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Chipa

In Paraguay you hear 'chipa, chipa!' called by vendors with big baskets on buses and street corners, and every family bakes it for Holy Week, when chipa is the food of Good Friday. Cassava starch, a little cornmeal, butter, eggs and a lot of hard cheese are kneaded into a dough scented with aniseed, shaped into rings or small rolls and baked in a hot oven, traditionally a domed clay tatakua. It's chewy, crisp outside and best warm with cocido (toasted yerba tea). Chef's tip: the dough should feel soft and slightly greasy; add milk a spoon at a time, as too much makes the chipa spread flat.

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Chipa guasu

Chipa guasu (Guaraní for 'big chipa') is sopa paraguaya's softer cousin, made from fresh corn instead of cornmeal. The kernels are grated or blended into a milky purée and baked with onion, cheese and whipped eggs into a tender, gently sweet bake that rises and wobbles. It's a summer dish at Paraguayan asados and fiestas patronales (saints' days), eaten beside grilled meat or simply with a tomato salad. Chef's tip: fold in the whisked egg whites last; it's what makes chipa guasu light and puffed rather than dense.

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Svíčková na smetaně

Svíčková is the dish Czech families make for weddings, name days and big Sunday lunches, and in Prague pubs it appears on the menu as the proud centre of the week. Beef is marinated for a day or two with root vegetables and spices, slow-roasted, and the vegetables are then blended into a smooth, sweet-sour cream sauce. It is always served the same way: sliced beef, a pool of sauce, bread dumplings, a spoonful of cranberry sauce, a twist of whipped cream and a slice of lemon. Many cooks under-season the sauce; it should taste clearly of vinegar, sugar and allspice, not just cream. The optional smoked bacon that flavours the vegetables is pork; leave it out and the sauce is still rich. Chef's tip: blend the sauce until completely velvety, then push it through a sieve; that silky finish is what makes svíčková special.

220 minCzechMeat
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Sopa paraguaya

Paraguayans love telling visitors that their national 'soup' is eaten with a fork: sopa paraguaya is a dense, moist cornbread baked with sweated onions, fresh cheese, eggs and milk. It's on every table at asados, weddings and the Christmas meal, and sold in squares at bus stations from Asunción to Encarnación. The crust is golden and the inside soft and cheesy, more like a savoury pudding than bread. Chef's tip: soak the cornmeal in the milk for 15 minutes before mixing; hydrated cornmeal bakes up tender instead of gritty.

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Česnečka

Česnečka is the soup Czechs swear by after a long night in a Prague pivnice: a thin, savoury broth fragrant with raw garlic, caraway and marjoram, with soft potato cubes, crunchy fried bread and a fistful of grated cheese melting into each bowl. It costs almost nothing, comes together in half an hour and is served in workers' canteens and village pubs all winter. This version uses vegetable stock instead of the old meat bouillon. Chef's tip: crush the garlic into the bowls or add it right at the end off the heat; boiled garlic goes sweet and mild, and česnečka should bite.

30 minCzechSoups
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Mbejú

Mbejú (say 'mbeh-JOO') is a Guaraní breakfast and merienda: cassava starch rubbed with butter, cheese and a little milk into damp crumbs, then pressed into a hot pan where it fuses into a thick, chewy, crisp-edged cake. It's eaten in the countryside with cocido (sweet toasted yerba tea with milk) on cool mornings, cut into wedges. It's naturally gluten free and very quick. Chef's tip: the mix should look like damp sand, not a dough; if you can squeeze a handful and it just holds, it's right.

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Ovocné knedlíky

Ovocné knedlíky are the summer main course of Czech childhoods: in July with apricots from South Moravian orchards, in September with blue plums, eaten as lunch rather than pudding. Each soft quark dumpling hides a whole fruit that turns jammy as it simmers, and they are served the old way, rolled in melted butter and buried under grated tvaroh (quark) and icing sugar. Kids compete over who can eat the most. Chef's tip: pinch the dough completely closed with no thin patches; a single gap lets water in and the dumpling bursts in the pot.

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Buchty

Buchty are the soft, pillowy yeast buns that Czech grandmothers bake in a roasting tin on Saturday, filled with povidla (plum butter), jam or sweet quark and packed so close that they rise into each other and have to be torn apart. They are the Czech answer to a cinnamon bun: eaten warm with milky coffee, packed for train journeys and school trips, and famous from the fairy tale in which the hero sets off with a bag of his mother's buchty. Unlike open koláče, the filling is sealed inside. Chef's tip: brush the sides of each bun with melted butter before you pack them in, so they pull apart cleanly with soft, shiny walls.

