Every Scottish granny has her own Scotch broth, the thick winter soup that simmers on stoves from the Borders to the Highlands and is often served on Burns Night. Lamb neck on the bone makes a rich stock with pearl barley, dried peas, leek, carrot, turnip and cabbage, and the meat is shredded back into the pot. It is a whole meal with crusty bread. Chef's tip: make it a day ahead; the barley keeps thickening it, and you can lift the solid fat off the top once chilled.
A new country every day, from every cuisine on the site.
Two downtown Los Angeles delis founded in 1908 still argue about who first dunked a roll into the roasting pan juices, but either way the French dip is LA's own sandwich: thin slices of roast beef piled into a crusty French roll that is dipped in a rich, savoury beef jus, eaten with hot mustard at the counter. Chef's tip: make the jus from the roasting pan; the browned bits stuck to the tin are where the flavour lives.
Ask in a Marrakech side street where to eat cheaply and you will be pointed to a stall with a vat of loubia: white beans stewed until creamy in a garlicky tomato sauce spiked with cumin, paprika and a little ginger, ladled into a bowl and eaten with bread. At home the same dish is a weekday staple, often cooked with a piece of meat, but the meat-free version here is just as satisfying and is how plenty of families make it. The sauce should be thick and orange with olive oil pooling on top. A sprinkle of cumin and a drizzle of oil at the table are customary. Avoid adding the tomato before the beans are tender; its acid keeps the skins tough however long they simmer. Chef's tip: soak the beans overnight and cook them until tender before the tomato goes in properly; acid stops beans softening, so loubia rushed with tomatoes from the start can stay chalky.
Ayvalık, the olive-oil town on the north Aegean, turned the humble cheese toastie into a feast: a long, soft loaf split and stuffed with kaşar, beef sucuk, beef salami, tomatoes and pickles, pressed hot, then opened up again to be piled with ketchup, mayonnaise and Russian salad. It is eaten for breakfast or as a late snack after a swim. This one has beef sausage and salami, so check the label if you avoid pork. Chef's tip: press it twice, once with the cheese and meats, then again after opening it to add the cold toppings, so the bread stays crisp.
Before any tapa reaches the bar in Seville, a little dish of aliñadas usually does: cracked green manzanilla or gordal olives steeped in brine with garlic, wild thyme, fennel and a strip of orange peel. Markets like Triana sell them by the scoop, but they are simple to dress at home from plain olives in brine. Give them two days; the herbs need time to get into the flesh. A common mistake is serving them after a day; they need at least two days in the brine for the garlic and herbs to reach the stone. Chef's tip: crack each olive with the flat of a knife until it just splits; a crushed olive goes soft and cloudy in the jar.
Accras are the first thing on the table at a Sunday lunch, a christening or a Christmas réveillon in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and they are sold by the paper bag from roadside stalls and beach shacks. The best-known version is made with salt cod; this is the vegetable one, with grated carrot and courgette, spring onion, garlic, parsley and a little Scotch bonnet in a light batter. They puff up in the oil and should be crisp outside and soft inside. Serve them hot with sauce chien and lime. Chef's tip: rest the batter for half an hour; it thickens and the fritters puff up much better.
Simnel cake is England's Easter fruit cake, once baked by girls in service to take home on Mothering Sunday and now the centrepiece of Easter tea. A light fruit cake has a layer of marzipan baked through the middle and more on top, decorated with eleven marzipan balls for the apostles, leaving out Judas. Chef's tip: wrap a band of baking paper round the outside of the tin; it stops the edges drying out during the long, slow bake.
In many Moroccan homes, coffee is bought ready-mixed from the roaster with a spoonful of 'attria', a warm blend of ground spices such as cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, black pepper and toasted sesame, that gives it a rounded, gently peppery aroma. It is brewed in a pan or a pot and sipped black and sweet, or with a splash of milk, after lunch, with pastries for guests, or on cold mornings. The spices soften the bitterness and make the whole kitchen smell wonderful. This home version mixes the spices into ordinary ground coffee. Chef's tip: keep the coffee at a bare simmer and never let it boil hard; vigorous boiling, the usual mistake, extracts bitterness from both coffee and spices.
Velvety, coral-coloured and rich with coconut, bobó de camarão is what Bahian families put on the table when there is something to celebrate, and beach restaurants from Praia do Forte to Itacaré serve it in clay pots with white rice and farofa. Cassava is boiled until it falls apart, blended with coconut milk into a smooth cream, then folded into prawns cooked with onion, tomato, peppers and a slick of dendê oil. The result is somewhere between a stew and a thick sauce, sweet from the prawns and gently earthy from the cassava. A frequent mistake is boiling the prawns in the purée for too long, which leaves them tough and curled; they go in at the very end. Cassava must always be cooked right through, never eaten raw: cut out the woody core and boil it until a knife meets no resistance. Chef's tip: blend the cassava while it is still hot, with some of its cooking water; cold cassava turns gluey in the blender.
