Recipes

Thomas Straker · Food You Want To Eat

Crab is one of my all-time favourite ingredients. Crab on toast is pretty outrageous as is, but once you put dressed crab on a freshly baked flatbread, you are in seafood heaven. Here, time to key: you need to make sure the flatbread dough has enough time to ferment in the fridge for up to a couple of days, to create both the perfect texture and those heavily desired leopard spots on the edges.

Linda Dangoor · From The Tigris To The Thames

A summer dish that is very popular and homely all over France. Every household makes this dish during the hot summer months when there is an abundance of courgettes. The courgettes are sometimes sliced, grated or cubed, then steamed, stir-fried or blanched in water or milk, before being coated with a mixture of eggs, cream or crème fraîche and grated cheese. I make this dish with a breadcrumb gratin top very often. I serve it warm or cold with a simple salad on the side.

Letitia Clark · Wild Figs and Fennel

This cake has the most sublime texture and tastes like the very essence of summer. Lemony light, damply sweet from the courgettes (zucchini) and with a wonderful cloud-whip of tangy icing (frosting) it is the perfect cake for a long summer afternoon. It is also very good at breakfast without the icing (plain with a dollop of yoghurt, or with a simple lemon glaze would be nice), very good at teatime or for occasions. A highly adaptable, fresh and fruity cake, moist and zesty, just-flecked with pale green, and a great way of using up endless courgettes. If you have fresh ginger readily available you can use that, too. It creates an even more vibrant flavour. Any extra icing can be used as a little mousse alongside some summer berries.

Dolly Parton and Rachel Parton George · Good Lookin' Cookin'

We admit it — we love the way butter or some sort of grease makes food taste, especially bacon grease. That’s why we use it to cook up country ham. I use it more than Rachel, so I have people save their bacon grease for me. I tell them, “Don’t throw away your bacon grease!” And when somebody says, “How do you keep your skin looking so good?” I tell them, “Bacon grease . . . from the inside out!” This is one of my favorite recipes from many years ago, and it is still a fantastic biscuit! Also, these are so easy to start in the food processor, which I often use to save time. If you don’t have one, you can also mix your dry ingredients and cut in your shortening and butter by hand like Mama used to. She was so good at cooking and making biscuits that she could just work the dough by hand and before you knew it, the whole pan would be coming out of the oven!

Emily Scott · Time & Tide

This is my dream fishy supper — a seaside soirée just would not be the same without this showstopper, which is also great as a Sunday lunch. Cook with your favourite tunes and glass in hand. Simple and quick to make, colourful and delicious, this rustic stew will always be a winner for satisfying seaside cravings. Use whatever fish and shellfish you like — I’ve used Cornish gurnard, mussels and prawns (shrimp) — to dress it up or down. I also make more aioli than is strictly necessary to celebrate this wonderful dish.

Helena and Vikki Moursellas · Peináo: A Greek Feast for All

We know what you’re thinking, this isn’t your traditional baklava, but who doesn’t love dried figs? The figs give this baklava a natural sweetness, but if you don’t have any, simply replace them with the same amount of extra nuts.

Claudia Roden · Med

This rich Levantine combination is immensely satisfying, with layers of flavour and aroma. The optional halloumi cheese makes it a meal in itself. As with anything cooked with oil, leftovers can be eaten cold — but not, in this case, if there is halloumi, as it becomes rubbery when cold.

Rick Stein and Jill Stein

When Jack was working in Sydney, he used to go to a restaurant in China Town called Golden Century and they would do XO clams with pipis, a type of shellfish. This is the version he brought home, and this XO sauce works really well with European clams. It’s a complicated sauce with lots of chilli and dried seafood, but it is so moreish.

Claire Thomson · New Kitchen Basics

Tomatoes and dates blitzed and cooked together here with some chubby chickpeas (garbanzos) make for a mind-blowingly good sweet, sharp and fruity flavour. Like many things (cheese, wine, human beings...), this dish improves with age; it tastes better after a good rest. Make it the day before, refrigerate and reheat. It really is effortless to make. Some brown butter would be an excellent addition on top to serve; good olive oil is also fine and less of a faff. For US cup measures, use the toggle at the top of the ingredients list.

