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Ali nazik

Lamb on smoky aubergine and yoghurt

Gaziantep cooks char aubergines over coals until they collapse, mash the flesh with garlicky yoghurt and spoon pan-fried lamb with tomatoes and peppers on top: that is ali nazik, a lunchtime favourite in the city's lokantas. The cool, smoky base and the hot, buttery meat are the whole point, so assemble it just as you serve. A gas flame or a very hot grill gives the same smoky flesh at home. The usual mistake is not draining the aubergine, which makes the yoghurt runny and grey. Chef's tip: stir the yoghurt into the aubergine off the heat with a spoonful of butter; warm, not hot, keeps it from splitting.

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Curried sausages

Curried sausages are pure Australian weeknight comfort, the dish generations of kids came home to in Sydney, Brisbane and country towns alike, usually made with thick beef or pork sausages and a tin of mild curry powder. The sausages are browned, sliced and simmered with onion, carrot, potato and peas in a gentle, slightly sweet curry gravy, then spooned over fluffy rice. The usual mistake is skipping the pre-cook: browning the sausages whole first keeps them juicy and gives the sauce its colour. Sausages, whether beef or pork, must reach 71 °C in the centre. Chef's tip: a grated apple simmered in the sauce is the classic Aussie trick for a rounded sweetness without extra sugar.

50 min

Australian Meat

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Bissy tea (kola nut tea)

Kola trees came to Jamaica with enslaved West Africans, and the nut, called bissy on the island, has stayed in country medicine ever since. Older people in St Mary, St Elizabeth and the hills of Clarendon still keep a dried bissy in the kitchen and grate some into boiling water when the stomach is upset or after eating something that disagreed with them,. Parched in a dry pan first, the grated nut gives a reddish-brown tea that smells faintly of cocoa and tastes bitter and astringent, softened by plenty of sugar. The common mistake is boiling raw, ungrated nut and expecting much flavour: whole pieces give little. Grate it finely, parch it until it darkens and smells like toasted cocoa, then boil. It is ready when the tea is a deep reddish-brown and coats the tongue with bitterness. Kola nut is very high in caffeine, as strong as a big mug of coffee or more, so drink one cup, not late in the day, and keep it away from children, pregnant people and anyone sensitive to caffeine or with heart trouble. Chef's tip: strain it through a fine cloth; the grated nut leaves a gritty sediment that a sieve lets through.

20 min

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Sungnyung (scorched rice tea)

Before electric rice cookers, every Korean pot of rice left a golden crust, nurungji, stuck to the bottom. Rather than waste it, cooks poured in water and simmered it while the family ate, and the warm, cloudy sungnyung was drunk at the end of the meal in place of tea. Older Koreans still describe it as the taste of home, and many Seoul restaurants that cook rice in stone pots finish by pouring water over the crust at the table. It tastes of toasted grain and has a faint natural sweetness, with soft pieces of crust to spoon up at the bottom. Without a stone pot you can make the crust from leftover rice in a frying pan. The common mistake is rushing the crust over high heat: it blackens on the outside and turns the drink bitter while the middle stays soft. Keep the heat low and patient, and aim for even golden-brown. The crust is ready when it lifts away from the pan in one sheet and smells like popcorn; the sungnyung is ready when the water is milky and pale gold. Chef's tip: make extra crust, dry it completely and keep it in a jar, so you can make sungnyung in ten minutes any evening.

35 min

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Sept cariSeven vegetable curries

Weddings, Cavadee and the days after a Tamil or Hindu prayer end with guests sitting in rows while volunteers walk past with buckets, spooning rice and seven little curries onto each banana leaf. There is no meat, egg or fish: soft yellow dholl, sweet crushed pumpkin, glossy tamarind aubergine, chayote, green banana with mustard seeds, butter beans in tomato and a curry of cabbage and potato, each with its own texture so the leaf never tastes the same twice. At home it looks daunting, but the trick is a shared base of onion, garlic and ginger prepared once and a cooking order that lets the sturdy curries wait while the delicate ones go last. The usual mistake is to tip curry powder into the pan and add the vegetables straight away, which leaves a dusty, raw taste; fry it with a splash of water until the oil runs red-brown first. Eat it with your right hand if you like, and finish with a spoon of pickle or chatini on the side. Chef's tip: everything except the pumpkin and green banana reheats beautifully, so cook the dholl, beans and cabbage the evening before and the feast day becomes a two-hour job.

