The other night, as I tried out Ragù Bolognese from a new range of pasta sauces (www.kleincaporn.com), and caught myself tossing the pasta in butter and garnishing everything lavishly with freshly grated Parmesan and basil from the pot on my window ledge, it occurred to me that a bit of extra effort always pays dividends.

Recently I bought organic lambs’ liver from my local health food shop. As it was one of our chillier summer evenings, I’d planned to fry it with bacon and eat it with mashed potato and runner beans, but at the last moment I remembered another excellent way of cooking liver that lifts it into a slightly different league.

The idea of frying liver with a splash of vinegar might sound a little strange, but when it’s finished with finely chopped garlic and quite a lot of flat-leaf parsley, the flavours are even more vibrant and interesting.

It’s funny how we forget favourite recipes for years on end but then something stirs the memory and there it is again, just as good as ever.

I got the idea for cooking liver with vinegar years ago from one of my favourite cookbooks, Poor Cook by Caroline Conran, with delightful line drawings by Susan Campbell. It’s been out of print for years but if you see one in a car-boot sale or secondhand shop, snap it up because it’s special among cookbooks in that every recipe is appealing and they all work.

Like liver and bacon, this French recipe goes very well with mashed or boiled new potatoes, but is good too with a mound of green beans. In both cases, it’s essential to have the vegetables cooked and ready to go before you fry the liver.

Chicken fillets often save the day for quick, healthy after-work suppers. One of my favourite ways of jazzing them up is dipping them into chopped nuts. This works brilliantly with ground almonds but is more spectacular with finely chopped hazelnuts or walnuts. The nuts stick better if you dust the chicken with flour and dip them into beaten egg first, but this “glue” isn’t essential.

These moreish strips of nutty moist chicken go with most salads and seasonal vegetables, but work best, I think, if there’s something creamy involved somewhere along the line. A dollop of hoummos is good with, say, green beans or a salad of peeled cucumber half-moons and peas, and tzatziki or herb-laced Greek yoghurt is good with roast or fresh tomatoes.

The other night I matched hazelnut chicken nuggets with boiled beetroot, soured cream and chives, a sort of deconstructed bortsch. This excellent combination was compounded by crisp lettuce hearts with a lemony dressing and chopped mint, providing a fantastic mix of textures and bursts of flavour.

On holiday in the Greek island of Samos recently, I had the best rocket I’ve ever eaten, whole just-dug plants bought early one morning from the back of a farmer’s truck parked at the edge of the village. The big, broad frilly leaves tasted both bitter and creamy and packed a punch so powerful that it was almost a relief when the next day the heat had faded slightly.

They were the star of several exceptional salads, but one made with filleted, chilli-seasoned canned sardines and gremolata – garlic chopped with parsley and lemon zest – is my favourite.

To complete the healthy theme, I’d recommend wafer-thin slices of pineapple tossed with chopped mint or nectarine and raspberry fruit salad with lime juice.

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