Claire Thomson · Home Cookery Year

This is a simple cake, which in my eyes makes it a great cake, one that anyone can make. Choose an interesting variety of apple if you can. With it being autumn, this shouldn't be all that difficult. I especially love russet apples, to eat and also to use in cakes and desserts. Russets, with their matt yellow and golden-brown colour and almost sandpapery skin, are the ugly duckling of the apple world, until you bite into one. With a firm, dry texture, they are less juicy, although definitely more crunchy, and the chomp of a russet apple can be heard from a mile off. Russet apples have the best flavour of all, fragrant like a pear, slightly nutty, and beautifully sweet. Baked here in the toffee and caramel sauce, the apples turn fudgy and glossy when up-ended as the topping to this cake.

Claire Saffitz · Dessert Person

These cookies will look nearly raw in the center when you pull them out of the oven, but they will continue to set as they cool. The key to the soft and chewy texture of these cookies is, simply, underbaking them. If you like a crispier spice cookie, bake them 2 minutes longer. The cookies, stored airtight at room temperature, will keep up to 5 days. The dough can be refrigerated up to 3 days. You can also roll the dough into balls and toss in sugar, then arrange them in tight rows on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and freeze solid. Transfer the balls to a resealable plastic freezer bag and keep frozen up to 2 months. No need to thaw before baking, but extend the bake time by a couple of minutes. Active Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 2 hours 10 minutes (includes 1 hour for chilling). Special Equipment: Stand or hand mixer.

Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton · Canal House: Cook Something

Escarole, a type of chicory, has rounded, ruffled leaves, a pale green center with darker green edges, and an intriguing, mild bitterness. Pairing it with the sweetness of English peas makes a perfectly balanced "sauce".

Jürgen Krauss · German Baking

The most famous and celebrated Stollen is Dresdner Stollen, now trademarked, from the city of Dresden in Saxony. It is laden with fruit and is made with double cream and lots of butter. For me, it is inseparable from Christmas. Usually, my parents would be given a Stollen as a Christmas gift and it was a real treat on the coffee table. It keeps extremely well and needs several weeks to mature and unfold all its flavours. German Baking by Jürgen Krauss is published by Kyle Books, £26.00, www.octopusbooks.co.uk

Sonali Shah · Dip In

A Mexican street-food classic, this dip is not for the faint hearted. Eat soon after it’s out of the oven to make the most of the cheesy goodness. You can swap the chorizo for mushrooms, which is often done in Mexico, and add sliced hot green chillies for more heat.

Rawaan Alkhatib · Hot Date!

A very rich, very intense delivery mechanism for dark chocolate, this sorbet cuts out anything that might distract from the chocolate itself, omitting the muffling effect of eggs and cream and keeping the focus squarely on the cacao. Use the best cocoa powder and chocolate you can get your hands on, as there isn’t anything for the chocolate to hide behind. I love to serve little scoops of this at the end of a rich meal, along with a similarly sized cup of espresso or Turkish coffee for each guest. As with the other very chocolate-forward recipes in this chapter of the book, dates are the backup dancers to chocolate’s Beyoncé: think of the date molasses as a flavor enhancer, not the star of the show. That said, if you are making this in early autumn, when rutab dates are in season, try folding them directly into the just-churned ice cream for a luscious ready-to-go date ripple. I also highly recommend serving this with the optional Warm Salted Dates (recipe below), which act like a sor

Katy Beskow · Easy Speedy Vegan

This is a 2-in-1 recipe that can be enjoyed warm (the melted chocolate will give a natural heat), or chill overnight for a more set dessert, depending on your mood or the season. Use hazelnut extract sparingly, as it has a concentrated flavour, but opt for the best quality you can afford.

Kate Young · Dinner At Mine?

Babka has its roots in the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community, where enriched dough was spread with jam, cheese, or spices before being rolled up and baked. It is commonly made with chocolate, thought to have been an American addition that originated when Jewish communities began baking it in the States. It was there that I ate my first slice of babka: in New York, on the Lower East Side. It was the platonic ideal — the dough soft, the crust as crisp and sweet as that of a glazed doughnut, rich chocolate ribboned all the way through. This recipe is the result of a happy year spent playing around with a number of famous babka recipes in the hope of creating something that lived up to that first slice. I leaned on the famous Breads Bakery, as well as Russ & Daughters in New York, and on Yotam Ottolenghi too. There is butter in the dough and in the filling, and though it’s a bread that really relies on all its various components for tender perfection, it’s the quantity of butter

James Park · Chili Crisp

As an egg yolk lover, I adore carbonara. The rich yolky sauce that coats the noodles is truly magical! But, whenever I enjoy carbonara, I crave something sharp, spicy, and vinegary to balance the rich sauce. After devouring a rich carbonara dish, I would open my tub of kimchi and eat straight out of the jar, standing in front of my fridge. But how about incorporating spice into the carbonara sauce? The addition of chili crisp turns the rich yolk sauce a beautiful amber-orange. When you slurp the pasta, it goes from being rich and luscious to peppery and spicy, then sharp and salty thanks to the Parmesan. It’s an endlessly delicious cycle of flavors! You can substitute bacon instead of pancetta, but pancetta has more distinct porky flavors that make the sauce worthy of devouring. And the egg yolk at the end creates a stunning presentation and a decadent sauce. Feel and taste the joy and excitement of breaking the yolk with this spicy, flavorful, and yolky carbonara!

