It’s not as complicated as you might think to make this superstar aromatic curry from scratch – here’s a definitive step-by-step guide

For many of us in the west, green curry, or kaeng khiao wan , was our first taste of Thai cuisine – indeed, just 30 years ago, the Irish Sunday Independent felt the need to explain to its readers that Thai curries were “very different” from Chinese or Indian ones. Fresh and fiery, this modern classic is still a wake-up call to the palate today.

Prep 20 min
Cook 20 min
Serves 2 , and easily doubled

Golden fried boiled eggs in a salty-sour curry sauce with a crunchy toasted coconut topping, and Thai baked chicken in a coconut sambal sauce

Thai New Year, or Songkran , is celebrated next weekend. Traditionally, water symbolises happiness and purity across the kingdom, and the festivities culminate in a huge nationwide water fight. If there’s an end-of-festival tradition more delightfully fun than this, I’m not sure what it is. I’d love to be in Thailand myself one year, water pistol in tow, but for now, I’ll be in the kitchen having almost as much fun. I’ll also certainly be staying dry while paying homage to the end of one year and the start of the next.

Both tantalising and restorative, zesty and creamy, this Greek take on chicken soup hits all the right notes and is perfect for Easter

Chicken soup for the soul is more than just an American self-help trope: as Carolina Doriti points out in her book Salt of the Earth , “every culture around the world has a restorative chicken soup”, from Romanian ciorba radauteana to Filipino tinolang manok . Creamy, tangy kotosoupa avgolemono is Greece’s version, and it’s “greatly healing and medicinal, and the most delicious, comforting, warming meal you will have”, according to food writer Georgina Hayden, whose Greek Cypriot family prescribes it for anyone feeling under the weather or simply run down.

Based on avgolemono, Greek cuisine’s famous egg and lemon sauce, which is a rich, bracingly sour mixture that’s often added to stews and other dishes (such as stuffed cabbage ), in the words of Rena Salaman , “its welcoming aroma always adds a bright note to a cold day, and it makes a very substantial meal by itself”. So if you’re craving sunshine but still feel in need of a little winter comfort, this is the dish for you. It also makes a lovely splash of colour at the Easter table, particularly if you’re serving chicken for the main course.

A hearty barley and vegetable soup with a cheesy topping and a quick miso- and ginger-coated chicken traybake on a bed of chard

Like any cook, I love it when people enjoy my food, and I get even greater pleasure when it’s also easy for me to make (and with minimal washing-up). I often turn to these one-pot recipes, which empty the pantry and make something comforting – a hearty, vegetable-filled soup and a speedy, miso- and ginger-coated chicken.

Yasmin Fahr is a US food and travel writer and the author of three cookbooks . Keeping it Simple, by Yasmin Fahr, is published by Hardie Grant Books (UK) at £16.99. To order a copy for £15.46, go to guardian.bookshop.com

There are as many different recipes for kare raisu as there are cooks who make it, so can our in-house perfectionist discover the winning formula?

In the early years of this century, not long after I ate my first “sushi” (M&S vegetarian selection, since you ask), I tried my first katsu curry at a cool London noodle bar, with my cool new university friends, one of whom had been banging on about this Wagamama place since freshers’ week. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I found that the thick, brown gravy dolloped over neat slices of breaded chicken reminded me of nothing more than good old chip shop curry sauce .

Of course, I didn’t mention this at the time, for fear of ridicule – it wasn’t until many years later that I found out this was no mere coincidence. As Japanese chef and author Hiroko Shimbo explains , “Indian curry came to Japan from England”, via the Royal Navy, when the country first opened up to foreign trade in the second half of the 19th century. After adoption by the Japanese armed forces, it became more widely popular as an example of yōshoku , or western food.

A Bengali kumro chenchki – stir-fried pumpkin with dried chillies, panch phoran, ginger and cumin – and a Keralan spicy chicken and cashew curry with turmeric, ginger and curry leaves

Today’s recipes are classics from two different regions of India. You’d typically find the kozhi kari at weddings and celebrations in Kerala, and the recipe here is a riff on my friend Ravi’s grandmother’s, who made the best version I have ever had. The kumro chenchki , meanwhile, is essentially a simply spiced stir-fry, that’s usually served with dal, ghee and flatbread for the ultimate comfort food.

Some farmers have turned from livestock to crops to avoid the financial pitfalls and thorny ethics of industrial agriculture

Farmer Tom Lim had been raising poultry for 20 years when the company he worked for as a contractor terminated him without warning, leaving him saddled with debt and unsure of where to turn. “My heart just dropped,” he said. “I didn’t know where to make money to pay off our loans.”

Lim was born in rural Cambodia, where his parents tended rice fields with water buffalos, raised a smattering of chickens and grew vegetables around their home. That lifestyle shaped his love of farming, but was a far cry from what he found himself doing as an adult, raising 540,000 chickens a year in North Carolina for Pilgrim’s Pride, one of the largest meat producers in the US that supplies chicken to Walmart, Costco and KFC.

A trio packed with flavour: chicken and cardamom meatballs in yoghurt sauce, a brioche bun stuffed with spicy, sour keema, and mini rice-paper wraps stuffed with a laab-like pork filling

Mince has a reputation for being cheap, uninspiring and bland, but there’s so much more to it than just spag bol and burgers. If you buy the best quality you can afford, and season it imaginatively, mince is versatile, quick to cook and nourishing. From ragu to laab, every culture has a favourite mince dish; these dishes use ground chicken, lamb and pork, and are boldly seasoned with Asian spices and condiments to warm you up on chilly nights.

A chicken, herb and celery stew with almonds and a return visit to an old friend: the Persian frittata known as kuku, made with aubergine and onions and studded with lemony currants

• Ask Ottolenghi: send in your kitchen questions

Some people are sure they were a particular animal in a previous life. The swimmer was a dolphin, maybe, and the pilot a bird, but me? I’m only certain that I was at a Persian dinner table at some earlier point in life, and my love for Persian food was signed, sealed and stamped for ever more. Or maybe I just adore turmeric-stained, saffron-infused, barberry-spiked and flaked almond-topped food so much that it makes me feel poetic. Either way, the gift of Persian cuisine, which somehow pulls off both abundance and balance at exactly the same time, is one that transports me every time.