In the palm oases of the Draa Valley, south of the Atlas, barley grows where wheat struggles, and the couscous cooked for family meals is often belboula: cracked barley grains steamed three times until fluffy, nutty and slightly chewy. It is heaped on a big platter, crowned with vegetables from the broth bubbling beneath it, such as carrots, turnips, pumpkin, courgettes and cabbage, plus chickpeas, then moistened with ladles of the turmeric-and-ginger broth. On hot days the same couscous is eaten cold with buttermilk instead. It takes time but very little skill once you know the rhythm of steaming. Chef's tip: oil and rub the grains between your palms before each steaming so they stay separate.
A new country every day, from every cuisine on the site.
London particular is a thick, yellow-green soup of split peas and smoked pork ham hock, named after the pea-souper smogs that once smothered the city. It was a cheap winter warmer in Victorian London eating houses and is still on menus in pubs and cafés when the weather turns. The hock gives a deep smoky saltiness and shreds of soft meat. Chef's tip: skim the grey foam off as the water first boils, for a cleaner taste.
In the green valleys of northern Navarre, Ultzama and Roncal above all, sheep's milk is set into cuajada, a wobbly, faintly tangy junket that is eaten as dessert in village restaurants and sold in little clay pots at Pamplona's markets. Shepherds once warmed the milk by dropping a red-hot stone into a wooden pot, which is why some cuajadas taste lightly smoky. It is always eaten cold, with honey and walnuts. Most rennet is made from calves' stomachs; for a vegetarian cuajada use a microbial or vegetable rennet. Chef's tip: once the rennet is in, don't move the pots at all until they have set, or they turn grainy and weep.
Taramosalata is the star of Clean Monday, the first day of Greek Lent, scooped onto torn lagana at picnics while children fly kites, and it stays on taverna meze tables all year. The real thing is beige-pink, not bright pink, made from salted cured carp or cod roe (tarama) beaten with soaked bread, onion, lemon and oil into a salty, briny, mousse-like dip. Because tarama is cured rather than cooked, buy pasteurised roe for a safer version; even so, this dip is not for pregnant women, young children or anyone with a weakened immune system. Common mistake: adding the oil too fast, which splits it. Chef's tip: use white tarama if you can find it; it is less salty and lets the lemon shine.
Bucaramanga's Mercado Central and the Sunday family tables of Santander serve mute, a big, thick soup that takes most of a day: hominy corn, honeycomb beef tripe and pork ribs, plus red beans, potatoes, pumpkin, cabbage and a handful of short pasta, all simmered until thick, rich and savoury. It is filling enough to be lunch on its own, eaten with avocado, ají and a piece of arepa. The tripe must be bought cleaned and bleached from the butcher and then simmered for two hours until tender; undercooked tripe is the most common complaint, as it stays chewy and tastes strong. This version uses cooked or tinned hominy and beans to save the overnight soaking. Chef's tip: rub the tripe with lime and salt and rinse it twice before cooking; it removes any farmyard smell and keeps the broth clean-tasting.
Late every summer, women across Central Anatolia, from Uşak to Konya and Sivas, ferment a dough of yoghurt, flour, tomatoes, peppers and onion, dry it on cloths in the sun and rub it into crumbs. All winter that tarhana becomes a quick, warming soup with a gentle sourness and the sweetness of sun-dried pepper. It is breakfast in villages, a cure for colds in cities, and is eaten with bread and a squeeze of lemon. Common mistake: tipping dry tarhana straight into hot liquid, which forms stubborn lumps; soak it in cold water first. Chef's tip: finish with a spoon of butter sizzled with dried mint and chilli flakes drizzled over each bowl; it lifts the whole soup.
Simplicity is the charm of this Andean dessert: a slab of fresh, milky cuajada, barely salted, with a dark syrup of panela poured over it, still warm. Highland fondas between Bogotá and Boyacá serve it after a lunch of ajiaco or sancocho, and the contrast of cool, squeaky curd with molasses-deep, spiced syrup is the point. Cuajada is set with rennet, traditionally animal; buy a vegetarian curd or fresh ricotta-style cheese, or make cuajada at home with microbial rennet. Panela is unrefined cane sugar; dark muscovado is the closest swap. The mistake is boiling the syrup too long: it turns to toffee as soon as it meets the cold cheese. Take it off when it coats a spoon thinly. Chef's tip: a strip of lime zest in the syrup cuts the sweetness beautifully.
Mid-morning in Arequipa's traditional picanterías, before the big plates come out, regulars order escribano: a bowl of warm yellow potato crushed with a fork and drenched in rocoto, ripe tomato, vinegar and oil. Local lore says it was a snack for the court clerks (escribanos) who worked nearby, and it is still eaten as a sharp, spicy wake-up with a glass of chicha or a soft drink. The texture should be rough and juicy, somewhere between a salad and a mash, with the red chilli bright against the potato. Don't purée it: overworked potato goes gluey and loses the chunks that hold the dressing. Rocoto is fiercely hot, so start with half and taste. Serve it alone with crusty bread, or beside fried cheese or grilled vegetables. Chef's tip: dress the potatoes the moment they are drained and peeled, while they are steaming, so they drink in the vinegar.
Ask any Argentine rotisería for a slice of tarta and choclo will be next to the chard and the ham-and-cheese. This is the creamy one: sweetcorn kernels folded into a thick white sauce with softened onion and red pepper, set with egg and cheese inside a buttery shortcrust. It is lunchbox and picnic food, eaten warm or at room temperature with a green salad, and it is a big favourite with children for its sweetness. The filling should slice cleanly but still be soft. A runny centre is the usual problem, and it comes from a thin white sauce or from forgetting to blind-bake: make the sauce thick enough to coat the spoon heavily, and part-bake the case. Mozzarella and grated hard cheese are often made with animal rennet, so buy vegetarian ones if that matters. Chef's tip: blitz a third of the corn with the white sauce; it gives a creamier, more corn-tasting filling while the whole kernels keep some bite.