Romesco belongs to the fishing quarter of El Serrallo in Tarragona, where fishermen made it to eat with the day's catch, and where an annual contest still decides who pounds the best one. It is close kin to the salvitxada served with calçots, but deeper and hotter: the ñoras are fried, a small dried chilli goes in, and hazelnuts share the work with almonds. Serve it with grilled fish, prawns, potatoes, or any roasted vegetable. Chef's tip: fry the bread and nuts in the same oil you will use in the sauce; it carries their toasted flavour into every spoonful.
On Fastnacht Day, the Tuesday before Lent, bakeries and church kitchens across south-central Pennsylvania fry thousands of these square potato doughnuts to use up the fat and sugar before the fast. Mashed potato in the yeast dough makes them light but slightly dense and moist. They are eaten plain, sugared, or split and spread with molasses. Chef's tip: cut them into squares with a knife and make a slit in the middle of each; that is the traditional Fastnacht, and there are no scraps to re-roll.
Rollmops are the pickled herring rolls of the North Sea and Baltic coasts, pinned with a wooden pick around gherkin and onion and kept in a jar of spiced vinegar; in Berlin and Hamburg they are the classic morning-after breakfast and a fixture of New Year's Day tables. Making them at home takes a week of fridge time but very little work. Because the fish is never cooked, use herring that has been frozen at −20 °C for at least 24 hours (most fresh 'sashimi-grade' or commercially frozen fillets qualify; ask your fishmonger), and keep everything chilled. Rollmops are not for pregnant women, young children or anyone with a weakened immune system. Chef's tip: let the jars rest a full five days; the vinegar needs that long to firm the flesh and soften the tiny bones.
No fish and chip shop in the North of England is complete without a tub of mushy peas, and in Nottingham and Leeds they are sold with mint sauce from pea stalls at fairs. Dried marrowfat peas are soaked overnight with a little bicarbonate of soda, which softens their skins, and then simmered until they break down into a thick, savoury green mash. Chef's tip: rinse the soaked peas very well, or the bicarbonate leaves a soapy taste.
Named after Queen Victoria, who took a slice with her afternoon tea, the Victoria sandwich is the cake of English village fetes, Women's Institute competitions and every birthday tea in the shires. It is two light butter sponges joined with raspberry jam and buttercream, finished with a dusting of caster sugar. Chef's tip: weigh the eggs in their shells and use the same weight of butter, sugar and flour; that is the classic way to get a perfect crumb.
Every Irish county has its apple cake, but it is especially loved in Armagh's orchard country and in Kerry, baked in late September when the Bramleys come in. Sharp cooking apples bake into soft, tart pockets in a buttery sponge, under a crunchy sugar and cinnamon crumb. Serve warm with custard or softly whipped cream. Chef's tip: toss the apple slices in lemon juice and sugar only at the last minute, or they release water into the batter.
Balmoral chicken, named after the royal castle on Deeside, is the Scottish hotel and wedding-dinner dish of chicken breast stuffed with haggis, wrapped in smoked streaky bacon (pork) and roasted, usually with a whisky cream sauce. This version uses a peppercorn cream sauce with no alcohol. Chef's tip: make a deep pocket rather than butterflying the breast, so the haggis stays inside as it cooks.
Manchester tart is the school-dinner pudding generations of Mancunians remember: a shortcrust case spread with raspberry jam, filled with thick, cold vanilla custard and covered in desiccated coconut, sometimes with a glacé cherry on top. It is a nostalgic Northern bake for birthdays and school reunions. Chef's tip: make the custard really thick and cool it a little before pouring, so it sets in clean slices.
Few plates say Puglia as plainly as this one: a pale, velvety purée of dried broad beans beside a tangle of boiled wild chicory, the two joined by a stream of green olive oil. Families from the Murgia to the Salento cook it on winter weekdays and through Lent, and Bari trattorias still put it on the menu as the true taste of cucina povera. The beans are sweet and earthy, the greens bitter, and every forkful should carry a little of both. Chef's tip: buy dried broad beans that are already skinned and split; they cook to a cream on their own, with no sieving.
Saffron buns, called 'tea treats' in parts of Cornwall, were handed out at Sunday school outings and chapel tea treats, and they still glow yellow in bakery windows from Penzance to Truro. A pinch of saffron steeped in warm milk colours a soft, enriched dough studded with currants and peel, so they taste gently floral and fruity. Eat them split and spread with butter or clotted cream. Chef's tip: steep the saffron overnight for the deepest colour and flavour.
On a Rabat family table, the Friday couscous is often preceded by a spread of small cooked salads, and the jewel-red dish of beetroot cubes is always one of them. Boiled beetroot is cut into dice and dressed with cumin, a little sugar, olive oil and either vinegar for a sharp version or orange-flower water for a softer, perfumed one; some cooks use both. It is earthy, sweet and bright, and needs nothing more than parsley on top. Make it a few hours ahead so the beets soak up the dressing, and serve it cool with bread and other salads. Chef's tip: dress the beetroot while it is still slightly warm; it absorbs the dressing far better than cold beets do.
In Hidalgo, the pulque country north of Mexico City, the pulquerías serve curados: pulque blended with fruit, and the strawberry one is pink, thick and creamy. Home cooks and taquerías make this alcohol-free cousin for the whole family, a strawberry agua fresca blended with evaporated milk, so it is like a light milkshake that you drink with tacos on a hot afternoon. It contains no pulque or alcohol. Chef's tip: use the ripest, darkest strawberries you can find; pale ones give a thin, sour drink.
