The book's basic eggless sponge, made with condensed milk and melted butter in one bowl. Sandwich it with jam and top with coconut, ice it any way you like, or use it for the Pinacolada cake. For a coconut cake, add 100 g desiccated coconut to the mixture.
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Injera is the soft, spongy, slightly sour flatbread eaten with Ethiopian stews: you tear it and scoop the food up with it. This home version uses rice and plain flour fermented with a home-made starter over a few days, then cooked on one side until covered in tiny holes. Serve rolled and sliced with missir wat, azifa and atter kik. Any fermented batter left over keeps in the fridge for the next batch.
Maji ya bungo is a favourite Zanzibar street drink made from the orange, sweet-sour pulp of the bungo fruit (Saba comorensis), soaked off the seeds, blended with sugar and water and strained. It's tangy, fruity and very refreshing. Serve well chilled.
Ehime prefecture on Shikoku farms more red sea bream than anywhere else in Japan, and tai-meshi is its signature rice. Around Matsuyama and the old fishing town of Hojo, a whole grilled fish is laid on seasoned rice and cooked in the same pot, then the flesh is flaked through the grains at the table. Down the coast in Uwajima the same name means raw bream on hot rice, but this is the cooked kind. Sea bream is a fish for celebrations in Japan, so the dish turns up at weddings and New Year as well as in station lunch boxes. Chef's tip: grill the fish briefly before it goes in the pot; the browned skin adds a toasty flavour to the rice and keeps the fish from smelling of the sea.
Every Malaysian household seems to have someone who makes pineapple tarts in the weeks before Chinese New Year or Hari Raya, and the plastic tubs of them go round every visit and open house. In Hokkien the pineapple, 'ong lai', sounds like 'fortune comes', which is why they matter so much at the New Year. This is the rolled 'nastar' style: a little ball of golden, slow-cooked pineapple jam, scented with cinnamon, star anise and clove, wrapped in rich, crumbly butter pastry. Chef's tip: grate the pineapple by hand rather than blending it; the fibres give the jam its chewy body.
No South African braai is finished without braaibroodjies, the sandwiches that go onto the grid once the coals have died down, from Cape Town to the Highveld. White bread is buttered on the outside and filled with cheddar, tomato, onion and a thin smear of apricot jam, a sweet-and-savoury combination every South African swears by. They come off the fire smoky, crisp and oozing. A frying pan or griddle works when there's no braai. Chef's tip: toast them over gentle, ashen coals and turn often; fierce heat burns the bread before the cheese inside has melted.
Koat pitha is Mizoram's favourite tea-time snack, sold in Aizawl's bakeries and street stalls and fried at home whenever bananas go soft: mashed ripe banana is mixed with rice flour and jaggery into a thick batter and fried in spoonfuls until crisp, brown and puffed. Inside they are soft and sticky-sweet. They are served at church gatherings and with red tea on wet afternoons. Chef's tip: the riper the bananas the better; spotted, almost black ones give the most flavour and sweetness.
Quesadillas de hongos are sold from comales at markets all over central Mexico, from Mexico City to the forests around Toluca where wild mushrooms are picked in the rains. The mushrooms are fried hard with onion, garlic and green chilli and finished with epazote, a pungent herb with notes of mint, anise and citrus that is the signature of central Mexican cooking. Folded into corn tortillas with stringy cheese, they are earthy, juicy and a little hot. Serve with salsa roja and lime. Use a cheese made with vegetarian rennet; low-moisture mozzarella is a good stand-in for Oaxaca cheese. Chef's tip: fry the mushrooms until all their liquid has gone; wet mushrooms make the tortilla soggy.
Ceviche is Lima's great obsession, eaten at lunchtime in cevicherías all along the coast; this vegetarian ceviche de champiñones keeps everything that makes it thrilling except the fish. Raw mushrooms are sliced thin and tossed at the last minute in leche de tigre, the bright, peppery marinade of lime, garlic, ginger, celery and ají limo, so they turn silky but still bite back. Red onion brings crunch, coriander freshness, and on the plate it gets the classic Lima company: a slice of sweet potato, a wedge of corn on the cob and a handful of toasted cancha. Serve it as a starter on a hot day, straight away. Chef's tip: squeeze the limes gently by hand and stop before the pith; pressing hard or using a squeezer that crushes the peel makes the leche de tigre bitter.
Every 1 January, Haitian families from Port-au-Prince to Brooklyn wake up to soup joumou. It marks independence from France on 1 January 1804: under French rule, enslaved Haitians cooked this pumpkin soup but were forbidden to eat it, so the free people of the new nation made it their own as a dish of freedom. In 2021 it was added to UNESCO's list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. The base is a velvety purée of joumou (Caribbean pumpkin) with epis, and in it simmer chunks of carrot, potato, cabbage, celery and turnip, with pasta and a squeeze of lime. It's usually made with beef; this vegetable version is full and golden, rich enough for the day. Chef's tip: roast half the pumpkin before puréeing it; the caramelised edges give the soup the depth that slow-cooked meat usually provides.
