Soft vinegar chips
Order chips at a corner café in Hillbrow or a fish-and-chip counter in Soweto and they come limp, pale gold and steaming, shaken with salt and drenched in vinegar until the paper bag goes see-through. Slap means floppy in Afrikaans, and that is the whole point: these are not the crisp, crunchy fries of a burger chain but thick potato batons fried at a gentle heat until fluffy right through, then left to sweat in their wrapping so the vinegar soaks in. People eat them on the pavement with their fingers, stuff them into a half loaf as a chip roll, or pile on chilli sauce and atchar. Frying them too hot is the classic error, because the outside browns and hardens before the middle is cooked. Chef's tip: use white spirit vinegar rather than malt and the chips stay gluten free, with a sharper, cleaner bite.
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Welsh cakes, picau ar y maen or 'cakes on the stone', are cooked on a cast-iron bakestone in kitchens across Wales and sold warm at markets and rugby matches, and they are a must on St David's Day, 1 March. The dough is like a rich scone with currants and mixed spice, and they are dusted with sugar while hot. Chef's tip: keep the heat medium-low; they need time for the middle to cook before the outside darkens.
Every 15 May, crowds head to the Pradera de San Isidro on Madrid's southern edge for the patron saint's festival, and stalls sell rosquillas by the dozen: plain "tontas" (silly ones) and iced "listas" (clever ones). Many families now bake them at home that week. Old recipes ice the listas with raw egg white; this one uses a lemon and icing-sugar glaze, which is safer and sets just as white. Chef's tip: oil your hands to shape the rings; the dough is soft and sticky by design.
On the night of 31 October and on All Saints' Day, families across La Mancha make sweet gachas: flour toasted in olive oil with aniseed, loosened with milk and sugar into a soft cream, and topped with crisp cubes of fried bread. Each person dips a spoon into the communal dish while the season's first cold nights settle in. Chef's tip: toast the flour in the oil until it smells nutty before adding any milk; raw flour tastes pasty.
Fried catfish is the Friday night fish-fry and Delta church supper of Mississippi and Arkansas, where much of America's catfish is farmed. Fillets are soaked in seasoned milk or buttermilk, rolled in cornmeal and fried until the crust crackles and the mild, sweet fish inside flakes apart. Serve with hushpuppies, slaw and lemon. Chef's tip: cut thick fillets in half lengthways so they cook in the same time as the crust browns.
Sea and mountain: the cooks of the Empordà, between the Pyrenees and the Costa Brava, have long put chicken and seafood in one pot, and this version with prawns is the one most families make for a celebration lunch. The sauce is a dark sofrito finished with a picada of almonds, hazelnuts, garlic and a little dark chocolate, which adds depth rather than sweetness. It uses wine; the alcohol-free option is in the ingredient list. Chef's tip: cook the prawns only briefly at the start and return them at the end, so they stay juicy while the chicken braises.
Every December, kitchens across the Beiras fill with the smell of these broas: soft, cakey cookies made with mashed sweet potato, flour, olive oil and honey, spiced with cinnamon and fennel seed and glazed with egg yolk. Families bake big batches to share with neighbours and keep in tins over the holidays. They are only lightly sweet, with a tender crumb and a shiny top. Chef's tip: dry the cooked sweet potato in the pan for a minute before mashing, as watery mash makes a sticky dough that spreads.
Biscuits and gravy is the working breakfast of the rural South and Appalachia, served at truck stops in Tennessee and diners in the Virginia mountains: fresh biscuits split open and smothered in a thick white 'sawmill' gravy made from crumbled pork sausage, its fat, flour, milk and plenty of black pepper. Chef's tip: don't drain the sausage fat; it is what thickens and flavours the gravy.
Easter Sunday in the Minho means cabrito: young goat rubbed with garlic, paprika and lard, soaked overnight in white wine and roasted until the meat falls from the bone. Families in Arcos de Valdevez and Monção serve it with roast potatoes and a tray of rice baked in the meat juices. This contains pork (lard and smoked bacon) and uses wine; an alcohol-free option is in the ingredient note. Chef's tip: baste every 20 minutes, as kid is lean and dries out quickly without it.
No sidrería in Oviedo's Calle Gascona is without a clay dish of chorizo bubbling in cider, served with bread to mop up the paprika-red juices. It takes minutes, is cheap, and is the first thing ordered while the waiter pours cider from shoulder height. This contains pork (chorizo) and uses dry Asturian cider, which is alcoholic; for an alcohol-free version use cloudy apple juice with a splash of cider vinegar, as noted below. Chef's tip: prick the chorizo all over first so it releases fat into the cider and drinks the cider back in.