Tagoula is mountain food from the Souss and the Atlas: coarse barley (or maize) cooked in salted water until it is thick enough to hold a shape, then turned into a shared dish, hollowed in the centre and filled with golden argan oil, honey and sometimes a spoon of smen. Families eat it for breakfast on cold days and it is a traditional dish for Yennayer, the Amazigh New Year in January. Everyone dips spoonfuls of the soft, nutty porridge into the pool of oil and honey, so each bite is sweet, savoury and rich at once. Outside Morocco, a roasted walnut oil is the closest stand-in for culinary argan oil. Chef's tip: pour the grits into boiling water in a thin stream while beating with a wooden spoon; dumping them in at once is the usual mistake and leaves lumps.
Segovia's confiterías have sold ponche since the 1920s: layers of light sponge brushed with syrup, sandwiched with thick custard and wrapped in a thin coat of marzipan whose sugared top is branded into a diamond lattice with a hot iron. It is the cake for a family celebration, or the sweet finish after a roast suckling-pig lunch in the old town. The syrup is traditionally laced with liqueur; leave it out, or swap it for orange juice, for an alcohol-free cake. Chef's tip: let the custard cool and set completely before assembling, or the layers slide.
Treacle tart is an old English nursery pudding, a favourite of Victorian kitchens and still served with clotted cream or custard in pubs and school canteens. Despite the name it's made with golden syrup thickened with fresh breadcrumbs, sharpened with lemon zest and juice, baked until chewy at the edges and soft in the middle. Chef's tip: warm the syrup before mixing so the breadcrumbs soak it up evenly.
From Kittery to Bar Harbor, roadside lobster shacks on the Maine coast serve this every summer: big chunks of sweet lobster meat, barely dressed with mayonnaise, lemon and celery, piled into a hot-dog bun toasted in butter. Over the border in Connecticut they serve it warm with melted butter instead, and both camps think the other is wrong. Chef's tip: dress the lobster lightly, just enough to gloss it; the meat should be the star, not the mayonnaise.
On the road into Chefchaouen, women from the Rif villages sit with rounds of jben wrapped in palm leaves, a fresh, soft, lightly salted cheese with a clean, milky tang. Breakfast in the north often means a slab of it drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with dried thyme or za'atar, with olives, honey and warm bread. Traditionally jben is curdled with animal rennet (sometimes with thistle or fig sap), so check if you buy it; this home version uses vegetarian (microbial) rennet and pasteurised milk, and is drained in the fridge. Hands-on time is about an hour; the curd then needs 1–2 hours to set and 4–6 hours to drain. Keep it chilled and eat it within 4 days. Chef's tip: avoid UHT and ultra-pasteurised milk, which will not set into a firm curd; ordinary pasteurised whole milk works well.
The Selkirk bannock is a round, glossy fruit bread from the Border town of Selkirk, first baked in the 1850s and famously eaten by Queen Victoria at Abbotsford. Unlike a plain oat bannock it is a rich yeast dough that is mostly sultanas, sliced and buttered with afternoon tea. Chef's tip: work the sultanas in only after the dough has risen once, or they tear the gluten and the loaf won't lift.
On hot evenings in the villages of the Middle and High Atlas, supper is often nothing more than saykouk: steamed couscous, usually barley, cooled and then drowned in ice-cold lben, the tangy buttermilk left after churning butter. It is eaten with spoons from a big shared bowl and is wonderfully cooling, sour and creamy, with the grains soaking up the milk as you eat. Some families sweeten it with a little sugar, others keep it salty; both are right. This quick version uses instant couscous so it is ready in about 20 minutes. Don't pour the buttermilk over warm couscous: it should be fully cool, or the buttermilk splits and the dish loses its refreshing chill. Chef's tip: let the couscous cool completely before the buttermilk goes in, or it turns the buttermilk warm and slightly grainy.
Olive sellers in the Marrakech medina build tall pyramids of green, violet and black olives, and some of the most tempting bowls are the ones already dressed with chilli paste, garlic and preserved lemon. Making zitoun mchermel at home is simple: rinse good brined olives, then toss them with harissa, cumin, paprika, lemon rind, herbs and olive oil and give them a day in the fridge to soak up the flavours. They come to the table at almost every meal, next to bread and salads, and are perfect with mint tea or as a snack before dinner. Chef's tip: lightly crack each olive with the flat of a knife or the bottom of a glass so the marinade gets inside.
Roadside cafés on the mountain passes of the High Atlas keep small clay tagines warming over charcoal, and the one most travellers order for breakfast or a quick lunch is the Berber omelette: eggs cracked over a bubbling base of tomato, onion, cumin and paprika, then covered until they just set. It arrives sizzling with olives and herbs on top and plenty of bread to wipe the dish clean, usually with a glass of mint tea. At home you can use a small tagine on a heat diffuser or a lidded frying pan. For anyone pregnant, very young, older or with a weak immune system, cook until the yolks are firm. Chef's tip: never put a clay tagine straight onto a high flame; use a diffuser and medium-low heat, or it can crack.
