Featured recipe

Samosa thoke

Samosa salad

Samosa thoke is pure Yangon street food, born from the city's Indian-Burmese communities: vendors on Mahabandoola Road chop crisp samosas into a bowl with cabbage, onion and mint, ladle over a thin, spiced lentil broth (pe hin ye), and finish it with tamarind, chilli and a squeeze of lime. The samosas soften at the edges while the middle stays crunchy, and the whole bowl is hot, sour and savoury. Use vegan samosas made without ghee. Chef's tip: ladle the broth over at the very last moment and eat straight away; samosa thoke left to sit turns soggy fast.

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Hoba misoMiso grilled on magnolia leaf

In the old mountain town of Takayama, in Gifu's Hida region, inns serve breakfast with a small charcoal brazier on the table and a dried magnolia leaf, hoba, resting on its grill. On it sits a mound of miso mixed with leek and mushrooms. As the leaf warms, the miso bubbles and gives off a smoky, woodsy smell, and you scoop it up with rice. It started as farmhouse winter food, when people toasted frozen pickles on leaves to thaw them. Dried hoba leaves are sold in Japanese shops and online; a sheet of baking paper works too, without the scent. Chef's tip: soak the leaf in water first. A damp leaf scorches slowly and perfumes the miso instead of catching fire.

23 min

Japanese Vegetarian

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Shinshu soba with spicy daikon dip

Nagano, the old province of Shinshu, grows buckwheat on cool mountain plateaux, and its soba is famous across Japan. In the castle town of Takato, and in the Aizu villages that took the custom with them, the noodles are not dipped in sweet soy sauce at all. Instead each diner gets a cup of juice squeezed from grated, eye-wateringly hot daikon, stirred with toasted miso. The result is sharp, clean and peppery, and it wakes up the earthy buckwheat. It's a summer lunch, eaten cold with a sprinkle of spring onion. Chef's tip: grate the daikon only just before serving. Its heat fades within 20 minutes, and the dish depends on that fresh bite.

25 min

Japanese Pasta & Noodles

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Sapporo soup curry

Sapporo's soup curry was born in the city's cafés in the 1970s and became a craze in the 2000s, when hundreds of small shops opened across Hokkaido's capital, each letting you pick a heat level from 1 to 30. It is nothing like the thick roux curry most of Japan knows: the broth is as thin as soup, aromatic with cumin, cardamom and garlic, and the vegetables arrive large and separately roasted, so each keeps its own colour and bite. Locals eat it in the long Hokkaido winter with a plate of rice on the side, taking a spoonful of rice and dunking it into the broth. Chef's tip: roast or fry the vegetables apart from the broth and only meet them in the bowl. The contrast of crisp-edged vegetables and hot, loose broth is the whole point.

65 min

Japanese Curries

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Chin chinCrunchy fried dough bites

Every December, Nigerian kitchens turn into small factories of chin chin, crunchy little cubes of sweet fried dough packed into big plastic tubs for Christmas visitors, weddings and the long drive back to the village. The dough is enriched with butter, egg and evaporated milk and scented with nutmeg; cut small and fried, it shatters with a satisfying crunch. It keeps for weeks, so families make kilos at a time. Chef's tip: roll the dough evenly thin, about 5 mm, so every piece fries through to a crisp centre at the same time.

50 min

Nigerian Snacks & Starters

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Shanxi cat's ear noodles

Shanxi has more pasta shapes than almost anywhere in China, and these are among the easiest to make by hand: small pieces of dough pressed and rolled with the thumb so they curl up like a cat's ear. Families in Taiyuan and Pingyao boil them and then stir-fry them with vegetables, or serve them in broth. The cupped shape catches the sauce. Children enjoy shaping them. Chef's tip: dust the board lightly with flour; too much and the dough slides instead of curling.

50 min

Chinese Pasta & Noodles

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Shanxi knife-shaved noodles with tomato and egg

In Taiyuan, noodle cooks hold a block of stiff dough on one arm and shave strips off it straight into a boiling cauldron, so fast they look like falling leaves. Each noodle comes out thick in the middle and thin at the edges, chewy and slightly uneven, which is the whole charm. The most common topping in Shanxi homes is a soft tomato and egg sauce, with a splash of aged vinegar at the table. Chef's tip: a firm dough is essential; a soft one sticks to the blade and tears.

