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Midia saganaki

Thessaloniki is Greece's mussel capital, with farms in the Thermaic Gulf a few kilometres from the seafront ouzeries where this two-handled pan arrives, still bubbling, at the table. Mussels steam open in a quick sauce of peppers, tomato and chilli, and crumbled feta melts into the juices at the end. Bread is essential. The classic version adds a splash of ouzo; this one is alcohol-free, using a pinch of fennel seed for that aniseed note (add 2 tbsp ouzo with the tomatoes if you like). Common mistake: overcooking — take the pan off the heat as soon as the shells open. Chef's tip: buy mussels on the day and keep them in the fridge in a bowl covered with a damp cloth, never in water.

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Kaya toast

The kaya toast set is Singapore's breakfast ritual: thin, crisp toast sandwiched with kaya and a cold slab of butter, served with two runny soft-boiled eggs seasoned at the table with dark soy and white pepper, and a cup of kopi. Office workers eat it at kopitiams in Tiong Bahru and Tanjong Pagar before work; children love dunking the toast in the eggs. Chef's tip: put the eggs in water that's just off the boil for exactly 6–7 minutes; the whites should be barely set and wobbly, the yolks completely runny.

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Vegetarian popiah

Popiah are the soft, fresh spring rolls that Hokkien and Peranakan families in Singapore make together at home, especially for Qing Ming and family reunions, with everyone wrapping their own at the table. Thin wheat skins are brushed with sweet sauce and chilli, then filled with a slow-braised mix of jicama (bangkuang) and carrot, plus lettuce, beansprouts, egg, peanuts and crispy shallots. This version leaves out the prawns and Chinese sausage and braises the filling in vegetable stock. Chef's tip: drain the braised filling very well before rolling; extra liquid tears the delicate skins.

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Kopi

Kopi is the strong, thick coffee poured from long-spouted pots at kopitiams all over Singapore. The beans are dark-roasted with sugar and margarine, which gives a bittersweet, almost chocolatey brew, and the classic cup is sweetened with condensed milk. Order it like a local: kopi-o is black with sugar, kopi-c has evaporated milk, and kopi peng is iced. At home, a dark-roast robusta or espresso blend in a cloth sock or cafetière gets close. Chef's tip: pour the coffee back and forth between two jugs a few times; it cools slightly, aerates and gets the smooth, frothy kopitiam texture.

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Vegetable Shan noodles

Shan khao swe comes from the hills of Shan State in eastern Myanmar, where it's eaten for breakfast at markets around Inle Lake and Taunggyi before the day's work begins. Sticky rice noodles are tossed with a garlicky tomato sauce, sesame oil and crushed peanuts, then served with pickled mustard greens and a small bowl of clear broth on the side. Markets usually make the sauce with chicken or pork; here mushrooms and tofu give it the same savoury depth. Chef's tip: cook the tomatoes down until the oil separates and the sauce turns jammy; a watery sauce slides off the noodles and tastes flat.

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Lahpet thoke

Lahpet thoke is how Myanmar welcomes a guest: a lacquered tray of pickled tea leaves surrounded by fried beans, peanuts, sesame and garlic, offered after meals, at weddings and at monk feasts from Mandalay to Yangon. Mixed into a salad with cabbage, tomato, chilli and lime, it becomes the country's most famous dish: bitter, sour, salty and crunchy at once, with a gentle caffeine lift. Ready-made lahpet sometimes contains fish sauce and the crunchy mix often has dried shrimp, so this version quick-pickles loose green tea at home. Chef's tip: soak the tea in several changes of hot water and squeeze it hard each time; that's what tames the bitterness.

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Gin thoke

Gin thoke is lahpet thoke's livelier cousin, served on the same lacquered trays at teashops in Yangon and as a palate-wakener after a rich curry lunch. Young ginger is cut into fine threads and pickled in lime and salt so it turns pink and juicy, then tossed with cabbage, tomato, peanuts, fried beans and sesame. Burmese cooks often add fish sauce; salt, lime and a little toasted chickpea flour give the dressing body without it. Chef's tip: use young ginger with thin, pinkish skin if you can find it; mature ginger is fibrous and too fiery to eat in this quantity, so slice it extra thin.

