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

Ear-shaped pasta in a roast red pepper and tomato sauce and topped with pistachios and ricotta

This dish is a happy accident. I first made it to accompany roast potatoes, with muhammara in mind (a delicious Middle Eastern dip of roast red pepper, walnuts and pomegranate molasses). But I had no walnuts, so used pistachios instead. The result is addictive and it has since become a go-to; the sauce works just as well tossed through pasta as it does with grilled prawns or roast potatoes. You could use crumbled feta instead of ricotta to top the pasta, but I like that the ricotta doesn’t compete with the flavour of the sauce.

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.

A cheat’s version of malai kofta , in which you blend readymade paneer with coriander and spices, roll it into balls, then deep-fry before immersing them in a creamy curry

This is a week-night take on my mum’s incomparable malai kofta , for which you blend homemade paneer with coriander and spices until fluffy, roll the mixture into balls, then deep-fry and serve with a spiced cream sauce. In this version, you quickly fry shop-bought paneer and serve it with a similar sauce that includes peas for colour and some other veg. My top tip, which comes from food writer Roopa Gulati , is that you can improve shop-bought paneer no end by giving it a quick soak before use – it rehydrates and has a lovely, fluffy texture, rather than bouncing off the plate when you try to stab it with a fork.

A layered bake of potatoes, risotto rice, cheese and mussels that will leave your kitchen smelling like the sea

Leafing through Luigi Sada’s book of La Cucina Pugliese , I couldn’t find riso, patate e cozze (rice, potatoes and mussels). I was looking for rice dishes in primi piatti , lost in the countless, great-sounding recipes for mussels and other shellfish from the heel of Italy – in short, the wrong chapter. This layered bake of rice, sliced potatoes, tomatoes, cheese and mussels is the first recipe in the chapter titled Les Soupes (oddly, in French). Sada crowns riso, patate e cozze , also known as tiella , “ the queen of minestre ”, and notes that it is made differently from town to town, and that this “mothership recipe” is tiella barese from Puglia’s capital, Bari. It includes courgettes and uses pecorino. Meanwhile, other recipes from Bari remind us that there is no such thing as a definitive version, each suggesting wildly different proportions and all sorts of rice, or not to include courgettes and to use parmesan instead.

What everyone seems to agree on, though, is that a rest brings out the best in tiella – they all advise waiting before eating – as well as the importance of opening the mussels by hand. Several people reassured me that this is just like opening oysters, which, after being defeated by shell-clenched oysters and shamed by a professional shucker, I didn’t find reassuring at all. However, it turns out that if you insert the point of a knife near the hinge, then run the blade between the two shells, mussels, while a faff, are much easier to lever open than oysters. Yet they’re no less dramatic when you pull apart the shells apart and see the soft, secret flesh inside.

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.

I’ve been smitten with Tex-Mex food since the early 90s. This dish moves things along, but it still hits the same flavourful spot

My first taste of Tex-Mex was at the Chiquito in the Kingston Retail Park, Hull, in the early 1990s. The lady on the next table ordered a margarita and a chimichanga, which sounded ludicrously exciting. I watched (along with everyone else in the place) as a sizzling fajita landed on another table. Aged 10, I was smitten. I’ve not been to Texas, but would love to one day; in the meantime, I’m content with reading my favourite Texas tome, The Homesick Texan Cookbook by Lisa Fain, and riffing on the flavours within.

Kufteh, or Iranian meatballs, in an Italian-American red sauce, and a California-style autumn fruit crumble

While I always loved food, it took many experiences to discover my own cooking and incorporate my Californian Iranian upbringing. I crave simple, delicious food, rather than anything overly complicated; I use what some may think is a ridiculous amount of herbs, have more vinegars than oils and prefer fruit-based desserts over chocolate. I want you to love these recipes, but what I really hope is that you take the nuggets of info and techniques, and integrate them into your own cooking routine.

In its 15th incarnation this year’s festival is the first held since the lifting of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. Locals and tourists throw ripe tomatoes to celebrate the harvest season