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Green fig and saltfish

Green bananas with salt cod

In St Lucia green bananas are called figs, and green fig and saltfish is the national dish: a Saturday lunch in Castries homes and the plate served everywhere on Jounen Kwéyòl, the island's Creole Day in October. The bananas are boiled until tender and mild, a little like potato, and served with salt cod sautéed with onion, sweet pepper, tomato, thyme and hot pepper. Add sliced avocado or cucumber on the side. The most common mistake is not soaking the saltfish long enough, which leaves the whole plate far too salty; taste a flake before you cook it. Chef's tip: rub oil on your hands (or wear gloves) before peeling the green bananas; the sap stains skin black.

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Khaddi kebabRoast spiced lamb over rice

A khaddi, in Baloch country, is a pit dug in the ground and lined with hot stones; a whole goat or lamb, rubbed with salt and spices and stuffed with rice, is lowered in, covered with earth and left for hours, then dug out for weddings and tribal feasts. Few home cooks have a pit, so this version roasts a bone-in lamb shoulder low and slow under foil, then sets it on a tray of part-cooked rice so the rice drinks the dripping juices, the same marriage of meat and rice the pit gives. The meat should pull apart with a spoon and the rice taste deeply of lamb. Stuffing raw rice inside a big joint is where cooks go wrong at home: the centre stays underdone and is not safe, so cook the rice under the meat instead. Chef's tip: roast the lamb the day before, chill it in its juices and lift off the hard fat, then reheat with the rice; it carves more neatly too.

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Every banana plant in a Sri Lankan back garden eventually pushes out a heavy, purple, spear-shaped flower, and rather than waste it, home cooks across the western province slice it into this savoury, slightly meaty curry. Once the tough outer bracts come off, the pale heart is shredded and cooked with roasted curry powder, mustard seed and chilli, then finished with coconut milk until it is tender with a faint, pleasant astringency, a bit like artichoke. It is a weekday dish, served with red rice, parippu and a pol sambol. The flower browns and turns bitter within minutes of being cut, which is where most first attempts go wrong, so have a bowl of salted turmeric water waiting and drop the slices in as you go. Chef's tip: if you can only find tinned banana blossom in brine, rinse it well, chop it and skip the soaking; it needs only half the cooking time.

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Ask almost any Pakistani what their mother made on a school morning and khagina comes up: eggs beaten with salt and turmeric and stirred into onion, tomato and green chilli softened in oil, served in a heap beside a hot paratha with a cup of doodh patti. It comes from the old Mughal and Hyderabadi kitchens that reached Karachi after Partition, and it differs from a plain scramble in being cooked a little longer, so it sets into soft, moist clumps coloured by the masala rather than staying creamy. It is everyday food in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar alike, also eaten for a quick supper with chapati. The usual mistake is adding the eggs before the tomato has cooked down, which leaves the dish watery and the eggs rubbery. Chef's tip: take the pan off the heat while the eggs still look slightly glossy but no liquid egg remains, because they keep cooking on the plate.

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At sunrise on Yangon street corners, women sit behind bamboo baskets of steaming sticky rice wrapped in cloth, spooning portions onto squares of banana leaf for people heading to work. The glutinous rice is soaked and steamed until each grain is glossy, chewy and slightly translucent, then topped with soft pe pyot peas, freshly grated coconut and a sprinkle of toasted sesame pounded with salt. It is a plain, satisfying breakfast, sweet from the coconut, salty and nutty from the sesame, and usually eaten with a cup of green tea; some vendors use purple sticky rice for a darker, nuttier bowl. Boiling the rice like ordinary rice is the mistake that ruins it, turning it to glue, so always steam it. Chef's tip: soak the rice overnight; a short soak leaves hard white centres in the grains.

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90 min

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90 min

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Karela piazBitter gourd with onions

Bitter gourd divides every family in Punjab, but karela piaz is the version that wins over the doubters: the gourd is salted, squeezed and fried until its edges crisp, then tossed with almost as much browned onion as karela, so the sweetness of the onions softens the bitterness. In Lahore it is a summer dish, a staple of tiffin carriers and home lunches with chapati and a cooling bowl of raita, and some households pack it for long train journeys because it keeps well. The thing most people get wrong is skimping on the onions or rushing them; pale, half-cooked onions leave the dish harsh rather than mellow. Chef's tip: rub the slices with salt and a little turmeric, leave them for 30 minutes, then squeeze hard by the handful, which draws out much of the bitterness before cooking.

70 min

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Karawila sambolaFried bitter gourd salad

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30 min

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90 min

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Karachi halwaCornflour halwa

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