17 min

Burmese Salads

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Shan tofu

Shan tofu (to hpu) contains no soy at all: it is a smooth, wobbly block of chickpea flour cooked with water and turmeric, then left to set. Shan women sell it in golden slabs at the five-day markets around Inle Lake and Taunggyi, cut into cubes and dressed as a salad with chilli oil, garlic, vinegar and peanuts, or sliced and fried into crisp fritters. Warm and unset, it's eaten as a porridge (to hpu nway). Chef's tip: whisk constantly as it thickens and keep cooking for a full 8 minutes after it turns thick; undercooked Shan tofu tastes raw and never sets firmly.

25 min

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Samosa thoke

Samosa thoke is pure Yangon street food, born from the city's Indian-Burmese communities: vendors on Mahabandoola Road chop crisp samosas into a bowl with cabbage, onion and mint, ladle over a thin, spiced lentil broth (pe hin ye), and finish it with tamarind, chilli and a squeeze of lime. The samosas soften at the edges while the middle stays crunchy, and the whole bowl is hot, sour and savoury. Use vegan samosas made without ghee. Chef's tip: ladle the broth over at the very last moment and eat straight away; samosa thoke left to sit turns soggy fast.

45 min

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Vegetarian mohinga

Mohinga is Myanmar's national breakfast, ladled from steaming pots at dawn on street corners from Yangon to Mandalay: thin rice noodles in a thick, golden broth fragrant with lemongrass, ginger and toasted chickpea flour, topped with crisp fritters, lime and chilli. The real thing is built on catfish and fish sauce. This vegetarian version is honestly different: dried shiitake and kombu give savouriness instead of fish, and the body comes from toasted chickpea flour, toasted rice powder and banana stem (or palm heart), so it's lighter and earthier rather than fishy. Chef's tip: toast the chickpea flour and rice until golden and nutty before they go in; they carry most of the flavour.

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Ohn no khao swe with tofu

Ohn no khao swe is the comforting coconut noodle soup that Burmese families serve for weekend lunches and for crowds at donation feasts, especially around Mandalay and Yangon. Wheat noodles sit in a rich, mildly spiced coconut broth thickened with chickpea flour, and everyone adds their own toppings: lime, sliced raw onion, chilli flakes, coriander and crispy fried noodles. It's normally made with chicken; tofu and chickpeas take its place here. Chef's tip: stir the coconut milk in at the end and keep it at a gentle simmer; a hard boil makes the coconut split and turn oily.

60 min

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Shwe yin aye

Shwe yin aye, roughly 'golden heart cooler', is what Yangon drinks during the scorching weeks of Thingyan, the April water festival, when stalls set up along the streets to hand it out. It's a bowl of sweet, lightly salted coconut milk over crushed ice, filled with chewy sago pearls, cubes of green agar jelly, a scoop of sticky rice and, surprisingly, a few pieces of soft white bread that soak up the coconut. Chef's tip: make the jelly, sago and sticky rice in the morning and chill everything; assembled cold, the bowl stays refreshing to the last spoonful.

65 min

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Pierogi ruskie

Pierogi ruskie take their name from Red Ruthenia, the old borderland around Lwów and Przemyśl, and today they are the pierogi every Polish milk bar (bar mleczny) from Kraków to Gdańsk keeps on the menu. The filling is the Polish one: floury potato mashed with crumbly twaróg curd cheese, plenty of slowly browned onion and a lot of black pepper, wrapped in a thin, soft dough. Kraków even holds a pierogi festival every August, and ruskie are always the best sellers. Serve them boiled with more golden onion and a spoon of soured cream, or fry leftovers in butter the next day. Chef's tip: let the filling cool completely and taste it before you fill a single dumpling; it should taste over-seasoned on its own, because the dough mutes it.

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Sauerkraut and mushroom pierogi

On Wigilia, the meatless Christmas Eve supper, almost every Polish family puts out a plate of pierogi z kapustą i grzybami, sour cabbage and forest mushroom dumplings. The filling is dark and savoury: sauerkraut simmered until soft, then chopped with dried ceps or bay boletes gathered in autumn and onion fried in oil, so the whole dish is plant-based and fits the old fasting rules of the evening. In Kraków and the south they are boiled; in many homes the leftovers are fried crisp on 25 December. Chef's tip: save the mushroom soaking water; a few spoons of it in the filling give far more depth than any stock cube.

