Follow the simple principles of quality meat, cheese and herbs for the perfect patty – and don’t forget a fresh, tangy sauce

I have never seen an Ottolenghi recipe for a burger, be it meaty or vegetarian. How would you construct and garnish your perfect hamburger?
David, Winnipeg, Canada
That’s such a good spot! To be honest, traditional, full-sized burgers are something I tend to seek out from others - passionate people who flip burgers all day, every day – and my must-have condiments for those are proper burger sauce (that is, two parts mustard, one part mayo and one part ketchup), melting American cheese, pickles, raw white onion and iceberg lettuce. And on those rare occasions when I do make a burger at home, I follow similar principles.

Buy the best-quality meat you can afford. I love lamb in my burger patties, but I’ve also been known to use minced turkey thigh. For a lighter, springier patty, breadcrumbs are the obvious choice, but coarsely grated courgette (squeezed to get rid of excess moisture), grated onion and even mashed potato (as in today’s broad bean burger recipe) work really well, too, along with a beaten egg. Cheese such as ricotta, paneer, manouri and feta are also brilliant in a burger, as in the mix for my lamb and oregano meatballs, which can easily be turned into a patty.

As well as a steady supply of eggs, the birds create fantastic compost, and pick away at weed seeds and aphids

The first spring after we moved out of London to East Sussex coincided with the first lockdown, and like so many people with access to a garden, I spent it growing crops. As the first tranche of seedlings were ready to be planted out into our new vegetable beds, I received an email from a nearby farm saying our chickens were ready to pick up. We drove them home slowly, listening to them quietly chattering to each other in their cardboard box.

By chance, we’d moved into a house that already had a fox-proof coop in the garden, but we little thought that we’d be spending more time with these four birds than with any other living things as those strange locked-down weeks turned into months.

Fast, furious and fresh, Sri Lankan-style vegetable curries take mere minutes to cook

If you’ve ever had Sri Lankan “rice and curry” for lunch, you’ll know the term is a misnomer. It’s not just one curry, but at least three and up to five that are served for lunch every day. How, you might wonder, is it possible to cook so many things in time for lunch? One of the answers is that Sri Lankan vegetable curries are fast and furious. Ingredients hit thin, metal saucepans in quick succession and are brought up to a Vesuvius-level boil, only to come out tasting surprisingly heavenly and delicate about 15 minutes later. The courgette is the perfect vegetable for such treatment: it’s tender , fresh and in need of a little spicing up.

Discover Meera’s recipes and many more from your favourite cooks in the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

Controversial, maybe, but these sandwich fillings dial up the taste factor and fit pretty well in a soft white roll

If I was forced to choose, I’d say I’m a butter, cheese and pickles man. I love mine open and I tend to go for sourdough, even if that does induce eye-rolls from many. I’m talking, of course, about sandwiches, a subject on which everyone has wonderfully strong opinions. What bread to use? Cut it on the diagonal or straight down the middle? Is it OK for anyone over the age of seven to cut off the crusts? And that’s before you even start discussing what’s going inside. Slices of tomato: sublime or soggy? A handful of crisps: critical or criminal? A lettuce leaf or two: lovely or limp? Fish finger sandwiches: right or wrong? Such seemingly innocent questions, yet ones that incite such firm feelings. (My reply to that last question, incidentally, is revealed by today’s first recipe, which takes the concept, dials it up and feels pretty strongly about the presence of a soft white roll.)

This south-east Asian favourite is fun to make, easy to adapt and healthy, so get rolling …

Though I enjoy a spring roll as much as the next fried-food fan, the freshness of the Vietnamese summer version has my heart, especially if I’m the one preparing it. Fun to make and easy to adapt to suit different tastes and diets, it’s fortunate they’re so healthy, because once I start rolling, I find it very hard to stop.

Prep 20 min, plus cooling time
Cook 25 min
Makes 8

Think tinned fish, curry, tahini, soft vegetables in butter … and who says the cheese has to be cheddar?

I’m tight on time lately, so want to have more jacket potato dinners. What toppings can I use other than tuna salad or baked beans and cheddar?
Paloma, Colorado, US
The key with the filling for a jacket potato is to use something that is, er, filling (which is why tuna or baked beans work so well) and to have a rich, creamy element that brings everything together, which is why mayonnaise is such a classic combo with tuna and grated cheese with beans.

Try that mayo with a different protein, though – it works especially well with leftover roast chicken, chopped ham or prawns, say. Or use coleslaw instead, maybe with some chopped fried bacon or pancetta mixed in. Or take the sauce in a curried direction with the likes of coronation chicken; for vegetarians, simply replace the chicken with chickpeas or butter beans.

