Easy meals, tastes of Asia and delicious desserts were our chef columnist’s biggest hits with readers Harissa chicken tray bake with chickpeas and olives: one of your favourite Mark Moriarty recipes this year. Photograph: Harry Weir Mon Aug 10 2026 - 05:00 • 3 MIN READAsian flavours, one-tray oven dinners, beef classics and retro desserts – now that the first half of the year has definitively faded from view, we can reveal that these are the Mark Moriarty Irish Times recipes you have most enjoyed so far in 2026.Starting off strong in January was our chef columnist’s recipe for chicken honey and soy with brown rice and mirin, which he said at the time is a dish he throws together “when that’s all I have to get dinner on the table”. It involves chicken dusted in cornflour which is then fried off with vegetables, with the whole thing coming together in 15 minutes. “It’s high on seasoning and a perfect midweek meal,” Moriarty wrote.Chicken honey and soy with brown rice and mirin. Photograph: Harry Weir Your love of Asian influences was also evident in February with two very simple recipes: green beans with minced pork, garlic and chilli, and stir-fried beef with broccoli and oyster sauce. With these, Moriarty aimed to tap into what busy households need: “quick and delicious food, using quality but cost-effective ingredients”. Summing up his approach, he described “frying up mince and protein with spoonfuls of garlic, chilli and ginger, coated in sauces formed in seconds using highly seasoned liquids such as soy, oyster and fish sauce, chilli jam and condiments” to deliver lip-smacking food in minutes. Green beans with minced pork, garlic and chilli. Photograph: Harry Weir You’ve also demonstrated an appetite for hearty, meaty meals this year, especially in March, when the country was treated to what Met Éireann described as “wetter than normal” rain. A trip to Paris inspired Moriarty to recreate Parisian bistro dishes, with beef Bourguignon your clear favourite. He acknowledged the time involved in “properly” making this dish (marinating the beef overnight) but said it was “a recipe to settle in for the evening with”.Beef Bourguignon. Photograph: Harry Weir Closer to home, you also particularly appreciated our columnist’s St Patrick’s Day recipe for Irish stew, which he said should involve “a powerfully flavoured broth, with roasted lamb fat pearls suspended in a sea of braised vegetables and greens”. Made well, according to Moriarty, Irish stew rivals any traditional dish from anywhere in the world. His recipe involves slow-cooked lamb and “overcooked and soft” barley.Classic Irish stew. Photograph: Harry Weir Still with meaty dishes but with an emphasis on ease, you gobbled up Moriarty’s easy, low-cost tray bake dinners, notably his easy spiced meatball tray bake, which involves 15 minutes of preparation and 30 stress-free minutes of baking.“For busy families, this style of cooking isn’t about cutting corners, it’s about cooking smartly. Tray-baking works because it simplifies decisions,” said Moriarty of this cooking method, with “nothing fancy required” and most of the work done by the oven. Another hit from the same week was his harissa chicken tray bake with chickpeas and olives, which he recommended serving with crusty bread.Easy spiced meatball tray bake. Photograph: Harry Weir Again with the ease offered by the oven, you favoured fish at the end of March with one-pot Spanish-style cod bake, which has an even shorter cooking time of 20 minutes. Moriarty advised readers to source Irish cod, where “the flesh should be firm to touch, the colour glistening with a rainbow shimmer or ‘nacre’ in the flakes when cooked properly”.One-pot Spanish-style cod bake. Photograph: Harry Weir And now to desserts, where your tastes veered directly towards old-school vibes with classic recipes. In January, you flocked to the ultimate Victoria sponge cake, which Moriarty described as “maybe the most approachable cake of all”. He acknowledged that it looks simple but said that’s the point: “It’s the kind of cake that proves you don’t need anything fancy to make something genuinely delicious.”Classic Victoria sponge cake. Photograph: Harry Weir You also loved Moriarty’s April simple cake recipes inspired by his school days: coffee and walnut loaf cake and ginger loaf cake with clotted cream. Coffee and walnut loaf cake and ginger loaf cake with clotted cream. Photograph: Harry Weir In his ode to simple bakes, he recalled a classmate from his early teens putting Fairy Liquid into his fairy cakes as a joke, saying he could not believe “someone would so callously disrespect the food”. A serious cook, even then.IN THIS SECTION