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Blueberry pierogi

When wild bilberries ripen in the pine forests of Podlasie and Masuria in July, roadside sellers appear with jars of them and half of Poland makes pierogi z jagodami for lunch. The dumplings are boiled, so the berries burst into a hot, purple, jammy filling inside a soft dough, and they are eaten with cold sweetened soured cream and a dusting of sugar. Cultivated blueberries work well; frozen wild bilberries are closer to the original. Chef's tip: toss the berries with potato starch, but add the sugar only on top when you serve; sugared berries weep juice, and that juice is what makes the pierogi burst.

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Łazanki with cabbage and mushrooms

Łazanki are short, square egg noodles, and in the Podhale highlands and around Kraków they are tossed with soft-fried white cabbage, a little sauerkraut and mushrooms for a cheap weekday supper, especially in autumn when the cabbage is new. Most cooks add smoked bacon; this version leaves it out and gets its depth from dried ceps, browned fresh mushrooms and plenty of black pepper and marjoram. It is soft, savoury and slightly sour. Serve it on its own with a glass of buttermilk or kefir, as people do in the mountains. Chef's tip: let the cabbage catch and brown in places before you add the noodles; that browning is the flavour bacon would otherwise give.

45 min

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Barszcz czerwony (Christmas Eve beetroot broth)

Barszcz czerwony wigilijny is the clear, ruby-coloured beetroot broth that opens the Christmas Eve supper in most Polish homes, from Warsaw to Wrocław. It is not the thick vegetable soup of Ukraine but a sipping broth, sweet, sour and earthy, sharpened with beetroot kvass or lemon and deepened with dried forest mushrooms; on 24 December it is served with tiny mushroom dumplings called uszka, and through winter people drink it from mugs alongside a croquette. It is fully plant-based, as the Wigilia table traditionally is. Chef's tip: once the beetroot is in, never let the soup boil hard; a bare simmer keeps the colour bright, and boiling turns it a dull brown.

90 min

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Makowiec

Makowiec is the poppy seed roll that sits on almost every Polish Christmas Eve and Easter table; in Silesia and Lesser Poland poppy seeds stand for plenty in the year ahead. A soft, buttery yeast dough is rolled around a thick, black, honey-sweet filling of ground poppy seeds with raisins, walnuts and candied orange peel, then baked and glazed so each slice shows a tight spiral. It takes time, but the process is calm and the roll keeps for days. Chef's tip: grind the soaked poppy seeds two or three times, until they look grey and pasty; whole or once-ground seeds give a gritty filling that falls out of the slices.

135 min

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Nokedli

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

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Vegetarian sausage rolls

Sausage rolls are the snack of Australian bakeries, school canteens and footy grounds, eaten from a paper bag with a squeeze of tomato sauce, and they're on the table at every kids' party from Perth to Hobart, and across the Tasman too. This vegetarian version wraps crisp, buttery puff pastry around a savoury filling of browned mushrooms, lentils, carrot, cheddar and sage, firm enough to slice and with the peppery, herby taste of a good bakery roll. The meat original uses raw seasoned pork or beef mince in place of the filling, as noted in the steps. Chef's tip: cook the mushrooms until they are dry and browned; any leftover liquid will turn the pastry soggy from the inside.

70 min

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Zupa ogórkowa

Zupa ogórkowa is the soup Polish families make when the crock of brine-fermented cucumbers from summer starts to run low in late autumn: grated sour pickles and their cloudy brine simmered with potatoes, carrot and root vegetables, then softened with soured cream and a fistful of dill. It is a staple of canteen lunches and Sunday-in-the-country cooking, from Mazovia to Silesia, and it tastes tangy, garlicky and comforting all at once. Traditionally it is made on meat stock; here a good vegetable stock does the job. Use real ogórki kiszone (fermented in salt water), not sweet vinegar gherkins. Chef's tip: stir the cucumbers in only after the potatoes are soft; acid stops potatoes from softening, so if they go in together the potatoes stay hard.