What to do with a leftover barbecued sausage? Add broccoli and beans for a quick and easy midweek meal

Just one cooked sausage, left over from a barbecue, or indeed any meal, is enough to make this simple one-pot wonder inspired by the Italian classic orecchiette con salsiccia e cime di rapa. In the original, raw sausage is skinned, broken into pieces and fried with cime di rapa (turnip tops), then tossed with cooked orecchiette. Being a bean fiend, however, I’ve come up with an even speedier version using creamy butter beans instead of pasta. Turnips are mostly grown for their flavoursome green tops in Italy, rather than their crisp roots as in northern Europe, so if you’re lucky enough to find a bunch of cime di rapa or some turnips with their tops, use those here; otherwise, just about any combination of leafy green and/or brassica will do.

Discover this recipe and many more from your favourite cooks on the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make every day cooking easier and more fun

A meat-free barbecue feast: charred leeks with pecorino sauce and pickled oyster mushrooms, grilled hispi cabbage with a classic French sauce, and barbecued chestnut mushrooms with habanero, lemon and rocket pesto

When it comes to barbecuing, subtlety is often overlooked amid the sizzle of sausages and the char of burgers, but it takes only a light extra touch to elevate your alfresco meal into something really special. I love fire cooking, because that lick of flame turns even simple ingredients into something greater than the sum of their parts. You can take something as ordinary as a leek, say, and transform it over hot coals into a dish that is unrecognisably delicious. Of course, it also helps that you’re then covering that leek in a rich pecorino sauce, but I’m telling you, without those flames, it just wouldn’t be the same. Today’s recipes, which are all taken from our restaurant menu at the Parakeet, show there’s magic to be had in the seeming chaos of smoke-infused vegetable cooking. For those who can’t resist the allure of traditional barbecue fare, they’re all also designed to pair with sausages (wild boar, ideally), thick-cut pork chops or flame-grilled fish.

This barbecue-style dish uses a tangy Trinidadian favourite, tamarind, in the marinade to add sweetness to the meat – cook in the oven or over coals, depending on the forecast

Barbecued meat isn’t exclusive to any ethnic group in the Caribbean. The term “barbecue”, however, originates with the (now dwindling) Amerindian people and is derived from the Taino word for the raised wooden structure used, among other things, to cure meat, barbecoa. A common misconception is that jerk chicken is popular throughout the Caribbean, when it is in fact only a chart-topper in Jamaica. From Cuba down to Guyana, you’ll find iterations of “BBQ chicken”, though, and this one uses that tangy Trinidadian favourite, tamarind.

Discover this recipe and many more from your favourite cooks in the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

Chopped salad offers a festival of textures and flavours all in the one mouthful

Not so long ago, I fell down a hole on the internet and landed on a page on Mob’s website entitled A Brief Investigation into Chopped Salads. This sentence, in particular, caught my attention: “According to Jeff Gordinier, food & drink writer for Esquire, ‘chopping intensifies the pleasure of a salad’ Perhaps it was just food clickbait, I thought – but perhaps it was also true? I tested out the theory (see today’s recipe) and can confirm first-hand that there is great pleasure to be had in both chopping ingredients to sling with abandon into a bowl, and in munching on a festival of textures and flavours all in the one mouthful.

Kick back, crack open the rosé and enjoy a vibrant, nutty Georgian vegetable paté and grilled lime prawns with courgettes

Whether it’s gorgeous or glacial, I’m determined to eat outside this bank holiday weekend. Fresh air I will find and alfresco I will call it! I’m not even talking a full decamp to the nearest common or heath – picnic planning still feels a bit too wishful; I’m thinking more outside the confines of the kitchen, so garden table, front doorstep, balcony: whatever we have, we should take, I think. Even an open window would count, with a chair perched beside it, plate on knees, searching for the sun.

The rich and aromatic Jamaican coconut and fish stew in just a few easy steps

Such is the mystery surrounding this curiously named breakfast favourite that Caribbean chef Riaz Phillips claims that, were he visited by a culinary genie offering to grant three foodie wishes, he’d use one to “ask the lineage and origin of Caribbean rundown”. Citing a dictionary of Jamaican English that describes it as “a kind of sauce made by boiling coconut down til it becomes like custard”, Phillips’ book West Winds suggests an intriguing link with the similarly rich and coconut-based Indonesian rendang, while food writer Melissa Thompson notes parallels with the pepper pots made by Jamaica’s indigenous population.

