In Riyadh, Dubai and Kuwait City, chicken shawarma is the late-evening street food, carved from a turning spit and wrapped in thin bread with toum garlic sauce, pickles and chips tucked inside, Gulf style. At home, thighs marinated in yogurt, lemon and warm spices are roasted at a high heat until charred at the edges, then sliced thinly. Chef's tip: give the chicken a final blast under a hot grill after slicing; it recreates the crisp edges of the spit.
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Small, round Swahili rice pancakes made from a yeasted batter of rice flour, coconut milk, grated coconut, sugar and cardamom. They're crisp and golden outside, soft and spongy inside. Serve hot with tea.
In Belgium a vol-au-vent is not a party nibble but a full plate: a big puff-pastry case filled with creamy chicken ragout, button mushrooms and tiny meatballs, served with chips in Brussels brasseries and for family celebrations and Sunday lunches all over the country. The little meatballs are made with pork mince, so this dish contains pork. The sauce is built on the poaching stock from the chicken, which gives it far more flavour than milk. A mistake many cooks make is filling the pastry too early, so the base turns soggy; fill the cases just before they go to the table. Chef's tip: poach the meatballs in the same stock as the chicken; they take just 5 minutes and season the broth further.
Vori vori is the soup Paraguayan grandmothers make on cold June and July evenings: a golden broth full of bori, small balls of cornmeal and cheese that swell soft as they simmer. The name is a Guaraní take on the Spanish 'bolita' (little ball). It's usually made with hen; this version gets its colour and body from pumpkin, carrot and a sofrito with saffron or turmeric. Chef's tip: shape the balls no bigger than a hazelnut; they double in size and larger ones stay raw inside.
Waakye (say 'waa-chay') came south from the Hausa communities of northern Ghana and is now Accra's favourite breakfast and lunch, sold from big pots wrapped in leaves at roadside stalls before most offices open. Rice and black-eyed beans are cooked together with dried sorghum leaf stalks (waakye leaves), which dye the pot a deep reddish brown and add a faint earthy note. A full plate comes loaded with shito, gari, spaghetti (talia), salad and fried plantain. Chef's tip: cook the beans almost soft before the rice goes in; beans and rice finishing together is the whole trick.
Wahan means pork and mosdeng a fiery mashed relish in Kokborok, the language of the Tripuri people of Tripura. Pork is boiled until tender, grilled over charcoal for a smoky crust, then tossed with raw onion, green chilli, ginger and coriander. In Agartala and the villages it is party and festival food, eaten during Garia Puja in April with rice beer or rice. Chef's tip: grill the boiled pork really hot and fast; you want charred edges without drying the meat.
Kuala Lumpur eats wantan mee for breakfast, lunch and late supper, usually from a stall where a cook flicks springy egg noodles through boiling water and tosses them in a dark, glossy sauce. The KL style is 'dry' (kon loe): noodles coated in soy, oyster sauce and lard or shallot oil, topped with slices of sweet char siu and greens, with the dumplings served in a little bowl of clear soup. Pickled green chillies cut through the richness. Expect chewy noodles, silky wontons and a salty-sweet, slightly smoky sauce. Chef's tip: rinse the cooked noodles under cold water for a few seconds, then dunk them back in the boiling water; the shock gives them their springy bite.
Warabimochi is Kyoto's summer sweet. Made from the starch of bracken fern roots, it is not really mochi at all but a clear, wobbly jelly that melts on the tongue, and on hot afternoons teahouses around Gion and Arashiyama serve it chilled on ice. It is dusted with kinako, a nutty roasted soybean flour, and finished with kuromitsu, a dark syrup of Okinawan brown sugar. Real warabi starch is costly and greyish-brown, so most home cooks buy warabimochi-ko, a blend with sweet potato or tapioca starch, which gives a clearer jelly. Chef's tip: keep stirring hard once it turns clear. Two more minutes of beating over the heat is what makes it springy rather than gluey.
