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Esparregado

Garlic puréed greens

Fried fish in a Lisbon casa de pasto often comes with a spoonful of soft, dark green esparregado on the side, and the roast lamb at Easter lunch in the Ribatejo does too. Cooks use whatever leaves are in season: turnip tops in winter, spinach the rest of the year, sometimes a handful of wild asparagus. The greens are cooked, chopped very fine and stirred into garlic-scented olive oil with a little flour until creamy, then lifted with a dash of vinegar. It is good with fried cuttlefish, grilled sardines or a fried egg. A common mistake is skipping the squeeze; wet greens make a watery purée, so press out as much water as you can. Chef's tip: squeeze the cooked greens really hard before chopping; watery greens give a thin, grey purée.

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Niislel saladPotato and egg salad

Niislel means 'capital', and this creamy salad is the one served across Ulaanbaatar at Tsagaan Sar (Lunar New Year), birthdays and in every canteen. It descends from the Russian Olivier salad of the Soviet era, made Mongolian with plenty of cucumber and sometimes apple; it usually includes ham or sausage, left out here and replaced with extra egg. It's cool and comforting next to hot buuz (dumplings) or tsuivan. Chef's tip: cut everything into small, even cubes the size of a pea; that uniform dice is what makes it niislel and not just potato salad.

45 min

Mongolian Salads

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NikujagaBeef and potato stew

Two naval port towns, Maizuru near Kyoto and Kure near Hiroshima, both claim nikujaga was first cooked in their navy galleys. Whatever its start, it became the dish many Japanese people think of as mum's cooking, simmered on autumn and winter evenings and served with rice and miso soup. Thin slices of beef, chunks of potato, onion and carrot cook gently in dashi seasoned with soy and sugar until the potatoes are tender and soaked with flavour. Families in eastern Japan often use pork; in the west, beef is usual. Chef's tip: cover the stew with a circle of baking paper with a small hole in the middle (an otoshibuta, or drop lid), so the small amount of liquid bastes everything evenly.

40 min

Japanese Meat

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NimonaFresh green pea curry

When fresh peas fill the markets of Varanasi and Gorakhpur in December, almost every household makes nimona. The peas are coarsely ground and fried in mustard oil until they lose their raw smell and turn a darker, nutty green. Potatoes are then added and everything simmers in a thin, spicy gravy. It is eaten with plain rice on a winter afternoon, and some families add fried moong dal vadis for extra bite. The most common mistake is grinding the peas into a smooth paste; nimona should have texture, like crushed peas rather than soup. Chef's tip: pulse the peas with the green chillies, ginger and garlic in short bursts, and stop as soon as they look like coarse, wet crumbs.

55 min

Indian Curries

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Niter kibbehSpiced clarified butter

Niter kibbeh is the golden spiced butter used across the Ethiopian highlands on non-fasting days, when a spoonful goes into doro wat, kitfo, genfo or a simple pan of scrambled eggs. Butter is melted slowly with onion, garlic, ginger, fenugreek, cardamom, sacred basil (besobela) and other spices, then strained, leaving a fragrant, nutty fat that keeps for months. Because it is dairy it is never eaten during fasts; for those dishes, Ethiopians use plain oil, or you can warm 250 ml vegetable oil with the same spices for 15 minutes and strain it for a vegan spiced oil. Chef's tip: keep the heat very low; the butter should barely shiver, and if the milk solids burn the whole batch tastes acrid.

40 min

Ethiopian Basics

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Groundnut soup (nkatenkwan)Peanut soup

Nkatenkwan is the Sunday soup of Ghanaian homes, simmered while families are at church and eaten afterwards with omo tuo (soft rice balls) or fufu. Roasted groundnut paste is cooked slowly in a peppery tomato and ginger broth until the oil separates and turns the soup a rich orange-brown. It usually carries chicken or goat; here garden eggs (small African aubergines) and mushrooms keep it meaty without meat. Chef's tip: cook the groundnut paste long and slow; it is ready only when reddish oil rises and pools on top, and rushing it leaves a raw, pasty taste.

60 min

Ghanaian Soups

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NokedliSoft egg dumplings

Nokedli, also called galuska, are the small, soft, irregular egg dumplings that sit under almost every paprikás in Hungary, from Budapest lunch canteens to Sunday tables in the villages of the Great Plain. Unlike German Käsespätzle, they are not baked with cheese: they are a plain, buttery side whose job is to soak up a red, sour-cream sauce. Grandmothers scrape the batter off a wet board with a knife, but a nokedli grater (nokedliszaggató) or a colander with large holes is quicker at home. Serve them with gombapaprikás or lecsó, or toss them with fried egg for a quick supper. Chef's tip: let the batter rest for 10 minutes before cooking; the flour hydrates and the dumplings hold together instead of dissolving into the water.