Pilgrims finishing the Camino in Santiago de Compostela see this cake in every bakery window around the cathedral, dusted white with icing sugar and stencilled with the cross of St James. It is made only from ground almonds, sugar, eggs and a little lemon and cinnamon, so it is naturally free of gluten, moist and dense with a thin crisp crust. Galicians eat it with coffee after Sunday lunch or at weddings. A common mistake is overbeating the eggs to a foam, which makes the cake rise and then sink; just mix until smooth. Chef's tip: cut a cross from paper and lay it on the cold cake before sifting over the icing sugar.
Loobia polo is a weeknight favourite in Tehran homes, the rice dish children ask for when they come home from school and the one packed for picnics on the slopes of Darband. Parboiled basmati is layered with a sauce of minced lamb or beef, short pieces of green bean, tomato paste and a warm hint of cinnamon, then steamed slowly until every grain is stained a soft orange and a crisp tahdig forms underneath. For a meat-free pot, swap the mince for diced potato and keep everything else the same. Serve with mast-o khiar, salad shirazi and torshi. A common mistake is adding the beans raw to the rice layers: brown them in the sauce first or they stay squeaky and pale. Chef's tip: let the tomato paste fry in the oil until it turns brick red before adding water; that is where the deep, sweet flavour comes from.
Gondi is the Friday-night dish of Tehran's Persian Jewish families, served at the Shabbat table before the main course or as a light lunch after. Big, soft dumplings of minced chicken, grated onion and roasted chickpea flour, scented with cardamom, are poached in a clear turmeric broth with chickpeas, and each bowl gets one or two with plenty of broth, fresh herbs and flatbread. The texture should be tender and slightly crumbly, a little like a dense matzo ball. A common mistake is using raw chickpea flour; buy roasted chickpea flour (nokhodchi flour) or dry-toast plain gram flour first, or the dumplings taste raw. Chef's tip: chill the mixture for 30 minutes before shaping so the dumplings hold their shape in the broth.
In Lille and across the Nord, a sugar tart is not pastry at all but a flat round of soft brioche dough, dimpled and covered with brown cassonade sugar, butter and a little egg and cream, which bakes into a sticky, caramelised top over a fluffy base. Families buy it from the boulangerie for Sunday breakfast and goûter, or bake one when guests come for coffee. The Nord's own beet sugar, vergeoise, gives it a deep, almost molasses flavour; soft dark brown sugar is the closest swap. Chef's tip: press deep dimples into the risen dough with your fingertips before adding the topping; the sugar and cream collect in them and bake into little pools of caramel.
Lyon's pralines are almonds coated in hard, shocking-pink sugar, and the city's bakeries melt them with cream into a sticky, vivid filling for this tart, sold by the slice in every pâtisserie from Bellecour to the Croix-Rousse. It is very sweet and nutty, with a crunch from the almonds, and is eaten in small slices with coffee. Look for pink pralines coloured with plant-based colourings; some are coloured with carmine (E120), which comes from insects. Chef's tip: crush the pralines roughly in a bag with a rolling pin, leaving some pieces the size of a lentil for crunch.
German settlers in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina brought the Streuselkuchen, and their descendants call it cuca: a soft, enriched yeast dough baked under a layer of fruit and a thick, buttery crumble called farofa. In Blumenau, Pomerode and the serra gaúcha it is sold in colonial bakeries and roadside cafés and served at the long afternoon café colonial with coffee, jams and cheeses. Banana with cinnamon is the classic, but grape, apple and guava versions are common. The usual misstep is letting the dough rise in a cold kitchen and then baking it anyway: it stays heavy and dense, so wait until it really has doubled. Chef's tip: rub the crumble together and chill it in the freezer while the dough rises, so it stays in big, crunchy clusters in the oven.
In the Sotavento region of southern Veracruz, around Tlacotalpan and Los Tuxtlas, cooks knead well-fried black beans straight into the corn masa, so the little cakes come out speckled grey-black, then fry them until they puff up like balloons. Gordas de frijol are a supper snack from street stalls and fiesta tables, split and topped with salsa, chopped onion and, for a non-vegan version, a crumble of fresh cheese. Avocado leaf in the beans gives a faint aniseed note. Chef's tip: the beans must be very thick and cooled; warm, wet beans make a sticky dough that will not puff.
In Querétaro, gorditas de migajas are a breakfast and market favourite, cooked on wide griddles in the old town and in the street stalls of the Sierra Gorda. They are thick corn cakes filled with migajas, the crunchy crumbs of pork crackling left at the bottom of the carnitas or chicharrón vat, bound with asiento, the brown, savoury pork lard full of toasted bits. This is very much a pork dish; plain pork lard and finely crushed pork crackling make a good substitute if you can't find asiento. Split open while hot, they are filled with red salsa, onion, coriander and crumbled cheese. Chef's tip: cook them over a medium, not high, heat so the inside cooks through before the outside burns.
Despite the name, tas kebabı never sees a grill: it is a bowl ('tas') of beef braised slowly with lots of onion, tomato and a little pepper paste until the meat is soft and the sauce is rich and glossy. It is a mainstay of esnaf lokantası, the tradesmen's restaurants where workers eat a hot lunch from steam trays, and is served over buttery rice pilaf or alongside mashed potato. Common mistake: crowding the pan when browning, so the beef boils grey. Chef's tip: cook the onions down until jammy before the tomato goes in; they melt into the sauce and give it body without any flour.
Tascalate is the drink of the Chiapas central valley, sold in Chiapa de Corzo and Tuxtla in tall glasses at markets and given to guests at fiestas. A powder of toasted tortillas, cacao, pine nuts, sugar, cinnamon and a little achiote is whisked into cold water or milk, so it is orange-brown, thick and nutty with a sweet chocolate finish. The powder keeps for weeks, so make a jar. Made with water it is vegan. Chef's tip: toast the tortillas until they snap cleanly; any softness leaves the powder clumpy.