70 min

Chinese Pasta & Noodles

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Spinach MaultaschenSpinach pasta pockets

Maultaschen are the big square pasta parcels of Swabia, around Stuttgart and Tübingen, and a dish with its own legend: Swabians jokingly call them 'little God-cheaters', because the dough was said to hide meat from God's eyes during Lent. Meat-free spinach Maultaschen are a long-standing Lenten and Good Friday dish there, filled with spinach, soaked bread, onion, parsley and a little cheese. Eat them in clear vegetable broth, or the next day sliced and fried in butter with onions and egg ('geröstet'). Chef's tip: press every pocket of air out as you seal the dough; trapped air expands in the hot water and splits the parcels open.

100 min

German Pasta & Noodles

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PkhaliSpinach and walnut balls

Pkhali are the walnut-bound vegetable pâtés that open almost every Georgian feast, the supra, from Tbilisi to the villages of Kakheti. Spinach is the best known, though beetroot, beans, leeks and nettles are made the same way, and in Lent they become the heart of the meal. The cooked greens are chopped fine with walnuts, garlic, coriander, vinegar and spices, shaped into small balls and pressed with a criss-cross, then dotted with pomegranate seeds. Eat them cold with mchadi or bread. The common mistake is not squeezing the spinach hard enough, which makes the pkhali loose and watery. Chef's tip: they taste much better the next day, once the garlic and vinegar have soaked into the walnuts, so make them a day ahead.

40 min

Georgian Snacks & Starters

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Tianjin fried sticky rice cakes

These are one of Tianjin's three famous snacks, named after Erduoyan ('ear hole') Lane, where the original shop opened over a hundred years ago. The dough is soft, slightly fermented glutinous rice, filled with dark, sweet red bean paste and fried until the shell is crisp and blistered while the inside stays chewy. Locals buy them for festivals and as a winter treat. Chef's tip: seal the edges thoroughly and fry at a moderate heat; hot oil makes them burst and spit.

45 min

Chinese Desserts

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Beijing mung bean cakes

Beijing pastry shops stack these pale yellow cakes high in early summer, when they're eaten for the Dragon Boat Festival and as a cooling sweet on hot afternoons. Peeled mung beans are steamed, mashed with sugar and oil, then pressed in wooden moulds, so each cake comes out with a pattern. Northern versions are dry and crumbly; Suzhou ones further south are oilier. You need a mooncake press or small mould. Chef's tip: cook the paste until it pulls away from the pan in one ball; if it's too wet the cakes slump.

80 min

Chinese Desserts

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Vegetable charquicánPumpkin, potato and corn stew

Charquicán is old Chilean country food: a thick mash of pumpkin and potato with corn and peas, once made with charqui, the dried meat of the Andes. In the south and in Santiago homes it's a winter weeknight dinner, served in a deep plate with a fried egg on top and pickled onions or a simple salad. Without the meat it's still rich and smoky with merkén (smoked chilli) and paprika. Chef's tip: mash only roughly at the end; charquicán should have soft chunks, not be a smooth purée.

50 min

Chilean Vegetarian

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Tibetan butter tea

On the cold Tibetan plateau, people drink many cups a day of this salty, buttery tea, and a host keeps topping up a guest's bowl as soon as a sip is taken. Traditionally, brick tea is boiled for a long time, then churned with yak butter and salt in a tall wooden cylinder called a chandong. At home, a blender gives the same creamy, frothy result. It tastes more like a light broth than a sweet tea. Chef's tip: boil the tea hard and long; it needs to be very strong to stand up to the butter.

14 min

Chinese Drinks

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ChashushuliSpicy beef and tomato stew

Chashushuli is a fiery beef stew from the home kitchens and Tbilisi taverns of eastern Georgia, cooked in a clay ketsi pot or a heavy pan and eaten with shoti bread. Beef simmers slowly with lots of onion and tomato, then gets a hit of garlic, chilli, khmeli suneli and fresh coriander right at the end. It is meant to be spicy, but you can halve the chilli. Chef's tip: cook it until the sauce is thick enough to scoop with bread; Georgians do not eat it like soup.

120 min

Georgian Meat

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ChatamariRice flour crêpe with toppings

Chatamari is a thin, round crêpe of rice flour that Newar cooks in Patan, Bhaktapur and old Kathmandu make on a covered griddle, so the topping steams on top while the base turns crisp underneath. It is sometimes called Newari pizza, which says something about how it's eaten: cut into wedges, hot, and shared. It is a festival and teahouse snack, served at Newar feasts and in the small eateries around Patan Durbar Square. The classic topping is a cracked egg spread over the batter with onion, tomato and coriander, and this vegetarian version keeps the egg; leave it out and add more vegetables if you prefer. The common mistake is to pour the batter too thick; it should be as thin as single cream so it cooks through before the edges burn. Chef's tip: swirl the batter with the back of a ladle in a spiral from the centre outwards, so it sets in an even, lacy layer.

