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Sayur lodeh

Sayur lodeh is everyday cooking in Central Java, made in big pots in Solo and Semarang kitchens and ladled over rice, with lontong rice cakes at Lebaran, or alongside opor and sambal goreng on festive tables. It's soupy rather than thick: a fragrant broth of coconut milk, galangal, lemongrass and lime leaf that carries chunks of aubergine, long beans, chayote and sweetcorn, plus tempeh and tofu to make it a meal. The flavour is mellow and slightly sweet, so the heat comes from sambal on the side. Chef's tip: keep the pot at a gentle simmer once the coconut milk goes in and stir now and then — a rolling boil splits the coconut milk into oily curds.

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Miyeok guk with beef

Ask someone in Korea what they ate on their birthday morning and the answer is usually miyeok guk. The same soup is given to new mothers for weeks after a birth, as the seaweed is rich in iodine, calcium and iron. Some students avoid it on exam days, because slippery seaweed is said to make you 'slip' in the test. The broth is clear and mild, made with brisket fried in sesame oil and seasoned with soup soy sauce. Chef's tip: squeeze the soaked seaweed hard and fry it with the beef for a few minutes; it gives the broth a rounder, nutty taste.

30 min

Korean Soups

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Kalari kulcha

Kalari, also spelt kaladi, is a fresh, stretchy cheese made in the hills around Udhampur and Ramnagar in Jammu, often from buffalo or goat milk. Street sellers in Jammu city lay slices of it on a hot iron tawa with no oil at all: the cheese releases its own fat and fries to a blistered brown crust while the inside turns soft and slightly stringy. They stuff it into a warm kulcha with onion, tomato, green chutney and a shake of chaat masala, and it is eaten standing up, especially on winter evenings. Outside Jammu, use halloumi, which behaves almost the same, or firm paneer with a teaspoon of oil. Chef's tip: dry the cheese slices on kitchen paper first; wet cheese steams instead of crisping.

25 min

Indian Snacks & Starters

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Budae jjigae

Budae jjigae grew up in Uijeongbu, north of Seoul, in the hard years after the Korean War, when surplus tinned meat and sausages from the nearby US army base were cooked with kimchi and chilli. The town still has a whole street of restaurants serving it. It is a sharing dish: a wide pan goes on a gas burner in the middle of the table, and friends fish out sausages and noodles as it bubbles. Chef's tip: arrange everything in neat piles in the pan before the stock goes in, so each person can see what they are reaching for.

30 min

Korean Soups

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Kashmiri modur pulav

Modur means sweet in Kashmiri, and this ghee-rich saffron rice is served at Kashmiri weddings and on Navreh, the Pandit new year, glowing orange and studded with almonds, cashews and raisins. In the hills of Himachal Pradesh the dham feast ends with a near-identical sweet rice called mittha, so this one page covers both: Himachal cooks often add a little more raisin and a pinch of fennel, which you can do too. It is sweet but not dessert-sweet, perfumed with cinnamon and cardamom, and is eaten alongside savoury curries as well as on its own. Chef's tip: soak the saffron in warm milk for at least 15 minutes before you start; it gives the rice its colour far more evenly than strands scattered dry.

70 min

Indian Rice & Grains

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Salată de vinete

Salată de vinete is on every Romanian table from Bucharest to Brașov in late summer, when market stalls are piled with aubergines and every balcony grill is busy charring them. The smoky flesh is chopped with a wooden knife and beaten with sunflower oil into a pale, fluffy spread, almost like a mayonnaise, then finished with sharp raw onion. There is no tahini or yogurt, which sets it apart from baba ganoush. It is eaten on toasted bread with sliced tomatoes for supper or as a meze before grilled vegetables. Chef's tip: drain the cooked aubergine well; leaving in the brown juices is the usual mistake and makes the salad bitter and watery.

