This recipe for pasta with kale and pancetta sauce comes from Castelfranco Emelia in Italy's Modena Province. It's a combination of the deeper flavours of onions cooked in white wine, pancetta and cream and the green flavours of kale and basil. Given its particular cooking method, it can be turned into a lactovegetarian dish with no effort at all.

My Dublin coddle recipe is a personal take on a dishes considered their signature dish by many natives of the capital of the Republic of Ireland. Like so much in Irish culture, its story is complex. Nonetheless, its core ingredients of carrots, potatoes, bacon and sausages are the stuff of comfort food in many cultures. Easy-to-cook, I have alway found it a crowd-pleaser, particularly among crowds of diminutives. Yes, kids like it.

Italian mascarpone cake is a personal favourite. It's flexible and the perfect option for those who don't like overly sweet things. Easy-to-make, it can be made with many different combinations of berries, citrus zest and spices. I'm doing it here with my favourite combination—blueberries, orange zest and nutmeg—but you can adapt it to your own personal preferences.

Recently, people have asked me if I have any child-friendly recipes. This chicken, bacon, mushroom and asparagus bake takes me back to when I had to think up healthy dishes that would go down with kids of differing preparedness to try anything adventurous. This easy recipe has consistently proved popular with kids and adults alike.

This recipe for pasta with pumpkin, spinach and thyme sauce takes barely 30 minutes to prepare and is surprisingly delicious for something that is so easy to cook with relatively few ingredients. Ideal for when you need to pull something impressive together with little time on your hands.

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.

Moroccan duck roast duck with figs is a delicious dish from the Moroccan High Atlas, here served with smoky vegetables and couscous. Its great additional benefits are that you're likely to get at least one additional meal out of this dish—maybe more—and possibly discovering a new Japanese-Moroccan sauce.

Cullen Skink is a traditional Scottish dish, a hearty soup that includes white fish, smoked fish and potatoes at the very least but often also includes cream and other seafood. Similar to chowder, it can be served as a hearty meal-soup but is often served as a first course on formal occasions in Scotland.

This recipe for Sicilian casarecce with caper and anchovy tomato sauce is simplicity itself with few ingredients, healthy and delicious. All it takes is a little time to cook down to perfection. It's from one of my father's journals of recipes he collected on his travels in the 1960s and 1970s.

A recipe for pasta with creamy sweet pepper and pancetta sauce with notes of fresh basil from Genoa. It is simple and fairly quick to make, but delivers way beyond expectations if you pay attention to a few small details.

This Galician fish with vegetable and chorizo stew is my take on a delicious regional dish that is all the better for cooking two meals at the same time. Delicious white fish—cod, haddock or the like—is paired with a slow-cooked stew of potatoes, carrots, onions, green beans, chorizo and various other delights.

A riff on the British Sunday roast, this Eastern Mediterranean roast lamb is served with autumnal veggies and spätzle dressed in the fresh flavours of spinach, feta and parsley. It's a nod to the food culture that Turkish immigrants brought with them to Germany. But, don't let the highfalutin concept get in the way: it's a delicious meal and, importantly a slow-cooked treat that won't stress out whoever is cooking the Sunday roast.

This quick Belgian peperkoek cheesecake is an easy-to-make unbaked fridge cheesecake that is an homage to "peperkoek" a traditional Belgian breakfast loaf that contains numerous spices. With boozy black cherries and lemon, it's perfect for anyone who doesn't like puddings too sweet and you can prepare it in less than 20 minutes preparation time.

This chicken leftover pie is a great way to make use of roast chicken, a perfect second act for all those households that love roast chicken, but don't have the capacity to devour an entire bird at the Sunday table.

This dish of pasta with celery and basil sauce, served here with broad beans, is an amalgam of a fondly remembered dish from childhood via what happens when you start nosing around in the British Library. Highfalutin bibliographic japes aside, it's also easy to cook.

This celeriac and beef carbonnade from Arras in the north of France is a slow-cooked delight that takes some time, but is actually very easy to cook. A hearty warmer as the nights start to draw in...

Caraway seed and bitter orange marmalade poussin served with spätzle and braised white cabbage. An old German family recipe.

This pasta with creamy asparagus and smoked salmon is one of my favourite summer dishes for when you're hungry but want something a little refreshing. It's certainly filling, but it is also light with the flavours of warm weather; citrus and green things. Better still, it takes very little effort to cook.

A chorizo and chickpea stew (potaje) from the north of Spain full of vegetable goodness. In addition to the core ingredients, it includes shallots, sweet peppers, tomatoes, broad beans and a plethora of leafy green herbs.

A Namibian German recipe for duck with kumquats served with spätzle with beetroot and horseradish. It's incredibly easy to cook. All it takes are good quality ingredients and a little patience to end up with a restaurant-quality dish.