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A cheap, batch-friendly workhorse: mixed peppers cooked down until silky with sweet onions and tomato, then folded through chickpeas and finished with red wine vinegar and parsley.

A revithada-style chickpea stew: soft, warming and quietly spiced with cumin and smoked paprika. Ready in half an hour and lovely spooned over rice.

A crunchy swap for chips: chickpeas dried hard, roasted until deep golden, then tossed hot with smoked paprika, cumin and garlic powder. Protein and fiber for very few calories.

Fakes, the Greek lentil soup that's the gentlest way back to solid food. Brown lentils simmered soft with tomato, oregano and bay, then lifted at the end with a slug of red wine vinegar and good olive oil.

Twenty-five minutes, one pan, mostly cupboard. The beans break down just enough to make the sauce creamy without a drop of cream.

Raw almonds roasted low until fragrant, then tossed warm with smoked paprika, cumin and a pinch of cayenne. Filling and full of healthy fats. Portion them out.

Soft olive-oil-poached potatoes and onion set in a chickpea-flour batter, cooked slowly until the middle is just custardy. Good hot, better at room temperature.

A generous vegetable soup with beans and small pasta, built on a slowly softened base of onion, carrot and celery. The kind of pot that improves every time you reheat it.

No cooking, one bowl, fifteen minutes. Chickpeas, cucumber, tomato and kalamata olives tossed in a sharp lemon and red wine vinegar dressing, with plenty of parsley and mint. Holds its own as a light lunch or shrinks to a side.

Sweet peppers packed with a lemony rice, pine-nut and herb filling and baked until they slump and blister. As good at room temperature as they are hot.

Greek yeast puffs fried until hollow and crisp, then rolled in syrup, cinnamon and walnuts. Best eaten standing at the stove.

A plain, damp cake carried by good olive oil and a lot of orange zest. Keeps for days and is better with coffee than with cream.

Lentils and rice cooked together under a heap of deeply caramelized onions, warmed with cumin, coriander and a whisper of cinnamon. The most filling plate in the set: the lentils make it stick with you far longer than rice alone.

Cannellini or butter beans forked into a chunky, garlicky spread with olive oil and lemon, piled onto good toast and topped with sliced tomato, herbs and chili flakes. Ten minutes, and far more filling than it looks.

The Provençal summer-vegetable stew, cooked the honest way: each vegetable browned so it keeps its character, then folded together to melt into a glossy, herby whole.

Giant white beans baked slowly in a sweet tomato sauce with dill and plenty of olive oil, until the top catches and the beans turn to cream. Greek taverna cooking at its simplest.

Orzo cooked risotto-style in stock so it comes out creamy without cream, finished with frozen peas, lemon and a lot of mint. One pot, twenty minutes.

Garlicky white beans wilted down with kale and lemon in a single pan. Substantial, cheap, and on the table in twenty minutes.

Good bread toasted hard, rubbed with a cut clove of garlic, then with the cut face of a ripe tomato until the crumb is stained red. Salt, olive oil, and nothing else.