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21 recipes

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Bifana

Bifana

Bifanas are Portugal's national lunch sandwich, sold at every counter from Lisbon to Porto. Slices of pork loin (paper-thin, across the grain) marinate for a couple of hours in white wine, garlic, paprika, bay and black pepper, then go into a screaming-hot pan with olive oil and a knob of butter for sixty seconds a side. The marinade reduces in the pan to a salty, winey sauce, which gets ladled over a halved papo-seco roll along with the pork. Add mustard, or a squirt of piri-piri, and you've nailed it. Eaten standing at the counter with a glass of Sagres beer, or in Porto with a Super Bock.

Portuguese 2 hours 30 minutes Serves4
Phaksha Paa

Phaksha Paa

A Bhutanese pork belly braise that leans Sichuanese on the spice rack, the Himalayan border showing in the dish. You cut pork belly into thumb-length strips and start it on its own in a heavy pot to render the fat and brown the meat properly, the rendered juices becoming the cooking fat for everything that follows. Then in go whole dried red chillies, daikon cut into chunks, ginger, garlic, a measure of soy and a generous spoon of Sichuan pepper, and the lot braises gently in the pork's own rendered juices until the radish has gone soft and the sauce has thickened into a glossy red-brown lacquer that coats the pork. The whole chillies sit in the pot still intact, and the cook at the table can choose to eat them or push them to one side. Eaten with red Bhutanese rice, the broth ladled over.

Bhutanese 1 hour 15 minutes Serves4
Pork Sorpotel

Pork Sorpotel

Pork shoulder and liver are par-boiled with whole spices, then diced. A masala paste of roasted Kashmiri chillies, peppercorns, cinnamon, cloves and cumin is ground with garlic, ginger and a generous splash of palm vinegar. The diced meat is browned in pork fat, the paste fried until the oil separates, and the cooking stock added for a slow simmer. The dish improves dramatically after 24-48 hours in the fridge; Goans traditionally make it the day before serving.

Goan 2 hours 30 minutes Serves6-8
Pulled Pork

Pulled Pork

Pulled pork is the slowest, simplest hero of American Southern barbecue. A whole bone-in pork shoulder, often called a Boston butt despite coming from the front of the pig, is rubbed with salt, sugar and spices and left to absorb seasoning overnight. The next morning it goes onto a smoker or a low oven and stays there for eight or nine hours until the collagen has fully broken down and a fork sinks in like wet sand. There are two great traditions: the eastern North Carolina style, where the whole hog is cooked and dressed with a thin cider vinegar and chilli flake sauce; and the Memphis or Kansas City style, where shoulder is the cut of choice and the sauce leans sweeter and tomato-based. The recipe here splits the difference: a Memphis-style sweet-and-savoury rub on the meat, then a sharp Carolina vinegar sauce to dress the pulled strands. The technique is forgiving. Internal temperature is the only thing that really matters, and you are looking for 95 degrees, well past the point where most cookbooks stop. That last twenty degrees is where the connective tissue finally surrenders. Wrap it in foil with a splash of cider when the bark sets, rest it long, and pull it warm. Pile onto a soft white bun with cold slaw, and you have the easiest crowd-feeder in the BBQ canon.

American 8 hours 20 minutes Serves8
Rougaille Saucisse

Rougaille Saucisse

Rougaille is the workhorse tomato sauce of Mauritian Creole cooking, used as a condiment with dholl puri, as a sauce for fried fish, and (most often) as the base of a one-pot meal with sausage, salt cod or eggs. The structure is simple but specific: onion softened slowly in oil, then ginger, garlic, chilli and fresh thyme bloomed in that oil, then a long-cooked mound of ripe tomatoes broken down until the oil splits and the sauce darkens. No curry powder, no garam masala, no coconut milk; rougaille belongs to the Creole rather than the Indo-Mauritian tradition, and its identity is the herbal punch of thyme and ginger against tomato. Rougaille saucisse, the version with smoked Mauritian-style sausages, is the textbook home preparation. Use any decent smoked, coarse-cut pork sausage; in the UK, smoked chipolatas or Polish kielbasa are good stand-ins. Difficulty is low and the cook is mostly passive. Serve with rice, a few leaves of bredes (sauteed greens) and a chilli pickle on the side.

Mauritian 55 minutes Serves4
Roujiamo (Xi'an Chinese Hamburger)

Roujiamo (Xi'an Chinese Hamburger)

Roujiamo is often, lazily, called the Chinese hamburger, but it is older than the burger by perhaps a thousand years and structurally quite different. The bread is a flat, lightly leavened, sometimes laminated wheat round, with the layered Tongguan style (flaky and croissant-like) considered superior to the softer baijimo. The filling is rich braised pork, shoulder or belly, simmered with rock sugar, soy and warming spice until it shreds under a knife, then chopped fine on a board with raw onion and cilantro and a spoonful of its own dark cooking liquid. The whole assembly is then crammed inside the freshly fried-and-baked bun while everything is still hot. Roujiamo is a quintessentially Xi'an dish, the product of a city that for centuries sat at the eastern terminus of the Silk Road; the bread tradition comes from the Hui and Uyghur Muslim communities of the northwest, while the braised pork belongs to the Han Chinese kitchen. Difficulty for a home cook is moderate to high, the lamination of the bread takes practice, and there are multiple components on timed tracks, but the result is one of the great street foods of China, and the buns and meat can both be made ahead.

Chinese 5 hours Serves4
Shellfish Gumbo

Shellfish Gumbo

A shellfish gumbo, lighter than the full Cajun "everything" version but built on the same foundations - a deep roux, the holy trinity of onion, celery and sweet pepper, and a slow-simmered broth that ties everything together. You cook a roux in oil until it goes to a peanut-butter brown (lighter than the full-Cajun chocolate roux but darker than blond), then soften the trinity in it before stock and herbs go in to build the soup. Mussels, prawns and crab go in towards the end and cook just briefly so they stay tender. A modern touch of fresh chilli lifts the heat across the back. Eaten over white rice in deep bowls, with hot sauce on the table and crusty bread to mop the last of the broth.

Cajun 1 hour 29 minutes Serves6
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