In the first two articles in this series I outlined the key ingredients, everyday processes and planning strategies worth thinking about now we’re cooking and eating at home for pretty much every meal. While these tips will help you keep your day-to-day cooking fresh and interesting, in theory the current situation also provides us with an opportunity to go a bit further: to take a deep dive into a specific culinary subject. At the very least, there’s a need to differentiate between grazing “at the desk” and evening meals away from “the office”, even if both make use of the same kitchen table, and to mark the change from weekends from weekdays. Why not do that through cooking?

With a toddler bouncing off the walls, a new cookbook to write and a seemingly never-ending flow of washing up, I’ve come to terms with the fact that this spring I’m not going to become the dumpling-folding expert I hoped I might. But I still plan to take the occasional 15-minute opportunity to get on top of using a whetstone to sharpen my knives. How about you? Here are my five ideas for cooking-themed projects that might inspire you, complete with a few suggestions of books and other resources to begin your journey down a culinary rabbit hole or two.

Like eating but can’t cook? Now really is a good time to take a few tentative steps towards regularly cooking from scratch. If that is your project, then perhaps I can suggest a few pointers:

• Take it easy. Two or three meals a week that stretch you is enough. Treat yourself to a delivery or two as well, along with a few of the dishes or ready meals you always fall back on. They’ll probably make you appreciate even more your tentative steps towards becoming a gourmand.
• Make “cooking from scratch” the activity for the night, rather than trying to also cram in a Zoom quiz and box set. There’s nothing like feeling rushed and overwhelmed to turn you right off the idea that cooking is a rewarding hobby in and of itself.
• Find one or two voices to rely on rather than randomly googling things you think you want to cook. The sometimes trumpeted but often maligned Mr Jamie Oliver is actually a very solid place to begin – try, for example, Cook With Jamie (or any of his TV programmes); a Netflix series by Ms Samin Nosrat titled Salt Fat Acid Heat might be the thing that convinces you cooking is both easy and worthy of your time. She has a book of the same name, which helps the reader work out how food and flavour fit together; and Ms Felicity Cloake’s Completely Perfect covers essential and iconic dishes in a very clear and logical manner – as a taster you could dip into the online archive of her Guardian newspaper column.

Perhaps you’re comfortable with the essentials, have a solid 15-dish repertoire on rotation and can fashion a passable meal from leftovers and scraps. But if you’re missing regular meals at restaurants specialising in cuisines beyond your own kitchen’s comfort zone, consider spending a few days, weeks or months focusing on the food of just one area.

I would begin with a core cookbook, planning one or two evening “feasts” so as to have something to aim for. Browse Instagram and internet TV for further insight, and spend a few hours online or in a relevant store (where possible) diving into the specialist ingredients of that region. For example:

Thai and Laotian

Use Ms Kay Plunkett-Hogge’s Baan as an entry point to ingredient lists that previously seemed impenetrable; or head to books by Mr David Thompson and Mr Andy Ricker, which are prominent on the shelves of your favourite Thai-influenced restaurants. Mr John Chantarasak (@englishhippy) is a good source of online inspiration, not least his weekly @anglothai newsletter.

Regional Chinese

Ms Fuchsia Dunlop’s recently updated The Food Of Sichuan is an excellent place to begin a lifelong fascination with regional Chinese cooking. Her Land Of Fish And Rice is the logical next step (away from Sichuanese and towards Shanghai and the Lower Yangtze in the west). Delve further still with the pocket-sized (Kindle only) Uncle Lau’s Teochew Recipes and Uncle Anthony’s Hokkien Recipes. To whet the tastebuds, watch the Instagram profile of @symmetrybreakfast, which increasingly showcases Mr Michael Zee’s life in Shanghai beyond the first meal of the day.

_The Caucasus _

Want to know about a regional cuisine you didn’t know you needed to know about? The Black Sea: Dispatches And Recipes, Through Darkness And Light by Ms Caroline Eden is an enthralling read and an opportunity to travel without leaving your home. “How to” videos on Ukrainian dumplings by Ms Olia Hercules will suck you in further, as will her books Mamushka and Kaukasis.

Obviously there are many other countries and cuisines to consider. A good place for the curious to begin is Vittles, an email newsletter curated by food writer Mr Jonathan Nunn. Included among a broad sweep of topics are guides to London’s immigrant supermarkets, written by people well versed in using the ingredients found within them – so far Turkish, Polish, Latin American, Balkan, no doubt more to come – it’s worth tuning into.

You could jump on the #isolationsourdough steam train (if so, Mr Fergus Jackson’s step-by-step guide over on @brickhousebread is where to start). But be warned: sourdough bread is relatively time – and certainly flour – consuming.

Other good things to do with dough do exist, many of which are ideal cooking projects – short-term activities that will either get you hooked and wanting to dive deeper, or that you can say you’ve had a go at, that weren’t a total waste of time and money and don’t need to do it again. 

