Featured recipe

Rubacão

Rice with cowpeas and dried beef

Paraíba's cousin of baião de dois, rubacão (also spelt rubação) is cooked for long family lunches in João Pessoa and Campina Grande, and it is a fixture of the São João season in June. Rice and freshly shelled green cowpeas (feijão verde) cook together with dried beef and smoky bacon, then coalho cheese and cream are folded through so the pot turns soft, creamy and stretchy, salty from the meat and sweet from the beans. Serve it on its own with a tomato salad and pepper sauce; it is a meal in one pot. If you use charque or carne seca, it needs soaking overnight in the fridge. The pitfall to avoid is adding the cheese while the pot is on the flame, which turns it rubbery; fold it in off the heat and let the steam soften it. Chef's tip: save the bean cooking water and use it to cook the rice; it gives the dish its earthy colour and flavour.

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In Cádiz, the tapa that sells out first in the fried-fish shops around La Viña is cazón en adobo: bite-sized cubes of dogfish soaked overnight in a sharp marinade of vinegar, garlic, cumin, oregano and paprika, then floured and fried. The marinade seasons the fish right through and gives it a tang that needs no sauce. If you cannot find dogfish, monkfish or any firm white fish works. A common mistake is a short marinade; the fish needs at least 8 hours in the fridge, for the vinegar and cumin to soak in. Chef's tip: marinate for at least 8 hours but no more than 24; past that, the vinegar starts to firm and 'cook' the fish and it goes dry.

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CayeyeGreen banana mash with cheese

Ask anyone from Santa Marta or Ciénaga what they ate growing up and cayeye will come up quickly. Unripe green bananas, the small cooking kind rather than plantains, are boiled and mashed with butter and grated salty cheese into a soft, slightly sticky purée, then topped with hogao, the tomato and spring onion sauce of Colombian kitchens. Breakfast is its moment, often with a fried egg or a slice of fried cheese and a strong black coffee, and it is filling enough to last until lunch. The cheese on the coast is queso costeño; a firm feta-style cheese works, and since both are usually set with animal rennet, look for a vegetarian microbial-rennet version. Mashing the bananas once they have cooled is the misstep to avoid, because they set into a gluey lump; mash them straight from the pot with a splash of the hot cooking water. Chef's tip: rub your hands with oil before peeling green bananas, as the sap stains skin and boards.

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No proper Sunday asado in Buenos Aires province or the interior is complete without a round of achuras, and chinchulines are the boldest of them: beef small intestine, coiled on the grill and cooked slowly until the outside crackles like pork scratchings and the inside stays soft and rich with its own fat. Pass them round on a board with lemon and bread as a starter while the bigger cuts cook. Buy them already cleaned from a butcher or a Latin American meat counter, and rinse them again well at home. The usual mistake is too much heat: the outside burns long before the inside cooks. Offal must be cooked right through, with no soft, raw-looking parts. Chef's tip: simmer them briefly before grilling; it cleans them further, shortens the time on the coals and gives you a much more even crunch.

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Every 27 September, homes across Salvador and the Recôncavo cook huge pots of caruru for the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian, and children are fed first; the rest of the year it turns up at acarajé stalls and on Bahian Sunday tables next to vatapá, rice and xinxim. Okra is chopped very small and cooked down with a paste of dried shrimp, toasted cashews and peanuts, ginger and onion, then finished with dendê oil until it is thick, glossy and gently sticky, nutty and faintly of the sea. Serve it with white rice, farofa de dendê and acarajé or abará. Most people make the mistake of slicing the okra into big rounds; cut tiny it melts into the sauce instead of sitting in slimy chunks. For a vegetarian caruru, skip the shrimp and use 40 g more of each nut. Chef's tip: toast the cashews and peanuts in a dry pan until they smell of popcorn before grinding them; it makes the stew taste deeper and less green.