Lorne sausage, better known in Scotland simply as square sausage or slice, is a skinless loaf of seasoned beef and pork mince that is cut into squares and fried for the full Scottish breakfast, or slapped in a morning roll with brown sauce. It is easy to make at home and freezes well. Chef's tip: freeze the shaped block for an hour before slicing; it cuts into neat, thin squares.
Tattie scones are thin triangles of mashed potato and flour cooked on a dry girdle, part of a full Scottish breakfast and sold in packs in every Glasgow bakery. They are soft, slightly chewy and speckled brown, and are best fried in butter and eaten with eggs or rolled round a filling. Chef's tip: use the potato while warm; cold mash needs more flour and makes them heavy.
Gosh-e fil, elephant's ear, is the big, bubbly, paper-thin fried pastry sold from bakery windows in Tehran and Shiraz in the days before Nowruz, and made at home for Ramadan evenings. A soft egg and yogurt dough is rolled almost see-through, pinched into a fan shape and fried until it blisters, then showered with icing sugar, cardamom and ground pistachio. They are best the day they are made, with glasses of black tea. Chef's tip: rest the dough properly; relaxed dough rolls thin without shrinking back.
It surprises everyone the first time, but Istanbul's old muhallebici shops still make this silky milk pudding with chicken breast pounded into fine threads, a recipe from the Ottoman palace kitchens. You cannot taste the chicken; it gives the pudding a stretchy, almost chewy body and a pearly look. Serve it cold with a heavy dusting of cinnamon. This dessert contains meat, so it is not vegetarian. Chef's tip: boil the chicken without salt and rinse the shreds several times in cold water; any savoury taste left behind will show in the finished pudding.
Tavuk sote is what Turkish home cooks make on a busy weekday: strips of chicken thigh seared hard, then tossed with green and red peppers, mushrooms, onion, tomato and a spoonful of pepper paste until glossy. It cooks in the time the bulgur or rice takes, and lokantas serve it from the steam tray with a side of yoghurt. Thigh meat stays juicy; breast dries out quickly. Common mistake: adding all the chicken at once, which drops the pan temperature and leaves it pale and watery. Chef's tip: finish with a knob of butter and a pinch of dried thyme off the heat for a glossy, aromatic sauce.
Esgarraet means "torn", and that is the whole technique: red peppers are roasted until soft and sweet, then pulled into strips by hand and layered with shredded salt cod, garlic and plenty of olive oil. Valencia's bars put it out as a tapa with crusty bread, and families make a big dish of it to pick at before a summer paella. Traditionally the cod is only desalted, not cooked, which means it is raw cured fish. That version is not for pregnant women, young children or anyone with a weakened immune system; this recipe gently poaches the cod first, which keeps it tender and makes it safe for everyone. A common mistake is rinsing the roast peppers under the tap to peel them; you wash away the sweet juices. Chef's tip: make it a day ahead; the peppers and cod drink up the garlicky oil overnight.
Eshkeneh is the soup of the cold north-west, cooked in Tabriz kitchens on winter evenings when there is little in the house but onions, eggs and dried fenugreek. The onions are fried very slowly until sweet and brown, a spoon of flour and turmeric thickens the broth, and eggs are dropped in to poach at the end; a little sour from lemon or dried sour cherries balances it. Azerbaijani families crumble barbari or lavash into their bowls so the bread soaks up the broth. A common mistake is rushing the onions, which leaves the soup thin and harsh rather than mellow and golden. Chef's tip: add the dried fenugreek with the flour, not before, because it scorches quickly and turns bitter.
Olivenza, on the border with Portugal and Portuguese until 1801, kept a taste for the convent sweets of its neighbour, and técula mécula is the town's pride: a dense, golden tart of ground almonds, sugar syrup and egg yolks, sold whole or by the slice in its pastry shops and carried home as a gift. Its playful name is said to come from a Latin phrase meaning with you and with me, as if it were made to share. The traditional pastry uses pork lard; this version uses butter and is vegetarian. Chef's tip: a thin slice is plenty, as it is very rich; serve it with coffee.
The long, black, sharp-toothed espada is caught at great depth off Madeira at night, and the Funchal fish market sells it every morning. Its white, tender fillets are eaten everywhere on the island, most famously dipped in egg and fried, then crowned with slices of the small, sweet local banana fried in butter. Black scabbardfish is hard to find elsewhere; hake, ling or cod fillets work well. Chef's tip: pat the fish completely dry before flouring it, so the egg coating clings and fries crisp.
Ica's sweet shops, along the road into town and around the main square, stack tejas in long rows, each one wrapped in white tissue paper with frilled ends. Inside the thin, crackly sugar shell is a soft centre of manjar blanco with a pecan or a piece of candied fruit; Ica has been making them since the 19th century and they are the city's best-known souvenir. They are intensely sweet, so one or two with coffee is enough. The hard part is the fondant: stir it while it's too hot and it turns grainy and opaque too early, so let the syrup cool before working it. This version makes a quick manjar blanco from condensed and evaporated milk and uses pecans; candied lime or orange peel works the same way. Chef's tip: chill the filled centres until firm before dipping; warm ones melt into the fondant and lose their shape.
On hot afternoons in Guadalajara, vendors ladle tejuino from big clay pots into plastic bags or glasses with ice, a squeeze of lime, a pinch of salt and often a scoop of lime sorbet. It is made from corn masa cooked with piloncillo and left for two or three days to ferment a little, which gives it a tangy, slightly sour taste. The fermentation is light and the drink is sold as non-alcoholic, but a trace of alcohol can form, so keep the fermentation to 2 days and serve it well chilled. Skip the fermenting stage entirely for children: drink it fresh as a sweet atole-style cooler. Chef's tip: taste it each day; take it to the fridge as soon as it tastes pleasantly sour, like a mild yoghurt.
In Tekirdağ, on the Sea of Marmara, köfte houses have been grilling the same small, flat, oval meatballs for a century: beef and a little lamb, bread, cumin and nothing much else, cooked over charcoal and served in rows with white bean piyaz, roasted green peppers and a dusting of chilli. The meat is lightly kneaded, so it stays juicy and tender. Make it on a barbecue in summer or a ridged pan in winter. Chef's tip: knead the mince with the bread and let it rest overnight; the flavours meld and the köfte hold together on the grill without any egg.
