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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.
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.
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.
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.