Featured recipe

Crème chantilly

Sweetened whipped cream

Crème chantilly is named after the Château de Chantilly north of Paris, where the 17th-century steward Vatel is said to have served it, and today it crowns waffles, crêpes, fruit tarts and hot chocolate in cafés across France. Cold cream is whipped with a little icing sugar and vanilla to soft, billowy peaks, light rather than stiff. The common mistake is over-whipping, which turns the cream grainy and then into butter. Chef's tip: chill the bowl and whisk for 15 minutes first, and stop as soon as the cream holds soft peaks that just flop over.

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Chalupas de ChilpancingoFried tortillas with chipotle chicken

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75 min

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Chalupas poblanasFried tortillas with salsa

On Sunday evenings in the old centre of Puebla, around the Barrio de San Francisco and the Paseo Bravo, stalls fry stacks of small, thin tortillas in shallow oil and paint them half red and half green with salsa. These are chalupas poblanas, sold by the half dozen on paper plates and eaten in a few bites. The Puebla version is usually topped with shredded pork; ours keeps the salsas, onion and cheese, which are the real flavour, and adds a few beans. The edges should be crisp, the middle still a little soft from the salsa. Cheese like queso fresco is often made with animal rennet, so use a vegetarian fresh cheese if you prefer. Chef's tip: spoon the salsa on while the tortilla is still in the pan so it sizzles and soaks in.

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No meal in the Canary Islands seems complete without a bowl of papas arrugadas, small potatoes boiled in water as salty as the Atlantic until their skins wrinkle and frost over with white salt. In every guachinche, the pop-up wine-farm eateries in the hills of northern Tenerife, they arrive with a pot of mojo picón, a thick, garlicky sauce of dried red peppers, cumin, paprika and vinegar. Eat them skin and all, dragged through the mojo. Chef's tip: once drained, put the pot back on a low heat and shake it for a minute or two, as that drying is what forms the wrinkles and the salt crust.

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Wild boar roam the Maremma, the wooded south-west corner of Tuscany, and in autumn, when the hunting season opens, every country trattoria serves pappardelle with a dark, gamey boar ragù. The meat is marinated overnight in red wine with juniper and herbs, then simmered slowly with tomato until it falls into shreds and coats the wide egg ribbons. Wild boar is hard to find outside game butchers, so pork shoulder is a good substitute, giving a milder but still rich ragù; either way the sauce also uses pancetta, making it a pork dish. It uses red wine, and the note gives an alcohol-free option. Chef's tip: shred the meat with two forks rather than mincing it; the uneven strands cling to the pappardelle far better.

210 min

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Paris-BrestChoux ring with praline cream

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Partan breeCrab and rice soup

Partan bree comes from the fishing villages of the north-east of Scotland, where partan is the Scots word for the brown crab and bree means broth. Rice is simmered in milk and fish stock until soft, blended with the crab's brown meat, and finished with sweet white claw meat and a little cream. It is the coast's answer to a bisque, simpler and milder. Buy ready-cooked crab meat and keep it chilled. Chef's tip: add the white meat right at the end and only warm it through, so it stays in flakes.

40 min

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ChiflesPlantain chips

Bags of chifles hang from every shop door in Piura and Sullana, and on the northern coast they come alongside almost everything: ceviche, seco, a cold drink at the beach. They are green plantains sliced paper-thin, lengthwise or in rounds, fried until glassy and crisp, then salted. The flavour is starchy and lightly nutty, the crunch is louder than a potato crisp, and they keep for days in a tin. Getting the slices even is what matters most: thick and thin slices fry at different speeds, and the thick ones end up leathery while the thin ones burn, so use a mandoline set to 1–2 mm. Use firm, fully green plantains; any yellow means sugar, which browns too fast. Chef's tip: soak the slices in salted water for 10 minutes, then dry them completely before frying; they crisp more evenly and stay pale gold.

30 min

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