Most recipes for pasta dough call for ‘00’ flour. Many authoritarian sources say this is quite wrong and the correct flour to use is durham wheat semolina. This is our version using this beautiful fine yellow flour.

This is one of those dishes with a multitude of spelling variations, but the essence of the dish is always a zesty or spicy tomato sauce in which fresh eggs are poached. The word shakshouka means ‘a mixture’ in some Arabic dialects and there are endless variations of this versatile dish. Our recipe is great because it’s structure provides a template for experimentation. Tell us if you make something special. Bread such as khobz or pita is often served to mop the plate. There’s room for embellishment here. If you have some ras el hanout, a little pinch might add something special, although I wouldn’t tell a Moroccan, as traditionally this spice blend is used in only specific dishes. (We love a good laugh about ‘traditional’ food, don’t you?) Try roasting whole cumin before grinding or finely grating double the quantity of fresh turmeric. Smoked salt might be nice. Parsley is often substituted for the coriander, but what about sage or chives? Leaving the chili pepper whole will allow you to remove it from the sauce when you feel it has added enough heat. You need a pan with a tight-fitting lid. A tagine is perfect for 4 servings; a smaller pan with lid is necessary for fewer portions. We are working on a version of this recipe with individual serving dishes so it can be scaled with more versatility and served more conveniently.

We’ve found this recipe to be a reliable one for making versatile short-crust pastry. The recipe is easy to remember as a 400–200–100 ratio of flour–butter–salt+water. Don’t overwork the dough. We are not trying to develop gluten and we don’t want to melt the butter during the kneading process.

We love these little gems when they turn up at yum cha. You often see these written as siu mai, along with a myriad other variations. We have not attempted to detail the process of making or filling the wrappers. We will deal with that at a later stage. There are traditional ways of filling and pleating, but we aren’t huge on mindless culinary tradition, so we recommend doing it any way you want. The point here is simply to start the process of developing a worthy recipe for the filling.

We like to read the blog of Yi from Yi Reservation. This recipe for spicy sichuan beef stew is based on his (紅燒牛肉). We also used tips we have learned from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats in his recipe for Real Deal Kung Pao Chicken. We found Yi’s recipe a little tricky to follow so we adapted it to our format and tweaked it to accentuate flavour and refine the texture. If you are not familiar with sichuan peppers and their delightful numbing effect, then this may be a good recipe to try. The level of pepper spice is relatively mild but there is certainly no point to leaving them out; there are other beef stews you could make which don’t have the spice. Yi’s original recipe allowed for radish to be substituted for the potato. We like the way the potato soaks up the flavour of the liquid and releases starch which thickens the sauce. Little sticks of pickled radish are delicious, though, as they brighten the savoury flavour.

The name of this recipe is a reference to the perfectly smooth texture we achieve by using a tamis or fine-mesh lab sieve. We’ve tried so many different techniques, including multiple passes through a potato ricer, but nothing can duplicate the lump-free texture achieved by the method used in this recipe. Everyone is likely to have their own ideas about how much butter and milk to use (if any) and any personal preferences in this regard will not impact this technique. The crux of the process is prior to the addition of these ingredients. We’ve included our proportions here because they result in a buttery mash which doesn’t frighten those guests with an eye on their waist. We cook our potatoes in their skins, which somewhat extends the cooking time but arguably improves the flavour.