Recipes

Trine Hahnemann · Scandinavian Comfort Food: Embracing The Art Of Hygge

Pancakes for breakfast are a real treat. I have a bit of an obsession with rye, not only for health reasons but also because I really like the flavour, and it just adds something to so many things. I didn't grow up with American pancakes (they were something you saw in the movies), and never had pancakes in the morning - they were a treat or even dinner. I started making this recipe in the early 1990s when I was living in Washington D.C. and I was very influenced by American cooking.

Trine Hahnemann · Scandinavian Baking

One day I was researching shortcrust pastry recipes and I asked my good friend and author Carolyn Steel - whose family had been hoteliers - if she had a great version. Her brother Brian had the recipe from the hotel, so I have him to thank for this truly excellent pastry. It is now part of this very classic Danish cake recipe with custard, which we call linse.

Trine Hahnemann · Scandinavian Christmas

Some people think this is a really is a weird way to eat potatoes! In my family, they are an essential part of Christmas Eve dinner. The secret to the perfect caramel potato is time; let them simmer slow and easy while you turn them gently now and then, so they are coated with caramel over and over again.

Nargisse Benkabbou · Madaq

Traybake dinners are one of the tricks that I often turn to in order to make my life easier. To me, these recipes are about packing as many flavours and textures as possible into one pan and letting the oven do its job. A roasted chicken may be the ultimate comfort food, and many of my traybake dinners feature chicken. I love how the juices and fat that the chicken releases during the roasting process meld with the seasoning to create a rich, satisfying sauce. As soon as I take the pan out of the oven, I dip a big chunk of bread into the warm sauce – it is, without doubt, the best part. This recipe is a traybake version of a grape, chickpea, and thyme chicken tagine. The grapes, added towards the end of cooking, caramelize in the hot juices and warm spices to create a delicious burst of flavour that beautifully complements the thyme. My favourite way to enjoy this dish is with a dollop of Greek yogurt and plenty of bread for sopping up the cooking juices.

Irina Georgescu · Tava

These flatbread-style pies come in many variations throughout Romania and each of them is considered to be key to the cultural identity of the region you eat them in. They are called plăcinte, turte, scovergi, pite or lipii, and can be fried or grilled. There is a tradition in Ardeal, another name for Transylvania, to cook the pies on a lespede, which is a baking stone. A typical sweet filling can either be curd cheese or jam, drizzled with honey or dusted with icing (confectioner’s) sugar. I read that in old times these pies were so important that even a young lady’s dowry would include one of them. I have chosen to make a recipe with curd cheese, since it is easier to fold and cook, and irresistible when served with honey.

Joseph Abboud · Rumi

The problem with toum is that you’ll find yourself using it everywhere, and everything you make ends up ‘needing toum’. If you’re not sure what toum is, it is the Arabic word for garlic as well as the paste that is a combination of garlic, oil, salt and lemon — almost like a thick garlic mayonnaise without egg.

Ursula Ferrigno · Dolci Italiani

This is perfect for big family gatherings, which happen often in my family. Ideal for anything from an eighteenth birthday, right through to a wedding celebration.

Tony Kitous and dan Lepard · Comptoir Libanais

Za'atar can cause a little confusion. It's the term for the Middle Eastern spice mix made from a heady combination of herbs, spices and seeds; however, it's also the name of a herb itself. As with so much of Middle Eastern cooking, there any many regional variations. Its uses are limitless: it can be sprinkled over food on its own, stirred into dips or through rice, or massaged over chicken or meat as a dry rub. In Lebanon it's strongly associated with the breakfast table, where it's used in both a sweet and a savoury context.

