Sweet chestnuts make a savoury flour that’s just perfect for this cracking, herby mushroom pasta

As anyone who has picked up a winking chestnut and rolled it around the palm of their hand knows, sweet chestnuts are heavy things – too heavy to be spread by animals or birds, meaning the chestnut landscape is largely man-made. Throughout history, chestnuts have been planted to provide food (especially in areas that are not suitable for grains), wood and fuel, or as a gift for future generations. In her charming and informative book On Chestnuts: the Trees and their Seeds , Ria Loohuizen recalls a saying from France: “One plants a peach for oneself, an olive tree for one’s son, a chestnut tree for one’s grandson.”

Sweet chestnuts are not picked: they fall from the tree when they are ripe, so need to be collected, on mats or by big vacuums. A friend of ours in Abruzzo, where chestnuts have always been of great economic importance, has a friend who built his own collector that consists of a soft wire basket on a stick which he rolls over the ground so the nuts squeeze between the gaps.

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Adaptability and ease is the order of the day for this tinned fish crostata with chermoula topping and conchiglie with smoked oyster sauce

My cupboards are rarely without a tin or two (or three) of tinned fish. Sardines, anchovies, tuna, smoked oysters: they’re all usually on standby, and I’m crazy about all of them. I find them very reassuring, too, because they mean I’m never more than about two minutes from a meal, whether they’re just spread on toast, or mixed with a little Tabasco and lemon juice, perhaps, or some soured cream and herbs. I also use them to dial up all kinds of other dishes – pizza and pasta, say, delight in tinned fish as much as toast does, as do potato salads – and they can even be the main reason to make a particular dish. Starring role, not standby.

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Creamy Spanish lentils are little marvels with wild garlic (or spinach), crumbly goat’s cheese, honey and a dash of sherry vinegar

When I was a child, Mum wouldn’t let me refuse lentils. If I left them, they’d be breakfast the next day – “They’re good for you!” – and I soon learned that being picky wasn’t wise in our house. Small, brown pardina lentils have thin skins, a creamy texture and earthy, herbal, peppery notes; they also hold their shape well, making them perfect for salads. It’s no surprise, then, that the finest examples from Tierra de Campos, the vast, semi-arid plains north of Valladolid, even have a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI).

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When you’re hankering after something starchy and satisfying, this soupy spring rice delight will definitely please the tastebuds

I don’t know whether I prefer saying risi e bisi or eating this Venetian springtime speciality, which is traditionally made to celebrate the feast of St Mark, the city’s patron saint, on 25 April. That said, this deliciously soupy, starchy dish ticks a lot of boxes for me at this time of year, not least because even I can amuse myself in a terrible Italian accent for only so long.

Prep 15 min
Cook 1 hr
Serves 4

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Celebrate the freshness of a new season with ricotta gnocchi with raw pea pesto, fennel sausage penne and broccoli orecchiette

Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr 25 min
Serves 4

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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).

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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.

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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.

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A diced potato binds this cheesy leek and pasta dish into a delightful gluey mess

Watching any pasta shape being extruded, be that through a small domestic machine or a vast industrial one, is hypnotic. Short shapes are particularly mesmerising, because the dough – made from durum wheat flour and water – emerges at speed from the bronze or Teflon-coated die, and is then chopped to size by a rotating blade. And then there are fusilli, whose helix form is created by an ingenious die that was invented and perfected in the early 1900s. Fusilli twist their way into being, the Syd Barrett of pasta shapes, emerging from the die in a psychedelic spiral.

The fusilli shape is an old one. In her Encyclopaedia of Pasta , Oretta Zanini De Vita traces the shape back to the fruitful Arab domination of Sicily and Sardinia, and the forming of the pasta by twisting dough around a thin reed known as a bus. The habit travelled and De Vita notes that fusillo became a southern Italian dialect term for any pasta made by wrapping or pressing dough around or into a ferretto , a thin metal rod with tapered ends, known as a fuso. As you can probably imagine, shaping pasta around a slender rod (or, alternatively, a knitting needle, bicycle wheel spoke or umbrella rib) and sliding it off makes for a particular form, sometimes like scroll of paper, at others canoes or even loose ringlets, all of which are still found in southern Italy. The industrial form, meanwhile, which took decades to perfect, is a helix or spiral and has since travelled all over the world. As with all pasta, the quality of the durum wheat used, and the way it’s extruded (through bronze, which gives texture) and dried (steadily, and with great attention) has a huge effect on the taste.

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