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Chiu chow fun guo
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Chiu chow fun guo

Pork and peanut dumplings

Chiu Chow families who settled around Sheung Wan and Kowloon City brought these chubby half-moon dumplings with them, and Hong Kong teahouses still steam them in bamboo baskets for the morning crowd. The wrapper is a mix of wheat and tapioca starch that turns translucent and slightly elastic, so you can see the filling inside: minced pork, crunchy roasted peanuts, garlic chives, salty preserved radish and a little dried shrimp. Each bite is chewy, savoury and crunchy at once. Dab them with chilli oil or a little Chiu Chow chilli sauce. People often roll the dough too thin, then it tears as it steams; aim for 2 mm and keep it under a damp cloth while you work. Chef's tip: toast the peanuts yourself and add them at the very end so they stay crunchy.

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100 minSpanishBaking
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45 minSpanishBakingVegan
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Sopa de caçãoDogfish soup with bread

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Guadalajara's great hangover cure, the torta ahogada is sold from street stands and small fondas all over the city from mid-morning. A crusty roll is split, packed with pork carnitas, then 'drowned' in a thin, mild tomato sauce and splashed with a ferociously hot chile de árbol salsa; you can order it half-drowned or fully submerged, and eat it with a plastic bag over your hand or with a knife and fork. The local birote salado, a sourdough roll with a hard crust, rarely exists outside Jalisco, so use the crustiest small baguettes or sourdough rolls you can find. Pickled red onions and a few radishes are the classic side. Chef's tip: let the rolls go a day stale and toast the cut sides; a firm, dry crumb soaks up sauce without turning to mush.

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Cañoncitos de dulce de lecheDulce de leche puff pastry tubes

Look at the tray of facturas in any Argentine panadería and the little cannons are easy to spot: flaky tubes of puff pastry, baked around metal moulds and filled from both ends with dulce de leche, then finished with a snowfall of icing sugar. They come from the Italian cannoncini, but here the filling is almost always dulce de leche. Each bite is crisp, buttery and shattering on the outside with a dense, caramel middle, and they sit on the Sunday table next to medialunas and bolas de fraile. Undercooking is the problem to avoid: pale pastry goes soft as soon as the filling goes in, so bake until it is a deep gold all over. Use all-butter puff pastry, and metal cannoli or cream-horn tubes (or rolls of foil). Chef's tip: wrap the strips without stretching them, overlapping each turn by a third; stretched pastry shrinks in the oven and the tubes split.

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BoozaStretchy mastic ice cream

In the covered Hamidiyeh souk in Damascus, men pound booza in frozen metal drums with long wooden pestles, and the thump of the mallets is part of the show. The ice cream is milky, chewy and elastic, thanks to sahlab (orchid-root flour) and mastic, then rolled in crushed pistachios. This home version thickens the milk with sahlab powder or cornflour and beats it as it freezes to get that stretch. Serve in scoops or slices, plain or with a spoon of rose syrup. Common mistake: grinding the mastic alone, which turns gummy; always pound it with a spoonful of sugar. Chef's tip: real sahlab gives the true chew, but a mix of cornflour and a pinch of guar gum gets very close.

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Kağıt kebabıLamb and vegetables baked in parchment

Malatya cooks wrap cubes of lamb with tomatoes, peppers, shallots and garlic in greaseproof paper and bake them slowly, so the meat steams in its own juices and the parcel puffs up like a pillow. At the table each person tears open their own package to a cloud of fragrant steam. It's a festive dish for guests, served with bulgur pilaf and a yoghurt salad. Common mistake: wrapping loosely so the juices leak and the meat dries; fold and crimp the edges tightly. Chef's tip: brown the lamb quickly before wrapping; it gives a deeper flavour than raw meat steamed alone.

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Cemita poblanaPork milanesa sandwich

Puebla's markets have whole aisles of cemita stalls, where a domed, sesame-crusted roll is split and piled with a thin, crisp milanesa, sliced avocado, a nest of stringy quesillo, smoky chipotle in adobo and leaves of pápalo, a pungent herb that tastes somewhere between rocket and coriander. This version uses pork loin for the milanesa, the most common choice alongside beef; thin beef steak works the same way. Pápalo is rarely sold outside Mexico, so coriander stands in for it here. It is a meal in itself, eaten with both hands at midday. Chef's tip: pull the quesillo into fine strands rather than slicing it, so it melts into the warm cutlet and holds the sandwich together.

