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Baked egg masala
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Baked egg masala

Whole eggs baked in layers of rich onion, tomato and capsicum masala, flavoured with cumin, black pepper and mild curry masala. Serve hot with bread or naan. Contains egg.

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Okayama barazushi

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.

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Rellenitos surprise everyone who hasn't grown up in Guatemala: soft, sweet plantain dough wrapped around a filling of black beans cooked down with chocolate, cinnamon and sugar, then fried and rolled in sugar. They're sold in panaderías and at fairs, and made at home for afternoon coffee and Christmas. The beans taste nothing like a savoury dish; think of a fudgy chocolate paste. Chef's tip: mash the plantains while hot and chill the dough for 20 minutes; cold dough wraps cleanly without sticking to your hands.

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Tsampa

Tsampa, roasted highland barley flour, has been the staple food of the Tibetan plateau for centuries. Every morning, families in Lhasa and in nomad tents put a handful in a bowl, pour in butter tea, add a knob of butter and knead it with their fingers into small, nutty balls called pak. It's filling, quick and easy to carry. Barley flour is easy to find; toast it in a dry pan if it isn't already roasted. Chef's tip: add the tea a little at a time; you want a dough like firm marzipan, not a paste.

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Dakor na gota

Pilgrims who come to the Ranchhodraiji temple at Dakor, in the Charotar belt of central Gujarat, rarely leave without a paper cone of gota from the shops around the temple square. These fritters are different from ordinary bhajia: the batter uses coarse gram flour, crushed black pepper and coriander seeds and plenty of fresh methi, and it is whipped light so the gota come out round, craggy and soft inside. Families buy the ready-mixed flour to take home and fry them on the first rainy evening of the monsoon. Serve them with green chutney, fried green chillies and a cup of masala chai. Chef's tip: beat the batter by hand in one direction for a full 3 minutes before frying; the air you whip in matters as much as the baking soda.

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125 minIndianMeatGluten free
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140 minIndianMeatGluten freeSpicy
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Kothimbir vadi

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Maharashtrian aamti

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Goan fish curry (xitt codi)

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50 minIndianFishGluten freeSpicy
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Chuchitos de verduras

Chuchitos are Guatemala's everyday tamal: small, firm parcels of masa tied in corn husks, sold from steaming pots at markets in Antigua and Guatemala City and eaten on Saturdays with a spoon of tomato sauce and crumbled dry cheese. They're denser than Mexican tamales, with the masa itself tinted by the red recado. Here they're filled with potato, green beans and sweet pepper instead of chicken. Chef's tip: beat the masa until a pinch floats in a glass of water; that air makes them tender rather than stodgy.

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Thekua

During Chhath Puja, when families across Bihar stand in rivers and ponds to make offerings to the setting and rising sun, thekua fill the bamboo baskets carried to the ghats. Women make them at home in the days before, pressing jaggery-sweetened wheat dough into carved wooden moulds (sancha) and frying them in ghee until dark and crunchy. Outside the festival they are the snack Bihari students take back to hostels in the city, because they keep for weeks. Chef's tip: the dough must be stiff, and the frying slow; soft dough loses the pattern and hot oil leaves them pale and soft inside.

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Ghugni chura

In Patna and the towns along the Ganges, ghugni chura is the morning and evening snack people queue for at the tea stall: a spicy, onion-rich curry of small black chickpeas served alongside chura, flattened rice that is fried or toasted in mustard oil until it crackles. You scoop a bit of each into your mouth together, with raw onion and green chilli for crunch. At home it is just as likely to be breakfast on a winter Sunday or what is offered to guests with tea. Chef's tip: cook the chana until it squashes easily between two fingers; firm chickpeas never soak up the masala.

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Gallo pinto

Gallo pinto means 'spotted rooster', for the speckled look of rice tossed with beans, and both Costa Rica and Nicaragua claim it. In Costa Rica it's black beans with plenty of coriander and a tangy brown sauce, served at breakfast with eggs, sour cream and fried plantain; in Nicaragua red beans are fried harder with onion until the rice turns rusty. This version follows the Costa Rican breakfast table and gets its tang from cumin and a little soy sauce. Chef's tip: use rice cooked the day before and keep a cup of the bean cooking liquid; that dark liquid is what colours the rice.

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Butter chicken

Butter chicken was born in the Punjabi restaurants of Old Delhi after Partition, when cooks found a way to use up tandoori chicken by simmering it in tomatoes, butter and cream. It is not the same as chicken tikka masala: tikka masala builds its sauce on fried onions and is chunkier and spicier, while makhani gravy has no onion at all, is strained silky-smooth, and gets its gentle sweetness and smoky-savoury note from butter, cashews and dried fenugreek leaves. It is the dish families order for celebrations across Delhi and Punjab, mopped up with butter naan or eaten with jeera rice, and it's mild enough for children. Chef's tip: crush the kasuri methi between your palms right over the pot; that one step is what makes it taste like the restaurant version.

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Mangalore buns

Despite the name, Mangalore buns are not baked at all: they are thick, soft puris made from a dough of overripe bananas, sugar, yogurt and flour, left for hours to turn slightly tangy, then deep-fried until they balloon. Every Udupi restaurant in coastal Karnataka has them on the breakfast board, served with coconut chutney and sambar, and children love them on their own. They are lightly sweet with a hint of cumin and a soft, bready inside. Chef's tip: use bananas with black-flecked skins; underripe bananas give a dense, pale bun that won't brown.

