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Potato is boiled, peeled and mashed. Mixed with drained tuna, harissa, capers, parsley, salt and pepper. A warka or filo sheet is laid flat; a line of filling is spooned across one edge; a small well is pressed into the filling; a whole raw egg is cracked into the well; the sheet is folded and rolled into a cigar. Fried seam-down immediately in moderately hot oil, the egg cooks inside as the pastry turns crisp. Eaten hot with lemon and harissa.
A pork and prawn filling is bound with shredded carrot, glass noodles and reconstituted wood-ear mushrooms, then rolled tightly in moistened rice paper and fried twice for maximum crunch. The double-fry technique gives chả giò their characteristic bubbled, blistered crust. Served with cool lettuce leaves, herbs and a punchy nước chấm dipping sauce.
Prawn toast is a classic dim sum snack of bread spread with a seasoned prawn paste, coated in sesame seeds, and deep fried until golden and crisp. The ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil in the paste give the filling a distinctly aromatic, umami-rich flavour that contrasts with the crunchy, seed-studded exterior. Popular in Chinese restaurants worldwide, it makes an excellent finger food or starter.
Sweet shortcrust pastry chills for 30 min. Filling: butter + flour make a blonde roux; trinity (onion + celery + green pepper) softens; crawfish tails + cream + tomato paste + Cajun seasoning + green onion finishes. Cool. Roll pastry; cut 10 cm rounds; spoon 1 tbsp filling on half; fold and crimp; brush with egg wash. Bake for 25 minutes at 200°C till deep gold.
A Louisiana hand pie, the Cajun answer to a Cornish pasty and the snack you'd buy at a Lafayette festival booth alongside a beer. You make a flaky shortcrust enriched with a little butter and lard (or all butter if you'd rather), cold and rested. The filling is a small batch of crawfish étouffée: a blond roux first, then the trinity of onion, celery and bell pepper, garlic, tomato, Cajun spice, stock and crawfish tails, simmered down until thick enough to hold its shape on a spoon. Cool the filling completely so it can be spooned into pastry circles, folded into half-moons, crimped sharp at the edge, brushed with egg wash and either deep-fried or baked. The fried version is the classic, with the pastry blistered amber-gold and the filling steaming inside. Eaten warm from the paper with a dab of remoulade and a cold drink.
Dough: flour, butter, sugar, salt, baking powder, egg, milk, mixes to a smooth firm dough. Rests for 30 min. Filling: tinned sardines mash with sautéed onion, chilli, curry powder, thyme, salt. Dough divides; each portion rolls to a 12 cm circle; filling pipes or spoons in a line down the centre; dough rolls around the filling into a cigar; ends pinch sealed. Deep-fries for 5 minutes at 170°C till deep gold.
Thai fishcakes (often called ‘tod mun pla’ on menus) are known for their spongy consistency, which I’m not fond of; that sponginess comes from the egg, so I tend to leave it out. Fishcakes are usually deep-fried in street stalls and restaurants, but I find it much easier to shallow-fry them. These are great served with sweet chilli sauce, Thai seafood dipping sauce and/or cucumber and chilli relish.
A mix of white-fleshed fish (carp, pike, whitefish, or a more modern blend of cod and haddock) is ground with grated onion, eggs, matzo meal and a little sugar, then formed into quenelles. The quenelles poach gently in a broth made from the fish skin, heads and bones with onion and carrot. After an hour they are lifted out and chilled overnight in the strained broth; some of the broth jellies as it cools, which is the point. Served cold, on a leaf of lettuce, with a generous spoon of horseradish.
Rice cooks, dresses with sesame oil and salt while still warm. Fillings prep separately: carrots julienne and stir-fry briefly with salt; spinach blanches, drains, dresses with garlic, salt and sesame oil; egg cooks as a thin omelette, slices into strips; pickled yellow radish (danmuji) cuts into long strips; protein (ham, beef bulgogi, tuna mayo, fishcake) preps to size. Each gim sheet (toasted seaweed) lays on a bamboo mat; rice spreads thin over two-thirds of the sheet; fillings line in the centre; the mat rolls everything tightly. Cut into 12 slices per roll. Brushed with sesame oil; sprinkled with sesame seeds.
