There’s a little, traditional-looking restaurant on rue Keller in Paris that’s not what it seems.

It isn’t a bistro as such … there’s no fairly predictable list of French classics washed down with red wine, nor is it an ultra-modern temple of haute cuisine. Instead, it serves a menu based around minced meat, formed into tartare, burgers or meatballs.

The three friends behind Cafe Moderne – one a very handy chef, the other two addicted to street food – realised on a jaunt around New York that there’s more to the meatball than the grey and unappetising ones from that ubiquitous Swedish furniture store, the one where you always mentally factor in a second trip to return the stuff that just falls apart, or the burgers from that temple to Americanism, the one with the drive-thru golden arches.

They were right. At their best, a burger or meatball can be sublime – a carefully seasoned, carefully flavoured dish centred around either can change the course of your day. It’s simple food, but when it’s done well, it’s got the potential to be astonishing food.

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A lot of the food I cook at the moment is about convenience.

Not ‘convenience’ in the sense of ‘piercing the film on some ready meal and throwing it into a microwave’, but convenience in terms of getting the best results with the least effort.

That doesn’t mean that my food is becoming ‘bad’ – there’s a very real misconception out there about food that’s convenient not being good, but it does mean that I’m putting less effort into some meals than I might have done when I had, well, more time.

But again, there’s another misconception … ‘convenient’ doesn’t equal fast, either – far from it … many times, I spend a far greater amount of elapsed time cooking, it’s just that the active time spent at the stove is shorter, with longer gaps between interventions.

It’s lazy or smart cooking, depending on your perspective.

This is a classic example. It’s a chicken sofrito, a speciality of the city of Jerusalem, which arrived there via the Sephardi Jews millenia ago.

As with most dishes that stretch back that long, there’s good reason it’s endured – it’s simple, and absolutely delicious. The basic premise is that a butterflied chicken is lightly and slowly cooked in a big, shallow, covered pan in its own juices for a long time.

That’s just about it.

The chicken emerges tender and perfectly cooked, and there’s hardly anything to wash up.

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In common with a lot of people, I buy big bunches of beetroot because I feel good about buying something that’s quite evidently been yanked straight out of the ground and that comes complete with leaves and dirt. I rarely have a clear idea about what I’m going to do with it, but still I buy it.

The leaves tend to wilt, and get lopped off and chucked in the compost bin, which in itself is something of a travesty as they make very good eating, and the purple roots sit in the fridge for a little too long, until they’ve got a hint of softness about them, at which point, they get sliced up, roasted and then thrown away because nobody actually likes them done that way, apart from me.

The biggest problem I have with beetroot is the mess – prepping a beetroot is a kitchen bloodbath that leaves everything covered in a bright reddish-purple slick. Don’t wear anything white when slicing beetroot.

I’m maligning this quite wonderful vegetable, though. Treated well, and eaten fresh or cooked properly, it’s a wonderful, if divisive, thing.

This recipe puts it to good use in a baguette, marrying the deep earthy flavour with the equally heavyweight flavour of time … this is like autumn distilled and condensed down into a piece of bread.

Baguettes are a little tricky, and after one too many disasters involving lovingly tended pieces of dough welding themselves onto baking paper intended to make the whole operation of moving ‘ready to bake’ dough around easier, I’ve decided to invest in two things: some proper silicon baking mats, like these, which have handy targets and rulers for optimum baked product placing, or these ones, which are far more sensible, and a proper baking tin that’s actually made for baking baguettes, like this one, which strikes me as about a tenner well spent.

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Here’s a ridiculously simple dessert for two:

Make two cuts in the shape of a cross in each of eight figs, plump them up a little so that they open up slightly, and fit them snuggly into a small ovenproof roasting tin or dish with a lid.

Drizzle a couple of tablespoons of honey over the top of the figs, letting plenty drip inside the cuts, and splash over a good glug of Marsala wine.

Put the lid on the dish or tray and roast in the oven for about twenty minutes at 200c.

Serve straight away, with vanilla ice cream, and some of the boozy sauce spooned over the top.

How easy is that?