Five summer meals to recover without turning on the oven

You get back from training, it's hot, you're hungry, and you open the fridge hoping something has cooked itself. It hasn't. That moment usually decides the difference between recovering properly and eating whatever you can grab standing up in the kitchen. So here are five cold meals with real quantities and, better still, the formula for inventing your own.

The formula: build your plate from four pieces

If you take one thing from this article, make it this. A decent recovery meal almost always contains the same four pieces, and from there you can improvise with whatever you have in.

With those four boxes ticked, the meal works. Everything else is down to taste, to what's in the cupboard, and to how much washing-up you can face.

Five options that require no thinking

Quinoa, salmon and cucumber bowl. 100 g of cooked quinoa, 120 g of salmon (smoked works, or cooked the day before), 150 g of diced cucumber, half an avocado and a squeeze of lemon. Five minutes, provided the quinoa was already done, which is the key to all of this.

Chickpea and tuna salad. 150 g of cooked, drained chickpeas, a tin of tuna in spring water, 150 g of tomato, 30 g of finely sliced red onion, 10 ml of olive oil and oregano. Better if you let it sit in the fridge for twenty minutes.

Gazpacho with a plain omelette. 350 ml of homemade gazpacho and a three-egg omelette with a handful of spinach folded in. It sounds like something your grandmother would serve on a Sunday, and it's genuinely excellent recovery: fluid, salts, protein and vegetables in one go.

Cold chicken wrap. A wholemeal tortilla of around 60 g, 120 g of yesterday's roast chicken, lettuce, 100 g of tomato, and a little natural yoghurt mixed with mustard as a dressing. Eats with one hand and barely dirties a thing.

Greek yoghurt with oats and fruit. 250 g of Greek yoghurt, 40 g of rolled oats, 100 g of blueberries or chopped peach, and 20 g of walnuts. This is the wildcard for when you get in very late or train at night and can't face a proper meal.

The meal that recovers you best isn't the most complete one on paper. It's the one you actually make when you come home shattered and overheated.

The Victoris philosophy

The trick that makes this work

You'll have noticed that nearly every option assumes something is already cooked. That's the whole trick: one Sunday afternoon, twenty minutes, and you've got a tub of quinoa, a tray of chicken and a few boiled eggs ready. For the rest of the week, making dinner is assembly rather than cooking.

If this has whetted your appetite, the original L'Orange Bleue recipe collection has ten more ideas spread across the day, from breakfasts to puddings.

A note on the quantities

The numbers above are a reasonable starting point for an adult training several times a week, not a prescription. If you're very large, very small, deep in a high-volume block, or living with any condition that affects your diet, adjust them or ask a professional. We're here to take mental work off your plate, not add to it.