30 min

Nepali Snacks & Starters

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Chatini pomme d'amourCrushed tomato chutney

Chatini pomme d'amour (tomato chutney) is on the side of every Mauritian plate of rice, dholl puri and farata. In Creole and Indo-Mauritian homes it is crushed by hand on the roche carri, the island's flat grinding stone, so the tomato turns juicy while the onion and coriander stay fresh. Unlike kachumbari it is crushed rather than chopped, with raw garlic and a spoon of oil. Chef's tip: crush the garlic and chilli to a paste first, then the tomato; otherwise you bite into raw garlic pieces.

10 min

Mauritian Chutneys & Dips

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Shanghai stir-fried rice cakes

Every Shanghai noodle shop has this on the menu: oval slices of rice cake, made from pounded rice, tossed in a wok with Shanghai pak choi and mushrooms until chewy and glossy brown. At New Year it's eaten for luck, because niángāo sounds like 'higher every year'. The usual version adds shredded pork, but it's often made with vegetables alone. Look for packs of sliced rice cakes in the fridge or freezer of Chinese supermarkets. Chef's tip: soak the slices in cold water first, so they cook evenly and don't stick together.

22 min

Chinese Pasta & Noodles

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ChebakiaSesame honey flower cookies

Chebakia are the dark, sticky, flower-shaped cookies that every Moroccan family associates with Ramadan; women in Fez, Meknes and Casablanca spend a whole day in the weeks before the holy month folding hundreds of them, and they are served at iftar with harira and dates. The dough is scented with anise, cinnamon, saffron and toasted sesame, cut into rectangles, folded into a rose, fried and dropped straight into hot, perfumed honey. They are crisp, chewy and very sweet. Chef's tip: work in small batches and keep the honey hot but not boiling; hot honey soaks in properly, while cool honey just coats the outside.

120 min

Moroccan Desserts

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Guangxi five-colour sticky rice

The Zhuang people of Guangxi steam this rainbow rice for Sānyuèsān, the festival on the third day of the third lunar month, and for weddings and tomb-sweeping. In the villages the colours come from local leaves and flowers; at home, turmeric, beetroot, blue pea flowers and black rice give the same effect without any artificial dye. It's eaten plain, sprinkled with sugar or with savoury dishes. Soak the rice for 6 hours or overnight. Chef's tip: soak each colour in its own bowl and keep them apart in the steamer, so the colours stay clear.

70 min

Chinese Rice & Grains

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Dai pineapple sticky rice

In Xishuangbanna, the tropical south of Yunnan, the Dai people cook sticky rice inside hollowed-out pineapples, so the fruit's juice soaks in while it steams. It turns up at festivals and on every Dai restaurant table, a sweet and tangy side next to grilled and sour dishes, and children love it. Soak the rice for at least 4 hours before you start. Chef's tip: use a ripe pineapple that smells sweet at the base; an under-ripe one makes the rice sour.

65 min

Chinese Rice & Grains

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Yunnan wild mushroom stir-fry

From June to September, the markets of Kunming fill up with wild mushrooms from the mountains: porcini, chanterelles, termite mushrooms and dozens more, and restaurants fry them with a lot of garlic and chilli. Wild mushrooms there are always cooked thoroughly, and some kinds are dangerous, so at home use only shop-bought mushrooms. A mix of oyster, king oyster, shiitake and any chanterelles or porcini you can find works well. Chef's tip: cook the mushrooms in a hot, uncrowded pan so they sear; crowded mushrooms sweat and go rubbery.

22 min

Chinese Vegetarian

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Xiamen sweet peanut soup

In Xiamen on the Fujian coast, peanut soup is breakfast, mid-morning snack and late-night treat, sold from steaming pots in the old arcades along Zhongshan Road. The peanuts are cooked so slowly that they become soft and creamy while keeping their shape, and the broth turns milky and lightly sweet. Locals often dunk a fried dough stick into it. Chef's tip: soak the peanuts, then freeze them overnight; the ice crystals break down the cell walls and the peanuts cook to that melting texture much faster.

135 min

Chinese Desserts

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Chelow with tahdigSaffron rice with crispy base

Chelow is the plain, fluffy steamed rice at the centre of almost every Iranian lunch table, and tahdig ('bottom of the pot') is the crisp golden crust that forms underneath it. In homes from Tehran to Isfahan the pot is turned out at the table and the shards of tahdig are fought over before anyone touches the stew. The method is the master one for all Persian polo dishes: long-grain rice is soaked, boiled briefly, then steamed slowly under a cloth-wrapped lid so every grain stays separate and long. This page gives a yogurt-and-saffron tahdig, with potato and flatbread versions in the steps. Serve it with ghormeh sabzi, a yogurt dip and fresh herbs. Chef's tip: turn the heat up for the first 10 minutes until you hear a steady sizzle, then right down; that early burst is what sets the crust.