180 min

Mauritian Curries

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Bokkeum kimchiStir-fried kimchi with pork belly

When a jar of kimchi turns very sour in Korean homes, it gets stir-fried with a little sugar and sesame oil, and often with pork belly, into bokkeum kimchi, a deep, mellow side dish that keeps for days and is a favourite in school and office dosirak. For a vegan version, use kimchi made without fish sauce or salted shrimp and leave out the pork. The usual mistake is using fresh, crisp kimchi, which tastes harsh when fried; it needs to be properly sour. Chef's tip: fry the kimchi until the edges just begin to catch and caramelise, which is where the flavour is.

17 min

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When Hanoi's tamarind-like sấu trees drop their small green fruit in May and June, street vendors start selling glasses of nước sấu: a few candied fruits, a ladle of ginger syrup, cold water and crushed ice. Families make big jars to last until the season ends in August. It is sipped with a spoon so you can bite into the crunchy-soft fruit at the bottom. It tastes sour and sweet at once, with a clean ginger warmth and a flavour a little like green mango and plum. Traditional cooks soak the peeled fruit in limewater to keep it crisp; a salt soak works well at home. The common mistake is skipping the blanch and slow syrup: raw fruit stays acrid and the syrup clouds. Blanch the fruit briefly, then cook it gently in sugar until it turns translucent yellow-green and the syrup is clear and glossy. Store it in a sterilised jar in the fridge for up to 2 months with a clean spoon; discard if it fizzes, smells fermented or shows mould. Fresh sấu is rare abroad; look for frozen sấu in Vietnamese shops, or use firm green ambarella. Chef's tip: slash each fruit a few times so the syrup soaks all the way in.

55 min

Vietnamese Drinks

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Katsu sandoPork cutlet sandwich

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25 min

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Gogji razmaKidney beans with turnips

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90 min

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20 min

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155 min

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DenningvleisTamarind and allspice braised lamb

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120 min

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AsierSweet dill pickled cucumbers

Late August in Danish allotments means the asie, a fat yellow-green cucumber left on the vine until its skin turns thick and its seeds big, and the smell of hot vinegar in every kitchen. The cucumbers are peeled, seeded and salted overnight, then sealed in jars with a sweet vinegar lage, dill crowns and mustard seeds. Asier are a fixture of the Danish table all winter: beside frikadeller, flæskesteg and roast duck at Christmas, sliced onto smørrebrød with liver pâté, and with boiled potatoes and brown gravy on any Tuesday. The pickle is crisp yet tender, sweet first and then sharply sour, with dill and mustard on the finish. Common mistake: skipping the overnight salting, which leaves watery, flabby asier that dilute the vinegar. The salt draws the water out so the cucumber stays firm. They are ready after two weeks, when the flesh has turned translucent and sweet-sour right through. Chef's tip: no asier? Use large, overgrown ridge or field cucumbers; ordinary salad cucumbers are too watery.

55 minScandinavian Chutneys & Dips

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CassareepCassava syrup

Cassareep is what makes Guyana's Christmas pepperpot dark, sweet-savoury and long-keeping, and in Amerindian villages of the Rupununi and along the rivers it is still boiled down from the juice of grated cassava. Traditional cassareep uses bitter cassava, whose raw juice is poisonous until it has been boiled for hours; this home version uses only sweet cassava (the kind sold in shops as yuca), and still boils the juice for a long time, because even sweet cassava must never be eaten raw. A little dark sugar helps it reach the deep colour that slow reduction gives in the villages. The usual mistake is stopping too soon, when it is brown and thin; it should be black and syrupy, like molasses. Chef's tip: take the pan off the heat when it coats a spoon thickly, as it thickens much more as it cools.

220 min

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Methi besan bhajiFenugreek and gram flour stir-fry

Farmers in Vidarbha and households in Jodhpur both make a version of this: chopped methi leaves cooked down and then dusted with roasted besan until the whole pan turns into dry, savoury crumbs that cling to a chapati. Because it has almost no moisture, it is one of the best sabzis for a long journey or a hot day's dabba. The mistake is adding raw gram flour straight to the leaves, which leaves a pasty, raw taste. Roast the besan dry until it smells like biscuits first. Chef's tip: sprinkle a few drops of water over the crumbs and cover for a minute at the end, so they soften just enough without turning into a paste.

25 min

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Chagem pombaMustard greens and fermented soybean

Chagem pomba is a thick Meitei stew of mustard leaves and seasonal vegetables, bound with rice flour and flavoured with hawaijar, Manipur's sticky fermented soybean; it is cooked especially for Ningol Chakouba and family gatherings, and eaten with rice. To make hawaijar, keep boiled, drained soybeans wrapped in leaves at 30–40 °C for 3 days until stringy and pungent; discard if black, green or pink mould appears or it smells rotten. The mistake is adding dry rice flour straight to the pot, which forms lumps: whisk it into water first. Chef's tip: bought natto or kinema replaces hawaijar well.

