In for Dinner

by Rosie Kellett

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Delicious and affordable recipes for any occasion

'Makes you want to EAT with the people you love' Calum Harris
‘Rosie uses affordable ingredients and makes really special and really delicious meals. I’m a big fan!’ Melissa Hemsley

For the past five years, home cook Rosie Kellett has been living communally with six others, making delicious seasonal food on a budget. In her first cookbook, she shares 101 low-effort, high-reward, veg-forward recipes to nourish you.

In for Dinner will give you the confidence to cook a Sexy Cacio e Pepe for your friends, bake moreish PBJ Blondies for your partner’s birthday, or make a Casual Chilli for your family on a weeknight.

Recipes
- Summer Holiday Bean Salad
- Comté, Spring Onions and Sesame Scones
- Mezze Feast with Falafel, Sumac Onion Slaw and Flatbreads
- Harissa Honey Roasted Carrots, Tahini Yoghurt, Roasted Sesame Seeds
- Citrus Mackerel Spaghetti with Pangrattato
- White Chocolate Burnt Caramel Cookies
- Crispy Chickpea Caesar Salad

READERS LOVE ROSIE'S RECIPES
‘Accessible and affordable recipes for every occasion’
‘An instant classic; chock-full of joy’
‘I genuinely cannot wait to make each and every dish’
‘Fantastic recipes... accessible for a nervous cook and yet exciting for a more seasoned chef’

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction

203 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 1, 2025

Reviews

[Miss✧Pickypants ᓚᘏᗢ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this cookbook is these are budget friendly dishes served by a group of roommates who share the cost and cooking of all their meals. The recipes are well written and tend to be for larger groups. This would be a good resource for newer, budget-minded cooks looking for more affordable meals. The dishes are generally easy to make and skewed toward vegetarian. While there are photos for many of the recipes, they were a bit lacklustre.

One thing that did start to annoy me was the overuse of favourite in many of the head notes. When everything is your favourite, it kind of loses its meaning since the point of being the favourite is it is reserved for the most loved things. Minor niggling matter, nothing that should dissuade readers from checking out the book, just a pickypants observation.

[Amy Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rosie Kellett's book is interesting in that she has an unusual living situation: she shares a warehouse with 5 other housemates, each one contributing $30 weekly toward a grocery budget and rotating the responsibility for making dinner each night. While not all home cooks are cooking for as many diners as Kellett (she sometimes has more than a dozen at the table), the book does feature ideas and suggestions for communal, simple cooking on any scale, such as buying in bulk and investing a little more money on ingredients such as canned tomatoes and olive oil. The low cost per meal does mean that, with the exception of tinned fish, most of the meals are vegetarian, and many of the book's recipes rely on staples such as chickpeas, pasta, or lentils.

Breakfast recipes include quick breads and muffins, toasts, granola, and oats, while the lunch chapter offers salads like tuna and egg, soups, and flatbreads. Most of the dinner recipes are pasta, bread, or otherwise carb-based (i.e. pierogies), with a few interesting vegetable recipes sprinkled in. The sweets section was my favorite; as an unabashed Anglophile, I'm always interested in trying recipes for British baked goods, and Kellett doesn't disappoint, with instructions for Bakewell slice, a flapjack-like crunch, parkin, and a twist on Grasmere shortbread. There are many photos of the finished dishes, always a plus.

Because three of the four adults in my house aren't big on chickpeas or lentils, and because we're trying to eat less pasta, the dinner recipes in this book aren't a good fit for my family. I'm looking forward to trying some of the salads and baked goods, as well as the granola recipe. 

Recommended for those interested in vegetarian recipes. Thank you to Edelweiss for the advance review copy.

[Annmarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In for Dinner by Rosie Kellett

In for Dinner is a cookbook for our time with its budget conscious meals and a focus on communal cooking and eating in. The author, Rosie Kellett is a supper club host and lives with six housemates. They each contribute to the weekly food budget and take turns cooking. They eat in together at the end of the day - like may families do, or wish they did. In For Dinner does this on a sensible budget ! This makes this cookbook different and useful.