90 min

Persian Rice & Grains

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Hakka stuffed tofu with mushroom filling

In Meizhou, the heart of Hakka country in east Guangdong, tofu stuffed with a meat filling is one of the dishes everyone expects at a family meal or a New Year table. Buddhist Hakka cooks fill it with mushroom, water chestnut and tofu instead, and that vegetarian version is given here. The squares are fried stuffed side down until crisp, then braised briefly so they soak up the sauce. Serve with rice and a plate of greens. Chef's tip: dust each hollow with cornflour before filling; it works like glue and stops the filling falling out.

50 min

Chinese Vegetarian

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Hunan scrambled eggs with chopped chillies

Duò jiāo, salted chopped red chillies left to ferment in jars, is the backbone of Hunan home cooking, and this ten-minute dish is how many families use it on a weeknight. The eggs are cooked in hot oil until they puff into big soft curds, then tossed back through the bright red chillies, which are salty, sour and very hot. Serve with rice and a green vegetable. Chef's tip: get the oil properly hot before the eggs go in, so they puff and set at once instead of soaking up oil.

10 min

Chinese Vegetarian

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Hunan smoked tofu with leeks and chilli

Smoked tofu (xiāng gān) hangs in strings in Hunan markets, firm and brown from wood smoke. Restaurants in Changsha usually toss it with a little pork, but leaving the meat out is common at home and in Buddhist eateries. The tofu soaks up the black beans and chillies, and the leeks go sweet and soft. Serve it with plenty of rice. Chef's tip: cut the tofu about 5 mm thick; thinner slices break apart in the wok.

20 min

Chinese Vegetarian

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Sichuan vegetable hot pot

Across Chengdu and Chongqing, friends spend whole evenings round a bubbling pot of red broth, dipping in mushrooms, tofu and greens a few at a time and fishing them out with chopsticks. The best-known bases are cooked in beef tallow; the clear-oil style (qīngyóu huǒguō) uses rapeseed oil instead, which keeps it vegetarian without losing the heat and tingle. You need a portable burner or electric hot pot on the table. Chef's tip: give each person a bowl of sesame oil with crushed garlic for dipping; it cools each mouthful just enough to keep going.

70 min

Chinese Soups

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Hot and sour potato shreds

In Chengdu this is the dish a family orders when the table already has something rich: a heap of potato cut as fine as matchsticks, cooked for barely two minutes so it stays crunchy, sharp with vinegar and warm with dried chilli. Over the border in Shanxi the same dish is made with the province's dark aged vinegar (lǎo chéncù) and less chilli, and it tastes deeper and slightly sweet; both versions are given here. It goes with plain rice and any braised tofu or bean dish. Chef's tip: rinse the cut potato until the water runs clear, because that washed-off starch is what turns the shreds gluey in the wok.

20 min

Chinese Sides

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Fukagawa-meshi (Tokyo clam and miso rice)

Clam diggers on the shallow shores of Fukagawa, in what is now Koto ward in eastern Tokyo, used to make a fast meal by simmering fresh asari clams with leek in miso soup and tipping it over rice. The bay has long since been built over, but small restaurants near Monzen-Nakacho and Kiyosumi-Shirakawa still serve it in bowls or lacquered boxes, and it is a well-known station lunch box. Some cooks steam the clams into the rice instead; this is the older poured-over style. It is savoury, briny and very quick. Chef's tip: steam the clams open first and take them out of the pot, then return them only for the last 30 seconds, so they stay plump instead of shrinking into rubbery nubs.

25 min

Japanese Fish

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Oden (Tokyo style)

When the evenings turn cold, Tokyo's convenience stores set out steaming trays of oden by the till, and small oden bars and street stalls fill up with office workers. Tokyo's style uses a darker, soy-seasoned dashi than the paler Kansai one, and it includes chikuwabu, a chewy tube of wheat dough that is rarely seen outside the Kanto region. Everything simmers gently for a long time, so the daikon turns translucent and soaks up the broth. Serve it straight from the pot with a dab of hot Japanese mustard. Chef's tip: make oden a day ahead and let it cool in the broth overnight; the daikon and eggs take on far more flavour as they cool than while they boil.

