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.

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.

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.

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.