In Şanlıurfa a bowl of bostana goes on the table beside every summer meal of kebab, köfte or bulgur pilaf. Tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, onion and fistfuls of parsley and mint are chopped very small, seasoned with isot and drowned in lemon juice and a little water, so you spoon up the juices as well as the vegetables. It is meant to be cold, sour and refreshing in the city's fierce heat. Common mistake: making it hours ahead; the cucumber goes limp. Chef's tip: chill the bowl and add a couple of ice cubes just before serving, as Urfa grandmothers do.
Axoa (say 'ash-o-a') comes from Espelette, the Basque village whose house fronts are hung with strings of drying red peppers every autumn, and it is still the dish of the October pepper fair and of market-day lunches in Cambo and Bayonne. Veal shoulder is cut into small dice, then stewed with onions, mild green peppers and a good spoonful of ground Espelette pepper, which brings warmth and a fruity, smoky perfume rather than real fire. The result is soft, juicy and brick-red at the edges, best spooned over boiled potatoes or with crusty bread. Chef's tip: stir most of the Espelette pepper in at the end of cooking; long simmering dulls its fragrance.
Porter cake is the Dublin fruit cake made with stout, the dark beer once drunk by the porters of Dublin's markets and docks; it is baked for Christmas, christenings and wakes across Leinster. The fruit is simmered in the stout, which gives the crumb a deep, malty, slightly bitter flavour and keeps it moist for weeks. This recipe contains alcohol: most of it cooks off, but for an alcohol-free version use strong black tea or alcohol-free stout. Chef's tip: wrap the cooled cake and leave it for 2–3 days before cutting; it slices better and tastes richer.
A cream tea is the West Country's afternoon treat: warm scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam with a pot of tea, served in tea gardens across Devon and Cornwall. In Devon the cream goes on first and the jam on top; in Cornwall it's the other way round, and the argument never ends. These scones are plain and light so the cream and jam shine. Chef's tip: cut straight down with the cutter and don't twist it, or the scones rise lopsided.
Cali's bakeries and Sunday food stalls by the Pance river sell aborrajados all day: thick slices of very ripe plantain, fried soft, pressed around a slab of white cheese, sometimes with guava paste, then coated in a light batter and fried again until golden. The result is sweet, salty and gooey, a snack you eat with your hands alongside a glass of lulada or champús. Choose plantains with skins almost completely black; yellow ones are too starchy and never get sweet. Queso blanco or campesino is often set with animal rennet, so use a vegetarian mozzarella or similar. The usual mistake is batter that is too thick, giving a heavy, bready shell; it should coat like thin pancake batter. Chef's tip: chill the stuffed plantain parcels for 10 minutes before battering; they hold together much better in the oil.
Abará is the steamed sister of acarajé, sold from the same wooden trays by the baianas in white lace who set up on the corners of Salvador's Pelourinho, Rio Vermelho and the Barra seafront. The batter is identical, black-eyed peas skinned and ground with onion and dried shrimp, but instead of hitting hot dendê it is wrapped in banana leaf and steamed, so it comes out soft, dense and sunset-orange, tasting of palm oil, sea and pulses. Baianas split it open and fill it with vatapá, caruru, vinagrete and a few whole shrimp; at home it is lovely with just a spoonful of pepper sauce. Plan ahead: the peas need soaking overnight. The usual mistake is leaving the skins on, which makes the parcels grey, gritty and heavy. For a vegetarian version, leave out the shrimp and add a pinch more salt. Chef's tip: beat the paste hard with a wooden spoon for a few minutes before wrapping; the air you work in is what keeps abará light rather than rubbery.
Bread and butter pudding was the thrifty English way of using up stale bread, and today it's a pub and Sunday-lunch pudding from the Cotswolds to London. Buttered slices of bread are layered with sultanas, soaked in a vanilla and nutmeg custard and baked until puffed with a crisp, sugary top and a soft, wobbly centre. Chef's tip: let the bread soak in the custard for 30 minutes before baking, so it's creamy all the way through.
Sweet and salty is the whole point here. Córdoba's empanadas hold a filling of beef, onion, a little potato, raisins and olives, and the moment they come out of the fryer they get a sprinkle of sugar that melts into the crackly crust. They turn up at birthday parties, school fundraisers and the patriotic holidays of 25 May and 9 July, often next to a bowl of locro. If the sugar on top sounds odd, try one: the contrast with the cumin and paprika is the local hallmark. The error that ruins them is frying in oil that isn't hot enough, which leaves them pale and greasy; keep it at 175 °C. Chef's tip: dust with sugar within seconds of draining, while the surface is still glistening, or it won't stick.
Spotted dick is the steamed suet pudding of English school dinners and gentlemen's clubs in London, the 'spots' being the currants and 'dick' an old word for pudding. Suet makes it light and moist; this recipe uses vegetarian suet, so it is meat-free. It is rolled, wrapped and steamed, then served in thick slices with hot custard. Chef's tip: leave a pleat in the paper and foil so the pudding has room to swell.