After a useful introduction, the chapters are In for Breakfast, In for Lunch, In for Dinner and In for Dinner and In for Cakie. I point each one out here because I liked that they emphasized that the recipes were for eating in….every meal....every day. Within each chapter are sensible subdivisions that make using the book easier. The recipes are clear, use ingredients that are in your pantry or easy to find in the supermarket. And while the book focusses on everyday, eating Kellet does offer guidance for cooking for a larger crowd when company comes which is helpful and welcome. Most recipes are accompanied by a color photo, list the ingredients on the left and give numbered directions on the right of the page.

In for Dinner inspires one to cook and eat in more often. It makes eating on a budget easy but interesting. It is the perfect cookbook for these times. That makes it a great wedding shower, housewarming, college graduation gift and a great addition to any household cookbook collection.

Clarkson Potter provided me with a free copy of this book; the opinions are my own.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kellett is a chef who lives in a communal warehouse setting. Each housemate puts $30 in towards food for the week and is assigned a day to cook. The other days, you are off. It's great - you get great food, and always know your budget. The meals are veg-forward (only fish, sometimes) and vary a lot. The breakfast and desert chapters really sung for me. The deserts are very English, but accessible. There is a photo for every recipe here and the illustrations are great. The portions are also good if you're cooking for a family or group - most serve about six, so if you made something for dinner, you would have leftovers for lunch the next day or later in the week, depending upon how your group eats.

Kellett is clearly happy and very enthusiastic about her lifestyle. While my family wouldn't embrace all of these, I think the book is worth checking out because it focuses on less expensive, healthier foods. If you can work a handful of these into your mix, that's a win. And also the recipes for Parkin and Aunt Rach's bars.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Who’s in for dinner”? That’s daily the group text between Rosie Kellett and her six housemates living in London. They’re a well oiled machine of community living, each contributing £25 (about $30) weekly to cover the cost of food and household items. Each person cooks dinner one night a week and they eat together ensuring that the various dietary needs of the others are met. If a housemate won’t be home for dinner but will want something when they get home, they can request ‘a plate’, and it will be waiting for them. The community and the food they cook and share, not just with their housemates but often with additional friends and guests, sparked the idea for the cookbook.

The introduction essay beautifully set the stage for what the book is about, and the recipes are organized by chapters (In For…) and subsections (Simple Weekday Dinners, Hosting, Slow Sunday Saviors). So far, I’ve made the Stick Eggplant Rice - coconut rice with roasted eggplant roasted with a honey/garlic/ soy/miso glaze and the Tuna Salad - which is packed with all good briny and bright things like capers, cornichons, and lemons. Both were hits in that they brought new flavors to standby types of recipes.

In a time when there are so many cookbooks vying for cook's attention, this one stands out for presenting a different philosophy of cooking and sharing food: cook lots of food (or scale down as desired), cook within a budget, meet the needs of a variety of diets, and project joy for the meals and memories you're creating. Sounds like a tall order, but Rosie's engaging writing, solid recipes, and the warmth conveyed in the design of this cookbook will make it one you'll find yourself pulling off your bookshelf regularly.

Clarkson Potter provided me with a copy of this cookbook; the opinions shared are my unbiased review.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The photographs are great and it was interesting reading about how she lives in a communal space and they share cooking duty. I wouldn’t make many of the recipes personally but they would be good for a dinner party.

[Kristen Barenthaler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm personally way too picky to eat half the recipes in here, but I still greatly enjoyed learning about them and seeing how recipes (even when shared) can still be affordable.

[amy vavrova · Rating 4 out of 5]

The banana bread recipe was outstanding! Very pretty book.

[LaLa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I truly disliked this recipe book. the photography was especially disappointing.