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Vepřo knedlo zelo

Ask anyone in Prague, Brno or a village pub in Moravia for the most Czech meal of all and they will name vepřo knedlo zelo: roast pork, dumplings and cabbage, eaten at Sunday lunch and washed down in pubs with a cold lager. This is a pork dish: shoulder rubbed with garlic, caraway and salt and roasted slowly in a little water until it falls into tender slices, the pan juices becoming the gravy. Alongside go slices of soft bread dumpling and red or white cabbage braised sweet and sour. The trap is roasting the pork too hot and too dry; a splash of water in the tin and a low oven keep it juicy. Chef's tip: lay the pork fat side down for the first hour, then turn it fat side up so the fat renders and crisps at the end.

210 minCzechMeat
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Burmese chicken curry

Burmese curries are cooked the 'see pyan' way, meaning 'oil returns': onion, garlic and ginger are slowly fried with turmeric and paprika until the water cooks away and the oil floats red and clear on top. This chicken curry is the everyday heart of a Yangon or Mandalay meal, set on the table with rice, a sour soup, a salad and fish-sauce-based relishes, and every family eats it on ordinary weeknights. It is mild in chilli but deep in flavour, with fish sauce adding a savoury edge. The common mistake is draining off the oil because it looks like too much; the oil carries the flavour, and you spoon around it when serving. Chef's tip: pound the onion, garlic and ginger to a rough paste rather than blending them smooth, so they fry rather than stew.

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Bryndzové halušky

Bryndzové halušky is Slovakia's national dish, cooked in every koliba (timber shepherd's restaurant) in the Liptov and Orava valleys and fought over each summer at the halušky-eating contest in Turecká. Little grated-potato dumplings are tossed while hot with bryndza, a tangy, spreadable sheep's cheese, and finished with a sour milk drink called žinčica. The traditional topping is crisp smoked bacon; here golden fried onions bring the same savoury crunch, and meat-eaters can add bacon on their own plates. Chef's tip: grate the potatoes at the last moment and work fast; grated potato left standing turns grey and watery and the dumplings go heavy.

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Vegetarian mohinga

Mohinga is Myanmar's national breakfast, ladled from steaming pots at dawn on street corners from Yangon to Mandalay: thin rice noodles in a thick, golden broth fragrant with lemongrass, ginger and toasted chickpea flour, topped with crisp fritters, lime and chilli. The real thing is built on catfish and fish sauce. This vegetarian version is honestly different: dried shiitake and kombu give savouriness instead of fish, and the body comes from toasted chickpea flour, toasted rice powder and banana stem (or palm heart), so it's lighter and earthier rather than fishy. Chef's tip: toast the chickpea flour and rice until golden and nutty before they go in; they carry most of the flavour.

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Samosa thoke

Samosa thoke is pure Yangon street food, born from the city's Indian-Burmese communities: vendors on Mahabandoola Road chop crisp samosas into a bowl with cabbage, onion and mint, ladle over a thin, spiced lentil broth (pe hin ye), and finish it with tamarind, chilli and a squeeze of lime. The samosas soften at the edges while the middle stays crunchy, and the whole bowl is hot, sour and savoury. Use vegan samosas made without ghee. Chef's tip: ladle the broth over at the very last moment and eat straight away; samosa thoke left to sit turns soggy fast.

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Kulajda

Kulajda comes from South Bohemia, the land of carp ponds and pine forests around České Budějovice and Český Krumlov, where families come home from the woods in late summer with baskets of porcini. It is a thick, pale, gently sour soup of potatoes, mushrooms, cream and plenty of dill, finished with vinegar and served with a soft poached egg floating in each bowl. It is eaten as a filling lunch on its own with a slice of rye bread. Chef's tip: add the vinegar off the heat and taste as you go; the soup should be clearly tangy but never sharp, like a good pickle brine softened by cream.

50 minCzechSoups
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Shwe yin aye

Shwe yin aye, roughly 'golden heart cooler', is what Yangon drinks during the scorching weeks of Thingyan, the April water festival, when stalls set up along the streets to hand it out. It's a bowl of sweet, lightly salted coconut milk over crushed ice, filled with chewy sago pearls, cubes of green agar jelly, a scoop of sticky rice and, surprisingly, a few pieces of soft white bread that soak up the coconut. Chef's tip: make the jelly, sago and sticky rice in the morning and chill everything; assembled cold, the bowl stays refreshing to the last spoonful.

