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Pingado

Hot milk with coffee

Order 'um pingado' at the balcão of any São Paulo padaria at 7 in the morning and the attendant pours hot milk into a ridged glass tumbler (the copo americano) and 'drips' in a splash of strong coffee, hence the name. It is milkier and gentler than a média (half coffee, half milk), creamy and lightly sweet, usually drunk standing up with a pão na chapa, a toasted buttered roll. At home you need strong filter coffee and milk heated until steaming. Scalding the milk is the frequent mistake, as boiled milk tastes flat and forms a skin. Chef's tip: froth the hot milk for a few seconds with a whisk or by pouring it back and forth between two jugs before adding the coffee, as padaria machines do.

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Chongqing grilled fish

The river port of Wanzhou on the Yangtze gave the country kao yu, now a late-night favourite in every Chinese city: a whole fish, split open and grilled over charcoal until the skin crackles, then laid in a metal tray of bubbling chilli broth and kept hot over a burner in the middle of the table. Friends pick at the crisp skin and soft flesh, then work through the potatoes, bean sprouts and celery underneath, which soak up the spicy, savoury, faintly numbing sauce. This home version uses a hot oven and a roasting tin. Serve it with rice and plenty of cold drinks. Chef's tip: dry the fish inside and out with kitchen paper and oil the tin well; a wet fish steams instead of crisping and sticks to the metal.

60 min

Chinese Fish

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Mala crayfish

On summer nights the pavements of Changsha and Wuhan fill with folding tables, plastic gloves and mountains of glossy red crayfish, the season's great shared feast from May to August. Each little shell is sucked for its spicy sauce before you twist off the tail for a sweet, firm bite of meat; the sauce is hot from chillies and bean paste, numbing from Sichuan pepper and rounded out with garlic and a bottle of lager. Large shell-on prawns make an easy swap if you can't buy live crayfish. Serve with cold drinks, cucumber, steamed buns or rice to mop up the sauce, and lots of napkins. Chef's tip: once the crayfish turn red, simmer them for no more than 8 minutes; longer and the tail meat goes mushy and comes away in shreds.

50 min

Chinese Fish

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Chairman Mao's red braised pork

Restaurants in Shaoshan, Mao Zedong's home village in Hunan, all put this pork on the menu because it was said to be his favourite food. What sets the Hunan way apart from the soy-dark braises of Shanghai is that the deep mahogany colour comes from caramelised sugar alone, with dried chillies and warm spices in the pot, so the sauce tastes cleaner and slightly smoky. After an hour of gentle simmering the cubes of belly are wobbly and melting under a sticky, sweet-salty glaze. It is celebration food at Hunan family dinners, eaten with steamed rice and a sharp stir-fried green vegetable to cut the richness. Chef's tip: dry the blanched pork well before it meets the caramel, so it doesn't spit, and stop the caramel at the colour of strong tea; a few seconds longer and it turns bitter.

90 min

Chinese Meat

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Hunan steamed fish head with chopped chillies

Walk into almost any restaurant in Changsha and a split fish head blanketed in scarlet chopped chillies will be on the table next to you. The chillies are salted and fermented, so they taste bright, sour and fruity as well as hot, and the steam carries their juices into the sweet, soft fish beneath; the meaty cheeks and the jelly-like flesh around the head are the prized parts. A last drizzle of smoking oil wakes it all up. When the fish is gone, Hunanese diners tip plain noodles into the leftover juices, and so should you. Chef's tip: buy the head from a fishmonger who has just cut it, with clear eyes and bright red gills; if that's hard to find, thick bone-in fish steaks work just as well.

35 min

Chinese Fish

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Hunan cured pork with garlic shoots

Every winter, Hunan households hang strips of salted pork belly over a wood fire until they turn dark and smoky, and this quick stir-fry is the most common way to eat them through the cold months. Thin slices of the cured belly are fried until the fat turns clear and the edges crisp, then tossed with green garlic shoots, which turn sweet and tender and soak up the smoky fat, plus fresh chilli and fermented black beans for a salty, spicy kick. It is a plain everyday dish that sits beside rice on a farmhouse table. Serve it with steamed rice and a light soup. Chef's tip: simmer the cured pork before slicing; it softens the meat and draws out some of the salt, so the finished dish is savoury rather than harsh.

20 min

Chinese Meat

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Guizhou sour fish soup

For the Miao people around Kaili in south-east Guizhou, a pot of sour soup is the heart of a meal, served in a wide pot over a burner with everyone dipping in. Their famous red sour soup is made by fermenting wild tomatoes with chillies for weeks, and it gives the broth a bright, tangy, lightly spicy taste that is fruity rather than vinegary. Chunks of fresh river fish, tofu and bean sprouts simmer in it until tender, and each piece is dunked in a little dish of chilli and herbs before eating. This home version gets close with very ripe tomatoes, fermented chillies and a splash of rice vinegar. Eat it with rice on a cold evening. Chef's tip: cook the tomatoes until they completely collapse into a thick red paste before you add any water; that is where the colour and the deep sourness come from.

60 min

Chinese Soups

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Guilin rice noodles

Guilin, among the karst peaks of Guangxi, starts its day with mifen: round, slippery rice noodles that are not served in soup at all but tossed with a few ladles of lu shui, the dark, spiced braising liquid in which the beef was cooked. On top go thin slices of that beef, crunchy fried peanuts, sour pickled beans and bamboo shoots, chilli and spring onion; you stir it all together and, if you like, add a splash of hot broth at the end. Street shops in the city serve it fast and cheap from breakfast till late. The flavour is savoury, sweet-spiced and sour, with crunch in every mouthful. Chef's tip: make the braised beef the day before and chill it in its liquid; cold beef can be sliced paper-thin, which is how Guilin cooks serve it.

70 min

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Yunnan steam-pot chicken

In the old town of Jianshui in southern Yunnan, potters still make the purple clay qiguo, a lidded pot with a chimney rising through its centre. Set over boiling water, it lets steam rise into the pot, where it meets the chicken, condenses and drips back as a pure, golden broth, with no water added at all. After three hours the meat falls from the bone and the soup tastes intensely of chicken and ginger, clean and restorative; in Kunming it is the dish for guests, for convalescents and for winter weekends. Serve the broth in small bowls first, then the chicken with rice and a chilli dip. Chef's tip: if you don't own a steam pot, a heatproof bowl covered with a plate in a steamer works well; it just needs a small splash of water to start the broth.

180 min

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Har gowPrawn dumplings

No basket at a Guangzhou yum cha is judged more harshly than the har gow: a dim sum chef is said to prove themselves by folding ten or more pleats into each one. The wrapper is made from wheat starch and tapioca, so it steams clear and slightly chewy, showing the pink prawns inside; the filling is snappy, sweet and lightly seasoned with sesame and bamboo shoot. They take patience rather than special skill, and a batch made on a weekend morning feels like a trip to a teahouse. Serve them straight from the steamer with jasmine or pu'er tea and a little chilli oil on the side. Chef's tip: roll each wrapper only when you are ready to fill it, because the thin starch dough dries and cracks within minutes.

75 min

Chinese Snacks & Starters

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