Fried in pancakes, braised with duck, pickled with a roast chicken or baked for pudding, apples are one of autumn’s star ingredients

Few ingredients are as familiar as apples, yet few carry such symbolic weight. Peaking just as the season’s begin to turn, they are the ultimate symbol of nature’s abundance, imbued with a sense of nostalgia for the retreating sunlight. The symbolism became unexpectedly tangible to me during a recent autumn apple-picking trip with my family: surrounded by branches heavy with fruit, I found myself seeing the humble apple with fresh awe. It looked nothing short of nature’s miracle. Native to the mountains of central Asia, near the modern Kazakhstan-China border, it has travelled further than perhaps any other fruit, becoming at home in cuisines from Normandy to New York, Caucasus to Kashmir. Sweet or savoury, everyday or celebratory, the apple is truly universal. Its versatility always reminds me of the simple joy of cooking with the seasons.

Baked pasta, gnocchi, chicken, meatballs and greens – all perfectly served straight from the oven

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As I have mentioned before, we live directly above a takeaway pizzeria and tavola calda (a canteen-like spot that translates as “hot table”). My desk is by the window, so the writing and editing of my next book (a collection of regional recipes that is only two years late) has been accompanied by the smell of whatever is cooking in their kitchen downstairs, before being arranged, in big roasting trays, behind a glass counter. Occasionally, I have to shut the window, but mostly the steady stream of pizza, baked pasta, braised meat, meatballs, roast potatoes and green vegetables shining with olive oil inspires me. And that is the inspiration for this newsletter: ideas for easygoing dishes that are best served straight from their rectangular roasting tins.

As I write this, it is almost lunchtime, so, driven by my own hunger, I would like the first serving from a roasting tray to be Angela Hartnett’s macaroni cheese: al dente pasta mixed with béchamel and various cheeses, then baked until golden brown and bubbling at the edges. Just as welcome would be a plate of baked pasta inspired by one of my friend Cinzia’s dishes: meze maniche, rigatoni, penne or macaroni with a rich tomato sauce, basil, lots of mozzarella and pecorino. Or a slice of Meera Sodha’s vegan sweet potato, miso and wholemeal lasagne, which, she promises, takes 15 minutes to put together and uses good, flavourful, ready-made ingredients such as miso, sun-dried tomato paste and passata.

Baker Helen Goh’s fridge is chock-full of far-eastern flavours – but with a few fusion surprises

Curry leaves
I used to freeze fresh curry leaves, but then [the chef] Romy Gill said you lose all the aroma when you do this. So now I fry them and you get curry leaf oil, which keeps them fresh. You can then crumble them into things like dal.

Tofu
I’m addicted to tofu – I have firm, medium, soft, and puffy. But this is my breakfast tofu in ginger syrup; it’s like junket but made with soya beans. Someone taught me how to make this, but the secret ingredient was plaster of paris, so I get it from the Asian grocers. I’m not a big breakfast person, but I could easily eat a whole tub of this.

A deep and ingredient-busy take on the classic, constructed with four layers of pasta and a little geometric thinking

Bearing in mind that lasagne is a construction, it pays to start with some easygoing geometry. That is, think about the size of the dish you want to fill in relation to the size of the sheets you are using and the number of layers you want the lasagne to have. For four to six servings, I use a particular ceramic dish, because its 20cm x 29cm proportions mean that, broadly speaking, two fresh sheets of shop-bought egg pasta or four dried ones make a single layer (homemade pasta can be rolled and cut with scissors to whatever size you like, so is less relevant here).

Having calculated how many sheets are needed for each layer, the next question is: how high do you want your lasagne building to be? Height depends on the density of the filling, which, in the case of this week’s recipe, includes sausagemeat rolled (using wet hands and speed) into small, grape-sized meatballs that act like height-boosters in shoes. This elevation, along with tomato sauce and three cheeses, means that, even with just four layers, this lasagne has depth and cuts into satisfying squares. All this emphasis on the dish is also fitting because the word lasagne seems to derive from the Latin lasanum (cooking vessel), which in turn derives from the ancient Greek λάσανον, which signified either a cooking vessel or a tripod set over a fire.