The Sunday bird. A whole chicken rubbed with garlic butter, roasted over halved lemons until the skin crackles. Squeeze the hot lemons into the pan juices.

Mashed with a fork, never a blender. Lots of lime, a little heat, and enough salt that you keep going back with another chip.

Everything goes on one tray, gets blistered in a hot oven, and is blitzed velvet-smooth. Grilled cheese strongly advised.

Four ingredients and fifteen minutes, the way it is served in a Venetian trattoria at ten at night. Good tomatoes and patience do all the work.

Thick, golden, diner-style hotcakes from a batter you can mix the night before. Butter between every layer is the rule.

Chickpeas in a tangy, gingery tomato gravy that comes together from the cupboard. Better the next day, if any survives.

Crisp-bottomed, juicy potstickers pleated at the kitchen table. Make a double batch: they freeze beautifully and cook from frozen.

Crisp edges, chewy middles and puddles of dark chocolate. Rest the dough overnight if you can bear to wait.

Sweet, spicy, sticky carrots that steal the show from whatever they are served next to. Use a rainbow bunch if you can find one.

An all-butter crust, a lattice top, and apples cooked just enough that the slices hold. Worth the afternoon.

A weeknight ramen built on a shortcut miso-butter broth that tastes like it simmered all day. Sweet corn, a jammy egg, done before the kettle cools.

No lettuce. Ripe tomatoes, cucumber, red onion and a whole slab of feta on top, with good oil and oregano. Bread for the juices is mandatory.

Buckwheat noodles rinsed ice-cold and dipped in a nutty, salty sesame sauce. The answer to every too-hot evening.

Eggs poached in a deeply spiced tomato and pepper sauce, served straight from the cast iron. The kind of breakfast that makes the whole morning slow down.

A thick Tuscan bread soup that gets better every day it sits in the fridge. Thick enough to stand a spoon in.

The classic, upgraded: nutty brown butter, a tender crumb and a crackly demerara top. Better on day two, toasted, with salted butter.