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

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.

Who knew you could put the genie back in the bottle by pulsing stale breadcrumbs back into flour and turning that into pasta?

The @no_mise_en_plastic Instagram account is an incredible resource of practical tips to help cooks create waste-free kitchens, and often showcases chefs from around the world. The sourdough pasta made by one of them, Albert Franch Sunyer from the restaurant Nolla in Helsinki , really caught my eye.

In fact, Albert thinks leftover bread is one of the most versatile ingredients in the kitchen, and says his pasta recipe came from the need to use up stale leftovers after service: “We’ve been playing with leftover bread recipes since the beginning of Nolla, making everything – cheese crackers, ice-cream, crumbles, you name it. And we thought that, if bread is made from flour, we can probably make flour again.”

A delicious way to poach a chicken, bollito-style, with a range of flavours to complement it

Before she moved, Ginia lived in a fifth-floor flat in a 1920s block near Piazza Vittorio. And before she gave up cooking, she used to make a bollito every other Sunday. Once upon a time, that meant an almost full bollito misto alla Piemontese , as her father taught her to make it: beef (muscle, tail and tongue), also a whole chicken and cotechino sausage boiled separately, then served together, sliced and steaming hot, with a selection of sauces. But as the years went on and the house emptied – of children, also of her husband (she threw him out) – her bollito streamlined.

By the time I met Ginia, the bollito was half a chicken, or maybe a boneless beef rib known as scaramella . Not that there was any talk of food when we first met in the international bookshop near Termini station. Browsing side by side, she asked me what I thought of Iris Murdoch, looked appalled when I said I hadn’t read her, then walked over to the desk and ordered me a copy of The Sea, The Sea. Two weeks later she sent me a message in capital letters – “LIBRO ARRIVES, BOOKSHOP WED 10” – and, after picking it up, we went for coffee, the first of many. She also seemed appalled when I told her I wrote about food. “Of all the subjects”. But then later we did talk about food – if the story involved something sinister or salacious, or a pub. Which is how we arrived at the bollito, and her ex-husband’s insistence that for it to be true bollito, the raw meat must be put into boiling water, but how she used to start from cold and he never noticed the difference. And somehow we arrived at Fergus Henderson ’s way of poaching a chicken, which she was quite delighted by, and in return she gave me suggestions for the sauces for boiled meat, whether for a bollito or a single poached bird, which is one of my favourite meals. Ginia suggested two or three condiments, plus mustard, with a poached bird, the sauces, and all ideally served in a compartmentalised dish. Leftover sauces are a gift for future meals and the saviour of leftovers. Ginia now lives in Berlin near her daughter, reads avidly and never cooks.

This beloved Italian-American chicken dish is perfect for a midweek dinner, while the vibrant, garlicky, tangy side makes for a brilliant accompaniment

Chicken piccata is not only a beloved Italian American classic, it’s also easy enough to be a weeknight dinner on the reg. The sauce is typically made with butter, lemon juice and capers – briny, bright and fatty all at once – but my take leans on buttermilk for tang and anchovies, chilli and shallots for brininess and spice. For the marinated zucchini/courgettes to go alongside, you’ll use them in two ways: raw and seared. As they sit in a vibrant, garlicky, tangy, minty marinade, all that flavour is absorbed into the flesh. The fried sunflower seeds on top add a necessary salty crunch.

This is an edited extract from More Is More: Get Loose in the Kitchen by Molly Baz (Murdoch Books, £26).

Spicy lamb meatballs tucked into a jacket of fig, and a Levantine salad of chicken and grape with juice-soaked pitta

There’s a giant fig tree in our neighbour’s front garden, which we watch closely every year, waiting for the arrival of the fruit and our favourite season. Celebration is called for, and these spicy, lamb-stuffed figs are the best way to kick things off. We’re all for stretching a meal to feed the many, and a grape and chicken fattoush does just that. By adding crisp pitta at the last minute to soak up all the juices, you turn a simple salad into a summer showstopper.