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Vepřo knedlo zelo
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Vepřo knedlo zelo

Roast pork with dumplings and cabbage

Ask anyone in Prague, Brno or a village pub in Moravia for the most Czech meal of all and they will name vepřo knedlo zelo: roast pork, dumplings and cabbage, eaten at Sunday lunch and washed down in pubs with a cold lager. This is a pork dish: shoulder rubbed with garlic, caraway and salt and roasted slowly in a little water until it falls into tender slices, the pan juices becoming the gravy. Alongside go slices of soft bread dumpling and red or white cabbage braised sweet and sour. The trap is roasting the pork too hot and too dry; a splash of water in the tin and a low oven keep it juicy. Chef's tip: lay the pork fat side down for the first hour, then turn it fat side up so the fat renders and crisps at the end.

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Pastéis de bacalhauSalt cod and potato croquettes

These torpedo-shaped croquettes of salt cod, potato, egg and parsley are everywhere in Lisbon: piled on café counters, packed for picnics, and served at weddings and christenings in their dozens. Every family argues over the cod-to-potato ratio; about equal parts gives a fluffy inside that still tastes properly of fish. Salt cod needs 24–48 hours of soaking in the fridge, so start two days ahead. A common mistake is a wet mixture from boiled potatoes, which makes the croquettes burst in the oil; bake or steam the potatoes instead, or dry them well. Chef's tip: shape each one between two wet tablespoons, passing the mixture back and forth until it has three smooth sides.

80 minPortugueseFish
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Pastéis de feijãoWhite bean and almond tarts

Torres Vedras, in the wine country west of Lisbon, has turned a humble white bean into its sweet emblem: tiny tarts with a moist filling of bean purée, ground almond and egg yolks, sold in pastelarias and at the town's carnival. Nobody would guess beans from the taste; they give a soft, marzipan-like body to the filling. Serve with a strong coffee in the afternoon. A common mistake is filling the cases to the top: the mixture puffs and spills, so stop at three-quarters. Chef's tip: blitz the beans with a little of the syrup until completely smooth; any skins left in make the filling chalky.

65 minPortugueseBaking
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Pastéis de TentúgalEgg cream pastry rolls

In Tentúgal, a village of the Mondego plain near Coimbra, a convent pastry is still made by hand-stretching dough across a whole room until it is as thin as tissue, then rolling it around a sweet egg cream. The real ones are sold in the village pastry shops and at Coimbra's markets, shattering at the first bite. Filo pastry with plenty of butter makes a convincing home version. Chef's tip: keep the filo you are not using under a damp cloth, as it dries and cracks in a minute or two.

65 minPortugueseBaking
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Pastel de anguFried cornmeal cheese pastries

Itabirito, an iron-mining town south of Belo Horizonte, holds a whole festival for this pastry, and its stalls fry thousands of them in a weekend. The dough is angu, cornmeal cooked thick and kneaded with sweet cassava starch, which fries up blistered, crisp and gently corny. Fillings vary from chicken to minced beef, but cheese is the meatless favourite: semi-cured Minas cheese that melts and stretches. Eat them hot from the pan with a cold drink and a dash of chilli sauce. Minas cheese is usually made with animal rennet; use a vegetarian semi-hard cheese or mozzarella with microbial rennet. Pastéis that burst while frying are almost always overfilled or not sealed; leave a clean 1 cm border and press it shut with a fork. Chef's tip: roll the dough between two sheets of plastic, because it is too soft and sticky to roll on a floured board.

60 minBrazilianSnacks & StartersGluten free
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Pastel de carne murcianoMinced beef and chorizo pie

Murcia's bakeries sell pastel de carne from first thing in the morning: a round pie with a crisp, coiled puff pastry lid, filled with spiced minced meat, chorizo and hard-boiled egg. People eat one standing at the counter with coffee, or buy a big one for Sunday lunch. Bakers make the coiled lid from a long rope of pastry; at home a scored spiral on a puff pastry lid gives the same look. This contains pork (chorizo). Chef's tip: let the filling cool completely before it goes into the pastry, otherwise the base melts and turns soggy.

85 minSpanishMeat
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Pastel de ChavesMinced veal puff pastry pies

In the spa town of Chaves near the Spanish border, these crescent-shaped pasties are sold warm from bakeries all day and eaten for breakfast, lunch or with a coffee on the old Roman bridge. Many crisp, buttery layers enclose a savoury filling of minced veal. Chaves bakers use their own protected dough; at home, good all-butter puff pastry gets very close. A common mistake is a warm filling; it melts the butter in the pastry, so cool the meat completely before shaping. Chef's tip: cook the filling and let it cool completely before filling, or it melts the butter in the pastry and the layers will not rise.

65 minPortugueseSnacks & Starters
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Pastel de papaLayered potato and cheese bake

On a plate in an Arequipa picantería, pastel de papa is the soft, golden square that sits next to a fiery rocoto relleno and cools your mouth between bites. Thin slices of parboiled potato are layered with fresh cheese and a seasoned egg and evaporated-milk custard, then baked until the top puffs and browns. It is richer and more set than a French gratin, firm enough to cut cleanly, and it makes a fine vegetarian main with a salad of tomato and onion or a spoon of uchucuta. The way it goes wrong is slicing the potatoes too thick or under-boiling them, which leaves them crunchy while the custard overcooks; cut them 3–4 mm thin and parboil them just until bendy. Arequipa cooks use paria or queso fresco, which are normally made with animal rennet; a vegetarian melting cheese such as a microbial-rennet mozzarella or mild cheddar works well. Chef's tip: let the bake rest for 15 minutes after it leaves the oven so the custard settles and the slices hold.