25 min

Hungarian Pasta & Noodles

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Nom banh chok with green curry brothRice noodles in green curry broth

Before seven in the morning, women carrying baskets on shoulder poles sell nom banh chok across Cambodia; around Siem Reap there is even a lane of stalls near the temples known for it. Soft, slippery rice noodles are piled into a bowl, ladled with a pale green broth of kroeung and coconut milk, then buried under shredded banana blossom, cucumber, beansprouts, long beans and handfuls of herbs. The market version thickens the broth with pounded fish; here pumpkin and creamy white beans give it the same body. Chef's tip: be generous with the raw vegetables and herbs; the dish is meant to be more garden than noodle, and the cool crunch is what balances the warm broth.

60 min

Cambodian Pasta & Noodles

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Nom krokCoconut rice cakes

Nom krok are a street snack you hear before you see: the hiss of batter hitting a charcoal-heated cast-iron pan full of small round hollows, outside markets and schools across Phnom Penh in the late afternoon. Each little cake has a lacy, crunchy rice-flour shell and a molten top of salted coconut cream with spring onion, and two halves are pressed together to eat hot from a banana leaf. A Danish aebleskiver or Japanese takoyaki pan works perfectly at home. Chef's tip: let the pan get properly hot before the first batter goes in, about 4 minutes on a medium-high heat; a cool pan makes pale, sticky cakes that won't come out cleanly.

40 min

Cambodian Snacks & Starters

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LebkuchenSpiced gingerbread cookies

Nuremberg has been the German capital of Lebkuchen since the Middle Ages, when the city sat on the spice trade routes, and at its Christkindlesmarkt the stalls are piled with them every Advent. The finest kind, Elisenlebkuchen, contain almost no flour: they're made mostly of ground nuts, candied peel, eggs, sugar and a warm spice mix, baked on thin Oblaten wafers so they stay soft and chewy inside, then glazed with chocolate or sugar. They keep for weeks in a tin and get better as they rest. Chef's tip: bake them only until just set; a common mistake is baking until firm, which makes them dry and hard by the next day.

50 min

German Baking

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Num ansom chekBanana sticky rice parcels

Num ansom chek are wrapped by the dozen in April for Khmer New Year and again in autumn for Pchum Ben, when families carry them to the pagoda as offerings. A ripe banana is hidden inside a jacket of glutinous rice that has been seasoned with coconut milk and dotted with black beans, then the whole thing is rolled tightly in banana leaf and boiled until the rice turns sticky and the banana goes jammy and blush-pink. Unwrapped, they're eaten at room temperature or sliced and grilled the next morning. Chef's tip: use bananas that are fully yellow with a few brown freckles; green ones stay chalky and the pink colour never comes.

90 min

Cambodian Desserts

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Oromo with pumpkinSteamed pumpkin roll

Oromo, or orama, is a big rolled dumpling: a thin sheet of dough spread with filling, rolled into a long coil and steamed in a multi-tiered mantovarka. It's a home dish across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, quicker than shaping dozens of manti. In autumn, when Kyrgyz gardens in the Chüy Valley are full of squash, it's filled with grated pumpkin and onion, which turn sweet and juicy. Serve in thick slices with sour cream or a garlicky tomato sauce. Chef's tip: grate the pumpkin coarsely and salt it only just before rolling; salted too early it weeps and makes the dough soggy.

80 min

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Nyama chomaSlow-grilled goat or beef

Nyama choma, "roasted meat" in Swahili, is the centre of every weekend gathering in Kenya: at roadside joints on the edge of Nairobi you choose your goat ribs or beef by the kilo, it is grilled slowly over charcoal, chopped on a wooden board and brought to the table with salt, kachumbari (tomato and onion salad) and ugali. The meat is meant to be firm and chewy, smoky and simply salted. The mistake is grilling over fierce flames; the outside chars before the inside is tender, so keep it over glowing coals and turn it often. Chef's tip: leg of goat or lamb on the bone is easiest at home; rub it with salt and a little lemon only.

110 minEast African Meat

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Nyonya chap chyeBraised cabbage with glass noodles

In Peranakan homes in Melaka and Penang, chap chye (mixed vegetables) is cooked in a big pot for Chinese New Year and family prayer days. Cabbage, dried shiitake, wood ear, lily buds and beancurd skin are braised with garlic and tau cheo, the salty fermented soybean paste, until everything is soft and the glass noodles have soaked up the savoury gravy. Many families add pork belly or prawns, but the vegetarian pot is just as traditional for the first day of the new year. It tastes better the next day. Chef's tip: fry the tau cheo with the garlic until it smells nutty before anything else goes in.