45 min

Polish Soups

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Zupa pomidorowa

In Poland, zupa pomidorowa is famously Monday's soup: on Sunday the family drinks rosół, and the next day the leftover broth becomes tomato soup with rice or thin noodles and a swirl of soured cream. Children across the country rank it as their favourite school-canteen dish. It is creamy, mild and a little sweet, nothing like a spicy Mediterranean tomato soup. This version starts from vegetable stock (the traditional base is chicken broth) and builds the flavour with carrot, celery root and tomato paste fried in butter. Serve it with rice cooked in the pot or with makaron (fine noodles). Chef's tip: fry the tomato paste in butter until it darkens one shade; raw paste tastes tinny and that one minute makes the soup taste like it simmered for hours.

35 min

Polish Soups

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Vegetarian gołąbki

Gołąbki, little doves, are cabbage leaves rolled around a filling and baked in sauce, and they turn up at name-day parties, weddings and Sunday dinners all over Poland. The best-known filling is pork and rice, but in the east, around Lublin and Podlasie, gołąbki filled with kasza gryczana (toasted buckwheat) and mushrooms are an old meatless version, often made for Christmas Eve and Lent. This one is fully plant-based: nutty buckwheat, fried onion and mushrooms, wrapped in soft cabbage and baked in a sweet-sour tomato sauce. They taste even better reheated the next day. Chef's tip: shave down the thick central rib of each leaf with a small knife; it lets the leaf roll tightly without cracking.

100 min

Polish Vegetarian

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Pączki

Pączki are the rich, yeasted doughnuts Poland eats by the dozen on Tłusty Czwartek, Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent, when Warsaw bakeries such as the old ones on Nowy Świat have queues round the block from dawn. A good pączek is round and heavy for its size, with a pale ring around its middle, a fine, yolk-rich crumb and a filling of rose-petal jam (konfitura z róży) or plum butter, finished with icing and candied orange peel. A spoon of vodka or spirytus in the dough is an old trick: it evaporates in the hot oil and stops the dough soaking up fat. Chef's tip: keep the oil between 165 and 175°C with a thermometer; hotter and they burn outside while raw in the middle, cooler and they turn greasy.

70 min

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Sernik

Sernik is the baked cheesecake Polish grandmothers make for Easter and Christmas, and in Kraków it often comes as sernik krakowski, with raisins in the filling and a lattice of pastry on top. Unlike the American kind it is made with twaróg, a dry, tangy curd cheese, so the filling is light and fine-grained rather than dense, set with eggs and a little potato starch, never gelatine. This version keeps a buttery shortcrust base and a smooth vanilla-lemon top. Chef's tip: the twaróg must be put through a mincer or sieve twice, or bought as ready-ground twaróg sernikowy in a tub; lumpy cheese gives a grainy cake.

110 min

Polish Baking

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Szarlotka

Szarlotka is the apple cake every Polish café and grandmother has a version of, from Zakopane mountain inns to the cake counters of Poznań. In the classic home style, a sweet, crumbly shortcrust (kruche ciasto) is pressed into a tray, filled with a thick layer of tart apples cooked briefly with cinnamon, and topped with the rest of the pastry grated over like crumble. It is served in squares, dusted with icing sugar, often warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Sharp autumn apples such as Szara Reneta or Bramley give the right sour-sweet balance. Chef's tip: grate the frozen top layer of dough straight onto the apples; it bakes into a light, sandy crust instead of a heavy lid.

85 min

Polish Baking

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Mizeria

Mizeria is the cool, creamy cucumber salad that sits beside Sunday dinner in Polish homes from May to September, especially next to young potatoes sprinkled with dill. Thin slices of cucumber are dressed in soured cream with dill, a pinch of sugar and a little lemon or vinegar, so it is fresh, tangy and slightly sweet. Legend links the name to Queen Bona Sforza longing for Italy, but in practice it is simply summer on a plate. Chef's tip: slice the cucumbers paper-thin on a mandoline or the slicing side of a box grater; thick slices never soak up the dressing.

10 min

Polish Salads

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Pavlova

Australians and New Zealanders have argued for a century over who invented pavlova, named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova after her tours of both countries in the 1920s; both make it for Christmas lunch in the height of summer. A good pav has a thin, crisp shell that cracks under the knife and a soft, marshmallowy centre, piled with whipped cream and the sharp fruit of the season, above all passionfruit, kiwifruit and strawberries. Chef's tip: add the sugar one spoon at a time and keep whisking until you can't feel any grains when you rub a little meringue between your fingers.

115 min

Australian Desserts

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