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Kofi brokeman
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Kofi brokeman

Roasted plantain with peanuts

The name jokes that this is food for 'Kofi who is broke': a ripe plantain roasted over a charcoal grill on a street corner in Accra or Kumasi, handed over with a twist of roasted groundnuts for very little money. The skin chars black while the inside turns soft, sweet and smoky, and the nuts give it salt and crunch, so it is surprisingly filling. At home a hot grill pan, oven or barbecue does the job. Chef's tip: choose plantains that are yellow with a few black spots, firm but not green; fully black ones collapse on the grill, and green ones, the usual mistake, stay starchy and dry.

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Gongura, the sour leaf of the roselle plant, is so central to Andhra cooking that it's called the state's own vegetable, and gongura pachadi is its best-known form. The leaves are fried in oil until they melt, then pounded with roasted red chillies, garlic, coriander seeds and fenugreek, and finished with a mustard tempering. It's intensely tangy, hot and garlicky, and in Guntur and Vijayawada homes a spoonful is mixed into hot rice with ghee or eaten with jowar rotte. It keeps in the fridge for a couple of weeks. Chef's tip: fry the leaves until all their water cooks off and they turn dark olive; any moisture left shortens how long the pachadi keeps.

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GomenBraised collard greens

Gomen is the everyday green on Ethiopian tables, cooked in homes across the highlands and always part of a fasting platter in Addis Ababa restaurants on Wednesdays and Fridays. Collard greens (or kale) are chopped fine and braised gently with onion, garlic, ginger and green chilli until they turn soft, dark and silky, without any berbere, so they cool the palate next to the red stews. On non-fasting days many cooks add a little niter kibbeh at the end; this oil version keeps it vegan. Chef's tip: cut out the thick central stalks before chopping; left in, they stay stringy long after the leaves are tender.

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NikujagaBeef and potato stew

Two naval port towns, Maizuru near Kyoto and Kure near Hiroshima, both claim nikujaga was first cooked in their navy galleys. Whatever its start, it became the dish many Japanese people think of as mum's cooking, simmered on autumn and winter evenings and served with rice and miso soup. Thin slices of beef, chunks of potato, onion and carrot cook gently in dashi seasoned with soy and sugar until the potatoes are tender and soaked with flavour. Families in eastern Japan often use pork; in the west, beef is usual. Chef's tip: cover the stew with a circle of baking paper with a small hole in the middle (an otoshibuta, or drop lid), so the small amount of liquid bastes everything evenly.

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NimonaFresh green pea curry

When fresh peas fill the markets of Varanasi and Gorakhpur in December, almost every household makes nimona. The peas are coarsely ground and fried in mustard oil until they lose their raw smell and turn a darker, nutty green. Potatoes are then added and everything simmers in a thin, spicy gravy. It is eaten with plain rice on a winter afternoon, and some families add fried moong dal vadis for extra bite. The most common mistake is grinding the peas into a smooth paste; nimona should have texture, like crushed peas rather than soup. Chef's tip: pulse the peas with the green chillies, ginger and garlic in short bursts, and stop as soon as they look like coarse, wet crumbs.

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Goli bajeYogurt and flour fritters

Goli baje is the tea-time snack of coastal Karnataka: round, golden fritters that are crisp outside and soft and spongy inside, sold by the plateful in Udupi hotels and Mangaluru tea shops around four in the afternoon. The batter is made from plain flour and sour yogurt, with green chilli, ginger, curry leaves and coconut bits, and left to rest so it turns slightly tangy and airy. Serve them piping hot with coconut chutney and a strong cup of coffee. Chef's tip: beat the batter hard for a few minutes before resting it; a well-beaten batter is stretchy, traps air, and gives fritters with an open, bread-like crumb.

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Niter kibbeh is the golden spiced butter used across the Ethiopian highlands on non-fasting days, when a spoonful goes into doro wat, kitfo, genfo or a simple pan of scrambled eggs. Butter is melted slowly with onion, garlic, ginger, fenugreek, cardamom, sacred basil (besobela) and other spices, then strained, leaving a fragrant, nutty fat that keeps for months. Because it is dairy it is never eaten during fasts; for those dishes, Ethiopians use plain oil, or you can warm 250 ml vegetable oil with the same spices for 15 minutes and strain it for a vegan spiced oil. Chef's tip: keep the heat very low; the butter should barely shiver, and if the milk solids burn the whole batch tastes acrid.

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GolfeadosSticky panela and cheese spiral buns

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NokedliSoft egg dumplings

Nokedli, also called galuska, are the small, soft, irregular egg dumplings that sit under almost every paprikás in Hungary, from Budapest lunch canteens to Sunday tables in the villages of the Great Plain. Unlike German Käsespätzle, they are not baked with cheese: they are a plain, buttery side whose job is to soak up a red, sour-cream sauce. Grandmothers scrape the batter off a wet board with a knife, but a nokedli grater (nokedliszaggató) or a colander with large holes is quicker at home. Serve them with gombapaprikás or lecsó, or toss them with fried egg for a quick supper. Chef's tip: let the batter rest for 10 minutes before cooking; the flour hydrates and the dumplings hold together instead of dissolving into the water.

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Nom banh chok with green curry brothRice noodles in green curry broth

Before seven in the morning, women carrying baskets on shoulder poles sell nom banh chok across Cambodia; around Siem Reap there is even a lane of stalls near the temples known for it. Soft, slippery rice noodles are piled into a bowl, ladled with a pale green broth of kroeung and coconut milk, then buried under shredded banana blossom, cucumber, beansprouts, long beans and handfuls of herbs. The market version thickens the broth with pounded fish; here pumpkin and creamy white beans give it the same body. Chef's tip: be generous with the raw vegetables and herbs; the dish is meant to be more garden than noodle, and the cool crunch is what balances the warm broth.

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Nom krokCoconut rice cakes

Nom krok are a street snack you hear before you see: the hiss of batter hitting a charcoal-heated cast-iron pan full of small round hollows, outside markets and schools across Phnom Penh in the late afternoon. Each little cake has a lacy, crunchy rice-flour shell and a molten top of salted coconut cream with spring onion, and two halves are pressed together to eat hot from a banana leaf. A Danish aebleskiver or Japanese takoyaki pan works perfectly at home. Chef's tip: let the pan get properly hot before the first batter goes in, about 4 minutes on a medium-high heat; a cool pan makes pale, sticky cakes that won't come out cleanly.

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