In season

May produce

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Go Bo Hoi an

Go Bo Hoi an

Go Bo Hoi An is a piquant Vietnamese beef salad featuring thinly sliced seared beef tossed with crisp vegetables, fresh herbs, and a bright tamarind-lime dressing. This dish has delicate undertones of lime and garlic which carry through the tamarind flavours perfectly. The combination of tender beef, crunchy vegetables, aromatic herbs, and crispy rice papers creates a textural and flavourful celebration of Vietnamese cuisine. Quick to make but requires advance preparation, ensure the salad, dressing, and toppings are made and ready to use before cooking the beef.

Vietnamese 25 minutes Serves2
Kung Pao Shrimp

Kung Pao Shrimp

Kung pao (gongbao) shrimp is the seafood cousin of the classic Sichuan gongbao jiding, named for the 19th-century governor-general Ding Baozhen whose title was Gong Bao. Where the chicken version uses diced meat, the shrimp version keeps the prawns whole or halved so they curl into bright pink commas around the chillies and peanuts. The flavour profile is the signature Sichuan "lychee" balance: a touch of sweetness from sugar, sourness from black vinegar, salt and umami from soy, and the warm tingle (ma la) of toasted Sichuan peppercorn paired with the smoky bite of dried er jing tiao chillies. This is a fast dish, fundamentally a wok exercise: every ingredient must be prepped and lined up before the heat goes on, because once the chillies hit the oil you have maybe ninety seconds before everything is overcooked. Difficulty is moderate for a home cook with a working wok and high burner; the trick is keeping the chillies dark red and fragrant without scorching them black, and pulling the shrimp out the moment they curl. Served over plain rice it is one of the most rewarding ten-minute meals in the repertoire.

Chinese 28 minutes Serves3-4
Lahpet Thoke

Lahpet Thoke

Myanmar's national salad and one of the most distinctive dishes in Southeast Asia: a tossed plate built around lahpet, fermented tea leaves with a sour-bitter pungency unlike anything else you've eaten. You start with pre-pickled tea leaves (sold at South-East Asian grocers; rinse to mellow if they're very sour), pile on shredded white cabbage and diced tomato for crunch and sweetness, then a generous handful of crispy fried things: fried garlic, fried peanuts, fried yellow split peas, sesame seeds. Fish sauce and lime juice toss it all together. Each spoonful is a contrast of soft-bitter tea against crunchy fried things and bright lime. Eaten as a snack at a teashop, an appetiser before dinner, or at the close of a meal as a sign of welcome and reconciliation.

Burmese 20 minutes Serves4
Polvo à Lagareiro

Polvo à Lagareiro

Polvo à Lagareiro is the dish the olive-press workers (the lagareiros) ate at the press during the harvest, and it is still glorious: tender octopus and small smashed potatoes baked together under a generous slick of olive oil. You simmer a whole octopus for an hour with onion and bay until you can pierce a thick part of the tentacle with a knife and feel no resistance. The potatoes parboil, then get punched gently with a wooden spoon so they crack but stay whole. Octopus and potatoes go into a wide oven dish, doused with olive oil, garlic, paprika and bay, and roast hard for 25 minutes so the edges char. The olive oil at the end is not a garnish but the dish itself, and it wants to be the best you have.

Portuguese 2 hours 25 minutes Serves4
Samkeh Harra

Samkeh Harra

A whole fish is rubbed with salt, lemon, garlic and olive oil inside and out. While it rests, a sauce of tahini, lemon juice, water, garlic and chopped fresh coriander whisks together, adjusted with more water until the texture of pourable double cream. Diced red onion, Aleppo pepper, cumin and a pinch of cayenne fry briefly in olive oil. The tahini sauce stirs in; warms gently to a velvety consistency. The fish nestles on top in an oven dish; the sauce surrounds it; covered with foil; baked for 20 minutes; uncovered another 5-10 minutes. Topped with toasted pine nuts, pomegranate seeds and extra coriander at the table.

Palestinian 50 minutes Serves4
Traditional Pad Thai

Traditional Pad Thai

Pad thai began as a 1930s government-promoted national dish during a campaign to reduce rice consumption, and has since become Thailand's best-known noodle export. The success of any version comes down to the sauce: equal parts fish sauce, tamarind and palm sugar, with a spoonful of finely chopped pickled radish for backbone. Once the sauce is mixed the wok work is fast, with soft rice noodles, chicken, tofu, dried shrimp and egg joining in quick succession before the dish is finished with peanuts, chives, lime and chilli at the table.

Thai 40 minutes Serves4