Cape Malay coconut beef curry is made with toasted desiccated coconut rather than coconut milk. It's a filling, slow-cooked meal with a rich gravy with fragrant spices and a certain sweet-'n-sour aspect to it, partly a result of the tamarind paste and sultanas. In addition to beef, it's packed with vegetables—onions, bell peppers and sweet potatoes. And, it's easily converted to a vegan curry.

Easy pad thai is a delicious, healthy dish that can be whipped up very quickly. If "easy" makes you think this isn't an authentic pad thai, think again. Thailand's national dish is easy to cook. This is an ever popular version with chicken, prawns and tofu, but it can easily be turned vegan or pescatarian. With rice noodles, garlic, tamarind, lime and peanuts, among other flavours, what's not to like?

This Durban chicken curry with green peppers, mushrooms, cashew nuts and yoghurt is a lesser-known Durban curry. It's origins lie in the Parsi cooking of KwaZulu-Natal, the traditions of one of the smaller cultural groups arriving from India. It has an earthy, nutty flavour, ideal for those who don't like their curries on the sweeter side. In these quantities, it is moderately spicy, but the heat can be cranked up or toned down easily enough.

This easy Japanese beef shigureni is a quick, easy dish that uses relatively few ingredients and is easily turned pescatarian or vegan. Succulent beef (or tofu) mixed with ginger in a sweet-meets-umami glaze. It's ideal for those wishing to dip their toes into the deep pool of Japanese cooking using ingredients widely available without having to stock up on many specialist items. Do as the Japanese ex-pats do.

Japanese-influenced katsu fish pie is a reworking of the British comfort food classic. Brimming with a mix of fish and seafood with a creamy béchamel subtly infused with with the flavours of katsu curry, a Japanese comfort food increasingly popular around the world, it's topped with a sweet potato and a panko crust.

You can pull this quick Thai green curry together in under 30 minutes. That doesn't make it any less authentic, quite the opposite. Whether the ever popular chicken version, seafood, tofu or a combination thereof, combined with vegetables and creamy coconut, it’s popular for many reasons. Just one of these is that it makes a perfect weeknight meal when you don’t want to spend too long in the kitchen.

This Durban vegan eggplant curry —usually simply called brinjal curry after the lead vegetable's name in various Indian languages —uses baked or grilled eggplant (aubergine) to bring a deep, slightly smoky flavour to a curry brimming with the flavours of onions, pepper, chillies, tomatoes, coconut, and sweet potato in a rich mix of spices. It can be cooked fiery hot in accordance with the cliché about Durban curries or as a milder affair.

This stir fried monkfish with Sichuan pepper is not one of the traditional Chinese recipes my father picked up on his travels in Asia and later taught me, but something I created after being reminded of the joys of monkfish in Scotland. But, it owes everything to him. Here the buttery monkfish works perfectly with spiky ginger, elegant star anise and tingly Sichuan pepper. Accompanied by egg fried rice and a side dish of bok choy and sweetcorn.

Another in my series of a fusion approach to the British tradition of the Sunday roast, this Thai Sunday roast—with chicken—is a fusion Sunday meal influenced throughout by Thai cooking, an easy way to make a Sunday fixture a little different. A spiced Thai rice stuffing, sweetcorn fritters, peanut and ginger roast potatoes and Thai style vegetables.

8 best side dishes for warm weather.A collection of delicious and less obvious side dishes originally created for specific recipes. But, they all share being able to work with a far wider range of dishes. Some are classics, others a little more leftfield and many are a good way to stop leftovers from going to waste. Issue no.1 of what I hope to be an occasional series and focuses on side dishes that work well in warmer weather. So, ideal for those who live in hot places or a

Indian methi chicken curry—chicken with fresh fenugreek leaves—is a dish traditional to a number of regions of India, each with their own take on it. It's not really a "curry" in the popular sense, in that the spices are mild and relatively minimal and the gravy lighter and less complicated to make than better-known Indian dishes. Yes, it's very easy to cook.

This Cape Malay seafood curry—technically it's fish and seafood—is a mild curry that is easy to make. It's less well-known than the famous lamb curries from the region, perhaps ironic given that it is more in keeping with the history of fishing at the Cape and today's healthier eating habits than lamb. It's relatively low in fat and brimming with vegetables too.

Cape Malay fish balls are highly adaptable. Not as well known as other Cape Malay dishes—such the famous lamb curries—these traditional fish balls made with a combination of white fish and smoked fish make tasty starters, great finger food at a party, and are also integrated into other delicious Cape Malay dishes.

Thai red curry is one of the best-known Thai dishes around the world. One of the four in the quartet of Thailand's most successful culinary exports, it can be vegan, pescatarian or carnivore. More importantly, if you use this recipe based on how street vendors produce it, it's easily adaptable to the needs of dining parties with different requirements.

This easy yakisoba can be made with pork, chicken, seafood or tofu—or a combination thereof— and is a mix of noodles, vegetables and a cooking sauce that gives the dish its name. It’s the perfect, quick meal to put together when you don’t have a lot of time to spare.

Cape Malay lamb chop curry is an updated version of a very traditional dish from Cape Town that makes good use of what doesn't make it onto the braai—that famed South African barbecue. Based entirely in the legacy of Cape Malay cooking with its Indonesian influences, it nonetheless has a few contemporary tricks up its sleeve.As always, vegan and vegetarian options are included.

These Basque fusion buns, which I am calling Bil-bao Buns, are a fusion of flavours from the north of the Iberian Peninsula and Asian cooking, most notably Japanese food. With two fillings—pancetta and tomato and prawn and green asparagus—they are a quick and easy to make, they're an easy meal that puts something a little different into a mid-week, no-fuss supper.

This easy Malaysian beef curry is very simple; easy to slow-cook, but ensure you allow enough time for it. The dense flavours of the beef and coconut are balanced by fresh green flavours, in this case green beans and choy sum, These are all wrapped in the heady flavours of lime, ginger, lemongrass, cloves and nutmeg, among numerous others.

Durban beef curry has a reputation for fieriness that has made it famous around the world. But, as this slow-cooked authentic recipe proves, it's not entirely about the hot spices and hearty beef that makes this curry a thing of beauty. A plethora of vegetables, herbs and spices are what come together to make it memorable, not to mention its unique history.

Cantonese glazed pork belly with vegetables, served with egg fried rice, is a dish from the archive of recipes my father collected in Hong Kong in the 1960s. The pork belly is first roasted or grilled with a glaze, very similar to char siu, before adding to wokked green vegetables and bamboo shoots and serving with egg fried rice.