Pizza is a prime example. It’s easy to make a simple, instant-yeast-powered dough. It’s even easier to buy a kit that provides that dough for you. The mini-chain Pizza Pilgrims has recently launched a DIY Pizza In The Post kit, in which that pizza is cooked to near-Neapolitan oven-standards simply via a frying pan and your grill. From there you can begin to look into making your own dough, and then suddenly you’ll find yourself sucked into the world of remarkably good gas and/or wood-fired portable pizza ovens, such as those made by Ooni (whose app is also a reliable source of dough recipes). You’re welcome.

There’s a chance you didn’t get the Low & Slow BBQ memo that was doing the rounds back in 2012, but even if you already ate your fill of pulled pork back then and just want to recall the feel-good factor of summer, cooking over fire is a great way of creating something delicious while also making you really feel like you’ve achieved something. Either way, you may finally find yourself with the time to put a pork butt or beef brisket in a smoker and just occasionally tinker between Zoom calls. Go for it: Pitt Cue Co. by Mr Tom Adams and Franklin Barbecue will sort you out with temperatures, timings and key techniques.

There is more to fire and food than smoking, however. Over the past three or four years, the most hyped new restaurants and food festivals have prominently featured “live fire” cooking. Order a turbot from the fishmonger and turn yourself into Mr Tomos Parry of Brat, or simply try your hand at imitating the grill-master at your local Turkish mangal that you miss more than you might have thought you would one month ago. There’s reading and scrolling and watching to be done (consider Mr Francis Mallmann for all three forms of research), but ultimately for this one, it’s practice makes perfect – bag some charcoal and pray for sunshine.

At the outset of this series, I wanted to stress that there’s so much more to home cooking than boiling pasta. Then again, maybe there isn’t.

Fresh pasta is one of the simplest and most rewarding skills to learn, and one that you can try once for one meal, or gradually build on your technique and become an expert (and connoisseur) over time.

There are also a seemingly infinite number of directions to take your dough once kneaded. For those of us who didn’t grow up at nonna’s knee, head to @PastaGrannies, an initially online project in which wrinkled Italian grandmothers have been filmed passing on their incredible skills and wisdom. It’s endearing, informative and well worth a watch. See also Mr Jacob Kenedy’s stylish reference book and pasta-sauce pairing guide The Geometry Of Pasta.

Crucially, there’s no need in the first instance to invest in a pasta machine that may become redundant if you don’t get hooked. Not only are the semolina flour-based pasta shapes – known as pici, orecchiette, cavatelli and trofie – hand-rolled, they’re egg-free, addictive and calming to roll and shape, too. In fact, they’re a not too distant a cousin to Chinese hand-pulled noodles… and that’s a whole other hole to fall down (hint: begin with the Instagram account of Ms Pippa Middlehurst).

Serves 2

For the pasta

• 200g semolina flour (semolina di grano duro), plus extra for dusting
• 100ml warm water

For the sauce

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 sausages (around 160g), skins split and discarded, meat crumbled
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• ½ tsp dried chilli flakes
• 5 or 6 broccoli florets, in small pieces (no bigger than 2cm)
• 20g parmesan, finely grated — plus extra as garnish

To make the pasta, combine the semolina and water in a bowl using a fork to bring the two together. Scrape out onto a lightly floured but otherwise clean surface and knead until firm and springy to the touch – it’ll take 6 or 7 minutes. Wrap with clingfilm or leave in a covered bowl and set aside to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Portion the dough into three pieces and work with one at a time, leaving the others wrapped. Roll one third of the dough into a thin sausage, around 1.5cm in diameter. Slice that into pieces just shy of 1cm long, then use the flat tip of a blunt knife to push a piece flat, before using your thumb to invert the shape, like a little ear. Repeat until all the dough is used up – you’ll be an expert by the end.

Dust with semolina flour and store in an airtight box in the fridge.

When you’re ready to eat, put a large saucepan filled with heavily salted water on to boil.

To make the sauce, measure the olive oil into a cold saute pan and add the crumbled sausage. Place over a medium-high heat and gently fry for 4-5 minutes until the sausage begins to brown and crisp. Jab at the pork from time to time to break it up further. 

Add the garlic, fennel seeds and chilli flakes to the sausage and its oils and cook for 1 minute more, softening but not browning the garlic. Now add the broccoli, plus 3-4 ladles of water from the pasta pot, to around 1cm deep. Cook for 5 minutes until the broccoli is soft and beginning to dull in colour and most of the water has evaporated.

Tip the orecchiette (but not any loose semolina) into the saucepan of boiling water and cook for 4-5 minutes until tender. Drain the pasta, reserving around 150-200ml of the cooking water. Transfer the pasta to the sausage and broccoli, plus around 100ml of pasta water and 20g of grated parmesan. Let the cheese melt, then toss thoroughly, bringing some of the starch out of the pasta to thicken the sauce. Add a little more water if you think it needs it. 

Serve with a liberal dusting of parmesan.