Teltower Rübchen are tiny, finger-length turnips grown in the sandy fields of Teltow, just south of Berlin, and harvested in spring and again in autumn. They were once a delicacy at the Prussian court, and Berliners still serve them glazed in butter and caramel as a side for roasts, goose or simply with boiled potatoes. They taste sweeter and more peppery than big turnips, with a hint of radish. Outside Brandenburg, use small white turnips or the base of young navets. A common mistake is peeling them thickly; just scrape off the thin skin. Chef's tip: let the sugar turn pale amber before adding the turnips, so the glaze has a real caramel flavour.
Mutzbraten is the fairground roast of eastern Thuringia, from Schmölln and the Altenburg area, where big chunks of pork shoulder are rubbed with salt, pepper and lots of marjoram, threaded on skewers and hung in an iron cage over a birch-wood fire. It is sold sliced with sauerkraut and a slice of rye bread at markets and village festivals. At home a lidded kettle barbecue with birch or other mild wood chips gives a close result; an oven version is in the steps. Chef's tip: marinate overnight, as the marjoram needs time to work its way into the meat.
In the wine villages of Burgundy, around Beaune and Chablis, a basket of gougères lands on the table the moment guests sit down: small golden choux puffs, crisp outside and hollow and cheesy within. They are handed round at cellar tastings, christenings and Sunday aperitifs, and they are best eaten warm, within ten minutes of leaving the oven. The dough is the same as for profiteroles, but salted, peppered and beaten with grated Comté or Gruyère. Both cheeses are traditionally made with animal rennet, so use a vegetarian hard mountain-style cheese if you need to. Chef's tip: dry the dough on the heat until it leaves a thin film on the bottom of the pan; drier dough takes more egg and puffs higher.
At the summer festivals of Messinia, whole young pigs are roasted overnight in bakers' wood ovens, then sold by the kilo at stalls with bread and pickled peppers. This home version uses a bone-in pork shoulder, rubbed with garlic, orange zest, oregano and chilli, left in the fridge overnight, and roasted low and slow until the meat pulls apart and the crackling shatters. Serve with lemon potatoes and a cabbage salad. Common mistake: wet skin — dry it well and salt it the night before, or it never crackles. Chef's tip: start covered at a low heat and finish uncovered at a high heat; that's how the meat stays juicy and the skin turns glassy.
Testaccio was home to Rome's slaughterhouse, and the vaccinari who skinned the cattle were partly paid in offcuts, among them the tail. The trattorie of the quarter still serve coda alla vaccinara as their signature dish: oxtail braised for hours in tomato with a mountain of celery until the meat slides off the bone, the sauce finished with a hint of bitter cocoa, pine nuts and raisins for a sweet-sour depth. A splash of red wine goes in early, with an alcohol-free option in the ingredients. Eat the meat with bread, and toss any leftover sauce with rigatoni the next day. Chef's tip: braise it a day ahead, chill it and lift off the hard layer of fat before reheating; the sauce will be cleaner and the flavour deeper.
The cattle ponds of the dehesa around Malpartida de Cáceres and Los Barruecos have bred tench for centuries, and every spring the town holds a fiesta for the fish. Locals fry it whole in olive oil with plenty of garlic and eat it with their fingers, picking the sweet flesh off the bones, with a green salad and bread. Tench is hard to find outside Extremadura, so small trout make a good stand-in. Chef's tip: dry the fish thoroughly before flouring, or the coating goes gluey and the oil spits.
On Easter Monday, families across the Valencian Community head out to the countryside or the beach to "menjar-se la mona": they eat an orange-scented sweet brioche, often with a whole egg baked on top, and children crack the egg on a friend's forehead. The bun is soft and fluffy, glazed and sprinkled with sugar or coloured aniseed sprinkles. Here the eggs are hard-boiled first, so they are cooked through whatever the size of your bun. A common mistake is adding all the flour at once to a sticky dough; it softens as you knead, so hold back the last 50 g until you've kneaded for a few minutes. Chef's tip: make the starter the evening before and the dough on the day; the slow start gives a lighter crumb that stays soft for two days.
The name means 'sweet' or 'delicious' in Basque, and goxua was created in Vitoria-Gasteiz in the 1970s, where cafés still serve it in small glasses or terracotta pots. From the bottom up you get whipped cream, a disc of sponge soaked in syrup, thick vanilla pastry cream and a crackling layer of burnt sugar. It is a make-ahead dessert for a Sunday lunch, since the layers need to chill. A common mistake is spooning in custard that is still warm, which melts the cream into a puddle. Chef's tip: caramelise the top just before serving, so the sugar crust is still glassy when the spoon goes in.
Mondeghili are the thrifty meatballs of Milan, invented to use up the beef left from a pot of bollito misto and now a fixture on the aperitivo counters of the city's bars. The cooked beef is minced with mortadella, a soft pork sausage, then bound with milk-soaked bread, egg, grana and lemon zest, flattened slightly and fried in butter until crisp and brown. They are best warm, with a squeeze of lemon, a spoonful of green sauce or simply a cold drink before dinner. Leftover roast beef or veal works just as well as boiled meat. Chef's tip: flatten each ball a little before frying; they cook through evenly and get more of that crunchy crust.
From March to May, families around Granada and Córdoba walk the field edges gathering thin, bitter wild asparagus, and the classic way to cook the haul is esparragados: simmered in a sauce of pounded fried bread, garlic, cumin and paprika, with an egg poached on top. Thin green asparagus from the shop works well too. The sauce should be thick enough to hold the egg. Chef's tip: pound the bread and garlic while still warm from the pan; they break down into a smooth paste far more easily.