Mazamorra morada is a deep purple pudding from Lima, made by boiling Andean purple corn with pineapple peel and spices and then thickening the dark juice with sweet potato starch and fruit. It is sold in little cups at markets and street carts, and in Lima it is eaten all year but above all in October, often spooned into the same bowl as rice pudding, a combination called el clásico. It is fruity, gently spiced and wobbly, like a thick jam pudding. Dried purple corn (maíz morado) is sold in Latin shops and online; purple corn powder works too. Chef's tip: dissolve the starch in cold water and stir it in off the boil; tipping it into a bubbling pan makes lumps that never smooth out.
Sweet potato is not old Moroccan tradition, but today it is sold in every souk from Agadir to Meknes and turns up in modern home tagines alongside the classic chickpeas, dried apricots and ras el hanout. This version leans on the sweet-and-spiced style of Fez and Marrakech cooking: the sweet potato melts slightly into the sauce, the chickpeas keep their bite and a handful of apricots adds little pockets of tang. It is filling enough for a weekend lunch with couscous or bread, and it reheats beautifully the next day. Chef's tip: bloom the ras el hanout in the oil for 30 seconds before the liquid goes in; raw spice blends taste dusty, cooked ones taste round.
Satay smoke drifts along Javanese streets every evening, where sellers fan charcoal grills set up on the pavement and serve skewers with peanut sauce, rice cakes and sliced shallot. Tofu and tempeh are naturals for it: they drink up a sweet-savoury marinade of palm sugar, tamari, coriander and garlic and pick up dark, sticky char at the edges. The sauce here is cooked until smooth and glossy, sweeter and milder than the grainy dressing on gado-gado, made for dipping. Chef's tip: soak the bamboo skewers for 30 minutes and brush the satay with marinade as it grills — the sugar caramelises into the dark, slightly burnt edges that make satay taste like satay.
Coffee was born in Ethiopia's south-western forests around Kaffa and Jimma, and buna is still a ceremony as much as a drink: in homes from Jimma to Addis Ababa, a woman of the house roasts green beans in a pan over charcoal, carries the smoking pan around so guests can breathe in the aroma, grinds them, and brews the coffee in a clay pot called a jebena. It is served in small handleless cups with sugar (or salt or butter in the countryside), alongside popcorn or dabo kolo, and poured three times: abol, tona and baraka. The ceremony takes the best part of an hour and is about conversation. Chef's tip: let the jebena stand for a few minutes before pouring so the grounds settle, and pour in one steady stream without stopping.
After a heavy tagine or couscous, Moroccan families in the orange-growing Souss valley and around Marrakech often skip pastries and bring out a plate of sliced oranges instead, splashed with orange blossom water and dusted with cinnamon. It is the simplest dessert there is, but when the oranges are cold and juicy it tastes like a perfume of spice and flowers. Scatter over toasted almonds or chopped dates to make it more filling. Chef's tip: cut off every bit of white pith; even a thin ring of it makes the slices bitter.
Baozi are breakfast across China: commuters in Shanghai, Beijing and small towns alike queue at steaming stalls for a couple of buns and a cup of soya milk. Vegetable baozi (su cai bao) are a standard on every counter, usually filled with greens, mushroom, tofu and glass noodles. Making them is a weekend job, but they freeze beautifully and reheat in 10 minutes. Chef's tip: let the shaped buns rise until they look puffy and feel light before steaming; under-proved buns come out dense and wrinkled.
Tokushima, the city famous for the Awa Odori summer dance, has its own ramen with a broth almost the colour of coffee. Instead of chashu slices, the bowl is topped with thin pieces of pork belly simmered in sweet soy, plus bean sprouts, spring onions and a raw egg cracked in the middle. Locals often order a bowl of plain rice on the side and spoon the pork and egg over it. This home version builds the dark soup from good stock, the pork's own simmering liquid and soy. Chef's tip: eat it with rice as Tokushima does; the sweet-salty broth is strong on purpose, and the rice balances it.
Mapo tofu was first served at a small eatery in north Chengdu in the late 1800s, and it is still on the table at almost every Sichuan family dinner: wobbly cubes of tofu in a glossy red sauce that is hot from chilli bean paste and tingling from Sichuan pepper. Restaurants make it with minced beef or pork; here finely chopped shiitake and chestnut mushrooms are fried until crisp-edged and dark, so they give the same savoury bite. Spoon it over plenty of steamed rice, which soaks up the oil. Chef's tip: grind the Sichuan pepper fresh and scatter it on at the very end; ground ahead of time it loses its buzz.
Gan bian si ji dou, 'dry-fried four-season beans', is a fixture of Sichuan restaurant menus and home tables alike. The beans are fried until their skins wrinkle and blister, then tossed in a hot, dry wok with chilli, Sichuan pepper and salty preserved mustard greens (ya cai) from Yibin. Nothing is saucy: every bean is coated and slightly chewy. Restaurants usually add pork; this vegetarian version leans on the ya cai for depth. Chef's tip: dry the beans completely after washing, or they will spit and steam instead of blistering.
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