I am struggling with mongoose.

I have a filter that I want to use to search through my model, which is:

const recipeSchema = new Schema(
    {
        name: { type: String, required: [true, "Recipe must have a name"] },
        category: {
            type: ObjectId,
            ref: "Category",
            required: [true, "Recipe must belong to a category"],
        },
        difficulty: { type: String, enum: ["easy", "medium", "hard"] },
    }
);

I got it to work by using this code:

let recipes = await Recipe.find({ ...searchTerm });

    if (difficulty) {
        recipes = await Recipe.find({
            ...searchTerm,
            difficulty: { $in: difficulty.split(",") },
        });
    }

    if (category && category !== "all") {
        recipes = await Recipe.find({
            ...searchTerm,
            category: { $in: category.split(",") },
            difficulty: { $in: difficulty.split(",") },
        });
    }

Can this code be simplified and use conditional logic inside queries?