We try not to hire professional chefs, or at least not very experienced ones. Perhaps we are being unfair, but we know that a lifetime of feeding people can make chefs a bit careless, a bit callous with food, and we want our food to be handled with the care of a home cook feeding loved ones. So rather than skill, we are looking for heart. Sometimes (rarely) this policy works.

Giorgia was the first one to join; a cake fanatic, she treats pastry like it’s a martial art—seriously, with fierce determination. We were very lucky to find Julia (she says she found us), whose heart is as great as her skills and who has a palate to match; she now runs our kitchen with Polish determination and her unique cheer.

We thought we had struck gold when we found Aristo, a bespectacled Spaniard with a winning smile who loves to eat, loves to cook and loves to feed people. He loved our food too, and wanted to learn so much that we could not foresee any problem. Our assumption has always been that if someone really wants to do the job, they can do the job; however, we did not take into account chronic clumsiness, a panicky disposition and a complete inability to retain information from one day to the next. Our kitchen became a warzone as Aristo trailed through it, bumping into equipment and furniture, leaving spillages and all kinds of debris in his wake. We soon realized that we could not leave him alone for a second, or if we did we would find ourselves with preparations so different from what we had wanted, we could not even tell what he was attempting to make. But we felt he was genuinely trying, and we liked him too much to let him go. We thought he could do the routine jobs, the repetitive tasks that are the backbone of every kitchen: slicing radishes, picking and washing parsley, picking pomegranate seeds. After a semi-successful week he graduated to cooking the lamb. This involves marinating it after lunch service; placing it in trays lined with aromatics, pink plums and roses; later, towards the tail-end of dinner service, putting it all in the deck oven (the stones in it as hot as can be after a whole day’s work); letting it all brown a bit, then putting a lid on it, turning the oven off and leaving it to cook in the residual heat all night. In the morning our noses would tell us how Aristo had done before we even got to the kitchen. We learned to recognize the different scenarios—an acrid smell meant he had left the oven on; steam meant he had forgotten to put the lid on; BBQ smell meant he had forgotten to add any liquid; and no smell at all meant that the lamb was still in the fridge, resting on its cold, pretty bed, and off the menu for today.

But if everything had gone to plan, the smell that welcomed us in the morning was pure joy: browned meat and vegetables roasting, sweet and sour caramel from the plums, a background perfume of roses and rose water—a promise of a true feast for everyone who came to eat with us that day, and a return of faith in our team and humanity, and our hiring policy.

These recipes are intended to give maximum value for minimum effort. All you need is a piece of meat (not an expensive one), the flavoring of your choice, some vegetables and a few hours in the oven. The result will be tender, flavorsome meat that will bring with it some sauce and a hit of nostalgia, a kind of sweet homesickness, even if you are already home.