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Smažený sýr

Smažený sýr, a thick slab of breaded Edam fried until molten, is the dish every Czech student orders at a Prague hospoda and the one vegetarian main that turns up on nearly every menu from Brno to the Šumava mountain huts. It comes with tatarská omáčka (tartare sauce) and either boiled potatoes or chips, and a cold pivo on the side. The joy is the crunch giving way to stretchy, salty cheese. Chef's tip: chill the breaded slices for 20 minutes and double-coat them, otherwise the cheese bursts out into the oil before the crumb is golden.

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Ohn no khao swe with tofu

Ohn no khao swe is the comforting coconut noodle soup that Burmese families serve for weekend lunches and for crowds at donation feasts, especially around Mandalay and Yangon. Wheat noodles sit in a rich, mildly spiced coconut broth thickened with chickpea flour, and everyone adds their own toppings: lime, sliced raw onion, chilli flakes, coriander and crispy fried noodles. It's normally made with chicken; tofu and chickpeas take its place here. Chef's tip: stir the coconut milk in at the end and keep it at a gentle simmer; a hard boil makes the coconut split and turn oily.

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Moravské koláče

In the villages of South Moravia and Wallachia, nobody gets married without a mountain of koláče: small round yeast buns with a deep hollow filled with sweetened poppy seed, vanilla quark or povidla (thick plum butter), each crowned with buttery posypka crumble. Relatives bake hundreds for the wedding and send guests home with boxes of them, and they turn up again at village fairs (pouť) and Sunday coffee. Chef's tip: press the hollow deep and wide just before filling; the dough rises again in the oven, and a shallow dip pushes the filling over the edge.

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Shan tofu

Shan tofu (to hpu) contains no soy at all: it is a smooth, wobbly block of chickpea flour cooked with water and turmeric, then left to set. Shan women sell it in golden slabs at the five-day markets around Inle Lake and Taunggyi, cut into cubes and dressed as a salad with chilli oil, garlic, vinegar and peanuts, or sliced and fried into crisp fritters. Warm and unset, it's eaten as a porridge (to hpu nway). Chef's tip: whisk constantly as it thickens and keep cooking for a full 8 minutes after it turns thick; undercooked Shan tofu tastes raw and never sets firmly.

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Houskové knedlíky

Houskové knedlíky are the sliced bread dumplings that sit beside almost every sauce in a Prague pub, from mushroom svíčková-style cream sauces to sweet-sour dill gravy. Unlike the round German Semmelknödel, these are a soft yeast dough rolled into a log with crisp cubes of stale roll inside, simmered whole, then cut into thick, spongy slices that drink up gravy. Czech grandmothers still slice them with a length of thread rather than a knife, which keeps the crumb open instead of squashing it. Chef's tip: cut the cooked loaf with a piece of cotton thread wrapped around it and pulled tight; a knife presses the slices into dense, gluey discs.

55 minCzechSides
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Vegetable Shan noodles

Shan khao swe comes from the hills of Shan State in eastern Myanmar, where it's eaten for breakfast at markets around Inle Lake and Taunggyi before the day's work begins. Sticky rice noodles are tossed with a garlicky tomato sauce, sesame oil and crushed peanuts, then served with pickled mustard greens and a small bowl of clear broth on the side. Markets usually make the sauce with chicken or pork; here mushrooms and tofu give it the same savoury depth. Chef's tip: cook the tomatoes down until the oil separates and the sauce turns jammy; a watery sauce slides off the noodles and tastes flat.

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Lahpet thoke

Lahpet thoke is how Myanmar welcomes a guest: a lacquered tray of pickled tea leaves surrounded by fried beans, peanuts, sesame and garlic, offered after meals, at weddings and at monk feasts from Mandalay to Yangon. Mixed into a salad with cabbage, tomato, chilli and lime, it becomes the country's most famous dish: bitter, sour, salty and crunchy at once, with a gentle caffeine lift. Ready-made lahpet sometimes contains fish sauce and the crunchy mix often has dried shrimp, so this version quick-pickles loose green tea at home. Chef's tip: soak the tea in several changes of hot water and squeeze it hard each time; that's what tames the bitterness.

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Gin thoke

Gin thoke is lahpet thoke's livelier cousin, served on the same lacquered trays at teashops in Yangon and as a palate-wakener after a rich curry lunch. Young ginger is cut into fine threads and pickled in lime and salt so it turns pink and juicy, then tossed with cabbage, tomato, peanuts, fried beans and sesame. Burmese cooks often add fish sauce; salt, lime and a little toasted chickpea flour give the dressing body without it. Chef's tip: use young ginger with thin, pinkish skin if you can find it; mature ginger is fibrous and too fiery to eat in this quantity, so slice it extra thin.

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Vegetarian vori vori

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.

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