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When I first started cooking Asian food, one of the things I used to make was a chicken dish with lemon and coriander from a BBC book by Madhur Jaffrey. Later, for Iranian guests, I sort-of 'persianised' the recipe, and served it with rice made the Persian way, with a golden crust. This is the result. If possible, start the morning before a dinner, or the day before a lunch. For four people with an appetite, you need eight chicken pieces. As I said before, I usually buy what the French call the ' haut de cuisse ', the thigh without the drumstick. If they're from the supermarket, you may need to trim off some 'make-weight' fat and skin tucked underneath the pieces. Set them to brown in hot oil, first one side, then the other. Personally, to avoid getting oil and chicken fat all over the kitchen, I do this with a lid on and, having done one side, switch the heat off for a while to let the spitting die down before turning the pieces over and switching back on a...

  I was alone during the first 2020 lockdown, and for evening meals, started making food that would last me two days or more. As I'm a lazy cook, that also meant making things that more or less cooked themselves, and didn't dirty many pots, me, or the kitchen. One of these dishes is a kind of chicken stew that, with rice, pasta or boiled potatoes, makes two good dinners for me. And the left-over sauce can then be resurrected on the third day to make a pasta dish in its own right. I buy a pack of four of what the French call ' hauts de cuisses ', i.e. the thighs only, without drumsticks, but of course you can buy whatever pieces you want. Place them in cold olive oil, skin-side down, in a wide pan, about four inches deep, then blitz them on a high heat, with the lid on : this way, you don't get oil and fat spitting all over the kitchen and burning your hands. While they're browning, cut up: one large onion garlic if there's any to hand a bulb of fennel or a ...