90 min

Japanese Soups

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Kozuyu (Aizu dried scallop soup)

Far inland in the Aizu basin of Fukushima, the old castle town of Aizu-Wakamatsu builds its festive soup on dried scallops, which reached these mountains by trade from the northern coast. Kozuyu is served at New Year, weddings and other celebrations in shallow red lacquer bowls, and it is polite to accept a second or third helping. The stock is clear and lightly salted, full of small cubes of taro, carrot, mushroom, konjac noodles and tiny wheat gluten balls. Expect a delicate, sweet sea flavour rather than anything strong. Chef's tip: keep every drop of the scallop soaking water; it is the whole stock, and the scallops themselves shred into soft threads in the soup.

50 min

Japanese Soups

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Gyutan (Sendai grilled beef tongue)

Sendai, the biggest city in Miyagi prefecture, turned beef tongue into its signature dish in the years after the Second World War. Specialist gyutan restaurants line the streets around Sendai Station, and the classic set is always the same: grilled tongue, a bowl of rice cooked with barley, a clear oxtail soup and a few pickles with a green chilli miso. This home version uses tongue sliced by a butcher, a short salt cure and a very hot pan, with a quick clear beef soup in place of the long-simmered oxtail. The meat should be chewy in a pleasant, bouncy way, with a smoky crust. Chef's tip: ask the butcher to peel the tongue and cut it into 1 cm slices; thick slices with shallow cuts on both sides stay juicy, while thin ones dry out in seconds.

60 min

Japanese Meat

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Vegetable cheung funSteamed rice noodle rolls

Cheung fun are the slippery rice-noodle rolls of Guangdong. In Guangzhou you see them steamed to order on cloth-lined trays at breakfast stalls, and at dim sum they arrive in a pool of sweet soy. This home version uses a flat tray in a wok, and fills the rolls with shiitake, Chinese chives and beansprouts. Chef's tip: stir the batter every time before you pour; the starch sinks in seconds, and an unstirred batter gives a thin, torn sheet.

40 min

Chinese Snacks & Starters

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Chhum hanSteamed vegetables with chilli dip

Chhum han is how Mizo families eat vegetables at their simplest: whatever is in the garden (pumpkin, chayote, beans, aubergine, cabbage, potato) steamed or boiled until just tender and served on a plate with a sharp dip of crushed chilli, garlic, salt and herbs. In Aizawl it is part of almost every home meal, eaten with rice and bai. The vegetables taste of themselves, and the dip does the work. Chef's tip: steam each vegetable for its own time and take it off when a knife slides in; overcooked chhum han is watery and dull.

25 min

Indian Sides

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Chhanar dalnaFresh cheese and potato curry

Chhanar dalna is how Bengal uses its fresh chhena, the same curd cheese that goes into rasgulla and sandesh, for a savoury lunch. Freshly split milk is kneaded with a little flour, pressed, cut into squares and fried, then simmered with potato in a thin, gingery tomato gravy scented with bay leaf and cardamom. It is lighter than a North Indian paneer curry and is a favourite on Thursdays and niramish days in Kolkata homes. Chef's tip: knead the chhena with your palm until it feels smooth and slightly greasy; that is what holds the cubes together in the gravy.

60 min

Indian Curries

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Imoni (Yamagata taro and beef stew)

On autumn weekends in Yamagata, friends, families and workmates carry big pots, firewood and bags of taro down to the riverbanks and cook imoni outdoors; the gathering is called an imoni-kai. Yamagata city even holds a festival on the Mamigasaki River where the stew is made in a giant pot and ladled out with a mechanical digger. The Yamagata version uses beef and a soy broth, while neighbouring Miyagi makes it with pork and miso. Taro gives the soup a soft, slightly thick body, konjac adds bite and the leeks go in last so they stay sweet. Chef's tip: rub the peeled taro with salt and rinse it before cooking; this removes most of the slippery coating, so the broth stays clean rather than gluey.

50 min

Japanese Soups

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Chhattisgarhi chilaRice flour pancakes

Chhattisgarh calls itself the rice bowl of India, and its everyday breakfast proves it: chila made from nothing more than rice batter, salt and a few aromatics, poured paper-thin onto a hot tawa. Village kitchens grind soaked rice on a stone; rice flour makes it quick enough for a weekday. The pancakes are soft in the middle with crisp, lacy edges and come with a rough chutney of fire-roasted tomato, garlic and green chilli. This is different from the thick gram-flour chila common elsewhere in India. Chef's tip: stir the batter before every ladle, because rice flour sinks fast and the last chilas otherwise turn thick and gummy.

30 min

Indian Breakfast & Brunch

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