Alexina Anatole · Bitter

This is a delicious, warming dish that hails from Belgium (and Northern France): bitter chicory are braised, wrapped in salty ham, smothered in a mustard-spiked béchamel sauce and showered in umami-rich grated Gruyère. I am indebted to MasterChef winner Eddie Scott for alerting me to the beauty of braising the chicory in beer — something that obviously suits the theme of this book. This dish is delicious as a meal in its own right, served with a green salad, but it also works well as a side to meat. If you’d rather keep this dish meat-free, you can easily leave out the ham, bearing in mind that the bitterness of the chicory will come through a little stronger.

Christina Soteriou · Big Veg Energy

This is perfect alone as a speedy lunch, or it can be served with crusty bread or your favourite grain for something more substantial. It is such a versatile recipe; try some different beans, vegetables and condiments depending on what you have to hand.

Su Scott · Rice Table

Chicken skewers have long been one of the most popular Korean street foods. Perfectly bite-sized strips of dark meat (usually leg meat) are grilled over charcoal, then brushed with a lick of sauce, the recipe for which is the owners’ well-kept secret. Chefs get quite theatrical blow-torching the top of the skewers while the undersides grill slowly over the charcoal heat to create what literally translates as ‘fire taste’ (bul mat). The glaze I use here isn’t spicy, rather it is balanced with sweet and umami saltiness that eats pleasantly. If you want to get ahead, it can be made in advance and will keep for a few days in the fridge. Crispy chicken skin crumbs make exceptionally good seasoning salt; the trouble is, they are actually just as good straight from the oven, which makes it hard to resist nibbling on them while waiting for the skewers to cook.

Tim Anderson · JapanEasy Bowls & Bento

One of my all-time favourite Japanese comfort foods is tonjiru, a hearty miso soup made with chunky root vegetables and slow-cooked pork. This recipe is based on that, but uses chicken instead of pork for a lighter flavour but no less heart-warming effect. Like any good chicken soup, this one also works as a meal in and of itself.

Emiko Davies · The Japanese Pantry

You can often order tsukune in a yakitori shop, along with a variety of other chicken cuts grilled on sticks over coals. It might come as one long patty or smaller balls piled onto the stick; or, sometimes, without even the sticks and as flatter patties. In some places the ground chicken might have crunchy cartilage through it (chicken cartilage is a valuable food in Japan, both for its texture and its richness in collagen). But at home it’s much easier to make these as regular meatballs, simply pan-fried and then finished in a characteristic teriyaki sauce. These are great on their own as an appetiser, or turn them into the main meal with rice, miso soup and some pickles. They’re also perfect in bento boxes or added to a donburi. VARIATIONS: Use any white fish instead of chicken – because the fish is softer, it will make flatter patties. For a vegan version, use fork-mashed tofu (but not silken tofu, which is too moist). This is basically a tofu fritter known a ganmodoki, and it usu

Henry Harris (editors: Jane Hodson, Lucas Hollweg and Clerkenwell Boy) · These Delicious Things

Mum was — and still is — a serial entertainer. She always did things well, with proper structure. Nibbles and olives with drinks, a fish starter, a meat course, cheese — in the French way, before dessert — and a choice of three puddings, which always seemed to include grape brulée and a chocolate roulade, referred to in our house as “elephant’s turd”. Summer lunches in the garden were populated with good things from the barbecue — grilled prawns, sausages, steaks and lamb chops — with the starters laid out on the table. There would be whole smoked mackerel with sweet mustard sauce, smoked salmon, homemade taramasalata, salami and prosciutto, and Mum’s chicken liver pâté, served in its terrine with a knife plunged into it. It was a lovely, old-fashioned pâté, with plenty of garlic and a texture that could be squashed onto toast. Dad would grill bread on the barbecue to go with it. In the 1960s, he had worked in the computer business, but at one of our summer lunches, he announced that