Ixta Belfrage · MEZCLA: Recipes to Excite

I should really take the salad out of this title, because, let’s be honest, we’re all here for the crumpet croutons. Once baked, their inherent holes crisp up and allow for an extra crunchy crouton experience which will leave you wondering if you’ll ever do it any other way again. Add these croutons to just about any salad in the book — they’re especially wonderful atop a salad made from leftover curried roast chicken. This salad uses Middle Eastern chillies in the oil, as well as many other ingredients that would never be used in Sichuan cuisine, but nonetheless it is very much inspired by the inimitable cucumber salad at Xi'an Biang Biang Noodles in East London (not the crumpet croutons part, of course).

Tom Parker Bowles · Fortnum & Mason: The Cook Book

The great Fortnum's dish. Quality is everything. Sausage meat is relatively cheap, so buy free-range from the butcher. Happy pigs make for wonderful-tasting meat, and you really want to wallow in that flavour. Make sure the egg is a little undercooked too. The art is all in the ooze. Serve with piccalilli and eat with your hands.

Tom Parker Bowles · Christmas & Other Winter Feasts

Damn, this is a fine Yule log, the sharpness of the sour cherries cutting through any chocolate excess. A subtle hint of kirsch works wonders too. It looks lovely plain, but feel free to add your own Christmassy decoration.

Tom Hunt · The Natural Cook

The best breakfast, a healthy yet hearty replacement for the full English. We serve it in huge pans from my festival cafe, with hundreds of eggs poaching in the rich tomato sauce.

Jess Murphy · The Kai Cookbook

Toby’s parents are two of the best organic gardeners ever, just outside of Galway at Sloe Hill Farm in a small village called Abbeyknockmoy. They grow these little Lebanese-style cucumbers and prickly gherkins that I order every summer. We do all sorts of dishes with them, but this is one of my faves. Long story short, my dad lives in Bangkok with his partner, Tuc, who’s Thai. I had this sauce on a trip to Thailand to visit them once. I’ve taken some liberties with the traditional recipes and have given it my own little twist, but it’s kick-ass with Toby’s cucumbers on a hot Galway day. Served with steamed rice and a cold beer, you’ll be in your fresh and sassy era.

Melissa Thompson

This is a lovely dish that doesn’t have to be reserved for after a meal. It is perfect as a brunch dish that is beautifully reminiscent of actual tiramisu but so much quicker to pull together.

Tim Anderson · Your Home Izakaya: Fun and Simple Recipes Inspired by the Drinking-and-Dining Dens of Japan

One of my very favourite lunch spots in Japan was a little fast food shop called Pepper Lunch. Pepper Lunch is a chain, with over 200 branches in Japan and even more outside Japan. It’s not exactly the pinnacle of Japanese gastronomy, and my Japanese colleagues teased me for liking it so much, but damn, did they do some good pepper steak. It was cheap — suspiciously so — but it was always cooked perfectly and it was also really good beef, highly marbled and incredibly tender. Of course, the seasonings were so tasty (lots of pepper, lots of garlic, lots of soy sauce) that you probably could have cooked an old shoe in them and it would have tasted reasonably good. So this is my loving homage to Pepper Lunch.

Tim Anderson · Vegan JapanEasy: Classic and Modern Vegan Japanese Recipes To Cook At Home

I'm sure you've seen those pop-sci articles about how to spot a psychopath, like how they don't yawn when other people yawn or how they watch Love Island. Well here's another dead giveaway: only psychopaths don't love gyoza. This is 100 per cent true. Or maybe not, I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. But I am an experienced gyozologist and if there's one thing my years of study has taught me, it's that gyoza is beloved by all decent human beings. What's not to love about steamy little parcels of dough, supple on top and crispy on the bottom, stuffed with juicy and flavourful fillings. Making gyoza takes a bit of practise, but it's not hard - and once you find your groove, crimping and folding them becomes a pleasantly mindless repetitive task, like a kind of meditation. Or, if you are making a lot of gyoza, you can get your friends and family involved and it becomes a really fun, chatty, social experience (gyoza is a great conduit for gossip). Oh yes and gyoza is even easier if you

Thomasina Miers · Chilli Notes

This recipe is for dark, wintery weekends when warming yourself with cooking seems the only way forward. I like to make it on Saturday morning and then let it sit somewhere cool overnight so that the flavours have time to develop. The fruity, raisin-like flavours of the pasilla chilli go well with the prunes and add real depth to the beef shin. If you can't find pasilla use a touch of cayenne instead. I like to make lots as it's so easy and keeps brilliantly in the freezer so double the recipe if you like.