45 min

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Guizhou sour fish soup

For the Miao people around Kaili in south-east Guizhou, a pot of sour soup is the heart of a meal, served in a wide pot over a burner with everyone dipping in. Their famous red sour soup is made by fermenting wild tomatoes with chillies for weeks, and it gives the broth a bright, tangy, lightly spicy taste that is fruity rather than vinegary. Chunks of fresh river fish, tofu and bean sprouts simmer in it until tender, and each piece is dunked in a little dish of chilli and herbs before eating. This home version gets close with very ripe tomatoes, fermented chillies and a splash of rice vinegar. Eat it with rice on a cold evening. Chef's tip: cook the tomatoes until they completely collapse into a thick red paste before you add any water; that is where the colour and the deep sourness come from.

60 min

Chinese Soups

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Kimchi jjigae

Every Korean home has a version of kimchi jjigae, and it turns up on the table from Seoul to Busan at breakfast, lunch and late at night. It is the classic way to use up kimchi that has fermented for weeks and turned properly sour. Pork belly gives the broth richness, tofu soaks up the heat, and the pot comes to the table still boiling, next to a bowl of plain rice. Chef's tip: fry the kimchi in the pork fat for a full 5 minutes before any water goes in; that is where the deep, savoury flavour comes from.

30 min

Korean Soups

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Nadru yakhni

Lotus stem, called nadru in Kashmiri, is pulled from the shallow waters of the Dal and Anchar lakes around Srinagar, and Kashmiri Pandit families treat it as something close to a festive vegetable. Yakhni is their pale, onion-free yogurt gravy, scented with fennel, dry ginger and black cardamom instead of tomato or chilli. The lotus slices stay faintly crunchy and show their lacy holes in a creamy, ivory sauce. It turns up at Herath (Shivratri) meals and at Sunday lunches, always with a mound of plain steamed rice. Chef's tip: pick firm, pale stems with closed ends; the ends keep mud out of the hollow channels, so you rinse far less.

55 min

Indian Curries

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Pinni

When the fog settles over Punjab in December, kitchens fill with the smell of wheat flour roasting slowly in ghee: pinni season has started. These dense, crumbly balls of roasted atta, jaggery, almonds and fried edible gum are made in big batches for Lohri, packed into tins for relatives and given to new mothers for strength. One pinni with a glass of hot milk is a classic winter breakfast. Chef's tip: let the roasted flour cool until just warm before adding the jaggery; if it is hot, the jaggery melts and the pinni set hard as stone.

50 min

Indian Indian Sweets

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Kashmiri girda

Every neighbourhood in Srinagar has a kandur, a baker working at a pit oven, and before sunrise people queue there for girda: round breads about the size of a side plate, pressed all over with fingertips so the crust sets in ridges and hollows. The outside is lightly crisp, the crumb soft and slightly chewy, and the bread is torn and dunked into salty pink noon chai or spread with butter. A home oven with a heavy tray heated until very hot gets close to the kandur. Chef's tip: wrap the breads in a clean cloth as they come out; the trapped steam keeps the crust tender rather than hard.

142 min

Indian Baking

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Champaran mutton

In the Champaran district of north-west Bihar, near the Nepal border, mutton is cooked in an ahuna or handi: a clay pot packed with raw meat, whole bulbs of garlic, onions, mustard oil and spices, sealed shut with dough and left for hours on a slow charcoal fire. Nobody adds water and nobody stirs; the meat cooks in its own juices and the garlic turns soft and sweet. Roadside dhabas on the highways out of Motihari made it famous, and it is now cooked at family picnics and parties right across Bihar, eaten with rice or rotis. This home version uses a heavy pot sealed with foil and a lid. Chef's tip: shake the pot instead of opening it; every time the lid comes off, steam escapes and the meat dries out.

135 min

Indian Meat

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Jushi (Okinawan mixed rice)

Jushi is Okinawa's seasoned rice, cooked with pork, vegetables and bonito stock. The firm kind, kufa-jushi, is what you find in rice balls at Okinawan supermarkets and alongside soba at lunch counters; a soupy, porridge-like version is cooked as well. On the winter solstice many families make a special jushi with taro root. Pork fat is part of its flavour, so the rice is cooked with a little lard and the belly pork itself. Chef's tip: measure the liquid carefully; the soy and stock replace part of the water, and firm, separate grains are what you want.