Ternasco is the young, milk-and-grass-fed lamb of Aragon, and roasting it in a wood oven with potatoes is how families in Zaragoza, Huesca and Teruel celebrate Sunday lunches, christenings and Christmas Day. The meat is pale, tender and mild, and the potatoes underneath cook in its juices with garlic, wine and herbs until golden and soft. This uses white wine; swap it for water with a squeeze of lemon if you prefer no alcohol. A common mistake is roasting too hot: young lamb dries out quickly, so keep the oven moderate and baste often. Chef's tip: ask your butcher to cut a shoulder or a leg of young lamb into large pieces through the bone; more surfaces brown, and it cooks evenly.
Culurgiones come from Ogliastra, on Sardinia's rugged eastern coast, where women seal each dumpling with a row of tiny pinches that look like an ear of wheat. Inside is a soft, warm filling of potato, aged pecorino, garlic and fresh mint. In villages such as Ulassai and Lanusei they are made for the end of the harvest and for 2 November, All Souls' Day, as a token of good luck and protection. Some families work a little lard into the dough; here it is olive oil. Chef's tip: chill the filling; firm, cold filling is far easier to pleat and won't tear the thin dough.
In the cave restaurants of Göreme and Avanos, testi kebabı arrives as a sealed clay jug, glowing from the oven, which the waiter cracks open at the table with a sharp tap of a knife. Inside is beef or lamb stewed with tomatoes, peppers, garlic and onion until tender in its own rich juices. A lidded casserole works perfectly at home, and you can still seal the lid with dough for the drama. Serve with plain rice pilaf. Common mistake: adding a lot of water; the vegetables give off plenty and the sealed pot should braise, not boil. Chef's tip: brown the meat in two batches first for a deeper, savoury sauce.
Texas migas is the Austin diner breakfast for using up stale corn tortillas: strips are fried crisp, then tossed with onion, jalapeño and tomato and scrambled with eggs and melting cheese, served with refried beans and warm flour tortillas. It is a quite different dish from the bread-crumb migas of Spain. Chef's tip: add the eggs while the tortilla strips are still crisp, so some stay crunchy and some soften.
Fried fish in a Lisbon casa de pasto often comes with a spoonful of soft, dark green esparregado on the side, and the roast lamb at Easter lunch in the Ribatejo does too. Cooks use whatever leaves are in season: turnip tops in winter, spinach the rest of the year, sometimes a handful of wild asparagus. The greens are cooked, chopped very fine and stirred into garlic-scented olive oil with a little flour until creamy, then lifted with a dash of vinegar. It is good with fried cuttlefish, grilled sardines or a fried egg. A common mistake is skipping the squeeze; wet greens make a watery purée, so press out as much water as you can. Chef's tip: squeeze the cooked greens really hard before chopping; watery greens give a thin, grey purée.
Across Provence, a grand aïoli is the lunch for Fridays, the meatless day, and for summer village fêtes, when long tables are laid under the plane trees and the platters go round. Poached salt cod, boiled potatoes, carrots, green beans, beetroot and hard-boiled eggs are piled up around a bowl of aïoli, the pungent, golden garlic mayonnaise that gives the meal its name. It is plain food made thrilling by that sauce, so use your best olive oil. The salt cod needs 24–36 hours soaking in the fridge, so start early. Because the aïoli is made with raw egg yolk, use pasteurised egg yolks if you are serving pregnant women, young children, older people or anyone with a weakened immune system. Chef's tip: start the aïoli with a pinch of salt and pounded garlic, and add the oil drop by drop until it thickens.
Around the shores of Lake Titicaca, thimpu is weekday food and Lent food alike: carachi, a small native lake fish, laid over potatoes and chuño (freeze-dried Andean potato) and gently poached, then drenched at the table with a hot sauce of onion fried with ají. The fish is soft and delicate, the chuño earthy and pleasantly chewy, and the sauce brings colour and fire. Outside Puno, small whole trout, tilapia or perch, or thick trout fillets, work well. Chuño needs an overnight soak (plan for it) and is sold in Andean and Latin shops; swap in extra waxy potatoes if you can't find it. The trap here is boiling the fish hard so it falls apart; keep the water at a bare shiver. Chef's tip: make the sauce while the fish poaches and spoon it on boiling hot, so it sizzles over the plate.
In Thuringia, Sunday lunch without Klöße hardly counts: big, pale, springy dumplings made from two-thirds raw grated potato and one-third hot cooked potato paste, each hiding a few butter-fried croutons in the middle. They come to the table beside roasts with lots of gravy, red cabbage or a mushroom sauce, and the texture is unique, smooth, slightly chewy and very good at soaking up sauce. A common mistake is letting the water boil once the dumplings are in, which makes them fall apart; they should only just tremble. Chef's tip: work fast once the raw potato is pressed, because it greys as it meets the air.
In Thuringia, a summer garden party or village fair isn't complete without a Rost, the charcoal grill, loaded with Rostbrätel: pork neck steaks that have spent a night in mustard and plenty of sliced onion. The fat in the neck keeps the meat juicy over the coals, and the onions from the marinade are fried and piled on top, with rye bread on the side. Many Thuringian grillers splash beer over the meat while it cooks; this version needs no alcohol. Chef's tip: scrape most of the onion off before grilling, as it burns on the coals; fry it separately instead.
In Thuringia the long, thin Rostbratwurst is grilled over charcoal at every market, football ground and village fête, and has been since at least the 15th century. It is a raw, finely seasoned pork sausage with marjoram, caraway and garlic, bought from a Thuringian butcher, and the local rules are strict: grilled slowly over glowing coals, served in a roll that is too short for it, with a sharp, coarse mustard and never with ketchup. Here you grill good fresh bratwurst and make a medium-hot mustard to go with it. Vegetarians can grill vegetarian bratwurst the same way. Chef's tip: grill over glowing coals with no flames, rubbing the sausages with a bacon rind or a little oil so they colour evenly and the skin crackles.
