Chicken quesadillas are a staple on every Mexican restaurant menu, but they’re a snap to make yourself at home. Roast up your own chicken breast or make it even easier on yourself by using a prepared rotisserie chicken.

Many people equate fajitas with a sizzling-cast-iron-pan experience at the local Tex-Mex restaurant. While dramatic, that’s not necessary for making smoking-hot fajitas at home. A simple marinade for the chicken, some charred veggies, and a few fixin’s make for an easy and healthy weeknight dinner.

Last week I used dry garam masala in a quick chicken supper and in a yogurt-based marinade for titchy lamb cutlets. The first recipe used the spice blend to soften and deepen the flavour base I had already made with more potent spices – mustard seed, cumin and chilli; the second as the principal ingredient in a thick marinade that stuck to my lamb cutlets in thick, fragrant clumps, forming a yellow crust under the grill. Neither was served with the knee-jerk accompaniment of rice. Soft, flour-dusted bread and spinach salad with a lemony dressing sat next to both recipes perfectly, if unexpectedly. But then, that was always the point.

As its name suggests, wine is an important part of this recipe, so don't just pop down to the corner shop for a plastic bottle of cooking stuff – although it doesn't have to be from Burgundy, you'll get the best results from a silky, fruity pinot noir. If you find the finished sauce is too thin and acidic, a spoonful of redcurrant jelly, as used by Hopkinson and Bareham, should save the day – but it's easier to buy the right wine in the first place. Serve with boiled potatoes or plain rice, a green salad, and a toast to Keith.

Not as common as the beef and pork dishes at a Korean barbecue restaurant, this underappreciated chicken dish, known as dak gui, is just as tasty and has a flavor reminiscent of teriyaki chicken but with a more complex, grown-up slant.

Can anyone make better chicken soup than a Jewish mother, and can a good one really cure colds and soothe all ills?

It surprises me that we often save barbecues for special occasions or parties when, frankly, it can be quite stressful catering for such numbers over fire. Really, the barbecue is just another agreeable weapon in the thinking cook's arsenal, more appropriate for a family lunch or friends over for supper than for feeding the whole village/street/cricket team.

Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco employs an interesting technique for its popular fried chicken wings: The wings are poached in oil, salted for flavor, frozen, deep-fried, then tossed in a spice mixture. Chef Danny Bowien says that the freezing helps stretch the skin slightly so that the second fry makes the wings extra-crispy.

Cheap and delicious recipes for student gourmets from some of the country's top chefs, including Gordon Ramsay, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver

These slightly sweet and spicy chicken wings are easy to eat with your fingers and go great with beer. The glaze, made from common ingredients, is a snap to throw together. Have lots of napkins on hand for sticky fingers.