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Casado vegetariano

Walk into any soda (small family diner) in San José at lunchtime and the board will offer a casado: one plate where rice and beans are 'married' to salad, sweet plantain and a main. The meatless version is just as common, with a fried egg and a slice of fresh white cheese, plus a little picadillo of chopped vegetables. It's a full, balanced lunch, and every element is simple. Chef's tip: cook the plantain only when it's deeply black-skinned and soft; ripe plantain caramelises to sticky dark edges, green plantain just goes dry.

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Sattu sharbat

On scorching May afternoons in Patna, handcarts with steel pots and heaps of lemons sell sattu sharbat by the glass: roasted gram flour whisked into cold water with black salt, roasted cumin, lemon and a bit of raw onion and chilli. It is filling enough to stand in for lunch and is the drink rickshaw pullers and farm workers swear by to beat the loo, the hot summer wind. It tastes savoury, nutty and sharp all at once. Chef's tip: whisk the sattu into a little water first to a smooth paste, then dilute it; tipping it straight into a full glass leaves dry lumps.

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Silao khaja

Travellers on the road from Patna to Rajgir stop at Silao, a small town near the ruins of Nalanda, for one thing: khaja, a pastry built from dozens of paper-thin layers that flake apart in the mouth and are glazed with a crackly sugar coat. Silao's halwais have made it for generations, and it is carried home in boxes as a present; it is also offered in temples and at weddings across Bihar and Odisha. It takes patience but no special equipment. Chef's tip: fry at a really low heat so the layers have time to open out like pages before the outside colours; hot oil seals them shut.

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Tandoori chicken

Tandoori chicken comes from Punjab, where clay tandoor ovens fired with wood or charcoal reach well over 400 °C and roast marinated chicken in minutes. In Punjabi dhabas and wedding buffets it arrives on a sizzling plate with raw onion rings, lemon and mint chutney, and it's the starting point for butter chicken. A home oven can't match a tandoor, but a very hot oven plus a final blast under the grill gets you charred edges and juicy meat. The two-step marinade (lemon and salt first, then spiced yogurt) is the key. Chef's tip: cut deep slashes right down to the bone; the marinade gets inside and the thick legs cook through at the same time as the thinner parts.

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Mughlai chicken korma

In the lanes around the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi, korma is cooked in huge copper degs for Eid and wedding feasts and sold from dawn with khamiri roti and sheermal. It descends from the Mughal court kitchens, where 'korma' meant meat braised slowly in yogurt and its own juices rather than in water. This one is not the mild, pale, coconut-sweet korma of British curry houses: it is golden-brown, fragrant with cardamom and mace, enriched with almond paste and fried onions, and medium-hot. Chef's tip: fry the onions slowly to an even golden-brown and grind them with the yogurt; the browned onion paste is both the colour and the backbone of the sauce.

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Baleadas

Baleadas are what Hondurans grab for breakfast on the way to work, from street stands in San Pedro Sula to the beaches of La Ceiba on the north coast. A thick, soft flour tortilla, warm from the comal, is spread with refried red beans, sprinkled with dry salty cheese and a spoon of mantequilla (sour cream), then folded in half. A 'baleada sencilla' stops there; add avocado, scrambled egg or fried plantain for a fuller one. Chef's tip: rest the dough balls a full 30 minutes; relaxed dough stretches thin by hand and puffs on the pan instead of shrinking back.

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Dal pitha

Dal pitha is the comfort food of Bihari winters, made on cold evenings and around Makar Sankranti: soft rice-flour dough wrapped around a coarse filling of chana dal, garlic, ginger and chilli, shaped into half-moons or little pouches and cooked in steam. People in Mithila call it a Bihari momo, and it is eaten hot with tomato chutney or a dribble of mustard oil. The dough tastes gently of rice, the filling is savoury and filling, and leftovers are excellent pan-fried the next day. Chef's tip: knead the rice dough while it is still hot; if it cools before shaping, the pitha crack and the filling leaks out.

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Khurmi

Khurmi are the sweet half of Chhattisgarh's Teeja-Pola festival snacks, made in big batches alongside the salty thethri. The dough is wheat flour and a little semolina bound with melted jaggery, studded with sesame and coconut, then cut into diamonds or pressed into small patterned shapes and fried until dark gold. They have a hard, crunchy bite and a deep caramel flavour, and they last for weeks in a steel dabba, ready for visitors and children back from school. Chef's tip: cool the jaggery water to lukewarm before kneading; hot jaggery makes a slack dough that spreads and soaks up oil.

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Thethri

No Teeja in Chhattisgarh passes without a tin of thethri: knotted and twisted pieces of gram-flour dough, seasoned with ajwain and chilli and fried slowly until they shatter when you bite. Married daughters coming home for the festival are sent back with them, alongside the sweet khurmi, and they keep for weeks. Each family has its favourite shape, from simple knots to little spirals and braided rings. Chef's tip: fry on a medium-low flame and be patient; thethri fried hot puff up and brown outside but stay soft and chewy inside.

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Basler Läckerli

Läckerli have been Basel's own biscuit for more than 600 years, once baked by the city's spice merchants and gifted at Christmas and New Year; Basel shops still pack them in tins all year round. They are small, chewy rectangles of honey, almonds, candied orange and lemon peel and warm spices, with a thin, crackly sugar glaze. Unlike soft German gingerbread they are firm and dense when they are fresh and soften with time in a tin. Eat them with coffee or tea, or keep a box for visitors. Chef's tip: cut the slab into rectangles while it is still hot and glaze it at once; once cool it sets too hard to cut cleanly.

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