-pan roast chicken with lemons and garlic

Serves 4, takes 1h 10min (mostly oven).

You will need: - 1 whole chicken (about 1.5kg) - 2 lemons - 1 whole head of garlic - A big handful of small potatoes - Olive oil, salt, pepper - A few sprigs of thyme or rosemary if you have them

What to do: 1. Heat the oven to 200°C. 2. Halve the lemons. Stuff two halves inside the chicken. Squeeze the other two over the chicken. 3. Cut the head of garlic in half (do not peel) and tuck it into the roasting tin. 4. Halve the potatoes. Toss in oil and salt around the chicken. 5. Drizzle oil and salt over the bird. Tuck the herbs in around the legs. 6. Roast for an hour to an hour fifteen, until the juices run clear from a leg when you stick a knife in. 7. Rest for ten minutes before carving.

The garlic, by the way, becomes squeezable golden mush. Spread it on the bread.

3. Apple and blackberry crumble

Serves 4-6, takes 50 minutes.

The filling: - 4 apples (any kind), peeled, cored, chopped - A cup of blackberries (frozen works) - 2 tbsp brown sugar - 1 tsp cinnamon - Squeeze of lemon

The crumble: - 1 cup plain flour - 1/2 cup rolled oats - 1/2 cup brown sugar - 100g cold butter, cubed - Pinch of salt

What to do: 1. Heat the oven to 180°C. 2. Toss the filling together in a pie dish. 3. Rub the butter into the flour, oats and sugar with your hands until it looks like wet sand. 4. Tip the crumble over the fruit. Do not press it down. 5. Bake for 35-40 minutes until golden and bubbling at the edges.

Vanilla ice cream. Not optional.

4. Pasta with brown butter and sage

Serves 2, takes 12 minutes.

You will need: - 200g pasta (long shapes work best, pappardelle or tagliatelle) - 100g butter - A handful of sage leaves - Parmesan, grated - Salt and pepper

What to do: 1. Cook the pasta in salted water until al dente. 2. While it cooks, melt the butter in a wide pan over medium heat. When it foams, drop in the sage. Let it sizzle for a minute or two until the butter is nutty-brown and the sage is crisp. 3. Drain the pasta (save a cup of the pasta water). 4. Tip the pasta into the butter, plus a couple of tablespoons of pasta water. Toss for a minute until everything is coated. 5. Cracked pepper, lots of parmesan, eat immediately.

Twelve minutes. Tastes like a restaurant dish for the cost of about five dollars per person.

5. Slow-cooker pulled pork

Serves 6-8, takes 8 hours (most of which you are not cooking).

You will need: - 1.5kg pork shoulder - 1 onion, sliced - 4 cloves garlic - 2 tbsp smoked paprika - 1 tbsp ground cumin - 2 tsp salt - 1 tbsp brown sugar - 1 cup chicken stock - A splash of cider vinegar

What to do: 1. Rub the pork all over with the paprika, cumin, salt and sugar. 2. Throw the onion and garlic in the slow cooker. Put the pork on top. 3. Pour in the stock and the vinegar. 4. Low setting, eight hours. 5. Pull it apart with two forks. Eat in rolls or tortillas or just out of the dish with a fork.

You will smell this all day. Your house will become an advertisement for soft-furnishings and cosy living for about eight hours, and you did almost nothing to make it happen.

How to use these

Print this page out (yes, actually print it) and stick it on the inside of a kitchen cupboard so that when you cannot think what to cook on a Tuesday evening, you have five fall-back options that are not on your phone.

Better still, copy the recipes by hand into a notebook. The act of writing a recipe out makes you remember it, and over time the notebook turns into the cookbook you actually use, which is something no app or website can give you.

The Offline Box delivers a single seasonal recipe on a real piece of paper every month. No website, no pop-up ads, no story about anyone's grandmother. Founding fifty for June, a handful left.

With love, Melly