Along the coast of Santa Fe, especially during Lent and Holy Week, fishmongers' stalls and riverside kiosks sell fried empanadas filled with sábalo or surubí. The fish is poached, flaked and folded through soft onion and sweet pepper, then sealed in a thin oil-based dough and fried until blistered and crisp. Squeeze lemon over them and eat them warm, with a green salad or just a paper napkin. Any firm white fish works: hake, cod or a farmed catfish. The mistake people make most is skipping the bone check; river fish such as sábalo hide fine bones, so run your fingers through every flake. Chef's tip: keep the filling quite dry and cold before you fill the discs; extra liquid turns to steam in the hot oil and bursts the seams.
In Boston, Irish families made corned beef the centre of St Patrick's Day, swapping the bacon joint of home for the cheaper brisket sold by Jewish butchers, and New Englanders still call the whole pot a boiled dinner. Salt-cured beef brisket is simmered for hours with spices, then potatoes, carrots and wedges of cabbage cook in the same broth. Serve with grainy mustard. Chef's tip: slice the beef across the grain, thinly; cut along the grain it looks stringy and chews tough.
Potato soup is what Irish pubs and farmhouse kitchens set down on a wet afternoon from Kerry to Mayo, always with a heel of brown soda bread. Floury potatoes, onion and leek are sweated in butter and simmered in stock, then blended to a velvety, comforting soup with a gentle onion sweetness. A swirl of buttermilk and chives adds freshness. Chef's tip: sweat the leeks slowly without browning them; colour makes the soup taste bitter and turns it grey.
Mendoza's empanadas are all about juice. The filling uses roughly as much onion as beef, cooked only briefly so it stays sweet and wet, then gets folded with hard-boiled egg and a whole green olive in every pastry; the dough is a tender one made with beef fat. They come out of wood ovens across the province for Sundays, family gatherings and the grape harvest, and are eaten by hand, leaning forward, with a tomato and onion salad on the side. The classic error is filling the dough while the meat is still warm: the fat melts, the pastry turns soggy and the seal splits in the oven. Cool the filling completely, ideally overnight. Chef's tip: cut the beef into small cubes with a knife instead of buying mince; it stays juicier and gives the bite a Mendoza cook expects.
Order a licuado in any Argentine café or bar and you will get a tall glass of fruit blended with milk (con leche) or water (con agua), and banana with milk is the one nearly everyone grows up on. It is breakfast for teenagers in a hurry, a merienda with tostados, and the drink parents in Buenos Aires make when the fruit bowl has spotty bananas. It should be thick, cold and smooth, with a light froth, sweet mainly from ripe fruit. Using under-ripe bananas is the mistake: they taste chalky and need lots of sugar, so wait for brown freckles. Chef's tip: slice and freeze the bananas the night before and you can skip the ice; the shake comes out colder and thicker without being watered down.
At beach shacks along Narragansett Bay and in Galilee, clam cakes are bought by the paper bag, half a dozen at a time, to dunk in a cup of clear clam chowder. They are not patties but craggy, golden fritters, crisp outside and soft inside, studded with chopped quahog clams. Chef's tip: use the clam juice as part of the liquid; it puts the sea flavour into every bite of batter.
Irish scones are the centre of afternoon tea in hotels and country houses from Galway to Wicklow, and the bake that every Irish cook makes from memory. Buttermilk makes them light and tender with a faint tang, and an egg wash gives the glossy golden top. Serve warm, split, with butter, raspberry jam and whipped cream. Chef's tip: press the cutter straight down without twisting; twisting seals the edges and stops them rising tall.
In April and May rhubarb crowns burst up in kitchen gardens all over Ireland, and the first of it goes into this plate tart, baked on an enamel plate in farmhouses from Cork to Donegal. The rhubarb is sweet-sour under a crisp, sugar-crusted lid of shortcrust. Serve warm with custard or a jug of cream. Chef's tip: sprinkle a spoonful of semolina or cornflour over the bottom pastry before adding the fruit; it soaks up the juice and stops a soggy base.
In Hawaii, Chantilly cake means a chocolate layer cake covered in a rich, caramel-coloured frosting made from evaporated milk, egg yolks and butter, not the whipped cream the name suggests. Honolulu bakeries have sold it for birthdays and graduations for decades, and it is very different from mainland cakes. Chef's tip: cook the frosting base slowly and stir constantly until it is as thick as pudding; if it is runny, the frosting will slide off the cake.
Irish coffee was first served in the 1940s at Foynes on the Shannon estuary, to cold passengers stepping off the flying boats from America, and it is now poured in hotel bars across Ireland after a long dinner. Hot black coffee is sweetened with brown sugar and laced with Irish whiskey, then topped with a layer of lightly whipped cream that you drink the coffee through. This drink contains alcohol; for an alcohol-free version, leave out the whiskey and add a few drops of vanilla. Chef's tip: whip the cream only until it just thickens, so it floats in a soft layer rather than sinking or sitting in stiff blobs.
The Sonoran hot dog came north from Hermosillo in Mexico and is now the late-night street food of Tucson, Arizona, sold from carts and small stands called dogueros. A frankfurter is wrapped in bacon (pork) and griddled until crisp, then tucked into a soft, split-top bolillo roll with pinto beans, onion, tomato, mayonnaise, mustard and jalapeño salsa. Chef's tip: wind the bacon tightly in a spiral and start it seam-side down, so it sticks and doesn't unravel.