Warak enab bi zeit, vine leaves cooked in oil, is what Lebanese aunts make in big batches in early summer when the young grape leaves are tender, and it fills the cold mezze table at every wedding and family lunch. The meatless version, eaten on Lenten fast days, is packed with short-grain rice, tomato, parsley, mint and spring onion, seasoned with dried mint and seven spices, and simmered slowly in lemon juice until the leaves are silky and the filling sharp and fresh. It is served cold with a wedge of lemon and a spoonful of yogurt for those who are not keeping it vegan. Rolling too tightly is the mistake most people make: the rice swells and splits the leaves, so roll them snug but not stretched. Chef's tip: line the pan with sliced potato and tomato; they stop the rolls catching and are a cook's treat to eat straight from the pot.
Watalappan came to Sri Lanka with the island's Malay and Muslim communities, and no Eid table in Colombo, Beruwala or Kandy is complete without it; it now turns up at weddings and birthdays across every community. Thick coconut milk and eggs are sweetened with kithul jaggery, the dark palm sugar from the fishtail palm, and spiced with cardamom, nutmeg and a little clove, then steamed until it sets into a wobbly, honeycombed custard the colour of toffee. Cashews scattered on top add crunch. Dark muscovado sugar works if you can't find kithul jaggery. The common mistake is steaming it on a fierce boil, which makes it full of large holes and watery; a steady, gentle simmer gives a smooth set with the fine honeycomb that's prized. Chef's tip: strain the mixture through a sieve before steaming to remove any stringy egg and jaggery grit.
Wattakka (pumpkin) curry is one of the soft, sweet dishes on a Sri Lankan buth (rice) spread, and in villages around Kurunegala it often appears at Poya day almsgivings, when temple meals are always meat-free. The pumpkin is cooked in its skin with dark roasted curry powder, cinnamon, a pinch of fenugreek and pandan, then thickened with coconut milk and a spoonful of ground mustard, which gives it a gentle tang. Some cooks also add toasted coconut paste (kalu pol); we keep it simpler. The common mistake is cutting the pumpkin too small, so it dissolves into mush before the gravy is ready; keep the chunks about 4 cm. Chef's tip: leave the skin on butternut or Kent pumpkin; it holds each piece together and softens completely as it cooks.
In Vienna's old Beisl taverns the Schnitzel arrives so large it hangs over the plate: a veal escalope beaten thin, coated in flour, egg and fine breadcrumbs and fried in plenty of hot fat while the pan is swirled, so the crumb lifts away from the meat in golden waves. Austrian law keeps the name 'Wiener Schnitzel' for veal; the pork version, very common in German homes, is called Schnitzel Wiener Art and is cooked exactly the same way. Serve it with a lemon wedge, lingonberry jam and potato salad. The most common mistake is pressing the crumbs firmly onto the meat, which stops the coating from puffing. Chef's tip: shake off the crumbs and lay the cutlet in only when the fat is hot enough that a crumb sizzles at once.
Xalwo is the sweet of Somali celebrations: weddings, Eid and the arrival of guests are all marked with a tray of this dark, glossy, chewy confection, cut into diamonds and served with coffee or spiced tea. Sugar is caramelised, then cooked slowly with cornflour and oil or ghee while the cook stirs without stopping until it pulls away from the pan. It is a cousin of Omani and Yemeni halwa. Chef's tip: stir constantly and keep going until the oil starts to separate and shine on the surface; stopped early, xalwo stays soft and does not set.
Xawaash (pronounced 'ha-wash') is the spice mix every Somali kitchen keeps in a jar, used in rice, soups, stews, sambuusa fillings and even tea. Families toast and grind their own, often in quantity before Ramadan, and the balance of warm cumin, earthy coriander and sweet cardamom and cinnamon varies from house to house. It is different from Yemeni hawaij and Ethiopian berbere: there is no chilli in it. Chef's tip: toast each spice only until it darkens a shade and smells warm; burnt cumin turns the whole jar bitter.
In Xi'an's Muslim Quarter, cooks peel liangpi off steaming trays all day, cut it into wide ribbons and toss it with chilli oil, black vinegar, garlic water and cubes of springy gluten. It's eaten cold, often with a flatbread, as a summer lunch. Gansu's niangpi, from Lanzhou and Tianshui, is the same dish with thicker sheets and more garlic, so it's covered here too. You wash a flour dough to split the starch from the gluten, so allow 4 hours for the starch to settle. Chef's tip: stir the starch water every time before you ladle it, because the starch sinks fast.