In the Zagros mountains of Lorestan and among the Bakhtiari nomads, women roll out nan-e tiri with a long, thin rod (the tir) until the dough is almost see-through, then flip it onto a domed iron saj over a wood fire. It cooks in seconds and is stacked high, and because it dries so thin it keeps for weeks and is softened with a sprinkle of water before eating. It needs only flour, water and salt. The usual mistake is resting the dough too little; it fights back and shrinks when rolled. Chef's tip: wind the dough around a long thin rolling pin as you roll and unroll it, as the Lori bakers do; it stretches the dough evenly without tearing.
Cardoons, the tall silvery cousin of the artichoke, are a Christmas vegetable in Lyon and the Dauphiné; market stalls on the Quai Saint-Antoine sell them in December, and the gratin goes on the table at the réveillon dinner. The stalks taste gently of artichoke and celery and turn meltingly soft under a nutmeg béchamel. Lyon cooks often add bone marrow; this version leaves it out and uses vegetable stock in the sauce. Gruyère is usually made with animal rennet, so choose a vegetarian alternative if needed. If you cannot find cardoons, celery hearts work, though they cook faster. Chef's tip: drop each peeled stalk straight into lemon water; cardoons blacken within minutes in the air.
In Guadeloupe and Martinique, colombo is the curry brought by Tamil workers in the nineteenth century and now a fixture of Sunday lunches, christenings and Carnival feasts. Its spice blend, also called colombo, mixes toasted coriander, cumin, fenugreek, mustard seed and turmeric with a little toasted rice that thickens the sauce. Chicken is marinated in lime and garlic in the fridge, then simmered with aubergine, chayote (christophine) or courgette and potato into a golden, earthy, gently tangy stew, with a whole Scotch bonnet for perfume. Serve with white rice and a wedge of lime. Chef's tip: leave the Scotch bonnet whole and lift it out at the end for flavour without fierce heat; prick it only if you want it hot.
In Estreito de Câmara de Lobos, on the hillsides above Funchal, the September wine harvest ends with espetada: big cubes of beef rubbed with garlic, salt and crushed bay, threaded onto bay branches and roasted over a wood fire. Restaurants hang the long skewers from hooks above the table, so everyone slides off their own pieces. It is eaten with bolo do caco, milho frito and a salad. Chef's tip: cut the beef into large 4 cm cubes, which stay juicy in the middle while the outside chars.
Nan-e Yazdi, often called Yazdi cakes, are the small domed cupcakes every Iranian bakery sells for breakfast and afternoon tea, first made in Yazd and now loved in Tehran and far beyond. The crumb is soft and a little dense, perfumed with cardamom and rosewater, and the tops are scattered with pistachio or sesame before baking. Children eat them dunked in milk. A common mistake is overbeating after the flour goes in, which makes the cakes tough and peaked; fold just until smooth. Chef's tip: rest the batter in the fridge for an hour before baking for a taller, crackled dome.
Booyah is the great community stew of north-east Wisconsin, brought by Belgian and French-Canadian settlers around Green Bay; church picnics and fire stations cook it in huge kettles over wood fires all day and sell it by the quart at fall festivals and Packers tailgates. It is a thick, peppery stew of chicken, a little beef and lots of vegetables, cooked until the chicken falls apart. Chef's tip: cook it long and slow and stir it often; a good booyah is thick enough that the spoon nearly stands up.
São Paulo and Minas call it curau; in parts of the Northeast the same thing is canjica, which can confuse anyone travelling for the June festivals. Whatever the name, it is fresh sweetcorn blended with milk, strained and stirred over the heat until it sets into a soft, pale yellow pudding, served cold in little bowls with a dusting of cinnamon. You find it at every arraial in the interior of São Paulo and Goiás and at corn shops beside the pamonha. It tastes of milky fresh corn, gently sweet, and the texture should be silky, never grainy. A frequent slip is to stop stirring: corn starch catches on the base within seconds and gives the whole pot a burnt taste. Chef's tip: cook it in a heavy pan and use a flat wooden spatula so you can scrape every corner of the base.
In Palestinian homes za'atar is both a herb and the blend made from it, kept in a jar beside a bowl of olive oil so torn bread can be dipped in one and then the other at breakfast; children grow up on it, and it goes to school in sandwiches. The blend is mostly dried wild za'atar (or thyme and oregano), tangy with sumac, nutty with toasted sesame and seasoned with salt. Common mistake: grinding it to dust; it should be coarse and slightly flaky. Chef's tip: rub the dried leaves with a few drops of olive oil before mixing; it wakes their aroma and helps the sumac cling.
Every family in Bari has its own tiella, also called riso, patate e cozze, and it turns up at Sunday lunches and summer gatherings along the Puglian coast. Layers of thinly sliced potato, raw rice, mussels opened on the half shell, onion, tomato, parsley and pecorino are packed into a deep baking dish, then baked with water until the rice has drunk up the sea-salty juices and the top is crisp. It's served warm, as a one-dish meal, followed by a salad. Chef's tip: open the mussels raw with a knife over a bowl and keep every drop of their liquid; it seasons the rice better than any stock.
The fishing port of Sète eats tielles everywhere: from bakeries along the canals, at the market on the Halles square, and on the quays during the summer water-jousting festival. Brought by Italian fishing families from Gaeta, the pie wraps a spicy, slow-cooked filling of octopus, onions and tomato in a soft olive-oil bread dough with a fluted, crimped edge. It is chewy, rich and properly peppery, and just as good cold as warm. Cut it into wedges as a snack or serve it with a green salad for lunch. Chef's tip: cook the filling until it is thick enough to hold a line when you drag a spoon through it, or the base will go soggy.
In Beira Baixa villages such as Oleiros and Proença-a-Nova, tigelada is baked in unglazed clay bowls heated in the wood oven until they are red hot, so the custard puffs up, cracks and browns on top while staying soft and slightly spongy inside. It is sold at festivals and markets across the region and is a common finish to a Sunday lunch. Terracotta dishes work best at home, but small ceramic ovenproof dishes do the job. Chef's tip: heat the empty dishes in the oven first; pouring cold batter into a hot dish is what makes it rise and form its typical crust.
