Welcome to a win-win vegetarian Italian classic: it’s simple, delicious and makes clever use of old bread

Today’s easy recipe for Italian vegetarian “meatballs” is a great way to use up stale bread in a tasty yet economical way. I like them gently fried, then mixed with tomato sauce and spaghetti, but they’re also great coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried or baked until crisp and delicious. They’re good with steamed seasonal greens, too. Other variations on the theme include placing a cube of mozzarella in the middle of each ball and taking this dish to the next level. Unless I’m feeling flush, though, I prefer to keep things simple with just breadcrumbs flavoured with parmesan or a vegetarian alternative (or whatever cheese I have to hand).

Two light and sprightly Thai dishes for spring: mushroom tom yum soup with rice noodles, and crisp cauliflower in a sweet-sour tamarind sauce

” Gin khao yung ?” – or “Have you eaten yet?” – is a way of saying hello in Thailand. It’s similar to “‘What’s up?” and “How’s it going?”, and is an indication of just how important food is in the everyday lives of Thai people. These recipes from my book, Thai Made Easy, are two classics reinvented with plant-based ingredients – simple to assemble and suitable for most.

Three joyful dishes for a new year: a mild yellow curry, street food-style fried pork and a simple dish of baked mackerel and rice

Songkran , the Thai New Year on 13 April, is a vibrant and joyous celebration marked by a famous water festival that symbolises the cleansing of the past year’s misfortunes through playful water fights and anointing one’s elders with water at the hottest time of year. Traditional Thai dishes play a central role, reflecting the culinary heritage that unites families and communities at this auspicious time.

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.

The classic spicy Levantine sandwich is made meat-free with hearty baked mushrooms

Reviews and ratings are very much a part of our daily lives. Most of them I disregard, but occasionally something cuts through and it feels as if people have truly voted with their hearts. That was the case when I stumbled across Sam Sifton’s New York Times recipe for chicken shawarma with 19,624 five-star ratings. I had to try it, but there were two problems: I didn’t want chicken (I wanted mushrooms) and, being a serial tinkerer in the kitchen, I tinkered with it. With thanks and apologies to Sam, I’m happy to report that I’d give this five stars, too.

Perfect for a light lunch, starter or snack: asparagus and artichoke fritters with herby yoghurt, and leek fritters with a lemony, green yoghurt sauce

Just three days to go, people! Three days until the equinox when, at 11.06pm, the sun sits directly over the Earth’s equator as it moves northwards. With both hemispheres sharing the sun’s rays equally, night and day are roughly the same length and the season officially, finally, changes. For those of us who look to our plates as much as we look to the sky, this change in season in the UK is marked, unofficially, by the arrival of one wonderful thing: asparagus! It’s here, and we can all boil it and char it and steam, grill or bake it as much as we can during its short season. I’m never one to miss out on the opportunity to make fritters, so frying is going to be first up in my kitchen, not least because it’s also at long last time to open the kitchen window.

The use of bean water in your baking makes use of a miracle ingredient and saves money on expensive eggs, too

Today’s macaroons are easy and fun little treats using just a few store-cupboard ingredients. Whenever I use a can of beans (which, frankly, is most days), I try to include the aquafaba, or bean water, in whatever it is I’m making. Inevitably, though, I sometimes end up with a bit left over, which means I have to get creative to find a way to use it up. Sometimes, I’ll include the liquid in a soup or stew, or use it to make mayonnaise , caesar salad dressing or a whisky sour. When my sweet tooth kicks in, or when I want to bake with my daughter, however, I often use it to make a simple sweet snack such as today’s macaroons. Using aquafaba in baking saves money, too. Good eggs are expensive, so I’d rather save them for when they’re essential to a recipe.

These sprightly, mint-infused fritters are great straight from the pan, but taste even funkier after a rest of 20 minutes or so

Walking home the other afternoon, I passed a car with a weed growing around one of its tyres. I found myself stopping, so I looked to see where the weed started and where it ended – it went almost all the way around it, like a snow chain.

It was only when I was right down near the tyre, surrounded by the smell of weed and rubber, that I realised I had done exactly the same thing during the first lockdown. Not with the same car, but one similar – which, like so many cars in so many cities, sat in the same spot for so long that the weeds took over and started using it as a climbing frame. For two odd, vertiginous seconds, it was lockdown again. Then I found the start of the weed in the crack where the pavement met the road, along with a cigarette butt and a damp lottery ticket, rotting leaves and other weeds, including a tuft of mentuccia .

Pre-dinner drinks or all-night grazing? The French tradition of apéro lies somewhere in between, writes Elizabeth Quinn – and her gougères recipe is the ideal snack to serve

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If you ever find yourself at a farmers’ market in France, you will quickly learn two things: that the longest queues denote the highest quality produce and the lengthiest discussions about how best to use it; and that the answer to “What would I make with this ingredient?” is nearly always “Apéro!”

The word itself is a shortening of apéritif, which, according to the Cambridge dictionary, means “an alcoholic drink, especially one that is drunk before a meal”. To the uninitiated, it might sound like pre-dinner drinks with a nibbly or two to soak up the alcohol.

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