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Cogollos de Tudela con ajosLettuce hearts with garlic oil

The lettuce hearts grown around Tudela in the Ribera of Navarre are small, tight and sweet, and they carry their own protected name. In the bars of Tudela and Pamplona they come to the table split lengthwise, still cold, with olive oil poured over them straight from the pan where garlic has just turned golden. Many places lay an anchovy on each quarter; this version leaves the fish out and is vegan. Chef's tip: dry the lettuce really well, because water left between the leaves makes the hot oil spit and leaves the dressing watery.

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Kibbeh bil saniehBaked tray kibbeh

When a Lebanese family is expecting a crowd for Sunday lunch, out comes the round tray of kibbeh bil sanieh, cut into diamonds before baking so everyone can lift a neat piece. Two layers of lamb and fine bulgur kneaded with onion and spices sandwich a filling of minced lamb fried with onions and toasted pine nuts; the top bakes crisp and brown while the inside stays moist. Serve it warm or at room temperature with yoghurt, cucumber salad or fattoush. Common mistake: using coarse bulgur, which won't bind; you need fine bulgur (number 1). Chef's tip: dip your hands in iced water while you press the top layer — it smooths the surface and stops the mixture sticking.

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FurrunduGreen papaya and cane sugar sweet

Cuiabá's grandmothers have a sweet for every fruit, and furrundu is the one that turns an unripe papaya into something special. The green fruit is grated, squeezed and cooked slowly with rapadura (dark unrefined cane sugar), fresh ginger, cloves and cinnamon until it is dark brown, sticky and chewy, with a warm spice that lingers. It is sold in small pots at Cuiabá's Mercado do Porto and at festas de santo in Mato Grosso, eaten by the spoonful with a slice of fresh cheese or on its own. The mistake to avoid is skipping the rinse: green papaya oozes a milky latex that tastes bitter and can irritate the skin, so wear gloves and wash the grated fruit well. Chef's tip: stop cooking when you can drag a spoon across the bottom of the pan and see the base for a second; it firms up a lot as it cools.

90 minBrazilianDessertsVeganGluten free
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Kahu sekanjabinLettuce with mint vinegar syrup

On Sizdah Bedar, the thirteenth day of the new year, Iranian families leave the city for parks and riverbanks around Tehran and Isfahan, and the picnic cloth almost always holds a jar of sekanjabin and a head of crisp romaine. The syrup is an ancient one: sugar and vinegar simmered together and steeped with fresh mint, sweet-sour and cooling. You tear off a lettuce leaf, dip it and crunch. The usual mistake is boiling the syrup too long, which turns it into hard toffee once cold. Chef's tip: keep the lettuce in iced water until the moment you serve; the colder and crisper the leaf, the better the contrast with the syrup.

40 minPersianSnacks & StartersVeganGluten free
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Axoa de veauMinced veal and pepper stew

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.

70 minFrenchMeatGluten free
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Canutillos de BergaraCustard-filled puff pastry horns

In Bergara, a market town in the Deba valley of Gipuzkoa, pastry shops have sold canutillos since the nineteenth century, and locals buy them by the tray for saints' days and family visits. Puff pastry is wound around metal cones, baked until crisp and caramelised, then piped full of custard scented with lemon and cinnamon. A common mistake is filling them too early: the pastry softens within a few hours, so fill them close to serving. Chef's tip: overlap the pastry strip by a third as you wind it, so the horns don't unravel in the oven.

65 minSpanishBaking
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Kibbeh labaniehKibbeh in garlic yoghurt sauce

In Lebanese homes, kibbeh labanieh is the dish that turns a batch of stuffed kibbeh into a comforting winter supper: the little torpedo-shaped shells of bulgur and lamb, filled with spiced mince and pine nuts, are poached in a silky yoghurt sauce scented with garlic and dried mint. It is eaten hot, ladled over vermicelli rice. The yoghurt has to be stabilised with cornflour and stirred in one direction while it heats, or it splits. Common mistake: letting the sauce boil hard before it has thickened; it curdles instantly. Chef's tip: make the kibbeh balls a day ahead and freeze them on a tray — they hold their shape better in the sauce.

95 minLebaneseMeat
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