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CartolaFried banana with cheese and cinnamon

Sweet, salty and hot all at once, cartola ('top hat') is a Pernambuco dessert that sounds odd and tastes like it was always meant to be. Bananas are fried in butter until caramel-edged, covered with slices of coalho or queijo manteiga that melt into a blanket, then showered with cinnamon sugar. It turns up on Recife lunch menus, in hotel buffets and in home kitchens after Sunday lunch, and needs nothing else, though a scoop of vanilla ice cream is welcome. Bananas-prata or ripe plantains are used locally; firm, just-ripe bananas are the nearest swap. Coalho is often made with animal rennet, so choose a vegetarian version or a vegetarian halloumi. Avoid overripe fruit; it collapses in the pan and the cheese slides off. Chef's tip: finish under a hot grill for a minute so the cinnamon sugar bubbles into a thin, crackly crust.

20 min

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AşureWheat, bean and dried fruit pudding

In the month of Muharram, kitchens all over Anatolia, especially in conservative Konya and Sivas, boil great pots of aşure and send bowls to every neighbour, regardless of faith, so the sweet is as much about sharing as eating. Legend says it was cooked on Noah's ark from the last of the stores, which is why it combines whole wheat, chickpeas, white beans, dried apricots, figs and raisins in a thick, gently sweet pudding. It's topped with walnuts, pomegranate and cinnamon. Common mistake: adding sugar before the wheat is fully tender; sugar firms the grains and they never soften. Chef's tip: soak the wheat and pulses overnight and cook the wheat in its soaking water for the creamiest result.

150 min

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Chivito al asadorSpit-roasted whole goat

Malargüe, in the dry south of Mendoza, holds a goat festival every summer, and the star is the chivito: a milk-fed kid opened flat, wired to an iron cross and planted at an angle beside a fire of jarilla or other hardwood. It cooks from the side, never over the flames, basted with a garlicky salmuera until the skin turns glassy and crackling and the meat pulls apart. Serve it straight from the cross with salad, bread and chimichurri. Order a whole kid of 5–7 kg dressed weight from a specialist or halal butcher, and check the cross fits it before the day. Most failures come from setting it too close to the fire, which burns the outside while the thick legs stay raw. Kid is lean, so cook it right through, as in Mendoza: the thickest part of the leg should reach at least 70 °C. Chef's tip: cook bone side to the fire for two-thirds of the time; the ribs protect the meat, and the skin goes on last so it crisps instead of scorching.

240 min

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CarnitasSlow-cooked pork

Quiroga, a lakeside town in Michoacán, is the capital of carnitas: on weekends the plaza fills with stalls simmering huge copper pots of pork, sold by the kilo with warm tortillas, salsa verde and lime. This pork dish uses shoulder cooked gently in its own fat and lard with orange and garlic, so it turns soft inside and then browns into crisp, golden edges at the end. Pile it into tacos with onion, coriander and salsa, or keep it for tortas ahogadas. Chef's tip: when the meat is tender, turn the heat up for the last 10–15 minutes and stir; this final fry in hot lard is what gives carnitas their crackly edges.

195 min

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Carne de vinha d'alhosPork marinated in wine and garlic

No Madeiran Christmas is complete without carne de vinha d'alhos: chunks of pork soaked for days in wine, vinegar, garlic and bay, then simmered and fried until browned and tangy. Families start it after the December pig-killing, and the leftovers fill bread rolls for days. Portuguese sailors carried the idea to Goa, where it became vindaloo. This contains pork and uses white wine; for an alcohol-free version use 250 ml water instead of the wine, as many Madeiran households do. Chef's tip: fry thick slices of bread in the pan juices at the end; they are the cook's reward.

95 min

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Carne en su jugoBeef in tomatillo broth

Carne en su jugo, 'meat in its juice', belongs to Guadalajara, where whole restaurants are devoted to it and families go for a big bowl at weekend lunchtime. Paper-thin slices of beef cook in a sharp, green broth of tomatillo, chilli and coriander, with soft pinto beans spooned in and crisp bacon scattered over, so it is also a pork dish. Each bowl is finished at the table with chopped onion, coriander, radishes and plenty of lime, and eaten with warm corn tortillas. Chef's tip: put the steak in the freezer for 30 minutes before slicing; firm meat is far easier to cut into the thin pieces the dish needs.