Tucumán takes its empanadas so seriously that the town of Famaillá holds a national empanada festival every September, and judges count the pleats. The local style is small and juicy, filled with beef cut by hand with a knife (never minced), lots of white onion and spring onion, cumin, paprika and hard-boiled egg, and the dough is made with beef fat. They are baked very hot, traditionally in a clay oven, until blistered, and eaten standing up at peñas, football matches or family lunches, a drop of lemon squeezed in. The beef filling must reach 71 °C; it cooks first in the pan and again in the oven. A dry filling is the mistake to avoid: cook the onion slowly and let the filling cool so the fat sets, which turns to juice in the oven. Chef's tip: chill the filling overnight if you can; cold filling is easier to spoon and the empanadas come out juicier.
In eastern North Carolina barbecue means pork, slow-smoked whole hog or shoulder chopped and dressed with a thin sauce of cider vinegar, chilli flakes and pepper, with no tomato at all. It is served at pit-cooked joints around Ayden and Goldsboro with slaw and hushpuppies, and piled into soft buns at cookouts. This oven version slow-roasts a pork shoulder until it pulls apart. Chef's tip: dress the meat with the sauce while it's still warm, so it soaks right in.
Ourkimen is cooked across the Souss and the Atlas for Yennayer, the Amazigh New Year on 12–13 January, when a pot of mixed dried beans, chickpeas, wheat berries and corn is simmered for hours to wish for a plentiful harvest. Many families add lamb's feet or dried meat; this is the meat-free version, made the way many cooks prepare it when meat is not on the table, and it is still deeply savoury from tomato, cumin, paprika and a good dose of olive oil. The grains turn chewy and the pulses creamy, and the stew is eaten hot from bowls with bread. Start the soaking the night before; the stew then needs about 3 1/2 hours of gentle simmering. People who have G6PD deficiency (favism) should leave out the dried broad beans and use more white beans. Chef's tip: stir from the bottom every 20 minutes in the last hour; as the stew thickens it catches easily.
Memphis is famous for pork ribs served 'dry': coated in a spice rub of paprika, garlic and chilli and slow-cooked until tender, then dusted with more rub instead of sauce. Basement rib joints downtown and the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest every May keep the style alive. This oven method gets close to the smoked version. Chef's tip: peel the papery membrane off the back of the ribs before rubbing; it blocks the seasoning and turns leathery.
Between Essaouira and Agadir, where argan trees grow on the dry hills, breakfast is not complete without a bowl of amlou: roasted almonds ground to a paste with culinary argan oil and honey until it is pourable, nutty and sweet with a deep, toasty flavour. It is spread on warm bread, msemen or baghrir, eaten with tea, and taken by many as a quick source of energy on cold mornings. Culinary argan oil is made from roasted kernels and is not the same as cosmetic argan oil, which is unroasted; if you cannot find it, roasted walnut oil gives a similar result. Chef's tip: roast the almonds until they are golden right through to the centre; pale almonds give a flat-tasting amlou.
White barbecue sauce was created in 1925 at a barbecue pit in Decatur, north Alabama, and it is still what that corner of the state puts on smoked and grilled chicken: a peppery mixture of mayonnaise, cider vinegar and horseradish. The hot chicken is dunked in it straight off the grill, so the tangy sauce soaks into the crisp skin. Chef's tip: keep half the sauce separate before it touches raw-chicken brushes, for serving at the table.
Palets are the thick cousin of the thin Breton galette biscuit: chunky rounds as wide as a small cookie and nearly a centimetre high, crisp on the outside and crumbly within, tasting strongly of salted butter. Bakeries in Pont-Aven and all along the Finistère coast sell them in tins, and Breton families serve them with coffee, with a bowl of cider-poached apples or crumbled over ice cream. Baking them in muffin tins or metal rings keeps their shape and straight edges. Chef's tip: use proper salted butter rather than adding salt to unsalted; the flavour is rounder and the dough handles better.
In March, when the sugarhouses of Vermont steam day and night boiling sap, diners and country stores sell this pale caramel-coloured pie made with the new season's syrup. The filling is a simple custard of maple syrup, cream and eggs, so the flavour is pure maple, deep and woody. Use dark, strong-tasting maple syrup, not pancake syrup. Chef's tip: bake until the edges are set but the middle still wobbles like jelly; it firms as it cools.
Avocado toast took off in the cafés of Los Angeles and San Francisco, where California's Hass avocados are grown, and it is now the state's standard weekend brunch. The trick is simple ingredients done well: thick sourdough toasted hard, ripe avocado smashed with lemon and good salt, and something crunchy and sharp on top. Chef's tip: season the avocado more than you think, with salt and lemon; underseasoned avocado tastes flat.
Green goddess dressing was created at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in the 1920s, named after a popular play, and it came back as the herb-packed dressing of California salad bars and grain bowls. It is pale green and creamy, full of tarragon, parsley and chives. The hotel's original used anchovies; this vegetarian version gets its savoury punch from capers. Use it on salads, as a dip for crudités or on roast vegetables. Chef's tip: blend the herbs with the lemon first, before the creamy ingredients, so they break down fully and turn the dressing bright green.