A filling of minced pork and chopped prawn binds with coriander root (pounded with garlic and white pepper into the traditional Thai "rak pak chee" paste), oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and a beaten egg. The mixture chills for 20 minutes to firm. Square wonton wrappers go around the filling cupcake-style: filling in the centre, edges pulled up and pleated open around the meat, top brushed with a tiny smear of beaten egg and topped with a thin slice of carrot. Steamed in a bamboo basket over boiling water for 8 minutes. Dip is black soy sauce with sliced chilli and rice vinegar.
The eight-day Passover diet rests on matzo, and matzo brei is the dish that turns yesterday's plain matzo crackers into a proper hot breakfast. Pieces of matzo go briefly under warm water until they soften (but don't disintegrate), then drain. They get folded into beaten salted eggs, sit a minute so the matzo drinks in the egg, and then go into hot foaming butter. Two finishes: cook flat as a thick pancake and flip, or break up and scramble. Eaten immediately with whichever topping the household votes for.
These are the little salt-cod fritters you'd order at a marble counter in Lisbon, sitting with a glass of vinho verde while the bartender slides a plate across with no ceremony. The recipe itself is simple, dry mashed potato through flaked bacalhau with onion, garlic, parsley and egg, then a brief fry, but it does start the day before because the salt cod wants 24 to 36 hours of cold water soaks to draw the salt out. That step is the one thing you cannot shortcut. Once the cod is desalted, everything else is an afternoon's work: simmer the cod, flake it through warm potato, shape into the three-sided football "quenelles" that are the Portuguese signature, and fry until amber. Eat them warm with a wedge of lemon and a dish of piri-piri on the side.
Rissois are the half-moon prawn fritters you'd see in the glass cabinet of every Lisbon snack bar, sold a couple at a time with a paper napkin. The dough is unusual, closer to a hot-water pastry than a normal flour-and-fat dough: you bring water, butter, lemon zest and salt to a boil, dump the flour in all at once, and stir hard until it pulls into a smooth elastic ball. Tip it onto a floured bench, roll paper-thin, cut into discs, then fill each with a spoonful of quick prawn-and-béchamel mixture, fold into a half-moon and crimp the edges. The béchamel needs to be properly cold before you fill, otherwise the dough won't hold its shape. Once they're breaded and frying they cook fast: two minutes a side until amber and crisp. Eat them warm, ideally with a chilled vinho verde.
Yeasted buckwheat batter rises briefly, then dollops of it cook into small fluffy pancakes on a flat pan. Topped with a small spoon of crème fraîche, a curl of smoked salmon, dill, lemon zest, and a tiny grind of pepper. Perfect with cold champagne.
A thin batter is whisked from plain flour, dashi (Japanese stock), eggs, a touch of soy and mirin, salt, like a thin pancake batter. The takoyaki pan (cast-iron or non-stick with half-spherical dimples) heats; each dimple oils with vegetable oil. Batter fills each dimple plus the connecting flat surface (overflow is intentional). A small piece of pre-cooked octopus, a pinch of pickled red ginger, a few cubes of tempura crumbs (tenkasu) and a sprinkle of spring onion drop into each dimple. As the bottom sets, a sharp wooden skewer rotates each ball: scrape the overflow from around each, fold it into the bottom, twist 90° to expose the wet top, allow it to set, twist another 90°, eventually achieving a complete sphere. Cooked until golden all around. The balls are plated and drizzled with takoyaki sauce and mayo, then scattered with bonito flakes and aonori.
A simple yeasted dough rises for 1 hour. Divides into 8 oval-shaped pieces about 10 cm long. Deep-fries for 2-3 minutes per side till golden and puffed (the fried buns triple in size and develop a hollow interior). Splits each bun horizontally with a small knife; stuffs with: a generous spoonful of tuna mashed with harissa; a few thin slices of hard-boiled egg; a few capers; a few olives; thin slices of preserved lemon; a sprinkle of parsley. Eats hot.