Recipes

Parragon Books · The Burger

These Japanese vegan snacks are made with cooked rice pressed into the shape of buns, crisp on the outside, with savoury spinach inside.

Paola Bacchia · Istria

Potatoes and cabbage were staples of winter meals in Istria; plentiful, filling and affordable. Speck or pancetta add fat and flavour to this simple dish, based on one Alice, my friend Tamara’s mother, would make, using savoy cabbage and potatoes from her husband Erminio’s garden. I also add sauerkraut for acidity, and caraway seeds for complexity, as I love their fragrant anise-like taste. To make this a complete wintery meal, I like to include a few good-quality pork sausages or partially cured chorizo. Some mustard and a bit of horseradish on the side wouldn’t go astray either.

Samin Nosrat · Good Things

Back when I cooked monthly dinners at Tartine bakery, I tried to incorporate their extraordinary bread into every menu. At some point, I began scoring loaves destined to become garlic bread vertically rather than halving them horizontally. The brilliance of this small tweak is that it allows for a maximal ratio of garlic butter to bread. The resulting loaf was so laden with garlic, herb, and Parmesan butter that it was, well, criminally good. Friends soon started calling it pane criminale. This recipe shines when made with a rustic loaf of farmhouse-style bread, but baguettes work well, too. Either way, use the most flavourful, crustiest bread you can find—it’ll make all the difference.

Sergio Herman · Mussels

Pan-fried mussels transport me to my grandfather's kitchen. I would go there for lunch as a little boy, and I remember taking in that smell — pure magic.

Sue Lawrence · New Scottish Baking

Any visitor to Orkney over the past couple of decades will have been unable to leave the islands without trying what has become a local institution — the Orkney fudge cheesecake. Rich and creamy, it is made with local fudge and is possibly the most moreish cheesecake ever. If you can’t find Orkney fudge, use another good quality fudge. I have even used tablet for this and it works pretty well, too. It is easier to grate the fudge if it is well chilled first. Decorate with extra grated fudge or with seasonal berries.

Philip Khoury · Beyond Baking

Melomakarona, the quintessential Greek Christmas biscuit (cookie), is a symphony of honey, spice and festive delight. This version takes a subtle detour, swapping honey for maple syrup and folding walnuts into the dough for an irresistibly tender bite. A small twist on tradition, but one that feels right.

Shally Tucker · The Social Kitchen: Food For Family & Friends

Onion rings are a classic in our home and we make them all the time. They’re always so popular that people would eat them all before we had a chance to put them on the table and we’d have to quickly cook up some more. The key to success is simple – have the oil nice and hot.

Nagi Maehashi · RecipeTin Eats Dinner

Anyone who knows me knows I hate rolling meatballs — hence why I love these sausage meatballs. Just cut sausages up into pieces and voila, instant meatballs! Here I cook them in a bright tomato sauce with rigatoni. Think a big, bubbly pasta bake — only you’ve done it all on the stove in one pot in less time than it’d take to roll up proper meatballs!

Olia Hercules · Mamushka: Recipes From Ukraine & Beyond

The word pampushka can be used to describe a gorgeous plump woman and is one of my favourite words. Pam-poo-shka! These pampushky are traditionally served with red borshch. In Ukraine, we would use regular garlic, so if you can’t find wet (new) garlic don’t worry – it will still be delicious.

Olia Hercules · Kaukasis

This is an extremely simple dish, taught to me by an Armenian friend, and one of the best ways to turn chicken leftovers into something mind-blowing, although it would be totally worth poaching a whole chicken just to make this. Herbs, seasoned yogurt, barberries, toasted sunflower seeds, chicken, crispy top – I can’t think of anything better to eat on a Monday night. If you live alone, or like me with a small child, you can make a mini version using a smaller baking tray.

Olia Hercules · Summer Kitchens

My friend Jan once drunkenly asked me to cook for his dad Anton’s seventieth birthday, which I enthusiastically agreed to (also tipsy). Anton, aka Papa Florek or P Flo, grew up in Derby – his Polish father, Alfredo, had settled there after the war, when he was demobbed from the Carpathian Lancers. Sernyk, a traditional cheesecake eaten across Poland and Ukraine, was one of Anton’s childhood favourites, something that connected him to his Polish heritage, so I decided that’s what I would make. Struggling to find good-quality cottage cheese the day before, I panicked and bought ricotta, adapting my mum’s original recipe to suit the moister texture of ricotta. Happily, it was a huge success, and this cake is now also one of my son’s favourites. I hope someone will make it for him when he is seventy.

Noor Murad and Yotam Ottolenghi · Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love

Kebab shop ‘chips with mayo’ are the inspiration for this dish, although this version is a little more involved. There’s a generous sauce-to-potato ratio here, which is kind of naughty, but also what you really, truly want.

Helen Graham · Centrepiece

This ice cream is slightly chewy from the evaporated milk, and the muscovado gives it a deep molasses flavour. The sherry-soaked raisins need at least two days to plump up and absorb the sherry and ras el hanout flavours, so if time is not on your side, this ice cream honestly pairs with so many other things: candied nuts, a little olive oil, chopped mango or strawberries. To me, this tastes like Christmas.