Bite carefully: inside each pleated parcel is a pork meatball floating in hot broth, which comes from a pork-skin jelly that melts as the dumplings steam. Shanghai's teahouses and the old town around Nanxiang have served them in bamboo baskets for well over a century, usually for breakfast or a late lunch with a saucer of black vinegar and threads of ginger. The wrapper should be thin enough to see the soup move but strong enough to lift with chopsticks. Make the jelly the day before (or use the gelatine shortcut in the ingredient note), then the folding takes about an hour with a little practice. Chef's tip: keep the filling in the fridge until the moment you wrap; cold jelly stays solid and the dumplings are far easier to pleat.
Across Xinjiang, from Kashgar's bazaars to Urumqi's backstreets, bakers slap rounds of dough onto the walls of clay tandoors and pull them out a few minutes later, golden and stamped with patterns. The centre is pressed thin and crisp while the rim stays soft and chewy, and the onion version is scattered with cumin and sesame. Nang keeps for days and is eaten with tea, kebabs and salads. Chef's tip: get your oven and tray as hot as they'll go; nang bakes quickly in fierce heat.
Xôi xéo is a Hanoi breakfast sold before dawn from baskets on the pavement, wrapped in a lotus or banana leaf for people to eat on the way to work. Turmeric-tinted glutinous rice is steamed until chewy, then topped with thin shavings cut from a firm ball of cooked mung bean (the 'xéo' is the slanting cut) and a spoonful of crunchy fried shallots with their fragrant oil. Street sellers often use pork fat for the shallots; frying them in vegetable oil keeps it vegan and still rich. Chef's tip: squeeze the mung bean paste into a tight ball while it is warm and let it cool before shaving; a loose ball crumbles instead of slicing into ribbons.
Order this soup in one of the old Hui restaurants around Xi'an's Drum Tower and you are handed a dense, barely leavened flatbread and expected to tear it yourself into pea-sized crumbs while you chat; the kitchen then cooks it in rich lamb broth until each crumb is soft yet still chewy. Slices of tender lamb, glass noodles and wood ear mushrooms go in too, and the bowl comes with sweet pickled garlic and chilli sauce on the side. It is a soothing, filling soup, especially on Xi'an's freezing winter mornings. Expect a deep, clean lamb flavour scented with warm spices. Chef's tip: tear the bread small, no bigger than a soybean; big lumps stay doughy in the middle.
Yangzhou in Jiangsu gave its name to China's most famous fried rice, which is supposed to show off a cook's skill: separate, glossy grains, small even dice and egg in every mouthful. The original carries ham and shrimp; this vegetable version swaps them for shiitake, peas, carrot and sweetcorn, and keeps the seasoning light (salt and a little soy) so the rice stays pale and golden rather than brown. It's a meal on its own or a side for stir-fries. Chef's tip: use rice cooked the day before and chilled uncovered; fresh rice is too soft and clumps.
This Yangzhou soup is a test of knife skill: a block of soft tofu is sliced and shredded so finely that the threads drift apart like silk in the bowl. It is credited to a Buddhist monk named Wensi, who served it at a temple in Yangzhou during the Qing dynasty, so a meat-free broth is true to its roots. Huaiyang banquets still serve it as a quiet, delicate course. Chef's tip: wet the knife and slice in one smooth stroke without lifting; the tofu then stays together until you fan it into water.
Rolling yaprak sarma is a social job in Aegean kitchens around Ayvalık and Manisa, where vineyards supply the leaves: a tray of grape leaves, a bowl of spiced rice and two or three people talking while they roll. This meat-free version is the olive-oil kind, filled with rice, onion, pine nuts, currants, mint and a pinch of cinnamon and allspice, and served cold as a meze or at tea-time gatherings. Good sarma are thin as a finger and hold together when bitten. A common mistake is overfilling: the rice swells as it cooks and splits the leaves. Chef's tip: use only a teaspoon of filling per leaf and roll firmly but not tight, leaving room for the rice to grow.