50 min

Malaysian Vegetarian

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Obi nonTandoor bread

Every Uzbek meal starts with bread torn by hand and passed round the table, and obi non is the everyday loaf: a round with a thick, soft rim and a thin, crisp centre pricked with a patterned stamp called a chekich. In Samarkand and Tashkent it comes out of clay tandoors at dawn, and across the border in Kazakhstan the same bread is sold as tandyr nan. Bread is never cut with a knife and never laid face down. A very hot oven and a baking stone or upturned tray come close to the tandoor at home. Eat it warm with green tea, achichuk salad, soups and plov. Chef's tip: press the centre really thin and prick it all over; if you don't, it puffs into a ball like pitta and you lose the flat, crackly middle.

40 min

Uzbek Breads & Parathas

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Obleas con arequipeWafers with dulce de leche

Obleas are the giant, paper-thin round wafers sold from street carts in Bogotá's parks and around Floridablanca in Santander, where they began. The vendor spreads two wafers with arequipe, Colombia's dulce de leche, and adds whatever you choose: blackberry jam, grated cheese, condensed milk or sprinkles, then presses them together. They are crisp, sticky and fun to make with children. Look for oblea wafers in Latin American shops. Chef's tip: assemble them right before eating; the wafers soften within an hour.

10 min

Colombian Desserts

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Ofe onugbuBitter leaf soup

Ofe onugbu is the soup Igbo families in Anambra and Enugu make for Sunday lunch and for visitors coming home at Christmas. Washed bitter leaf gives a gentle, pleasant bitterness, cocoyam paste thickens it, and beef, shaki (tripe), stockfish and dried fish add layer after layer of savoury flavour, all coloured by palm oil. It is eaten with pounded yam, eba or fufu, pinched up with the fingers. The mistake to avoid is using bitter leaf that hasn't been washed enough; it should taste only mildly bitter before it goes in. Chef's tip: frozen pre-washed bitter leaf from African grocers saves an hour of squeezing and rinsing.

130 min

Nigerian Soups

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Oil downBreadfruit and salt fish one-pot

Oil down is what Grenadians cook on the beach, at village fêtes and on Sunday afternoons, often in a big iron pot over a wood fire with everyone waiting around it. Breadfruit, salt fish and soft flour dumplings are layered with callaloo and turmeric (called 'saffron' on the island), then steamed in coconut milk until the milk is drunk up and only a golden oil coats the pot, which gives the dish its name. Many cooks add salted pig tail or chicken; this version keeps to salt fish. The mistake to avoid is stirring, which breaks the layers into mush; shake the pot instead. Chef's tip: put the Scotch bonnet in whole and lift it out at the end, so it scents the pot without burning everyone's mouth.

95 minCaribbean Fish

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Ojingeo bokkeumSpicy stir-fried squid

Around the harbours of the Chungcheong coast on the Yellow Sea, seafood restaurants fry freshly landed squid in a sticky red sauce, and the same dish turns up in lunch canteens and home kitchens all over Korea. Bright with chilli, it's on the table in about twenty minutes and is often piled straight onto rice as ojingeo deopbap. The sauce is gochujang and chilli flakes sweetened with a little sugar, and the vegetables stay crisp. Serve with rice and a bowl of light soup to cool things down. Chef's tip: mix the sauce before you light the hob, because the squid cooks so fast that there is no time to measure anything once it's in the pan.

20 min

Korean Fish

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Ojingeo sundaeRice-stuffed squid

Abai Village in Sokcho, on Gangwon's east coast, was settled by people from Hamgyeong province in the north who could not go home after the Korean War. With squid plentiful in the East Sea, they stuffed it the way they had once stuffed pork casings for sundae, and the dish is now sold in the village's small restaurants and at Sokcho's Jungang market. The squid is filled with sticky rice, tofu and vegetables, steamed, cut into rounds and fried in beaten egg until golden. It makes a good sharing plate with a soy and vinegar dip. Chef's tip: mix a little glutinous rice into the filling; it binds the slices so they don't fall apart in the pan.

90 min

Korean Fish

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Ojja with merguezSpicy tomato sauce with sausage

Ojja is the quick supper of Tunis cafés and home kitchens: a pan of tomato, peppers, garlic and harissa, cooked down until thick, with slices of spicy lamb merguez and eggs set softly on top. It is scooped up with crusty bread straight from the pan. The mistake is stirring the eggs in too early; they should go in once the sauce is thick and be left alone to just set. Chef's tip: brown the merguez first so its spiced fat flavours the sauce. If you can't get merguez, use any spicy lamb or beef sausage.