65 min

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Carne de sol com macaxeiraSalted beef with cassava

Out in the sertão, beef was salted and hung in airy shade to cure, and the result, carne de sol, is now the pride of restaurants from Natal to Caruaru, where it arrives sizzling on an iron plate with boiled macaxeira (cassava) glossed in clarified butter, grilled squares of coalho cheese and a dish of feijão verde. The meat is firm, faintly salty and deeply beefy, the cassava soft and buttery, the cheese squeaky and browned. If you can't buy carne de sol from a Brazilian butcher, salt the beef yourself in the fridge for 24 hours (step 1), so allow an extra day. The mistake people make is frying the beef straight from the salt; a 30-minute soak in cold water keeps it pleasantly seasoned rather than harsh. The beef is cut into chunks and fried, so cook it to your taste: pink in the middle or well done are both fine for whole-muscle beef. Chef's tip: fry the beef in small batches in a really hot pan so it browns rather than stews in its own juice.

60 min

Brazilian Meat

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Choclo con quesoCorn on the cob with cheese

Ride the train or the bus through the Sacred Valley of Cusco and at every stop someone will hold up choclo con queso: a steaming cob of Urubamba's huge white-kernelled corn with a slab of fresh cheese tucked into a corn husk. The kernels are big, chewy and starchy rather than sweet, and the salty, milky cheese is eaten in alternating bites, sometimes with a dab of uchucuta or ají. It's snack food, a market lunch and something to keep children going on a long day. Fresh choclo is sold frozen in Latin American shops; sweet corn works but is sweeter and softer. Adding salt to the cooking water is the usual misstep, as it can toughen the kernels: season the cheese, not the corn. Andean fresh cheese is generally made with animal rennet, so use a vegetarian fresh cheese if needed. Chef's tip: drop a few of the inner husks and a small spoon of sugar into the pot; it brings back some of the sweetness lost after picking.

20 min

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Choco fritoFried cuttlefish with chips

Across the river from Lisbon, the fishing port of Setúbal claims choco frito as its own, and there are whole streets of grill-houses serving it with chips, salad and lemon. Thick strips of cuttlefish are marinated in garlic, lemon and a little white wine, floured and fried until golden and tender. The wine contains alcohol; extra lemon juice with a splash of water does the job. A common mistake is frying too long: cuttlefish goes from tender to rubbery in a minute or two. Chef's tip: score the inside of the cuttlefish in a fine crisscross before cutting it into strips, so it stays tender and grips the flour.

35 min

Portuguese Fish

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Carne de fiestaMarinated fried pork

The smell of carne de fiesta, cubes of pork sizzling in a huge pan, drifts over every romería and village saint's day in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, where it is sold piled into bread rolls or with chips. This contains pork. The meat sits for a day in a deep red marinade of garlic, paprika, thyme, oregano, vinegar and white wine before it is fried until crusty. The wine can be swapped for water with an extra spoon of vinegar for an alcohol-free version. Chef's tip: fry in batches with plenty of space, so the meat sizzles and caramelises instead of boiling in its own juices.

50 min

Spanish Meat

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Chocolate santafereñoHot chocolate with cheese

Old Bogotá, once Santafé, built an afternoon ritual around hot chocolate. In the café-restaurants of La Candelaria it comes in a big cup, frothed with a wooden molinillo, with a plate of white cheese, almojábanas and buttered bread on the side. The surprise for visitors is the cheese: cubes go straight into the hot chocolate, softening into stretchy strings that are fished out with a spoon, a salty contrast to the sweet, spiced drink. Colombian table chocolate comes in bars already sweetened and often flavoured with cinnamon and clove; dark chocolate plus sugar and spice is a fair swap. The usual cheese, queso campesino or doble crema, is normally set with animal rennet, so choose a vegetarian (microbial-rennet) mozzarella-style cheese. Boiling the chocolate hard is the misstep that makes it grainy and scorched; keep it at a gentle simmer. Chef's tip: no molinillo? Whisk briskly with a balloon whisk or a milk frother until there's a thick foam.