Yassa comes from Casamance, the green, rice-growing south of Senegal, and has become the dish Dakar families cook for guests and naming ceremonies. Chicken spends a night in lemon juice, mustard and a huge pile of sliced onions, is grilled or browned until charred at the edges, then braised in those same onions until they collapse into a sharp, sweet, jammy sauce. It is served over plain white rice with a green olive or two on top. A common mistake is rushing the onions; if they are still crunchy the sauce tastes raw and harsh, so give them the full half hour. Chef's tip: keep the marinade, because it becomes the sauce; just boil it well with the onions so it is safe to eat.
Yomari are the sweet dumplings of the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, made once a year on Yomari Punhi, the full moon of December that marks the end of the rice harvest. Freshly milled rice flour is kneaded with hot water, pinched into a hollow cone, filled with chaku, a dark, fudgy Newari molasses, and toasted sesame, then shaped with a pointed tail like a fish or a teardrop and steamed. Children go from house to house singing for them, and families offer a few to the gods before anyone eats. The shell is soft and slightly chewy, and the filling melts into warm, smoky caramel. The usual mistake is mixing the dough with lukewarm water: it must be just off the boil so the starch swells and the dough stretches without cracking. Chef's tip: keep a bowl of warm water beside you and dip your fingertips often; damp hands smooth out cracks as you shape.
Hakka miners brought yong tau foo to the tin town of Ampang, on the edge of Kuala Lumpur, and families still drive there on weekends for big bowls of it. You choose your pieces from a counter, tofu, chillies, okra, aubergine and bitter gourd, each stuffed with a savoury paste, and the stall poaches or fries them and serves them in a light broth, with a sweet brown sauce and chilli sauce to dip. The traditional filling is fish and pork; this one is firm tofu, shiitake, water chestnut and carrot. It is a gentle, light meal. Chef's tip: press the stuffing in tightly and smooth it flush with a wet finger, so it stays put while it cooks.
Yu xiang is a Sichuan flavour named after the way local cooks once seasoned fish, but it contains no fish at all: pickled chilli, garlic, ginger and spring onion balanced with sugar and black vinegar. Aubergine is the dish most Chengdu households make with it, often for a weekday supper, because the soft, creamy flesh drinks up the sauce. Serve it with rice and a plain green vegetable. Chef's tip: salt the aubergine fingers for 15 minutes and squeeze them dry; they then absorb far less oil and turn silky instead of greasy.
Yuca con mojo is a fixture of the Cuban Nochebuena feast and of everyday family dinners in Matanzas and Miami alike: chunks of cassava boiled until they crack open and turn soft, then drenched in a hot dressing of olive oil, lots of garlic, onion rings and sour orange juice. The yuca soaks up the tangy, garlicky oil like a sponge. Serve it beside moros y cristianos or black beans. Chef's tip: add a splash of cold water to the pot halfway through boiling; Cuban cooks say it 'shocks' the yuca and helps it split open and turn tender.
Yudofu is the simplest dish in Kyoto and one of the most loved. The city's soft water makes fine tofu, and the restaurants around Nanzen-ji temple in the Higashiyama hills have served it to pilgrims for centuries as part of Buddhist vegetarian cooking. A block of tofu is warmed in an earthenware pot over a sheet of kombu and lifted out with a little slotted ladle, then dipped in citrusy soy with spring onion and ginger. It's a winter dish, best eaten slowly at the table on a cold evening. Chef's tip: never let the water boil. The tofu is ready when it trembles and starts to rise; boiling makes it spongy and full of holes.
In Gwangju, yukjeon is a restaurant meal in its own right: the server sits by a hot plate at your table and fries slice after slice of egg-coated beef, handing them over while they're still sizzling. Elsewhere in Korea it's more often a festive pancake, made for Chuseok and Lunar New Year along with other jeon. The beef is cut very thin, so it cooks in the time it takes the egg to set. Gwangju places serve it with a sharp salad of finely shredded spring onion and a little salt and sesame oil for dipping. Chef's tip: half-freeze the beef for 40 minutes before slicing; firm meat is easy to cut into slices 2 to 3 mm thick.