Beach restaurants on the coasts of Quintana Roo and Campeche cook tikin xic over charcoal: a butterflied whole fish, or thick fillets, rubbed with brick-red achiote and bitter orange, laid on banana leaves under tomato, onion and pepper and grilled until smoky. The flesh stays moist and turns a deep orange, tangy and earthy rather than hot. Seville orange is the traditional sour; orange and lime juice together stand in well. Serve it with corn tortillas, rice, pickled red onion and habanero salsa so everyone can make tacos at the table. Chef's tip: cook the fish skin side down without turning; the banana leaf protects it and keeps the achiote from scorching.
Grießnockerlsuppe is the soup that opens a proper Austrian Sunday lunch, from Viennese grandmothers' tables to village inns in Upper Austria: a clear, deeply savoury beef broth with three or four soft, oval semolina dumplings that should be fluffy enough to cut with a spoon. The broth is made from beef shin and bones, simmered slowly with charred onion; broth left over from Tafelspitz works perfectly too. Chef's tip: let the semolina mix rest for 15 minutes before shaping; the grains swell and the dumplings hold together without going heavy.
Ask for a tinto anywhere in Colombia and you get a small cup of black coffee, never red wine. Street vendors carry it in thermos flasks through the plazas of Manizales, Pereira and Bogotá, and offices, bus stations and farm kitchens in the coffee region brew pots of it all day. It is light, hot and gently sweet, often made by simmering ground coffee with water and a little panela, then straining it through a cloth bag. The usual error is boiling the coffee hard, which makes it harsh and bitter; let it come to the boil only once. Chef's tip: let the grounds settle for a minute off the heat before straining, so the cup stays clear.
Sweet, tangy and a little sticky, tipakay is the chifa order for people who like their sauce on the fruity side: battered pieces of chicken fried crisp, then dressed in a dark, glossy sauce built on tamarind, panela and soy, with strips of red and green pepper and onion that keep some crunch. It is one of the most popular platters in Lima's family-run chifas, eaten with white rice or chaufa. Its sauce is darker and less candy-sweet than kam lu's, with tamarind's sour depth. The mistake most home cooks make is letting the peppers stew until soft; give them only a minute in the wok so they stay bright. Chef's tip: taste the sauce before thickening and balance it: more lime if it's cloying, a pinch more panela if it's too sour.
Lima's Japanese-Peruvian cooks turned ceviche on its head with tiradito: instead of cubes soaked in lime, the fish is cut thin like sashimi, laid flat and dressed at the last minute, so it stays silky with only the surface turning white. The sauce here is the classic golden one, ají amarillo blended with lime, garlic and ginger, fruity and medium hot. It is served as a starter in cevicherías and upmarket Miraflores restaurants with boiled sweet potato and corn. Because the fish is eaten almost raw, this version uses sashimi-grade fish frozen at −20 °C for 24 hours first (allow for that), kept cold and eaten the moment it is dressed; it is not for pregnant women, young children or anyone with a weakened immune system. The mistake people make is dressing it ahead: after ten minutes the lime cooks it through and it turns chalky. Chef's tip: chill the plates in the freezer for 10 minutes before you lay out the fish; it keeps the slices firm while you work.
When celeriac fills the Kadıköy market stalls in winter, Istanbul home cooks braise thick slices of it in olive oil with orange juice, carrots and baby onions, then serve it cold the next day as a starter. The root turns silky and sweet, the orange gives it a bright, almost marmalade edge, and a little dill keeps it fresh. It sits happily on a meze table or alongside a bowl of lentil soup. Chef's tip: drop the cut celeriac straight into lemon water, otherwise it greys within minutes and never looks as good on the plate.
Tiroler Gröstl is what Tyrolean mountain huts serve to skiers and hikers coming in from the cold, and what farmhouse kitchens around Innsbruck make on Monday from Sunday's roast. Cold boiled potatoes are fried until crusty with onions, then tossed with cubes of leftover roast pork or smoked pork, caraway and marjoram, and crowned with a fried egg. It is made in one big pan and brought to the table in it. Chef's tip: let the potatoes fry undisturbed for the first few minutes; the brown crust is the whole dish.
Grüne Soße, or Grie Soß in Frankfurt dialect, arrives in spring when market stalls in Hesse sell paper bundles of exactly seven herbs: borage, chervil, cress, parsley, burnet, sorrel and chives. Blended into sour cream and yoghurt, they make a cold, bright, grassy sauce that is eaten with halved boiled eggs and new potatoes, traditionally on Maundy Thursday. It is a whole meal, light but filling. If you can't find the herb bundle, any mix of soft herbs with some sorrel for sourness works. A common mistake is blending the herbs to a smooth purée in a hot blender, which turns them dull and bitter; chop or pulse briefly. Chef's tip: make the sauce an hour ahead and chill it so the herbs flavour the cream fully.
In the Palatinate, between the Rhine and the vineyards of the Weinstraße, September brings a pairing that puzzles outsiders: a bowl of creamy potato soup served with a slice of plum tray cake on the side, and you dip the cake as you go. It is a plain, cheap farmhouse supper for plum season, and the sweet-sour fruit against the soft, marjoram-scented soup is the whole joy. This version makes a small tray of yeasted plum cake while the soup simmers. A common mistake is sweetening the soup; it should stay savoury so the cake can do the sweet work. Chef's tip: use dark, oval Zwetschgen plums, which hold their shape; round dessert plums go watery.
This dish carries the sweet-and-savoury taste of medieval Catalan cooking: spinach wilted with plump raisins and toasted pine nuts, sometimes with a little pork fat or anchovy, though olive oil is just as traditional. Families cook it in spring and autumn as a side for fish or chicken, or as a light first course before the main. It takes ten minutes. Chef's tip: soak the raisins in warm water first so they swell and burst sweetly, instead of turning hard in the hot pan.