The Coachella Valley around Palm Springs and Indio grows most of America's dates, and roadside date farms along the desert highway have sold this shake to thirsty drivers since the 1930s. Soft Medjool dates are blended with vanilla ice cream and milk into a thick, caramel-flavoured shake. Chef's tip: soak the chopped dates in a little warm milk for 10 minutes first, so they blend completely smooth instead of leaving chewy bits in the straw.
Hot chicken has been a Nashville institution since the 1930s and is eaten at late-night shacks and the city's summer hot-chicken festival: crisp buttermilk-brined fried chicken painted while hot with a paste of cayenne and brown sugar in hot oil, served on a slice of white bread with dill pickle chips to cool things down. Chef's tip: brine the chicken overnight in the fridge; it seasons the meat right through and keeps it juicy under all that heat.
Unlike Italian potato gnocchi, the Paris version is made from choux paste flavoured with cheese and mustard, piped straight into simmering water and cut into little logs with a knife. The poached dumplings go into a dish with béchamel and more cheese and are baked until puffed and golden. It was a classic of old Parisian brasseries and grand-hotel kitchens and still turns up as a comforting supper or a side in bistros. Gruyère and Comté are traditionally made with animal rennet, so use a vegetarian mountain cheese. Chef's tip: dip the knife in hot water between cuts; the paste drops off cleanly instead of stretching into strings.
Brown bread ice cream has been a country-house dessert in Ireland since Victorian times and still turns up on menus in Kenmare, Kinsale and Dublin restaurants. Crumbs of brown soda bread are toasted with brown sugar until crisp and toffee-like, then folded through a rich vanilla ice cream, so it tastes of caramel and malty, nutty bread. This no-churn version needs no machine. Chef's tip: let the caramelised crumbs cool and break up completely before folding them in, or they sink and clump.
Chicken and ham pie is the family supper of Irish homes from Westmeath to Wicklow, the way to stretch a roast chicken and a piece of cooked ham into another meal, and a staple of hotel carveries. The ham is pork. Both meats sit in a creamy leek and mushroom sauce under a puff pastry lid. Chef's tip: let the filling cool before putting on the pastry, or the butter in the puff melts and it won't rise.
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.
In July and August shoals of mackerel come close to the piers from Kilmore Quay to Killybegs, and children catch them on hand lines for the evening pan. The old Irish partner for the oily fish is a sharp sauce of the gooseberries ripening in the garden at the same time, which cuts through the richness. Serve with new potatoes. Chef's tip: cook the fillets skin-side down almost all the way, so the skin crisps and the delicate flesh stays moist.
Boston earned the nickname Beantown from this pot: small white beans baked all day with salt pork, molasses and mustard, traditionally put in the oven on Saturday morning to be eaten that night with brown bread and kept warm for Sunday. The pork, cured belly with its rind, melts into the beans and gives a savoury richness against the dark, sweet sauce. Chef's tip: keep the beans just covered with water as they bake; if they dry out on top they turn hard and leathery.
Waste-not Southern cooks in Georgia and the Carolinas turned the white part of the watermelon rind into these sweet, glassy pickles, served on relish trays at Christmas and with fried chicken in summer. The rind is brined, then simmered in a cinnamon and clove syrup until translucent and crisp-tender. Chef's tip: cut away every bit of green skin and pink flesh; the skin stays tough and the flesh goes mushy.
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.
Beignets are the pillowy fried dough squares served three to a plate, under a drift of icing sugar, at the open-air coffee stands of the French Quarter in New Orleans, day and night. The dough is a soft, slightly sweet yeast dough enriched with evaporated milk, and the squares puff up hollow in hot oil. Drink them with chicory café au lait. Chef's tip: roll the dough only 5 mm thick; thicker squares stay doughy in the middle.
Order 'um pingado' at the balcão of any São Paulo padaria at 7 in the morning and the attendant pours hot milk into a ridged glass tumbler (the copo americano) and 'drips' in a splash of strong coffee, hence the name. It is milkier and gentler than a média (half coffee, half milk), creamy and lightly sweet, usually drunk standing up with a pão na chapa, a toasted buttered roll. At home you need strong filter coffee and milk heated until steaming. Scalding the milk is the frequent mistake, as boiled milk tastes flat and forms a skin. Chef's tip: froth the hot milk for a few seconds with a whisk or by pouring it back and forth between two jugs before adding the coffee, as padaria machines do.
Bilbao's great salt cod dish shows up every Lent and on Good Friday, and in the city's old taverns its sauce is judged as fiercely as the fish. The sauce is made only from onions cooked for a long time and the flesh of dried choricero peppers, with no tomato, which gives it its deep red colour and gentle sweetness. Salt cod needs 36–48 hours of soaking in the fridge, so start two days ahead. A common mistake is hurrying the onions: they need at least 40 minutes on a low heat to turn soft and sweet. Chef's tip: taste a flake of the soaked cod before cooking, and if it's still salty, soak it a few hours more.
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.