Zaalouk is one of the cooked salads that open almost every Moroccan meal, from Fez to Essaouira, set out in small dishes with taktouka and carrot salad and scooped up with bread. Aubergine and tomato are cooked down together with garlic, cumin and paprika until they become a soft, spoonable relish, sharpened at the end with lemon and olive oil. It tastes even better the next day, so many cooks make a big batch. Chef's tip: char the aubergine over a gas flame or under the grill first if you can; the smoky skin flavour gives the best zaalouk.
Zacuscă is the autumn preserve of Moldavia and Transylvania: in Iași and the villages around it, families spend a September weekend charring aubergines and red peppers over a grill and slowly frying them down with onion and tomato into a thick, chunky spread. The jars go into the cellar and come out all winter, spread on bread or eaten with mămăligă during the Orthodox fasts. It is coarser and more oniony than smooth Balkan ajvar, with bay and a long, jammy cook. Chef's tip: let the onions go fully soft and sweet before adding anything else; rushing them leaves a sharp, raw edge that the long cook never removes.
In Hrvatsko Zagorje, the green hill country north of Zagreb, štrukli are Sunday food: paper-thin dough is spread with fresh cow's cheese, rolled up, pinched into pieces with the edge of a plate, then boiled and finished in the oven under a blanket of cream. Zagreb restaurants serve them as a starter or a main, blistered golden on top and soft and custardy inside. The dough is stretched by hand over a tablecloth, which is easier than it sounds once it has rested. Chef's tip: squeeze the cheese if it is wet; a runny filling soaks the thin dough and makes the rolls tear when they boil.
Zan is the millet porridge of Arunachal Pradesh, eaten by the Monpa, Sherdukpen and other hill communities for breakfast or dinner on cold days. Finger millet (ragi) flour is stirred into boiling water with vegetables, ginger and chilli until thick and smooth, then served with a chilli chutney or butter. Some families cook it with meat; this is the vegetable version. It is warming, filling and earthy-tasting, a little like a savoury polenta. Chef's tip: sprinkle the millet flour in with one hand while whisking with the other, or it forms lumps that never cook out.
Ask for fried chicken in Kushiro or Sapporo and you'll be handed zangi, which locals insist is not the same as karaage. A Kushiro restaurant says it coined the name around 1960, and today zangi shops, ski-lodge canteens and supermarket delis across Hokkaido sell it in big, bone-in pieces. The chicken soaks for hours in a punchy mix of soy, sake, garlic, ginger and oyster sauce with an egg beaten in, so the flavour runs right through the meat, and it often comes with a sharp dipping sauce of vinegar, soy and black pepper. The coating is a mix of flour and starch, so it fries darker and more savoury than karaage. Chef's tip: marinate it overnight in the fridge for the full Hokkaido flavour; 30 minutes works, but the difference is clear.
Zanzibar's famous street bowl (urojo): a thin, tangy, golden soup of gram flour, raw mango, coconut and chilli, filled with little lentil fritters and potato balls and topped with crushed cassava crisps and coconut, green and red chutneys. It's sour, spicy and crunchy all at once. Make the fritters, potato balls and chutney ahead, then assemble the bowls at the table.
Zapiekanka is Polish street food born in the 1970s and perfected at the hatch windows around Plac Nowy in Kraków's Kazimierz district, where students and night owls queue for one at midnight. Half a long baguette is topped with mushrooms fried with onion, covered in grated cheese and baked until crisp at the edges and bubbling, then finished with a zigzag of ketchup and chives. The classic version has no meat at all. Use a hard cheese made with vegetarian rennet (many supermarket mild Cheddars and Goudas are). Chef's tip: fry the mushrooms until completely dry before they go on the bread; wet mushrooms make the baguette soggy instead of crisp.
In spring, when globe artichokes pile up on stalls in İzmir and Urla, market sellers trim them on the spot into pale hearts kept in lemon water, and families take them home to make zeytinyağlı enginar. The hearts are braised cup-side up with small onions, carrots, potato and peas in olive oil and lemon, then served cold with a shower of dill, often as the first course of a spring dinner. The classic mistake is leaving trimmed artichokes in the air: they turn grey within minutes. Chef's tip: rub every cut surface with lemon as you go and drop the hearts straight into water with lemon juice and a spoonful of flour, which keeps them pale and cream-coloured.
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