15 min

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ChocotortaNo-bake chocolate biscuit cake

Born in 1980s Buenos Aires as an advertising idea and adopted by the whole country, chocotorta is the cake children ask for at every birthday and the easiest dessert in the Argentine repertoire. Chocolate biscuits are dipped briefly in milk (adults often use coffee), layered with a cream of dulce de leche beaten with cream cheese, and left overnight until the biscuits turn soft and cake-like. It is rich, sweet and a little tangy, and slices cleanly straight from the fridge. Any plain crisp chocolate biscuit works; rectangular ones make the neatest layers. The mistake to avoid is soaking the biscuits too long: a one-second dip is plenty, or they collapse into mush before you can lay them down. Chef's tip: assemble it a day ahead in a loaf tin lined with cling film; overnight chilling is what turns it from biscuits and cream into cake.

20 min

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ChontaduroBoiled peach-palm fruit

Street vendors in Cali, Buenaventura and Tumaco push carts piled with bright orange and red chontaduro, peeled to order and sprinkled with salt, then drizzled with honey. The fruit of the peach palm, it has a dense, floury flesh somewhere between roasted chestnut, squash and boiled egg yolk, and a savoury-sweet flavour that people from the Pacific coast swear by as an energy food. At home, the fruit must be cooked, as raw peach palm is unpleasant and irritating to the throat. Fresh fruit appears in Latin American shops in season; frozen or jarred cooked chontaduro is easier to find and only needs warming. Undercooking is the common slip: the flesh stays fibrous and scratchy, so keep boiling until it crumbles easily. This is vegetarian but not vegan because of the honey; panela syrup is a vegan swap. Chef's tip: cut the fruit in half and remove the stone before salting, so the seasoning reaches the warm flesh.

65 min

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Choquinhos com tintaBaby cuttlefish in ink

Setúbal claims fried cuttlefish, but the Algarve has its own treasure: choquinhos, cuttlefish no bigger than a thumb, sautéed whole in garlicky olive oil until their ink turns the pan glossy black. Seafood bars in Olhão and Faro serve them in small clay dishes, to be eaten with toothpicks and bread for mopping. The recipe uses a splash of white wine; use water with a squeeze of lemon instead for an alcohol-free version. Chef's tip: cook in a very hot pan in two batches, so the cuttlefish sizzle rather than stew.

25 min

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Choros a la chalacaCold mussels with corn salsa

Named for the people of Callao, Lima's port, choros a la chalaca are what you order with friends at a seafront cevichería on a hot afternoon: steamed mussels, chilled, each on its half shell under a bright, wet salsa of red onion, tomato, Andean corn, rocoto and lime. Cool, sweet, briny and sharp, they are eaten with your fingers in two bites, often before a ceviche or a jalea. Here the mussels are fully steamed open first, so nothing is served raw. People often overcook them while waiting for the last stubborn shells, which leaves the rest rubbery; lift them out as soon as each one opens. Chef's tip: dress the salsa no more than 15 minutes ahead, and spoon a little of the juice onto every mussel; that juice is the whole point of the dish.

30 min

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Choucroute garnieSauerkraut with smoked pork and sausages

From the winstubs of Strasbourg to the brasseries near Paris's Gare de l'Est, choucroute garnie is the dish that announces autumn, when the new season's sauerkraut arrives. It is a pork feast: smoked pork belly and smoked pork loin braised on a bed of sauerkraut softened with white wine, juniper and onion, then crowned with Strasbourg and smoked sausages and boiled potatoes. The cabbage turns mellow and silky rather than sharp, and soaks up the smoky fat. The braise uses dry white wine; the ingredient notes give an alcohol-free swap. Serve it with strong Dijon mustard and a little horseradish on the side. Chef's tip: rinse the sauerkraut only once and squeeze it well, so it keeps a little tang but doesn't make the whole dish sour.

