Adana Kebab

Adana Kebab

Lamb shoulder and lamb tail fat (or extra fatty trim) chop fine with a heavy knife or zırh (curved blade), proper Adana is hand-cut, never minced through a grinder. The texture has visible pieces of meat and fat the size of small peas. Knead with salt, ground sumac, hot red Aleppo / Maraş chilli flakes (acı biber) and crushed garlic for 6-8 minutes until tacky and clinging to the bowl. Chill for 2 hours. Press a fistful onto a wide flat skewer, working from the centre outward, shaping a 25 cm × 3 cm flat sausage with finger-tip dimples down the length. Grill over hot charcoal 5-6 minutes per side. Slide off skewer onto warm lavash. Rest for 2 minutes; serve.

Turkish 2 hours 42 minutes Serves4
Andouille Skewers

Andouille Skewers

A Cajun cookout skewer, the kind of thing that comes off the grill at a Louisiana backyard barbecue while the gumbo is finishing on the back burner. You take andouille (the heavily smoked, garlicky Cajun pork sausage) and cut it into thick coins, then thread them onto pre-soaked wooden skewers (or metal) with chunks of red and green pepper, red onion, and a few halved cherry tomatoes. Brush with a quick Cajun glaze of melted butter, garlic, brown sugar, hot sauce and Cajun seasoning. Onto a hot grill over high heat for just long enough to char the vegetables and bring the sausage shiny and sticky. Eaten straight off the skewer with a beer in the other hand, the smoke still hanging in the air.

Snacks 27 minutes Serves8
Apple Strudel

Apple Strudel

The Viennese pastry that holds the cafe culture of Habsburg Europe in a single bite, the apfelstrudel that arrives on a small plate next to your melange at every old coffeehouse from Vienna to Prague. You roll cinnamon-spiced apple, raisins, and toasted breadcrumbs in layers of tissue-thin filo until the pastry is nearly transparent (a real Viennese cook will say you should be able to read a newspaper through it before you fill), then bake the whole roll until the outside is shattering golden. A heavy dust of icing sugar at the end, and a warm slice eaten with a quenelle of softly whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream while the pastry crackles under the spoon. The contrast is everything: the brittle, dry, almost-paper-thin pastry against the tender, juicy spiced apples soft enough to give to a teaspoon. Coffee on the side; an afternoon in front of you.

Desserts 40 minutes Serves6
Arancini

Arancini

Cold risotto (saffron Milanese-style is traditional in arancini "alla Milanese"; plain works too) is mixed with grated parmesan and beaten egg to bind. Filling, a stew of beef-and-pork ragù with peas, OR a cube of mozzarella, sits in the centre of each ball. Hands wet with water shape the rice around the filling into a tight orange-sized ball (or cone, for the Catania style). Each ball is rolled first in flour, then in beaten egg, then in fine breadcrumbs (or in the doubled-up "panata" mix of flour + water for the Sicilian original). Deep-fried at 180°C in 4-5 cm of oil for 4-6 minutes per ball until deep gold. Drained on kitchen paper; eaten warm.

Snacks 45 minutes Serves4
Aroog

Aroog

Fine bulgur (#1 grade) soaks in hot water until soft and fluffy. Lamb or beef mince mixes with the bulgur, grated onion, lots of chopped parsley and coriander, ground baharat, cumin and a pinch of cinnamon. The mixture should be soft enough to spread, if it's too dry the aroog crumble. Small portions press onto a hot oiled pan and flatten to 1 cm thick discs; cook for 4-5 minutes per side over medium heat until deeply browned and the meat is just cooked through. Lift, drain briefly, eat hot with lemon and yoghurt.

Snacks 1 hour 20 minutes Serves4
Arroz de Pato

Arroz de Pato

Arroz de pato is Portugal's answer to paella, except baked rather than simmered, and the rice picks up a top crust of crisped chouriço at the end. You poach a whole duck for two hours with onion, bay, cloves and lemon peel until the meat falls apart, then strip the meat off the bones and put the bones back to extract another half hour of flavour from the stock. The strained duck stock cooks the rice, the shredded meat folds back in, and the whole thing goes into a baking dish under a layer of paper-thin chouriço slices. Twenty minutes in a hot oven and the top emerges deeply burnished, the chouriço slices crisp at their edges and slick at their centres. Sunday lunch, ideally with a heavy red from the Douro.

Portuguese 3 hours 25 minutes Serves6
Ash Reshteh

Ash Reshteh

Dried beans (chickpeas + kidney beans + green lentils, OR the popular cheat of mixing all dried into one pot) soak overnight. Onion fries in oil; turmeric, salt and the soaked-and-drained beans go in with stock; simmers for 1 hour 15 minutes until tender. A heaping double handful of finely chopped fresh herbs (parsley, coriander, dill plus blanched spinach) goes in. Reshteh noodles (Persian flat egg noodles, sold at Iranian shops) add for the last 10 minutes. The bowl finishes with a sour-fermented kashk drizzle, dried-mint-and-garlic-in-oil sizzle, deep-fried golden onion, and a swirl of yogurt. Garnishes are not optional.

Persian 2 hours 10 minutes Serves6
Austrian Goulash

Austrian Goulash

The Viennese answer to its Hungarian cousin: slower, deeper, almost spoonable, the gravy as dark as treacle from hours of careful reduction rather than from any thickener. The defining technique is a one-to-one ratio of onion to beef by weight, which sounds wrong until you taste what it does. The onions cook down to a sweet, brown, almost-marmalade paste before the paprika and meat ever join them, and that paste is the body of the sauce. You use beef shin or chuck and simmer it very slowly in this paprika-onion base with stock, garlic, marjoram, caraway, vinegar and tomato until the gravy clings to every cube. Lard is the right fat. No flour. No quick fixes. Serve with bread dumplings (Semmelknödel), spätzle or thick slices of dark rye, and pickled cucumbers on the side to cut the richness. A bowl that warms you from the centre out on a winter night.

Austrian 2 hours 50 minutes Serves4-6
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