30 min

Tunisian Meat

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Oka i'aRaw fish in coconut cream

Oka i'a is the raw fish salad served at every Samoan to'ona'i, the big Sunday lunch after church in Apia and the villages of Upolu and Savai'i, and in Samoan homes in Auckland. It is close to Fiji's kokoda but usually uses tuna, a shorter citrus soak and more vegetables, with a finish of spring onion. As a raw fish dish it is written here as a safer version: buy very fresh, previously frozen sashimi-grade tuna, keep it cold and eat within 2 hours. Raw or citrus-cured fish is not for pregnant women, young children or anyone with a weakened immune system; for them, sear the tuna as described in the steps. The mistake is cutting the fish too small, so it goes mushy; keep the cubes about 1.5 cm. Chef's tip: chill the coconut cream and the bowl, so the salad is cold and refreshing.

25 minPacific Islander Fish

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Okayama barazushiScattered sushi with vegetables

Okayama families make a big shallow platter of barazushi for the autumn shrine festivals, Girls' Day in March and other celebrations, and it is sold in station lunch boxes all year. A local story says it began when a lord ordered people to eat only one side dish, so cooks hid everything in the rice instead. The seasoned rice is mixed with simmered vegetables and topped with seafood from the Seto Inland Sea. This version uses cooked prawns, gently simmered squid and egg threads, plus ready-made vinegared mackerel, which is cured but not cooked. Use very fresh, sushi-grade fish from a trusted fishmonger; not for pregnant women, young children or anyone with a weakened immune system. Leave the mackerel out, or add extra prawns, to make it fully cooked. Chef's tip: fold the vinegar into the rice while it is hot and fan it as you go; the rice soaks up the seasoning and turns glossy instead of wet.

60 min

Japanese Rice & Grains

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OkroshkaCold vegetable and kvass soup

When Moscow swelters in July, okroshka replaces every hot soup: a bowl of finely chopped radishes, cucumber, potato, egg and a forest of green onion and dill, with ice-cold kvass poured over at the table. It is the lunch of dacha weekends and of hot afternoons on the Volga, and families argue over whether kvass or kefir is the right base (kefir works well and is less sweet). The name comes from kroshit, to crumble, since everything is chopped small. Chef's tip: rub the spring onions and dill with salt first until they give off juice; it releases a green, pungent flavour that tastes of summer.

45 min

Russian Soups

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OlanAsh gourd and cowpea stew

Olan is the quietest dish on a Travancore sadya leaf, the banana-leaf feast served in southern Kerala for Onam, weddings and temple festivals. Thin, glassy slices of ash gourd and soft red cowpeas sit in coconut milk with nothing louder than green chilli and curry leaves, and its job is to cool the palate between the tangy, fiery curries around it. The flavour comes from coconut milk added in two stages and a spoonful of raw coconut oil poured over at the end. Eat it with plain rice, or ladle it beside appam on an ordinary weekday. Chef's tip: slice the ash gourd as thin as a coin so it turns translucent in the time the coconut milk takes to thicken.

60 min

Indian Curries

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OliebollenRaisin fritters

On the last day of December the queues outside the oliebollenkraam, the caravan-like stalls that pop up in every Dutch town, stretch round the block. Oliebollen ('oil balls') are the food of Oudejaarsavond, New Year's Eve: round, yeasted fritters full of raisins, currants and apple, deep-fried and buried in icing sugar. Families fry big batches at home in the afternoon and eat them with champagne at midnight. They are best within a few hours. Chef's tip: dip your two scooping spoons in the hot oil before each ball; the sticky dough slides off cleanly and the balls come out round instead of ragged.

60 min

Dutch Desserts

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Olla de carneBeef and vegetable pot

Olla de carne, "pot of meat", is the Costa Rican Sunday soup, cooked slowly in the Central Valley around San José and in country homes: beef shin and short ribs simmered for hours in a clear broth with big pieces of yuca, chayote, green plantain, corn, carrot and taro. The broth is served first, then the meat and vegetables, with rice on the side. The mistake is putting all the vegetables in together; add the hard ones first and the soft chayote and corn last. Chef's tip: use a little bone with the beef; it gives the broth body without any stock cube.

180 minCentral American Soups

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Olluquito con charquiOlluco and dried beef stew

Olluco is a glossy yellow-and-pink tuber grown high in the Andes, crunchy when raw and silky when cooked, and in Lima's market eateries it is cut into fine matchsticks and stewed with charqui, sun-dried meat that was the travel food of Inca messengers. The dish is gently spiced with ají panca and finished with fresh parsley, and it is always served with white rice. Latin shops sell olluco in jars; if you can't find it, firm new potatoes or courgette give a similar texture, and beef brisket stands in well for charqui. Chef's tip: cut the olluco and rinse it well; the slippery sap washes off and the stew won't turn slimy.

95 min

Peruvian Curries

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