Titaina comes from the Cabanyal, the tiled fishermen's neighbourhood by Valencia's beach, where it is still served as a tapa in the old bars and spooned onto bread at home on summer evenings. Green peppers, onion and ripe tomatoes are cooked down in olive oil with toasted pine nuts until sweet, then mixed with tuna. Fishermen used tonyina de sorra, salt-cured tuna belly; this version uses good tinned tuna in olive oil, which is already cooked and easy to find. A common mistake is cooking it fast on a high heat: it needs a slow 40 minutes so the vegetables melt instead of fry. Chef's tip: add a pinch of sugar only if your tomatoes are sharp, and stir in the tuna at the very end so it stays in flakes.
Fishermen's wives in Portimão stretched a modest catch of squid by filling the bodies with chopped tentacles, rice and a little chouriço, then simmering them slowly in tomato sauce until meltingly tender. It is a Sunday dish in the western Algarve, served sliced into rounds with boiled potatoes or more rice. This contains pork (chouriço), and the sauce uses white wine; replace it with the same amount of fish or vegetable stock for an alcohol-free version. Chef's tip: fill the squid only two-thirds full, because the rice swells and can split them.
Walk out of almost any Metro station in Mexico City in the morning and you will find a woman on a low stool patting out tlacoyos on a clay comal: thick, oval cakes of blue or white corn masa with a seam of bean or fava purée hidden inside, topped with cactus, salsa and crumbly cheese. They are bought hot, eaten standing up, and are one of the oldest street foods in the valley, older than the city itself. This version is filled with garlicky fava purée (habas) and topped with a quick nopal salad and salsa verde. Leave off the cheese and it is vegan. Chef's tip: keep the purée stiff, like mashed potato; a loose filling bursts through the masa when you flatten it.
In the villages of Tlaxcala, tlatlapas is the Lenten and rainy-season soup: dried beans, fava and peas are toasted on a comal, ground to a coarse flour and simmered into a thick, earthy purée seasoned with dried chilli, epazote and strips of cactus. It is a peasant dish with pre-Hispanic roots, cheap, filling and full of protein, eaten with corn tortillas and a squeeze of lime. Using split beans keeps the cooking under an hour. Chef's tip: toast the pulses until golden and nutty, not dark; burnt ones turn the whole pot bitter.
Guacamayas are León's street snack, sold from carts outside schools and in the city centre of this Guanajuato town from the afternoon on. A crusty bolillo is split and stuffed with crisp pork chicharrón, piled with a juicy pico de gallo of tomato, onion and chilli, and soaked with a hot red salsa and lime, so the crackling softens at the edges but stays crunchy in the middle. Some stands add avocado or a smear of beans. It is a quick, no-cook pork dish, best eaten standing up with a cold drink. Chef's tip: dress the chicharrón with salsa and lime only seconds before eating; left to sit, it turns soft and chewy.
Commuters in Mexico City grab a guajolota at the tamal stand by the bus stop at seven in the morning: a crusty bolillo roll split open with a whole steaming tamal pushed inside, sometimes with a smear of green salsa, eaten with a cup of atole. It is starch in starch, cheap and filling enough to last until lunch. The name means 'turkey hen', a joke about how stuffed it is. This recipe makes eight vegetarian tamales of roasted poblano strips and melting cheese (rajas con queso); four go into rolls and the rest freeze well. Shop-bought vegetarian tamales work if you are short of time. Chef's tip: warm the bolillo on the comal while the tamal rests, so the crust crackles against the soft masa.
Tocino de cielo means 'bacon from heaven', but there is no pork in it at all: the name refers only to its rich, deep-yellow colour. The story told in Jerez de la Frontera is that the sherry bodegas used egg whites to clarify their wine and gave the leftover yolks to the convents, whose nuns turned them into this. It is denser and silkier than flan, with no milk, and a small square goes a long way after Sunday lunch. Chef's tip: strain the yolk mixture twice and skim off every bubble; that is what gives the glassy, pore-free finish.
Long before fizzy guaraná, people in Mato Grosso started the day with this: a hard, dark stick of roasted guaraná seed paste grated into a glass of cold water with sugar and stirred well. Cuiabá's older generation still drink it at breakfast or in the heat of the afternoon, and market stalls sell the sticks along with the traditional grater, the dried tongue of the pirarucu fish (a fine microplane works just as well). It tastes bitter-earthy, a little like cocoa without the fat, and the caffeine is strong. Because guaraná contains more caffeine than coffee, keep to one glass a day, and avoid it for children, during pregnancy or if you are sensitive to caffeine. The usual error is grating far too much, which makes it bitter and overpowering; a level teaspoon per glass is plenty. Chef's tip: let it stand for a minute after stirring so the powder hydrates, then stir again before drinking.
In the villages of Corsica's mountainous interior, veau aux olives is the dish of Sunday lunch and of family gatherings on saints' days, made with the island's free-roaming veal. The meat is browned, then stewed slowly with tomato, garlic, rosemary and plenty of green olives, giving a rich, savoury sauce with a pleasant salty-bitter edge from the olives. Corsicans often add a little panzetta (cured pork belly), which is optional here; with it, the dish contains pork. White wine is used too, and the ingredient note gives an alcohol-free version. Serve with soft polenta, ideally the island's chestnut-flour pulenda, or with fresh pasta. Chef's tip: blanch the olives for two minutes before adding them, so their brine doesn't oversalt the sauce.
Goiás is the one place in Brazil where people seek out bitterness in a palm heart: guariroba, from a cerrado palm, tastes like a cross between artichoke, chicory and jiló, and Goiânia's lunch counters serve it braised with tomato and onion beside rice, beans and pequi. The pale slices turn tender and silky, and the sharp, clean bitterness is softened by the sweet tomato base. Fresh guariroba is sold in Goiás markets, and jars or frozen packs in some Brazilian shops; elsewhere use ordinary palm heart with a handful of sliced chicory or radicchio for the bitterness. Cooks unfamiliar with it often boil it first to tame the bitterness, but that washes out the flavour that makes the dish; sauté it directly instead. Chef's tip: slice it thinly across the grain, because thick pieces stay fibrous however long you cook them.
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