Adasi is the winter breakfast of Iran's cafés and university canteens, ladled out early in the morning in Tehran, Tabriz and Mashhad from big pots that have bubbled since dawn. Whole brown lentils are cooked soft with turmeric and onion until thick and spoonable, then finished with cumin, a little golpar (ground angelica seed), black pepper and lemon. It is eaten with warm barbari or sangak and sweet tea. The common mistake is cooking it at a hard boil, which leaves the skins split and the soup grainy rather than velvety. Chef's tip: mash a ladleful of lentils against the side of the pot at the end; it thickens the adasi without any flour.
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.
A side of poached salmon is the centrepiece of Irish wedding buffets, First Communion lunches and summer gatherings along the Moy and the Blackwater, where wild salmon once ran thick. Poached gently in a court bouillon, it stays silky and moist, and here it is served warm with a simple chive and lemon butter sauce, new potatoes and peas. Chef's tip: never let the poaching liquid boil; it should barely shiver, or the salmon tightens and leaks white curds.
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.
In New Orleans a praline (say 'praw-leen') is a flat, fudgy disc of pecans set in brown sugar and cream, sold in waxed paper from candy shops along Decatur Street and by street vendors since the 1800s. It melts on the tongue rather than snapping like brittle. Chef's tip: use a sugar thermometer and take the pan off at 114 °C; a few degrees more and they turn grainy and hard.
Bakeries all over Colombia keep a fridge of avena in plastic cups, ready to pair with a warm pandebono, buñuelo or almojábana. It is a thick, sweet oat drink cooked in milk with cinnamon and cloves, then blended smooth and chilled until it is creamy and spoonable, somewhere between a milkshake and rice pudding. Children drink it after school, and it is a common mid-morning snack with something baked. Home versions are less sweet and more spiced than shop ones. The thing to watch is texture: if you skip blending or straining, you end up with slimy flecks of oats, so blend thoroughly once it is cooked. It thickens a lot as it chills, so loosen it with cold milk before serving. Chef's tip: toast the oats in the dry pan for 2 minutes first; it gives a nutty, biscuity flavour.
Cheese enchiladas in chili gravy are the heart of the Tex-Mex combination plate, served in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio cafés since the early 1900s with rice and refried beans. Unlike Mexican enchiladas in fresh chile sauce, the Texas version uses a roux-thickened 'chili gravy' spiced with chili powder and cumin, and lots of melted yellow cheese with raw onion inside. Traditional cheddar is often made with animal rennet; choose a vegetarian cheese. Chef's tip: dip each tortilla in hot oil for a few seconds first, so it rolls without cracking and doesn't go soggy.
The po'boy was born in 1929 when two former streetcar drivers fed striking workers free sandwiches at their New Orleans restaurant, and today every neighbourhood joint from Mid-City to the Bywater fries them. The bread is a light, flaky-crusted French loaf, and a shrimp po'boy comes 'dressed' with shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles and rémoulade or mayonnaise. Chef's tip: use the lightest, crustiest baguette you can find and warm it; dense bread fights the filling.
Boudin is a soft Cajun sausage of pork, pork liver, rice and the holy trinity sold hot from the counters of meat markets and petrol stations along Interstate 10 between Lake Charles and Lafayette. Boudin balls take the same filling, roll it in breadcrumbs and fry it, and they are the snack of LSU tailgates and crawfish boils. This recipe uses pork shoulder and pork liver. Chef's tip: chill the rolled balls for 30 minutes before frying so they keep their shape.
New Orleans barbecue shrimp never touch a grill or a barbecue sauce: they are big head-on Gulf prawns baked or pan-cooked in an outrageous amount of butter, black pepper, garlic, Worcestershire sauce and lemon, made famous in an Uptown restaurant in the 1950s. You peel them at the table and mop up the sauce with French bread. Some cooks add a splash of beer, which contains alcohol; this version uses stock, so it is alcohol-free. Worcestershire sauce contains anchovy. Chef's tip: keep the heads on; they hold the juices that make the sauce.
Blackened redfish was the dish that made Cajun cooking famous across America in the 1980s, created in a New Orleans restaurant by a chef from Opelousas. Fillets are dipped in butter, coated thickly in paprika, cayenne, thyme and pepper and seared in a white-hot cast-iron pan, so the spices char into a dark, smoky crust while the fish stays moist. It produces a lot of smoke, so open the windows or cook it outside. Chef's tip: the pan must be heated empty for a full 5 minutes; a lukewarm pan steams the fish instead of blackening it.
Shoofly pie is the signature sweet of the Amish and Mennonite farms around Lancaster, Pennsylvania, sold at roadside stands and farmers' markets and eaten for breakfast with strong coffee as often as for dessert. This is the 'wet-bottom' kind: a gooey layer of molasses custard under a cakey middle and a buttery brown-sugar crumb. Chef's tip: use mild, light molasses; strong blackstrap makes it bitter.
Fried pies are a staple of Appalachian bake sales, country stores and Grand Ole Opry-era lunch pails across Tennessee, Kentucky and north Georgia, made from apples dried on the porch roof in autumn. The rich filling of stewed dried apple is folded into rounds of tender pastry, crimped with a fork and fried crisp in a skillet. Chef's tip: let the filling go completely cold and use only a heaped tablespoon; overfilled pies burst in the pan.
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.
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