50 min

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Monji haak

Kohlrabi, monji in Kashmiri, grows in almost every kitchen garden in the Kashmir Valley, and families cook the round bulb and its leaves together in one pot. Like its cousin haak, it is a dish of very few ingredients: mustard oil, dried chilli, a pinch of asafoetida and salt, simmered with a splash of water until the bulb turns sweet and tender. It is eaten through the cold months with plain rice and a bowl of yogurt, and Kashmiris will tell you it tastes best in autumn when the bulbs are young. Chef's tip: buy kohlrabi with fresh, perky leaves attached; if the leaves are tired, add a handful of spinach instead.

35 min

Indian Sides

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Rafute (Okinawan braised pork belly)

Rafute comes from the cooking of the old Ryukyu court in Okinawa, where pork has long been the most important meat. Thick blocks of skin-on belly are boiled to remove fat, then braised slowly in awamori, the local rice spirit, with soy, bonito stock and the islands' dark brown sugar. Today it is a dish for family celebrations and the Okinawan New Year, a staple of izakayas in Naha, and a topping for Okinawa soba. Expect deep amber pieces that hold their shape but cut with chopsticks. Chef's tip: cook it the day before; chilling lets you lift off the set fat, and the flavour soaks deeper into the meat overnight.

180 min

Japanese Meat

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Chaman kaliya

In Kashmir paneer is called chaman, and kaliya is the name for a gravy coloured bright yellow with turmeric rather than red with chilli. Kashmiri Pandit cooks fry thick slabs of paneer, rest them in warm water so they stay spongy, then simmer them in milk with fennel, dry ginger and cardamom. The result is mild, sweet-scented and soothing, a dish that sits beside the fiery ones on a wedding or festival spread and is just as welcome on a weekday with rice. Chef's tip: use a generous spoon of good turmeric; the gravy should glow a deep gold, and the milk mellows any rawness.

40 min

Indian Curries

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Hunan steamed fish head with chopped chillies

Walk into almost any restaurant in Changsha and a split fish head blanketed in scarlet chopped chillies will be on the table next to you. The chillies are salted and fermented, so they taste bright, sour and fruity as well as hot, and the steam carries their juices into the sweet, soft fish beneath; the meaty cheeks and the jelly-like flesh around the head are the prized parts. A last drizzle of smoking oil wakes it all up. When the fish is gone, Hunanese diners tip plain noodles into the leftover juices, and so should you. Chef's tip: buy the head from a fishmonger who has just cut it, with clear eyes and bright red gills; if that's hard to find, thick bone-in fish steaks work just as well.

35 min

Chinese Fish

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Huaxi beef noodles

Breakfast in Guiyang means a steaming bowl of rice noodles at a counter, and the version from the Huaxi district on the city's southern edge is the one people queue for. Silky noodles sit in a clear, deeply beefy broth under slices of slow-cooked shin, and each diner finishes the bowl at the table from pots of tangy pickled mustard greens, toasted chilli and fresh herbs, so it is sour, spicy and savoury exactly to taste. The broth is light enough for the morning but rich in flavour. Serve it as a whole meal; a few extra pickles on the side are all it needs. Chef's tip: blanch the beef and rinse it before the long simmer; skipping this is the common mistake that leaves the broth cloudy and scummy.

90 min

Chinese Soups

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Chicken Kyiv

Chicken Kyiv, kotleta po-kyivsky, became the pride of the restaurants of Kyiv in the 20th century, and the city still serves it with a little paper frill on the bone and a fountain of herb butter when it is cut. A flattened chicken breast is rolled around a frozen stick of garlic, dill and parsley butter, double-crumbed to seal it, then fried and finished in the oven. Serve with mash or fried potatoes and a green salad. Chef's tip: freeze the butter until rock hard and seal every edge with two coats of egg and crumbs; that is what stops it from leaking.

80 min

Ukrainian Chicken

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