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22 recipes

TereréIced yerba mate

In Asunción the hottest part of the day stops for tereré: a horn or cup packed with yerba mate, topped up again and again with ice water infused with crushed herbs, and passed round the group through a metal straw. It was recognised by UNESCO as part of Paraguay's cultural heritage, and the herbs (yuyos) change with the season and the drinker's mood. Yerba mate contains caffeine, so it isn't one for small children. The common mistake is pouring water straight into loose yerba, which then clogs the straw; tilt the yerba to one side first. Chef's tip: for tereré ruso, swap the water for cold orange or grapefruit juice.

10 min

Paraguayan Drinks

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Kaeng khilekCassia leaf curry

Kaeng khilek is an old-fashioned country curry from central Thailand, cooked when the cassia (khilek) trees put out tender shoots after the rains and sold ready-boiled in bags at markets around Ratchaburi and Suphan Buri. The leaves are boiled and drained several times until their bitterness softens, then simmered with pork belly in coconut milk with red curry paste, leaving a dark green, pleasantly bitter, rich curry eaten with jasmine rice and salted egg. This recipe contains pork. The usual mistake is skipping the repeated boiling: cassia leaves must be boiled and drained at least three times, or they are harshly bitter and can upset the stomach. Frozen pre-boiled khilek from Thai shops saves work. Chef's tip: squeeze the boiled leaves firmly in a cloth so they soak up coconut milk instead of water.

90 min

Thai Curries

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Kafae boran (old-style Thai coffee)

Before espresso bars reached Bangkok, coffee in Thailand meant kafae boran from Hainanese-Chinese shophouses and market carts: a dark robusta roast mixed with toasted grains, poured through a long cotton sock called a tung tom and stirred into thick sweetened condensed milk. Uncles still order it hot at 6 am with patongko dough sticks, and in the afternoon heat the same brew is poured over crushed ice and topped with evaporated milk as oliang or kafae yen. The taste is strong, roasty and slightly smoky, sweet and creamy, with a faint caramel-cereal edge from the grains; the iced version is silky and cold. The common mistake is brewing it like filter coffee with too little grounds: once milk and ice go in, it tastes thin. Use plenty, steep it in the sock and pour it through twice. The brew is ready when it is opaque, nearly black and leaves a brown film on a white spoon. It is high in caffeine, so not one for children or late evenings. Chef's tip: rinse the cloth sock in hot water only, never soap, and keep it in a jar of clean water in the fridge between uses so the coffee oils season it.

10 min

Thai Drinks

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Nam lamyai (longan drink)

Longan orchards cover the valleys of Chiang Mai and Lamphun, and every August the harvest is smoked and dried in big brick ovens so the fruit lasts all year. That dried lamyai is the base of nam lamyai, sold in plastic bags with a straw at Warorot Market, at roadside stalls on the way to Doi Suthep and in school canteens across the north, especially in the hot season from March to May. It tastes like toffee and smoked honey with a light floral note, and each glass comes with a few plump, chewy longans at the bottom to fish out. The common mistake is boiling the fruit too long with all the sugar at the start: the drink turns syrupy and the longans go mushy. Simmer the fruit first, sweeten at the end and taste before adding everything. It is ready when the liquid is clear amber-brown, the longans have swollen back to roughly their fresh size and the kitchen smells of caramel. It keeps 4 days in a closed jug in the fridge. Chef's tip: a tiny pinch of salt is the street-vendor trick that makes the sweetness taste rounder and brings out the smoky edge.

30 min

Thai Drinks

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Khao kha mooBraised pork leg rice

Khao kha moo is Bangkok's great one-plate lunch, and the shophouses along Charoen Krung Road in Bang Rak have been simmering pork leg in the same dark, star-anise-scented pots for decades. Fresh pork hock is braised in soy, palm sugar and five-spice until the skin turns glossy and gelatinous and the meat falls away in tender strands. It is sliced onto jasmine rice with a soy-stained boiled egg, pickled mustard greens, blanched Chinese kale and a fierce green chilli and garlic vinegar to cut the richness. Chef's tip: keep the braise at a lazy simmer; a hard boil tears the skin and turns the meat stringy.

185 min

Thai Meat

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BusecaTripe and white bean stew

Buseca arrived in Montevideo with Italian immigrants from Lombardy and became a classic winter dish of Uruguayan bodegones and family kitchens, eaten on cold June and July days. Honeycomb tripe is simmered until tender, then stewed with white beans, pork chorizo, bacon, peppers, tomato and paprika into a thick, warming stew served with crusty bread. Buy tripe that is already cleaned and blanched (dressed). The usual mistake is undercooking the tripe: it needs a full 2 hours, until it's soft enough to cut with a spoon. Slow-cooker option: after step 4, cook on low for 8 hours. Chef's tip: a little grated lemon zest and parsley stirred in at the end lifts the rich, gelatinous sauce.

