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Chicken poaches in a heavily spiced broth (saffron, ginger, cinnamon, lemon). The shredded meat returns to a reduced sauce thickened with beaten eggs to make a soft set. Toasted almonds with sugar and cinnamon form a layer. Everything wraps in butter-brushed filo, baked golden, and dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon.
The defining British dinner-party showpiece, somewhere between French haute cuisine and English roast tradition, made famous in the modern era by Gordon Ramsay even if the Iron Duke himself probably never ate it. You sear a centre-cut beef fillet hard for colour, smear it with English mustard, wrap it in a tight blanket of mushroom duxelles and prosciutto, then encase the lot in all-butter puff pastry and roast at high heat. The pastry insulates the beef so it cooks gently to medium-rare while the crust crisps to deep mahogany above. The one technical trick the recipe insists on is drying the duxelles thoroughly so the pastry stays crisp underneath rather than going soggy from leaking mushroom water. Sliced at the table into thick rosy rounds, with a red-wine jus and roasted root vegetables on the side, the kind of plate that makes the evening feel like a special occasion before anyone says it.
Each vegetable cooks separately and gets dressed with sesame oil, garlic and soy. They arrange in colourful piles around a mound of rice; an egg fries on top. Gochujang sauce on the side. Diners mix vigorously before eating.
Bread is soaked in milk; mince is browned with onions; curry powder, turmeric and Cape Malay spices bloom. Apricot jam, mango chutney, vinegar and lemon balance the spice with sweet-sour notes. Raisins, toasted almonds and the soaked bread are folded through. The mixture is pressed into a baking dish; eggs are whisked with the leftover milk and poured over; bay leaves are stuck into the surface; the lot is baked until the topping is just-set with a faint wobble.
Tender chicken meatballs simmered in a fragrant coconut and curry sauce, this Indonesian classic combines aromatic spices with creamy coconut milk for a comforting, flavourful dish. The meatballs stay moist and are infused with lemongrass and lime leaves for authentic flavour.
Pork loin escalopes pound thin, bread, and shallow-fry. While they crisp, a sauce of bacon, onion, mushrooms, white wine, stock and cream reduces in another pan. The schnitzel plates with the sauce on top (or alongside, if you want the crumb to stay crisp), with spätzle or boiled potatoes underneath.
Fine bulgur soaks; lamb mince blends with bulgur, grated onion, allspice and salt to a smooth paste; small torpedoes are shaped around a separately-cooked lamb-onion-pine-nut filling. Torpedoes deep-fry briefly until golden, then slip into the warm stabilised yogurt sauce (whisked with egg white, cornflour and garlic), simmer for 4 minutes to warm through. Garlic-mint butter on top.
A platter built around fragrant coconut and lemongrass rice, served with a fiery sambal of dried anchovies and rehydrated chillies, then ringed with hard-boiled egg, sliced cucumber and fried peanuts. The sambal does most of the heavy lifting, sweet, sour, smoky and hot. The rice itself is gentle, designed to be a calming counterpoint to everything else on the plate.
The meat-filled half-moon that sits next to the cheese version on every Levantine-Arabian table. You roll a soft butter-and-yogurt dough thin, stamp it into nine-centimetre rounds, and place a teaspoon of spiced lamb mince in the centre of each. The lamb is fragrant with baharat, onion, toasted pine nuts and a touch of pomegranate molasses that adds a sweet-sharp depth you can't quite place. The rounds fold into half-moons and crimp with a fork. From there they go either route: deep-fried at 170°C for three or four minutes per side, or baked at 200°C for eighteen to twenty minutes with an egg wash for shine. The pastry blisters lightly, the filling stays juicy. Eaten warm with a wedge of lemon, often as part of a meze spread alongside hummus, mutabbal, salata and warm flatbread.
A simple wheat-flour-and-water dough rests for 30 minutes. The filling: onion fries; lamb mince browns with baharat, allspice, cinnamon, salt and pepper; cooled. The dough rolls thin, cuts into 5 cm rounds; a small spoon of filling sits on each; folded in half to make a half-moon; the corners pinched together over the back to form a tiny tortellini. Lined up on a tray; baked for 12 minutes at 200°C to firm and lightly colour. A warm yogurt sauce simmers gently, thickened with cornstarch (or whisked egg white) so it doesn't split. The baked dumplings drop in and warm 5 minutes. Garlic-and-mint butter sizzles on top.
The lamb filling fries with onion, allspice and a touch of cinnamon; the dough rolls thin, stamps into 4 cm rounds; each gets a small ball of filling, folds in half, then the two corners are pinched together into a tortellini shape. The dumplings bake at 200°C for 15 minutes to brown the tops. Whisked yogurt stabilises with cornflour and egg white, simmers gently with crushed garlic. The dumplings drop in for the last 5 minutes. Final flourish: sizzled garlic-mint butter.
This recipe from the Sichuan region of western China showcases the region's trademark use of chillies combined with the modern addition of cashew nuts. The sauce is complex and layered, savoury from fermented beans and hoisin, spicy from dried chillies, and balanced with vinegar's acidity and sugar's sweetness. The result is distinctly Chinese in technique yet contemporary in execution.
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.