Nisha Katona · The Spice Tree: Indian Cooking Made Beautifully Simple

This is a Rolls-Royce of a dish. Poppy seed and mustard seem to dive straight into the endorphins. I implore you to please master ground white poppy seeds, as they are one of those Indian kitchen secrets that will change your world. Grind them and they will keep in a jar for weeks. Do make play of the spice formula in this recipe – try it with green beans, courgettes and potato and let the scales fall from your eyes.

Niki Segnit · Lateral Cooking

Venezuelan cachapas are a type of sweetcorn pancake made by grinding fresh kernels with salt, egg and butter. The variety of corn used in Venezuela is so starchy – the kernels release a pearly liquid when pulverised – that no flour or milk is needed to create a luxuriously thick batter, stippled with nibs of whole corn. Once cooked, the pancake is folded over a generous helping of queso blanco, the mild, white, Latin-American cheese you might replace with some mozzarella or halloumi. This recipe works for the sort of sweetcorn widely available in the UK, but without the authentic starchiness, you do have to rely on the egg and a small amount of flour to make the batter cohere.

Nik Sharma · The Flavor Equation

Sweet potatoes are on a monthly rotation in my household; even my dog, Snoopy, loved them. The different components of the pie can be prepared on different days. Here's a suggested order of steps you might find useful, especially if you make this for Thanksgiving. Day 1: Roast sweet potatoes, reduce the beer, and prepare the pie crust, but don't blind bake (partially bake). Day 2: Blind bake the pie crust, prepare the sweet potato custard, and bake the pie. Of course, you can also do this all in one day. The Flavour Approach: Heat plays a very important part in this recipe: The bitterness of beer is concentrated through reduction by evaporating the water. When the nuts in the crust are heated, a whole new set of flavour molecules is produced, which will vary depending on the type of nut used. Heat also helps the egg, nuts, and sugar bind together to form the structure of the pie. When sweet potatoes are heated, the enzyme amylase breaks down the starch stored in the vegetable’s cell

Nik Sharma · Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food

The inspiration for this cake is a sweet chutney made from dates and tamarind, which is commonly served as a dipping sauce with samosas and other fried snacks. I often dust this cake with confectioners’ sugar or drizzle it with a little Kefir Creme Fraiche (see below). A high-speed blender is a marvelous tool to use for olive oil cakes because it can quickly whip air and emulsify the liquids in the batter to create a delicate cake crumb. This cake is first spiced with ginger and black pepper and sweetened with jaggery, adding contrast to the tamarind and dates in the batter, and then finally drizzled with a tamarind glaze to add a pop of fruitiness. I prefer to use the sour tamarind found in the Asian grocery stores rather than the sweeter Mexican variety because its stronger flavor comes through better in baking.

Nigel Slater · A Cook's Book

Roasted nuts, dark chocolate. A marriage made in heaven. The cake will appear, as you take it from the oven, to be not quite ready. The middle will be slightly sunken and feel less springy than the sides. That is as it should be. As it cools, the texture settles and the result is deeply fudgy and really rather pleasing. It is, incidentally, flourless and will keep, covered with kitchen foil, for several days.

Nigel Slater · Greenfeast

Spring roots roasted. A creamy dressing.

Nigel Slater · Eat

Frugal, plain and simple. Peaceful starch and soothing stock with a back note of smoke.

Nargisse Benkabbou · Casablanca: My Moroccan Food

I love eggs. Fried, scrambled, Benedict or Royale, anything with a runny egg yolk has the potential to make me unreasonably excited. I can’t tell you how much I adore my Moroccan take on eggs Florentine with harissa hollandaise! It’s interesting how a bit of ras el hanout and harissa can give a unique twist to such a classic dish. It certainly proves that a little goes a long way. The harissa hollandaise is so tasty and easy to prepare, I always make a double batch and use it for poached fish or grilled asparagus the next day.

Yevhen Klopotenko · The Authentic Ukrainian Kitchen: Recipes from a Native Chef

Nothing beats a thin crêpe with lots of sweet or savoury filling. Filled crêpes — whether rolled up or folded into little envelopes — are so popular in Ukraine that you can buy them ready to serve or frozen in any grocery store in the country. But while those are convenient, I’m a firm believer in making these crêpes from scratch and filling them with creamy soft cheese and sweet raisins.

Nadiya Hussain · Nadiya Bakes

Meringue pie is a classic, especially the familiar lemon variety. But it's also a recipe where there are so many variations possible and this is just one of countless ways to mix it up. Instead of biscuit or pastry I've made the base with sweet crisp cereal and instead of lemon curd I've gone for orange and lemongrass. The only bit that hasn't changed is the top, as I think meringue needs no improvement.

Nadiya Hussain · Nadiya's Kitchen

This has to be one of the most nostalgic breakfast recipes - it takes me right back. This was my mum's thrifty way of using up bread that was very close to its sell-by date, with ingredients she always had at home, like onions, chillies and coriander. Bread never lasts long enough in our house to go out of date, but I make this recipe just for the trip down memory lane. When you toast the bread in the pan long enough for it to get crispy, the onions soften and the cooked-out chillies will mellow. Finally add the egg to weld it all together, with a dash of fresh coriander. It makes for the heartiest breakfast, and we still eat it the way I did twenty years ago - all together in a circle on the floor, with six forks.