In Chennai's old tea shops, many started by Irani and Muslim families, a glass of strong tea comes with a plate of small onion samosas: thin, crackly pastry folded around a filling of nothing but slow-cooked onion, green chilli, curry leaves and a little poha to soak up the juices. They are sold by the dozen in the evenings and at bus stands across Tamil Nadu. The pastry is the thin, ready-rolled samosa-patti kind, so they are quick to fold. The common mistake is undercooking the onion, which leaks water and makes the samosas soggy; fry it until soft and sweet, then cool. Chef's tip: seal the folds with a thick paste of flour and water, not plain water, so they do not open in the oil.
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Summer pudding is the high-summer pudding of English country gardens, made when redcurrants, raspberries and blackcurrants ripen together in July. Slices of day-old white bread line a basin and soak up the juices of lightly cooked berries overnight, turning a deep crimson and setting into a dome. Serve with cream (or a plant cream for a vegan pudding). Chef's tip: keep back a few spoonfuls of juice to paint over any white patches after turning it out.
The plain around Aydın grows most of Turkey's figs, and in winter, when only the dried ones remain, local cooks soften them in water, tuck a walnut half inside each, and poach them in a light syrup until they plump up dark and glossy. A spoonful of milk in the pan, an old Aegean trick, gives the syrup a soft caramel note. Serve them cold with kaymak or thick yoghurt. Chef's tip: soak the figs first so they swell before cooking; added dry, they stay leathery in the middle however long they simmer.
From the riverside kitchens of Iquitos and the Peruvian Amazon comes inchicapi, a festive chicken soup traditionally made with a free-range hen for birthdays and fiestas. Raw peanuts and a little maize flour are ground and stirred into the broth, which turns it creamy, pale and nutty, and pieces of cassava, garlic, ají dulce and sacha culantro (a long, serrated, strongly flavoured coriander) finish it. It is served with rice, boiled plantain or cassava. If you can't find sacha culantro in Asian or Latin shops (sold as culantro or ngo gai), use a big handful of coriander. The pitfall is adding the peanut paste dry: it clumps and catches on the bottom, so loosen it with broth first and stir often. Chef's tip: use raw, not roasted, peanuts; they keep the soup pale and give it the right fresh, milky taste.
Ijjeh is the quick supper of Palestinian and Levantine homes: eggs beaten with so much parsley, mint and spring onion that they turn green, spiced with a little cinnamon and allspice, then fried as thick little patties. They are tucked into warm bread with tomatoes and pickles for school lunches, or served on a breakfast spread with olives and labneh. Common mistake: frying in too little oil over a high heat, so the outsides burn before the herbs inside cook. Chef's tip: a spoonful of flour and a pinch of baking powder make them puff and stay soft when eaten cold the next day.
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.
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.
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.
In Bologna, lasagne means green lasagne: thin sheets of spinach egg pasta layered with slow-cooked ragù, béchamel and plenty of parmigiano, baked until the edges crisp and served for Sunday lunch and every family celebration in Emilia-Romagna. The ragù is made with beef and pork mince and a little pancetta, so this is a pork dish as well as a beef one; a splash of white wine is traditional but optional, and the note gives an alcohol-free swap. Homemade spinach pasta is the classic choice, but bought fresh egg lasagne sheets work well. Serve with a crisp green salad. Chef's tip: keep the layers thin and many rather than thick and few; a proper Bolognese lasagne has at least six layers and holds its shape when cut.
The Caesar salad was born in Tijuana in the 1920s, at an Italian immigrant's restaurant on Avenida Revolución, and it is still tossed at the table there by waiters who make the dressing in a wooden bowl in front of you. Crisp inner romaine leaves are coated in a garlicky, lemony emulsion of coddled egg yolk, anchovy, olive oil and parmesan, then showered with garlic croutons; traditionally you pick the leaves up with your fingers. The yolks are only lightly warmed, so use pasteurised eggs if you are serving anyone pregnant, very young, elderly or with a weakened immune system. It makes a starter before grilled meat, or a light lunch on its own. Chef's tip: mash the garlic and anchovies to a paste with salt before anything else goes into the bowl, so the dressing is smooth with no fishy lumps.
Steak frites is the backbone of the Parisian bistro and brasserie menu, ordered at a zinc-topped table at lunchtime with a green salad and a dab of Dijon. A thick entrecôte or bavette is seared hard in a very hot pan, rested, then topped with a melting coin of shallot and parsley butter, while chips cooked twice come out crisp outside and fluffy within. In France the steak is usually served rare (saignant) or medium-rare (à point); because this is a whole-muscle cut, the inside can safely be pink as long as the outside is well seared, but cook it to your taste using the guide in the steps. Chef's tip: take the steak out of the fridge 30 minutes before cooking and salt it just before it goes in the pan, for an even, crusty sear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When the sweetcorn stands in late summer at farm stands from Maine to Connecticut, corn chowder is what goes on the stove. It is a milky, chunky soup of corn, potato and onion, thickened by simmering the stripped cobs in the stock. Many cooks start it with salt pork; this vegetarian version gets its depth from butter, smoked paprika and the cob stock instead. Chef's tip: scrape the bare cobs with the back of a knife to get the sweet corn 'milk' into the pot.
In Austin and San Antonio the breakfast taco is the morning commute: soft flour tortillas wrapped around fillings like crispy potato, scrambled egg and cheese, bought in foil from taquerías and petrol stations and eaten with salsa. Potato and egg is the classic meatless pairing. Chef's tip: fry the diced potatoes in one layer without stirring for the first few minutes so they get a real crust.
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