In the Savoyard valleys, especially around Albertville and the Val d'Arly, farçon was the Sunday dish left to cook slowly while the family was at Mass: grated potatoes mixed with eggs, cream, prunes and raisins, set in a tall mould and cooked for hours in a water bath. The result is a sliceable, sweet-and-savoury cake, soft and golden, served with a green salad or as a side at a winter feast. Traditionally the mould is lined with bacon; this version uses a buttered mould instead, so it is vegetarian. Chef's tip: let it rest for 15 minutes in the mould before turning it out; it firms up and slices cleanly.
Fariñes, or farrapes in some valleys, fed Asturian farming families through the winter: a pot of maize meal stirred over the fire, eaten for breakfast or as a light supper with cold milk poured over the hot porridge. Today it is comfort food again, offered at rural guesthouses in the Oriente and made at home when the weather turns. The contrast of warm, soft porridge and cold milk is the whole point. Chef's tip: whisk the cornmeal into cold water before it heats so it never forms lumps.
Asturias has two great loves at table, the fish landed at ports like Cudillero and Avilés and the cider pressed from its orchards, and merluza a la sidra brings them together. Families cook it for Sunday lunch, the hake settled on a bed of soft onion and potato with cider poured over, until the sauce turns sweet-sharp. The cider is alcoholic; cloudy apple juice with a little cider vinegar makes a good alcohol-free swap. Chef's tip: add the hake only when the potatoes are nearly tender, so the fish stays juicy.
Fegato alla veneziana is one of the oldest dishes in Venice and still a weekday staple in the trattorie around the Rialto market. Mountains of onions are cooked gently until soft and sweet, then thin strips of calf's liver are tossed through them for barely two minutes, so the liver stays tender against the jammy onions, with a splash of vinegar and parsley to finish. The classic partner is soft white or yellow polenta, which soaks up the buttery juices. Chef's tip: slice the liver into thin strips, no thicker than your little finger, so it cooks through in moments without going tough.
At every Asturian romería, the summer pilgrim fairs held in meadows from Llanes to Cangas del Narcea, stalls sell bollos preñaos by the dozen, warm from the oven, to eat with cider on the grass. The name means "pregnant buns": each soft roll carries a chorizo inside, and its paprika fat seeps into the crumb as it bakes. This contains pork (chorizo). Chef's tip: use semi-cured chorizo sausages that are already safe to eat; raw fresh chorizo may not cook through inside the dough.
Bara brith means 'speckled bread', and this is the fruit loaf of Welsh farmhouses and tea rooms from Snowdonia to the Gower. Dried fruit is soaked overnight in strong black tea, then mixed with sugar, egg, flour and spice, so it is moist, dark and keeps well without any butter in the mix. Slice it thickly and spread with salted Welsh butter. Chef's tip: wrap it and wait a day before cutting; it gets stickier and slices cleaner.
Every village fête in the Aveyron, the old province of Rouergue, has a baker selling fouace: a big golden brioche ring scented with orange flower water and topped with crunchy sugar, carried home in a paper bag to be torn up at breakfast or after Sunday lunch. Laguiole and Rodez bakeries are famous for it, and families bake one for Easter, weddings and christenings. It is softer and less buttery than a Paris brioche, with a light, cottony crumb. Chef's tip: let the shaped crown rise until it is puffy and a fingertip leaves a dent that springs back slowly; underproved fouace tears in the oven.
Red, white and green, the colours of the Basque flag, sit in one pan in piperade, the summer dish of Bayonne, Espelette and the villages of the French Basque Country. Green peppers, onions and ripe tomatoes are stewed in olive oil until soft and sweet, then warmed with the region's mild, fruity Espelette pepper. Basque families eat it at lunch with crusty bread, spooned beside rice, or with eggs softly scrambled into it; restaurants often add a slice of Bayonne ham, which this version leaves out. Chef's tip: cook it slowly and let the liquid reduce; a good piperade is jammy, not watery.
Faggots are the thrifty meatballs of the Black Country, the industrial towns west of Birmingham, sold by butchers and served at chip shops with mushy peas and gravy. They are made from pork liver, pork belly and onion with breadcrumbs, sage and mace, and baked in a deep onion gravy. This is a pork dish. Chef's tip: wrap each faggot in caul fat if your butcher has it; it bastes them and holds them together.
Boxty is the potato pancake of the north midlands, from Leitrim, Cavan and Fermanagh, remembered in the rhyme 'boxty on the griddle, boxty in the pan'. Raw grated potato is mixed with mashed potato, flour and buttermilk, then fried, giving a cake that is crisp and lacy outside and soft and slightly chewy inside. Eat it for breakfast with eggs and tomatoes, or wrapped round a creamy mushroom filling. Chef's tip: squeeze the grated potato hard in a cloth; wet potato gives soggy, grey boxty.