Whatever the truth, rundown, of Jamaican origins but popular on other islands and in parts of Latin America, too, is beloved – “a rich and textured meal that is most often enjoyed on Sundays, when there is ample time to prepare it, as well as time to leisurely imbibe and digest,” as chefs Michelle and Suzanne Rousseau explain, while for Levi Roots it’s simply a classic. And if all that feels like too much of an effort first thing in the morning, be reassured by Phillips that, when it comes to rundown, “many people (including myself) have decided that being limited to the morning just isn’t long enough”.

The Basques work wonders with fresh peas: try them with fried cod, fino and jamón, pork belly with fried eggs, goat’s cheese toasts or in crab and pea rice

As with any proud Basque, peas have played a huge part in my culinary education – they even feature in one of my earliest kitchen memories, of five-year-old me podding peas with my mother. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that peas are one of the most important ingredients in our cooking tradition, and we happily eat them for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner, as well as a raw snack. Every spring, we Basques turn into pea-obsessives, because that’s when guisantes lágrima come into season. They’re much smaller than regular peas, and much, much sweeter, and we cook them every which way, from roasting and frying to stews and salads – they’re so revered that we call them “green caviar”. Lágrima peas are next to impossible to get hold of in the UK, but that’s not to say you can’t use fresh British peas in similarly delicious and varied ways.

These small, soft balls make for a speedy supper – serve them with a generous grating of parmesan and a well-dressed green salad

The combination of ricotta, wilted chopped spinach, grated parmesan or pecorino, egg and a good grating of nutmeg is a familiar and typical filling for ravioli. In today’s dish, though, there is no pasta covering, hence the nudità (nudity) of the little lumps (gnocchi simply means “little lumps”), which is neatly captured by the Tuscan dialect word gnudi. They have other names, too. In Casentino, in the province of Arezzo, for example, they are possessive and call them gnocchi di Casentino, as well as gnocchi di ricotta, while in the provinces of Siena and Grosseto gnudi are known as malfatti (“badly shaped”), which is a reassuring name, as well as a charming one.

That said, my gnudi are well formed, ever since I learned an entertaining and satisfying technique (I wish I could remember who to thank for this): you put a walnut-sized lump of the spinach-speckled gnudi mixture into a small bowl along with a little semolina (or plain) flour and move the bowl in a circle, so the cheese mixture rolls around like a ball bearing in a slot machine and eventually turns into a satisfying oval. Another way of shaping is simply by rolling the balls between floured hands, or the two-teaspoon method, which involves turning and smoothing each side until it forms a neat lump, then dusting it in flour.

It’s the season of salads, so a good dressing is a must

The dressing I make most often is a simple vinaigrette with vinegar, olive oil, a dash of smooth mustard and salt and pepper. I give it only the faintest breath of garlic, the clove left to steep in the vinegar for 10 minutes to take out its sting. I use a workaday olive oil rather than something more peppery or fruity, shaking everything up in a tightly sealed jar. I could make it in my sleep.

Sometimes, a slightly more aromatic dressing is called for: one with shredded basil and sherry vinegar for tomatoes; or with the merest hint of honey for bitter leaves, such as watercress or chicory or with mint and tarragon to marry with roasted aubergines or courgettes. A dressing to flatter the fresh ingredients, not mask them. A light, uplifting lotion to tease out the flavours of the ingredients rather than one that smothers. A dressing to bring harmony and balance. It is what makes a few, well-chosen leaves special enough to eat as a single course.

Make up a big batch of tahini sauce with herbs, quick preserved lemons, experiment with all sorts of pestos, or try zhoug and shatta, two punchy Levantine chilli condiments

I love the green tahini sauce with the roast cauliflower in your book Simple – it livens up even the most joyless of midweek meals. What other easy sauces should I have in my repertoire to give plain dishes a bit of zhoosh?
Joe, Liverpool
I’m so pleased you’ve asked this question, Joe, because sauces and pastes are one of the secrets to exciting home cooking. They’re little flavour bombs, sitting ready in the fridge, to drizzle over or stir into all sorts.

Tahini sauce, green or otherwise, is one of my favourites. If I don’t have herbs at home, or if I just fancy a change, I’ll often mix in some miso or soy for a deep, savoury hit. Or, if I want some chilli heat, I’ll add chilli flakes, harissa or similar chilli pastes such as doubanjiang and gochujang; just remember to add plenty of lemon or lime juice to balance things out.