45 min

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Mi saoVegetable fried noodles

Chinese families who settled in Toamasina and Antananarivo a century ago brought mi sao with them, and it is now one of the most ordered plates at any hotely, often eaten at lunch with a bowl of clear soup on the side. This version is all vegetables: shredded cabbage, carrot, green beans and spring onion tossed with springy wheat noodles, garlic, ginger and soy sauce until glossy and a little smoky. Because of the soy sauce and wheat noodles it is not gluten free. Overcrowding the pan is the usual mistake; it steams everything into a limp tangle, so cook in two batches if your wok or pan is small. Chef's tip: rinse the boiled noodles in cold water and toss them with a few drops of oil, so they fry into separate strands instead of a sticky clump.

25 min

Malagasy Pasta & Noodles

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Chanka de polloChicken soup with broad beans

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75 minAndean Soups

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MilcaoPotato bread

On Chiloé, where potatoes have been grown for thousands of years, milcao is the bread that comes with almost everything: it is buried in the curanto pit, boiled in broth, or pan-fried until crusty and eaten with honey or sugar in the afternoon. The dough is half grated raw potato and half mashed boiled potato. Islanders often press pork crackling into it; this version is plain and vegan. Forgetting to squeeze the raw potato is the mistake that makes milcaos fall apart in the pan. Chef's tip: let the squeezed potato juice stand for 5 minutes, pour off the water and scrape the white starch from the bottom of the bowl back into the dough; it is the glue that holds milcao together.

65 min

Chilean Breads & Parathas

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Chocolate cracklesChocolate puffed rice cakes

No Australian child's birthday party is complete without chocolate crackles, served in paper patty cases alongside fairy bread at backyard parties from Adelaide to Cairns. Puffed rice cereal is bound with melted solid coconut fat, icing sugar, cocoa and desiccated coconut, then set in the fridge. Kids can make them almost entirely on their own. A common mistake is using hot fat, which makes the mixture greasy; let it cool a few minutes. Chef's tip: use solid white hydrogenated coconut fat sold in blocks, not jarred coconut oil, which won't set firm at room temperature.

20 min

Australian Desserts

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Gobi matar (cauliflower and peas)

In Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, winter means cauliflower and fresh peas, and gobi matar is what fills countless school and office dabbas between November and February. It is cooked dry, so the florets brown a little at the edges, sweetened by the peas and sharpened by plenty of ginger. The mistake is cooking the cauliflower covered with water until it is soft and smells of cabbage; steam it briefly in its own moisture, then fry it uncovered. Chef's tip: cut the florets so they have one flat side; that face sits on the pan and browns while the rest steams tender.

30 min

Indian Sides

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DashmiMilk and jaggery flatbread

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40 min

Indian Breads & Parathas

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MiscutRaw mango pickle

Before the monsoon breaks over Goa in late May, the first small, tender mangoes are knocked from the trees in Salcete and Bardez villages and cut for miscut, the pickle Goan Catholic families keep for the rainy months when fishing stops and the table relies on rice, curry and preserves. Unlike Gujarati pickles, miscut leans on toddy or cane vinegar: the mango is salted overnight, then folded into a paste of Kashmiri chilli, mustard, fenugreek, turmeric, garlic and ginger ground in vinegar, and finished with oil. It is sour, hot and garlicky, the mango still crisp, and a spoonful brightens a plate of red rice and dried-fish curry or a simple pez (rice gruel). Common mistake: grinding the masala in water; it must be vinegar only, or the pickle spoils. It is ready after 4–5 days, when the vinegar has soaked into the mango and the raw-garlic bite has gone. Because it contains fresh garlic and ginger, keep it in the fridge for up to 3 months, always covered by liquid, dry spoon each time; discard if you see mould, fizzing, sliminess or smell anything off. Chef's tip: use mangoes whose stones have not yet hardened so you can slice straight through.

40 min

Indian Chutneys & Dips

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Ei im GlasSoft-boiled eggs in a glass

In the old coffee houses of Vienna, the breakfast menu still lists Ei im Glas: two very soft-boiled eggs, scooped warm from their shells into a small glass, with a knob of butter, chives, salt and pepper. You stir it into a golden, custardy mess and eat it with a crisp Semmel roll (gluten-free bread if you need it) and a Melange coffee. The mistake almost everyone makes is boiling the eggs a minute too long, so the yolk sets and the dish turns into plain egg salad. Chef's tip: warm the glass with hot water while the eggs cook, so the butter melts on contact and the eggs stay hot to the last spoonful.

8 min

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5 min

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Pollo alla cacciatoraHunter's chicken

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75 min

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