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Wotou (Steamed Cornmeal Cones)
Cornmeal mixed with boiling water, shaped by hand into hollow cones and steamed โ the everyday bread of northern China. The name means "nest-shaped thing", and the hollow is the whole design. Corn has no gluten, so nothing rises and the dough cooks at the thickness you built it; a fist-sized lump never gets steam to its centre. Take the centre out and the inside becomes a second surface, so the same size cooks from two faces at once.
Urap (Blanched Vegetables in Spiced Grated Coconut)
A Javanese vegetable salad: blanched or steamed vegetables tossed through seasoned grated coconut. Every other Indonesian dish here presses the coconut for its milk and then spends the recipe managing the fat that comes out of it. Urap presses nothing. The grated flesh is mixed raw with a pounded paste of chilli, garlic, galangal and lime leaf, steamed briefly, and turned through the vegetables as a coating rather than a liquid.
Tonjiru (Pork and Root Vegetable Miso Soup)
Pork and root vegetables โ daikon, carrot, burdock, potato โ fried in sesame oil first, then simmered in water and finished with miso. It uses the same paste as miso soup and runs in the opposite order: miso soup builds a dashi and drops things into it, while here frying the vegetables in the pork fat is what makes the broth. That is why it works without dashi at all, and why โ against the rule that a miso soup is best straight off the heat โ this one is kept and reheated on purpose.
Tapenade (Pounded Olive, Caper and Anchovy Paste)
A Provenรงal meze of olives, capers and anchovy pounded to a coarse paste in a mortar. Almost nothing in the bowl is fresh: all three arrive cured, so the recipe has no step that adds salt. The seasoning was settled at the shop, when the olives were chosen.
Spanakorizo (Spinach and Rice Cooked in the Spinach Water)
A Greek rice dish in which the spinach is wilted first and its own liquid cooks the rice. Dill goes in by the handful, the olive oil is not rationed, and the lemon is squeezed over after the heat is off. The liquid is not poured in and measured; it comes out of the vegetable, so the rice goes in after you can see how much there is. Eaten warm or at room temperature, with feta alongside.
Shchi (Cabbage Soup, Fresh or Soured)
The Russian cabbage soup, and one whose identity is its sourness. Where that sourness comes from changes with the season โ the cabbage itself, sauerkraut, or a sour leaf such as sorrel โ and which one you pick changes the order things go into the pot.
Satsivi (Poached Poultry Under a Cold Walnut Sauce)
Poached chicken or turkey served cold under a walnut sauce โ a Georgian holiday dish whose name means "the cold thing", and the cold is the method. The walnuts are ground fine and let down with the poaching broth, garlic, vinegar and spices, and the sauce is never cooked. Heat it and the walnut oil separates and the sauce breaks. It goes on the table at New Year and Christmas.
Samlor Kako (Stirring Soup with Toasted Rice)
Cambodia's national soup: a pounded Khmer paste of lemongrass and turmeric let out into a broth, whatever vegetables there are simmered in it, and the body brought up at the end with rice that has been toasted dark and ground. Kako means to stir. Where amok seals the same paste into a banana-leaf cup so that nothing escapes, this one dissolves it into a litre of liquid โ and the toasted rice and the prahok are what pay for that.
Reganmian (Hot Dry Noodles with Sesame Paste)
Wuhan's breakfast noodle, and it sits in a gap the site's other noodles leave open: not a soup, and not a cold dressed bowl either, but hot with no broth at all. The noodles are boiled the day before, tossed in oil and fanned cool, then dipped for ten seconds in boiling water and dressed with sesame paste. The noodle rules say never to oil a strand, because the film keeps sauce off it. That rule quietly assumes the sauce is water-based, and sesame paste is not.
Raclette (Melted Cheese Scraped over Potatoes)
A Swiss cheese dish that is barely a recipe: the cut face of a half wheel is held under a heater and the melted layer scraped straight onto hot potatoes. Nothing is added to the cheese โ no starch, no wine, no emulsifying salts โ because nothing is ever held long enough to need it.
Piadina (Romagna Flatbread Made with Lard)
Flour worked with lard, no yeast, rolled to 3mm and cooked in about two minutes on a dry iron plate, then folded around a filling โ the bread of Emilia-Romagna. The fat goes into the dough and not into the pan, and that combination is the character of the bread: the lard shortens the gluten strands so it breaks tenderly instead of stretching, while the dry plate keeps it from crisping, so it still folds in the hand.
Pancit Bihon (Stir-Fried Rice Vermicelli)
A Filipino stir-fried noodle in which fine rice vermicelli is softened in cold water and then finished in a measured amount of fully seasoned stock that it drinks to the last spoonful. There is no pot of boiling water anywhere in it, so that stock is the noodleโs only chance at seasoning โ which makes its quantity and its salt the whole recipe.
Thatโs every recipe.