A thrifty yet irresistible Neapolitan dish of tomatoes, nuts, raisins, capers and olives, all sweated down in lots of olive oil and tossed through a tangle of spaghetti

’E Curti is a small, very good osteria in a town called Sant’Anastasia, which is perched on the slopes of Vesuvius about 13km north-east of Naples. We made a detour and stopped there two summers ago, thanks to the trusty Slow Food osteria guide (although no thanks to my navigating). One of the specialities at ’E Curti is spaghetti with dried nuts and fruit, capers, olives, herbs and a local variety of tomatoes called pomodori piennoli . The dish came about as a way of using up the dried fruit and nuts left over from Christmas, and its name, ’O sicchje ra munnezza , is a humorous nod to this resourcefulness – ’O sicchje meaning “bin” and ra munnezza “rubbish” in Neapolitan dialect.

Such joking is possible only if you are confident of how good something is. And the combination of tomatoes collapsed in extra-virgin olive oil and the texture from the various nuts, the slight sweetness from the fruit and the defiantly savoury capers and olives, all held in a twisted net of spaghetti, is extremely good. Which is in no small part due to the local olive oil and flavour of the pomodori piennoli, particularly because they can be hung and kept for months, wrinkling and developing in richness. That said, it is absolutely a dish that can be recreated with other tomatoes, especially sweet cherry or datterini tomatoes, or even tinned plum tomatoes (that you like the taste of) drained of their juice. Being able to recreate this is also thanks to a recipe directly from ’E Curti itself that is wonderful in its specificity, suggesting (among other ingredients): 16 pine nuts, 10 raisins, 18 capers, eight olives, half a kilo of tomatoes and 1kg spaghetti for eight people.

Egg-drop soup with thick udon noodles and savoury Japanese sprinkles, and a thick and wholesome Iranian-style ‘minestrone’

Like everyone else currently eating their way through to spring, I’ve been thinking a lot about comfort food recently. What makes something tick the comfort food box will vary from person to person, but, for me, there are a few obvious wins. The first is eating from a big bowl – I just love cupping my hands around the base, warming them as I go. Noodles are another big yes. True, “slurp” is perhaps not the most gracious of words, but I’m going to own it fully, chopsticks in (my now warmed) hand. Eggs score highly, too, and broth is never not a brilliant idea. Bring all these together and I think I’ve found a dish that is very comfortably going to see me right through.

A hearty winter soup with an ancient punchy pesto called cuminatum – can you guess its magic ingredient?

Frustrated by our inability to do not just urgent things in our small flat, but anything, I recently forced the issue and pulled everything out of an extremely large wardrobe. Weeks later, the empty wardrobe is still waiting to be removed, while the rest of the flat is inside out, there’s no hook without nine things hanging on it and no surface clear. Except one. One of three shelves in the cupboard above the washing machine – the one I look at most, with the tea, custard and jars filled with things that are not only tidy, but clean, so I can see what is cocoa and what is cumin.

In De re coquinaria , or Apicius , an extensive source of ancient Roman recipes, cumin is medicinal and a pantry staple. Its warm, volatile nature adds spice and stimulates all sorts of appetites. The dried seed of the herb Cuminum cyminum – part of the Umbelliferae family along with parsley and celery – cumin is ancient and has its origins in Iran. It is also precious and useful, which is why it travelled so widely. Three types are described in Apicius: Ethiopian, Syrian and Libyan cumin, all of which are used in various recipes, and also made into a cumin-based sauce called cuminatum .

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.”

Persian-style braised tofu with sour yoghurt and spinach, a pleasingly simple cabbage and poppy seed pasta, and steamed fish with cumin and tomato oil

The perennial question for weeknight meals is, what are the rules? For me, for now, and whenever I can, it’s essentially a 30-minute window, give or take, from when I start chopping to dishing up, and pretty much serve straight from the pan, too. It’s very often pasta for comfort, or steamed fish for speed. Of course, swaps are made and shortcuts taken, but these are my speedy solutions for when it’s 8pm and I’m starving.