75 minPeruvianVegetarianGluten free
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Pastel de papasBeef and mashed potato pie

Midweek family dinners in Buenos Aires often come out of the oven in a deep dish: pastel de papas, the Argentine answer to cottage pie. The beef picadillo is cooked the way it is for empanadas, with onion, red pepper, paprika and cumin, then studded with green olives, chopped boiled egg and sometimes raisins for a sweet-salty bite, all under a thick, creamy mash browned with cheese or sugar on top. It is a dish of school lunches and Sunday leftovers, served with a green salad. Mince must reach 71 °C, which it will long before the potato crust browns; just make sure no pink remains when you cook the filling. A runny filling is the usual letdown, as it seeps into the mash, so cook it until the pan is almost dry. Chef's tip: sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar over the mash before baking, as many Argentine cooks do; it caramelises into a thin, crackly golden crust.

75 minArgentinianMeatGluten free
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Pastel vascoAlmond cake with pastry cream

Bakeries across the French Basque province of Labourd, from Cambo-les-Bains to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, sell this round cake by the slice, and the village of Itxassou has long filled it with black cherry jam instead of cream. The dough sits between a biscuit and a shortcake, rich with butter and ground almonds, and it hides a thick layer of vanilla pastry cream. Some bakers add a spoon of rum to the cream; this one leaves it out. A common mistake is baking it too pale, so the crust stays soft: wait for a deep golden top. Chef's tip: chill the dough well, as it is very soft and much easier to roll when cold.

85 minSpanishBaking
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PasteliSesame honey bars

Pasteli is one of the oldest sweets in Greece, and on islands like Sifnos and Andros it is still made in the home kitchen for weddings and feast days, sometimes cut into diamonds and served on lemon leaves. Toasted sesame seeds are bound in hot honey and set into a thin sheet that snaps cleanly but softens slightly as you chew, tasting of nuts and wild thyme. Common mistake: taking the honey off the heat too early, which leaves bars that stay sticky and bend instead of snapping. Chef's tip: test a drop of the honey in cold water; when it sets into a firm ball you can press without it flattening, it's ready.

30 minGreekDessertsGluten free
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Pastelitos criollosFried quince pastries

Every 25 May, when Argentina marks the 1810 revolution, bakeries and school kitchens from Buenos Aires to Tucumán turn out trays of pastelitos: two squares of flaky dough stacked into a star, filled with dulce de membrillo or dulce de batata, fried until the layers fan open and then dipped in syrup. They are eaten warm with mate or hot chocolate, shattering crisp outside and sticky in the middle. Lard is the traditional fat in both the dough and the frying pan; this version uses butter or vegetable shortening for laminating and sunflower oil for frying, so it stays vegetarian. Expect a hard but rewarding job: the dough is folded like a quick puff pastry. Oil that is too hot is the classic error, browning the outside before the inner layers have opened, so keep it around 160 °C. Chef's tip: pinch the four corners of the top square down onto the gaps of the bottom one and press with a wet fingertip, or the star unfolds in the oil and the filling leaks.

90 minArgentinianBaking
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Pastes de Real del MonteBeef and potato pasties

Cornish miners arrived in the silver mines around Real del Monte and Pachuca in the 1820s, and their pasties stayed: today the hilltop town in Hidalgo has paste shops on every street, selling them warm from the oven to visitors and locals all day. The classic filling is close to the original, diced beef, potato, onion and parsley seasoned with plenty of pepper, sealed in a short, buttery crust and baked until the juices turn to gravy inside; Mexican kitchens added a little chilli and many other fillings, including chicken in mole, which you can use instead of the beef. Eat them with a hot salsa or alone, with coffee. Chef's tip: cut the beef and potato small and evenly, about 1 cm; it all cooks raw inside the pastry, so even pieces are what make it tender.

100 minMexicanBaking
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PasticciottoCustard-filled shortcrust pastries

In Lecce the day starts at the bar with a pasticciotto still warm from the oven: a little oval of crumbly, golden shortcrust split open to reveal thick lemon-scented custard. It is said to come from a pastry shop in nearby Galatina in the 1700s, and the whole Salento eats it at breakfast, after Sunday Mass and with a caffè in ghiaccio in summer. The traditional pastry is made with lard; this version uses butter, which keeps it short and crisp. Chef's tip: make the custard first and chill it well; cold, thick custard stays put inside the pastry while it bakes.

75 minItalianBaking
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Pastis gasconCrackling apple pastry

In the Gers and the Lot-et-Garonne, grandmothers once stretched pastis dough over the kitchen table until it was thin enough to read a newspaper through, then layered it with apples and butter into a crackling, golden dome. Called pastis in Gascony and croustade in Quercy, it is served at Sunday lunch, weddings and village fêtes. The apples are traditionally soaked in Armagnac, the local brandy; this home version uses filo pastry and gives an alcohol-free soak of apple juice and orange flower water, with Armagnac as the option. Chef's tip: scrunch the top sheets loosely like crumpled silk; the folds turn into the crisp, shattering crown.

80 minFrenchBaking
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Pastissets de moniatoSweet potato pastry half-moons

As Christmas nears, bakeries and home kitchens from Valencia to Alicante turn out trays of pastissets, little half-moon pies of crumbly olive-oil pastry wrapped around a filling of sweet potato cooked with sugar, lemon and cinnamon, finished with a snowy dusting of sugar. They are eaten with coffee or a glass of mistela after the big family meals, and also for All Saints in November. The pastry traditionally includes a splash of sweet mistela wine; orange juice works just as well for an alcohol-free version. A common mistake is overfilling, which splits the seams in the oven; a heaped teaspoon is enough. Chef's tip: chill the filling until firm before you shape, so it sits neatly in the centre and is easy to seal.

95 minSpanishBaking
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