The Palomar · The Palomar Cookbook

We make this salad exactly how my grandma Grazia used to make it. It’s spicy and sour, and totally addictive. I like to have it with merguez sausages, but it also works really well with fish and seafood. Just make sure to pair it with a strongly flavoured protein — one that can put up a good fight in the face of the intensity of this salad. When all’s said and done, my favourite way to eat it is simply with some plain white rice.

Jess Murphy · The Kai Cookbook

Whenever we make this cake, people pre-order it and it always sells out. This gorgeous gateau was the brainchild of Fabian, a super-talented French pastry chef from La Rochelle who worked at Kai. Since the West of Ireland has the highest number of coeliacs per capita in Europe, we always need a kick-ass gluten-free cake on the cake bar, and this is it. This recipe uses pistachio paste, which isn’t the same thing as the pistachio spread that you can find more easily in the shops. You’ll probably have to get the paste from an online catering supply store. It’s a hassle, I know, but it’s worth it. This cake is basically Taylor Swift. Her reputation precedes her.

Eddie Scott · Misarana

This recipe pays homage to both the Hull pattie and vada pav and I’m sure that I’ve created something quite unique in doing so.

Helly Raichura · The Food of Bharat

The Syrian Christian community’s cuisine in India is heavily influenced by local produce and techniques. The community is composed of local Brahmins who were converted to Christianity, and a few hundred Syrian Christians who had travelled there, with both communities merging through intermarriage. Christmas and Easter are prominent festivals celebrated by the community, with a spread of dishes that use spices, produce and techniques popular in Malabar cooking. One of the most popular festive dishes is a roast duck made with flavourful spices.

Stephen Harris · The Sportsman At Home

This tart is almost healthy as it has no added sugar. The idea is based on a tarte fine aux pommes, but using tangerines instead of apples. It’s important to follow the instructions carefully, and make sure you have the right knife to slice the tangerines. I use a ceramic knife, but some people may prefer a serrated knife. It seems that you can judge a tree or plant’s success by how widespread it has become. If this is the case, then the citrus genus would seem to be a winner. Not only has it conquered the subtropics and mild, temperate zones of the world but we even grew a lemon tree in the conservatory of The Sportsman. At the time of writing, it has been a particularly grey, low-skied start to the year – so much so, that I did something was struck by the bright green colour, the fragrance and the beauty of the segments as well as the vesicles containing small amounts of juice. It made me realise what a magnificent thing it is that just when we are struggling with short, dark days, w

Hisham Assaad · Taboon

Tamriye and kallaj Ramadan are similar pastries but they are not the same. Kallaj is almost exclusively sold during Ramadan and bought fresh an hour before iftar. The pastries are stuffed with Ashta while the similar-looking tamriye are filled with Halawet el Smeed — a semolina pudding. Tamriye is one of the items sold in the shacks set in squares or next to churches during the feasts of saints. It takes skill to raise and slap the dough on the counter to spread it out as thinly as these experts do. I happened to be in Al Mrouj, a mountain village in Al Matn, during the week of the Saint Takla feast. Two shacks selling sweets were fighting for my attention when they saw me taking photos and wanted me to buy their products. I almost caused a fight between them, but I eventually tasted from both — their tamriye were excellent.

Josh Niland · Take One Fish

Who doesn’t love a good schnitty! This bone-in, Flintstone-like chop relies heavily on being fried in ghee. The flavour and stability of temperature that ghee provides is unrivalled by other cooking fats.