İzmir mornings begin at a boyoz stand in Alsancak or Kemeraltı: a small round pastry of paper-thin, oil-stretched dough, coiled into a snail and baked until the layers shatter, eaten beside a halved hard-boiled egg and a glass of tea. Sephardic Jews brought it to the city centuries ago, and İzmir has guarded it ever since. The dough itself is plain; the magic is in the long rest in oil and the stretching. Chef's tip: let the dough balls sit submerged in oil for a full two hours; they relax so completely that you can stretch them almost transparent without tearing.
Bozghormeh is a dish of Kerman, the desert city in south-east Iran, cooked on winter weekends and for family gatherings. Lamb and chickpeas are simmered with turmeric until soft, then pounded together and finished with kashk (salty fermented whey), lots of fried onion and garlic and a dusting of dried mint; it is scooped up with flatbread rather than eaten with rice. The result is creamy, tangy and deeply savoury. A common mistake is boiling after the kashk goes in; it turns grainy, so add it at the end over a low heat. Chef's tip: if you can't find kashk, mix thick Greek yogurt with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon; it's milder but close.
Pobra de Trives, a mountain town in Ourense, holds a festival every August in honour of its bica, a rich, close-textured cake made with fresh cream and butter from local dairies. It is baked in a rectangular tin, sold in paper and eaten in thick slices with coffee or a glass of milk. The sugar scattered on top bakes into a thin, crackly crust. A common mistake is overmixing once the flour goes in, which makes it tough; fold just until no streaks remain. Chef's tip: whip the egg whites separately and fold them in last for a lighter crumb.
Paisas finish lunch with a glass of mazamorra the way others take dessert: soft, swollen kernels of hulled white corn in their own starchy cooking liquid, topped up with cold milk and eaten with a piece of panela or guava paste to nibble between sips. In Medellín it is sold from carts as well as made in big pots at home for the week, and it is mild, milky and quietly filling. Look for dried hulled white corn (maíz pilado or peto) in Latin American shops. Soak it overnight first. A common mistake is serving it before the corn is fully soft; the kernels should split open and be tender to the bite. Chef's tip: save the thick cooking liquid; it gives the drink its silky body, and the corn keeps in it for 4 days in the fridge.
High in the Vosges above Munster, the farm-inns called fermes-auberges serve their pungent washed-rind cheese in the simplest way: a wedge laid over hot potatoes in their skins, with a little dish of cumin seeds for sprinkling. Alsatians eat it as a winter supper or as the cheese course after a walk in the hills, with a green salad and a glass of something cold. The cheese smells strong but tastes mild and milky once warm, and cumin is its traditional partner. Most Munster is made with animal rennet; for a vegetarian meal choose a vegetarian washed-rind cheese, or a ripe vegetarian brie or reblochon-style cheese. Chef's tip: toast the cumin seeds in a dry pan for a minute before serving; they go from dusty to nutty and lift the whole plate.
Each June farmers around Gaziantep cut wheat while it is still green and burn off the husks in the field, which gives firik its gentle campfire smell. Cooked as a pilaf with onion, pepper paste and a handful of chickpeas, it has a chewy, nutty bite that sits well beside grilled kebabs or simply a bowl of ayran and a tomato salad. It is the everyday grain of the region's home kitchens, cheaper than rice and more filling. Rinse the grains well: grit and bits of chaff are common in firik. Chef's tip: let it rest under a tea towel for ten minutes after cooking; the steam finishes the grains and they separate beautifully.
Gaziantep's baklava shops lay out trays of şöbiyet beside the classic squares: buttery filo triangles hiding a soft semolina cream and a thick seam of pistachio, soaked in cool syrup. Families buy them by the kilo for bayram visits and engagement days, and they are best eaten the day they are made, while the top layers still crackle. Home versions use shop filo and a quick milk cream instead of the clotted cream the masters fold in. Pour cold syrup over hot pastry, never hot over hot, or the layers turn soggy. Chef's tip: chill the cream until it is firm enough to slice; a soft filling oozes out as you fold the triangles.
Order an Adana kebab in its home city and a tall glass of şalgam arrives with it, deep purple, salty, sour and often fiery. It is made by fermenting black carrots with a little bulgur and salt for a week or more, and the sharpness clears the palate between bites of lamb and grilled onion. Street carts in Adana sell it by the glass in summer. This home version skips the separate bulgur-sour-dough stage the big producers use. Use non-iodised salt: iodised salt can stall the ferment. Chef's tip: taste from day 5; when it is sour enough to make you blink, strain and chill it, because it keeps fermenting at room temperature.
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