Georgian and Mediterranean home cooking with a made-ahead breakfast

Chakhohbili is a Georgian braise and the traditional cut is chicken, but this one was built on beef top sirloin, which needs a good hour longer before it gives. Bell peppers, tomatoes and onions are the entire sauce, no stock at all, and the fine herbs go in once the heat is off. It sits well next to the baked baby potatoes with mushrooms because neither dish is reaching for the same flavour.

The teriyaki shrimp is built low on both sodium and sugar, so the glaze never takes the lacquered shine you would get from a bottle. That constraint changes the cooking rather than just the label: with less salt to lean on I reduce the sauce further and finish with more acid. The same logic runs through the turkey picatta meatballs, where lemon and capers do the work salt usually does.

Breakfast is three mornings of cottage cheese, chives and spinach scrambled eggs plus the protein banana bread. The eggs come off the heat deliberately underdone because they keep setting inside the container, so give them twenty seconds less than you think. The banana bread wants eight minutes at 325°F, or a dry pan if you like a crisp edge on the slice.