185 min

Paraguayan Meat

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Cocido quemadoBurnt sugar mate drink

Cocido is how Paraguay starts the day: in Asunción, in the villages of Guairá and Itapúa, and in school kitchens, a pot of burnt yerba is brewed and poured into cups with chipa, the cheesy cassava bread, or with a hard galleta. The old way is to drop a glowing piece of charcoal into a pot with yerba and sugar and stir until the sugar burns. On a home stove you caramelise them together in a dry pan instead, which is safer and gives the same smoky, toffee-like taste. The drink is clear amber-brown, with roasted, slightly bitter mate notes over burnt-sugar sweetness; with milk added it becomes cocido con leche, creamy and coffee-coloured. Yerba mate contains caffeine, so treat it like a cup of coffee. The common mistake is letting the sugar go black: it turns acrid and bitter. Pull it off the heat when the caramel is deep amber and the yerba smells toasted, not burnt. It is ready when the liquid is a clear dark amber and tastes of toffee and smoke. Chef's tip: the water will spit fiercely when it hits the hot caramel, so pour it in from the side, at arm's length.

14 min

Paraguayan Drinks

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Morcilla dulceSweet blood sausage with walnuts

No Uruguayan parrilla is complete without morcilla dulce: a soft pork blood sausage sweetened with sugar and scented with orange peel, studded with walnuts and raisins, grilled until the skin crisps and served first, as part of the achuras, while the beef is still cooking. It is pork throughout: pork blood, pork back fat and natural pork casings. Making it at home is a project. Buy fresh pork blood with an anticoagulant added from a butcher who supplies it for sausage making, keep it chilled below 4 °C and use it within a day. The common mistake is poaching at a rolling boil, which bursts the casings. Chef's tip: keep the water at 80–85 °C, just shivering, and prick a sausage after 25 minutes: it is done when brown, not red, juice comes out.

120 min

Paraguayan Meat

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Postre MassiniCustard sponge with burnt sugar top

Montevideo's birthday cake of choice since the early twentieth century, the Massini is two thin layers of sponge sandwiching a thick filling of whipped cream folded with egg-yolk custard, crowned with a thin glassy crust of torched yolk and sugar. Bakeries across Uruguay sell it on Sundays. Traditional versions sometimes add a sweet fortified wine to the custard; this one is alcohol-free. The custard is cooked to a safe 71 °C. The common mistake is assembling with warm custard, which melts the cream into a puddle. Chef's tip: if you don't have a blowtorch, put the sugared top under a very hot grill for a minute and watch it closely.

80 min

Paraguayan Baking

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Kaeng tai pla jay (southern vegetable curry)

Kaeng tai pla is the boldest curry of southern Thailand, eaten from Surat Thani down to Hat Yai: a dark, pungent, fiercely hot broth of turmeric-heavy southern curry paste, pumpkin, bamboo shoots, aubergine and long beans, normally flavoured with fermented fish innards. During the Vegetarian Festival (thetsakan kin jay), held every autumn in Phuket and Trang, cooks make a 'jay' version with fermented soybean paste and roasted peanut, and that is the curry here. It is thinner than a coconut curry and served with rice and plenty of raw vegetables to cool the heat. Chef's tip: this curry is meant to be very hot. If you want less heat, add fewer bird's eye chillies to the paste but keep the black pepper and turmeric, which give it its character.

45 min

Thai Curries

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Gaeng som plaSour fish curry

Down the Andaman coast and in Surat Thani and Nakhon Si Thammarat, this is everyday home food, the curry that turns up at lunch alongside rice, fried egg and a plate of raw vegetables. It is thin, brothy and startlingly bright: fresh turmeric turns it orange, tamarind makes it sour, and a pounded paste of chillies and shrimp paste gives it real heat, all without any coconut milk. Chunks of firm white fish poach gently in the soup with green papaya and long beans. Eat it with plenty of jasmine rice to soak up the broth. Chef's tip: pound a little of the poached fish into the curry paste; it thickens the broth slightly and makes it taste of the sea.

30 min

Thai Curries

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Sai ouaHerby grilled pork sausage

Walk through Chiang Mai's Warorot market and you will smell sai oua before you see it: long coils of sausage smoking over charcoal, flecked green with lime leaf and orange with chilli paste. The meat is coarse and juicy, the flavour loud with lemongrass, galangal and turmeric, and Northern Thais eat it in thick slices with sticky rice, raw cabbage, nam prik noom and a few slices of fresh ginger. If you have no casings or sausage stuffer, the same mixture makes excellent flat patties. Chef's tip: fry a teaspoon of the mixture before you stuff anything and taste it; this is your only chance to fix the salt and chilli.

90 min

Thai Meat

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Khua klingDry-fried spicy minced pork

Ask for this at a rice-and-curry shop in Phuket or Hat Yai and it comes as a small, dark heap beside your rice, smelling of lime leaf and black pepper and hot enough to bring tears. There is no sauce at all: minced pork or beef is fried with a turmeric-heavy southern paste until every crumb is dry, separate and coated in spice. The heat is fierce, so it is always eaten with jasmine rice, sliced cucumber, raw long beans and herbs to cool the mouth. It also keeps well for a couple of days and is excellent cold in a lunchbox. Chef's tip: keep stirring and pressing the meat against the hot wok at the end; the name means 'roll and roast', and that last dry-frying is what makes it.

