Takeaway you cook at home

An organic kitchen, where people can prepare their own meals without having to shop for, or chop the ingredients - or clean up afterwards - has been opened in London.

All customers have to do is put together their chosen recipes on site, so they can enjoy authentic home cooking without the hassle.

The only work they do in their own kitchens is to heat up the dishes they have prepared.

The Yard, opened in Battersea three weeks ago, also sells ready-prepared dishes, which can be delivered to your door.

It follows in the footsteps of a company called Cook (www.cookfood.net), which has 21 outlets in London and the South-East for time-pressed gourmands to buy pre-prepared dishes. The trend for fast, nutritious-food is evident in Nigella Lawson's new TV cookery series, Nigella's Express, which features speedy suppers and noeffort roast lunches.

The new project is the idea of two ex-City workers. Richard Holloway, a former fund manager, and his fiancée Sue Leffy, who was a risk analyst.

Their high- powered jobs meant they had little time to cook healthy meals from scratch at home.

Inspired by similar set-ups in America, they went into business with Helen Prifti and opened the kitchen.

Helped by two other staff, they spend the morning washing and chopping food from ingredients sourced locally. In the afternoon they hold cooking sessions for groups of around six people, who can cook enough food for a week of dinner parties. Dishes include salmon en croute, lasagne, smoked mackerel and caper fishcakes and barbecued chicken thighs.

Cooks can visit the kitchen for an hour and a half in which they can make six dishes which they have already chosen. Prices work out at about £3.20 per portion.

Mr Holloway said: "People have said they enjoy cooking but don't have the time.

"This way they can arrive, all the ingredients are weighed and chopped ready and we do the washing up while they go away with a home-cooked meal.

"The idea started because I ate so many microwave meals and started thinking about especially the salt content."