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11 recipes

GundrukFermented leafy greens

After the rice harvest in October and November, hill families from Ilam to Gorkha cut the leaves of mustard greens, radish and cauliflower, leave them to wilt in the yard, then pound them into clay pots or pits to ferment. A week later the greens come out olive-brown and sour, and they are dried on bamboo mats in the bright Dashain-Tihar sun. That dried gundruk carries families through the lean winter: soaked and simmered into gundruk ko jhol with tomato and soybeans beside dal-bhat, or tossed into gundruk sadeko with onion, chilli and mustard oil to eat with chiura. The flavour is deeply sour, earthy and a little smoky, the dried leaves chewy-crisp, softening when cooked. Common mistake: packing the leaves loosely; air left in the jar lets mould grow instead of the sour lactic ferment, so press until juice rises over the greens. It is ready to dry when it smells sharply sour like good sauerkraut and the leaves have lost all their green. Chef's tip: if your greens are from a supermarket, mix mustard greens with radish tops or kale for the closest flavour, and ferment in a big jar with a weight.

45 min

Nepali Basics

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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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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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SargyangmaPork blood sausage

This is a pork dish: sargyangma is the blood sausage of the Limbu people of Taplejung, Panchthar and the eastern hills, made at Chasok Tangnam, weddings and whenever a pig is killed for a family celebration. Fresh pork blood is mixed with diced pork fat, rice, ginger, garlic, chilli and timur, stuffed into pork intestine, gently boiled and then sliced and fried until crisp-edged, and it is eaten hot with a tomato and timur achar or simply with rice. At home, buy fresh or frozen pork blood and natural hog casings only from a licensed butcher, keep both chilled, and cook the sausage until a thermometer in the centre reads 71 °C. The trap is boiling the water hard, which bursts the casings; it should barely simmer. Chef's tip: prick the sausages with a needle as they rise in the pot, and when the liquid that comes out is clear brown, not red, they are nearly done.

120 min

Nepali Meat

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Sukuti sadekoDried meat salad

Up in Mustang and the high Thakali villages of the Kali Gandaki, strips of buffalo or yak meat are hung in the cold, dry wind until they turn dark and hard, and that sukuti keeps families in protein through the winter. Sadeko means mixed or dressed, and sukuti sadeko is the bar-snack and festival nibble that every Nepali restaurant from Jomsom to Kathmandu serves: the dried meat roasted or fried until it softens and smokes, pulled into shreds and tossed with red onion, tomato, garlic, green chilli, numbing timur and a splash of hot mustard oil. It is chewy, smoky and fiercely savoury. Buy sukuti from a reputable Nepali or Asian grocer, or use good dried beef jerky without sugar glaze. The usual misstep is skipping the roasting step, which leaves the meat too tough to chew. Chef's tip: pound the roasted sukuti lightly in a mortar before shredding, so it breaks along the grain.

30 min

Nepali Meat

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TakhaSpiced buffalo jelly

On cold Kathmandu winter mornings the clay bowls of takha that were left overnight by the window have set firm, and Newar families eat it cold in wobbly spoonfuls, a clear, glistening aspic studded with tender buffalo meat, tasting of ginger, garlic, cumin and timur. Its set comes entirely from the collagen in the skin, trotters and bony cuts, slowly simmered for hours; no gelatine is added. Takha is served with beaten rice at winter feasts and around the festival of Yomari Punhi. Buffalo is hard to find outside Nepal, so beef shin and a cleaned beef or veal trotter are the best stand-in. The most common failure is boiling the stock hard, which makes it cloudy and greasy; it should barely tremble. Chef's tip: test the set before you pour, by chilling a spoonful on a cold saucer for 10 minutes; if it stays runny, reduce the stock further.

240 min

Nepali Meat

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GhonghiSnail curry

When the monsoon fills the rice paddies of the western and central Terai, Tharu families gather ghonghi, the little freshwater snails, and cook them in a dark, fiery curry thickened with ground roasted linseed; the tip of each shell is snipped so the meat can be sucked out at the table, and the dish is loved as both a treat and a monsoon tonic, eaten with rice or dhikri. Wild freshwater snails can carry parasites such as rat lungworm and liver flukes, so never use snails you have collected from ponds, ditches or paddies yourself. At home use only cleaned, purged farmed snails in their shells from a specialist supplier, or cooked, frozen farmed escargots, or live periwinkles from a good fishmonger as a stand-in, and boil them hard before they go into the curry. The usual error is skimping on the boiling, which is both unsafe and leaves the snails rubbery; they need a rolling boil and then a long simmer. Chef's tip: roast the linseed until it pops before grinding, for the nutty, dark Tharu flavour.

80 min

Nepali Meat

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Kachila (cooked)Spiced buffalo mince

In the Newar homes and bhoj feasts of the Kathmandu Valley, kachila is a prized delicacy: finely minced buffalo meat mixed with mustard oil, garlic, ginger, chilli and numbing timur, eaten in small spoonfuls with beaten rice, traditionally raw. Raw minced meat can carry harmful bacteria and parasites right through, so the traditional raw form is not for pregnant women, young children or anyone with a weakened immune system, and we do not recommend it for anyone at home. This version keeps every bit of the seasoning but sears the mince quickly in a very hot pan to 71 °C, so it stays soft and loose rather than turning into a dry fry, then dresses it with the classic smoking mustard-oil tempering. It is eaten as part of samay baji or as a snack with chiura. The usual slip is overcooking it into crumbly pellets; take it off the heat the moment it is cooked through. Chef's tip: use buffalo or beef mince, or ask the butcher to mince lean beef twice, very fine.

30 min

Nepali Meat

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Sapu mhichaStuffed leaf tripe

Sapu is the many-layered leaf (or book) tripe of the buffalo and mhicha means a little bag, and these parcels are among the great tests of a Newari cook in Kirtipur, Bhaktapur and the old quarters of Kathmandu, made for bhoj feasts and festival days. The tripe is filled with soft bone marrow seasoned with ginger, garlic and timur, tied up, simmered until tender and finally fried so the outside crisps while the marrow inside turns rich and melting. Slices are eaten hot with beaten rice and a sharp tomato achar. Buy leaf tripe already dressed (cleaned and blanched) from a butcher, ask for beef if buffalo is not available, and cook it until fully tender; it is never served pink or half-cooked. The usual slip is overfilling, which makes the parcels burst in the pan. Chef's tip: tie the parcels like a small sausage with kitchen string, tight but not cutting into the tripe.

120 min

Nepali Meat

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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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SekuwaSpiced grilled meat skewers

Dharan, in Nepal's eastern hills, is famous for its 'sekuwa corner', a lane of smoky grills where families and friends gather in the evening for spiced goat, chicken and pork skewers fresh off the fire. The meat is marinated in a dry-ish paste of garlic, ginger, cumin, chilli and timur (Nepali Sichuan pepper), with a little mustard oil, then grilled until charred at the edges. It is the classic picnic and party food, eaten with puffed rice, a tomato-sesame achar and sliced onion. This recipe uses lamb or mutton shoulder in place of goat. Chef's tip: soak wooden skewers for 30 minutes and leave a little space between the pieces so the heat reaches all sides.

40 min

Nepali Meat

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