25 min

Thai Meat

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Sai krok IsanSour pork and rice sausage

Strung in little round links and grilled at night markets from Khon Kaen to Udon Thani, these garlicky sausages are tangy from fermentation, with soft rice grains in a juicy pork filling. Vendors serve them with fresh ginger slices, bird's eye chillies, raw cabbage and roasted peanuts, and every bite is a mix of sour, salty, hot and crunchy. Traditionally they are left at room temperature for two or three days to sour; that is a real food-safety risk at home without controlled cultures and curing salts, so this version cures in the fridge instead. Expect a milder tang than street-stall sai krok; a squeeze of lime at the table makes up the difference. Chef's tip: use day-old cooked rice that went into the fridge quickly; freshly cooked warm rice turns the filling mushy and keeps it in the danger zone.

65 min

Thai Meat

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Gaeng hang layPork belly curry

Brought to Lampang and Chiang Mai by Burmese teak traders in the 1800s, this coconut-free curry is now the dish Northern families cook for temple fairs, weddings and Songkran, often a day ahead in a big pot. Chunks of pork belly and shoulder braise slowly until they almost fall apart in a dark, glossy sauce that tastes of ginger, garlic and warm spices, sharpened with tamarind and rounded with palm sugar. It should be thick enough to cling to the meat rather than soupy. Serve it with steamed jasmine or sticky rice and a crisp cucumber salad. Chef's tip: make it the day before; overnight in the fridge the flavours settle and the fat sets on top so you can lift some off before reheating.

120 min

Thai Curries

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Asado uruguayoGrilled beef short ribs and chorizo

Sunday in Uruguay means asado: in Montevideo backyards and the cattle towns of the interior, beef ribs (asado de tira), chorizo and morcilla cook slowly over the embers of a wood fire, with only coarse salt, while the family waits. The parrillero rakes coals under the grill and keeps the heat low and even. This recipe includes pork chorizo. The mistake is cooking over flames; the fire should burn down to embers you can hold your hand above for 6–8 seconds. Chef's tip: salt the meat only when it goes on the grill, with coarse salt, never fine.

140 min

Paraguayan Meat

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ChajáSponge, peach and cream cake

Chajá was created in 1927 at a bakery in Paysandú, a city on the Uruguay River, and named after a local bird whose feathers look as fluffy as its crumbly meringue coat. Today it's Uruguay's birthday and celebration cake: layers of light sponge soaked in peach syrup, filled with whipped cream, peaches and dulce de leche, then covered in crushed meringue. It's sweet, soft and crunchy at once, best on the day it's assembled. Chef's tip: soak the sponge but not too much; it should feel moist, not wet, or the layers slide.

90 min

Paraguayan Baking

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Kaeng pa (jungle curry)

Kaeng pa means 'forest curry', and around Ayutthaya, Suphan Buri and the rice-farming plains north of Bangkok it is the curry cooked when there is no coconut to hand: a thin, fiery, herb-scented broth packed with whatever vegetables grew nearby. It turns up at roadside curry-and-rice shops in the Central region, ladled over jasmine rice at lunchtime. Without coconut milk the flavour is sharp and clean, carried by wild ginger (krachai), fresh green peppercorns and holy basil. This version uses a home-pounded red paste with no shrimp paste and seasons with soy sauce instead of fish sauce. Chef's tip: fry the paste in a little oil until it smells toasty before any water goes in; raw paste makes a curry that tastes flat and grassy.

35 min

Thai Curries

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Thai red vegetable curry

A quick Thai red curry with a home-made paste of soaked red chillies, onion, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, coriander, cumin and white pepper. Crunchy baby corn, broccoli, carrot and mushrooms simmer in coconut milk with basil until the sauce is creamy and gently thickened. The paste is also used in several other Thai recipes in this collection. Serve warm with rice.

35 min

Thai Curries

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Thai green vegetable curry

A mild, fragrant Thai green curry made with a fresh paste of green chillies, garlic, lemongrass, coriander and lemon, simmered with coconut milk, a big mix of vegetables and soft cubes of paneer. The sauce is creamy and herby rather than fiery, and the vegetables keep a little bite. Serve hot with plain steamed rice or jasmine rice.

50 min

Thai Curries

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Thai vegetables in peanut coconut sauce

Aubergine, French beans, cauliflower and carrots are simmered gently in coconut milk until tender, then coated in a thick gravy of coconut cream, a fresh paste of spring onion, coriander root, red chilli, lemongrass, galangal and lime peel, and a finish of roasted peanuts and tamarind. Rich, tangy and fragrant. Serve hot with steamed rice.

45 min

Thai Curries

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Thai green chicken curry

A weeknight green curry that tastes like a takeaway. Frying the paste in the thick top layer of coconut milk wakes up the lemongrass and chilli, and a last-minute balance of fish sauce, lime and a little sugar makes it sing.

30 min

Thai Curries

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