130 min

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Sancocho canarioSalt fish with potatoes and mojo

Sancocho is the Canary Islands' Good Friday dish and a Sunday favourite in Gran Canaria, where whole families sit down to a platter of desalted cherne (wreckfish), boiled potatoes and sweet potatoes, red mojo poured over the top and a ball of pella de gofio on the side. Salted cherne is soaked for a day or two in the fridge to draw out the salt, then poached gently. If you cannot find cherne, salt cod or fresh hake works well. Chef's tip: before cooking, poach a small flake in boiling water for a minute and taste it; it should be pleasantly seasoned, like well-salted fresh fish, and if it is still briny, soak a few hours more.

60 min

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Chuchu refogadoSautéed chayote

Chayote is so cheap and common in Minas Gerais that Brazilians joke it tastes of nothing; this everyday refogado proves the point wrong. Peeled and diced, it is softened in garlic, onion and a little tomato with its own juices until it turns tender, pale green and silky, picking up all the flavour of the base. It is the side you find at every self-service lunch in Belo Horizonte, alongside rice, beans and couve, and works with grilled tofu, eggs or a bean stew. Adding water is the most common error: chuchu releases plenty of liquid, and extra water makes it bland and soupy. Chef's tip: rub a little oil on your hands, or wear gloves, before peeling; the cut fruit releases a sticky sap that leaves your skin tight and dry.

25 min

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Chuño phutiFreeze-dried potatoes with egg and cheese

Chuño are potatoes freeze-dried the ancient way on the Altiplano: left out on frosty nights, trampled to squeeze out the water and dried in the high sun, so they keep for years. In Puno and across the border in Bolivia, they are soaked, crumbled and fried with onion, then scrambled with egg and fresh cheese to make phuti, a hearty breakfast or supper eaten with a hot tea. The texture is dense and slightly chewy, and the flavour earthy and a little tangy. Chuño is sold dried in Andean shops; it must soak overnight (ideally 24 hours, with the water changed) and then be peeled, which adds time before you start. The mistake is not soaking or rinsing enough: under-soaked chuño smells strong and stays hard in the middle. Serve with a fresh tomato salsa or uchucuta. Fresh cheese is usually made with animal rennet, so use a vegetarian one if needed. Chef's tip: squeeze the soaked chuño hard between your palms before crumbling; the drier it is, the better it fries.

40 min

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Chupe de camaronesPrawn chowder

Arequipa's picanterías serve one chupe on each day of the week, and the prawn one, made with crayfish-like camarones from the Majes and Ocoña rivers, is the grandest, especially on Fridays in Lent. It is a big orange chowder: a broth made from the prawn shells and heads, coloured with ají panca, filled with potatoes, corn, broad beans and a little rice, then softened with evaporated milk and fresh cheese, with an egg poached in each bowl. Rich, sweet and gently spicy, it needs nothing but bread. Large shell-on prawns stand in well for river prawns. Many cooks boil the prawns from the start and they turn to rubber; add them at the end and cook only until pink and opaque. Chef's tip: fry the heads and shells in the oil first and press them hard; the orange fat that comes out is what gives chupe its colour and depth.

75 min

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Cari de légumesVegetable curry

On Réunion, the French island in the Indian Ocean, cari is simply lunch: a pot of something gently spiced with onion, garlic, ginger, thyme and the island's turmeric, which locals call safran péi. It arrives at the table with white rice, a bowl of lentils from Cilaos or red beans, and a sharp tomato rougail, and this vegetable version uses chayote (chouchou) from the green Salazie valley, potatoes, carrots and green beans. The heat comes from the chilli in the rougail, not the cari itself, so it suits children too. Chef's tip: let the onions take real colour before the spices go in; that golden base gives a cari its depth.

55 min

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