Appetizer
Dishes served before or beside the main ones: dips and spreads, raw and cured plates, dumplings, fritters and skewers. Several are served raw, so how they are cut matters as much as how they are seasoned. Basics to read first: Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size Matters
Ankimo (Steamed Monkfish Liver)
A Japanese delicacy of monkfish liver: rubbed with salt, rinsed in sake, cleaned of its veins, rolled into a cylinder and steamed. Chilled and sliced into rounds, it is served with momiji-oroshi (grated daikon with chilli), scallion and ponzu. The liver is about 40% fat, which is why it is called the foie gras of the sea.
Almogrote (Hard Cheese and Pepper Spread)
A spread from La Gomera in the Canary Islands: a long-aged hard goat cheese grated fine and worked with hot pepper, garlic and olive oil. No heat is used. The cheese is too hard to mash, so it is grated and loosened with oil, and the amount of oil sets how thick the paste is. Spread on toast or potatoes.
Tomatokeftedes (Santorini Tomato Fritters)
Tomato fritters from Santorini. Tomatoes are chopped fine by knife, mixed with onion, mint and parsley, and stiffened with flour into a thick batter that is dropped by the spoonful into hot oil. No water goes in: the juice from the tomatoes is the liquid of the batter.
Boquerones en Vinagre (Fresh Anchovies Cured in Vinegar)
A standard Spanish bar tapa. Fresh anchovies are filleted, soaked three hours in brine and six in vinegar until the brown flesh is white all through, then laid in olive oil with garlic and parsley and served cold. Nothing is cooked, so the fish is frozen first.
Œufs en Meurette (Eggs Poached in Red Wine Sauce)
A Burgundian egg dish: red wine reduced with shallot and garlic, the eggs poached straight in that wine, and the same wine then thickened with butter and flour into the sauce. Lardons, button mushrooms and pearl onions go with it, on toast rubbed with garlic.
Katsuo no Tataki (Bonito Seared over a Straw Fire)
A Kochi dish of skin-on bonito seared fast over a straw fire on the surface only, then sliced thick and covered with garlic, spring onion and ponzu. The outside smells almost smoked; the inside is still sashimi.
Gujeolpan (Platter of Eight Fillings with Wheat Crepes)
A Korean starter served in an eight-sided platter: beef, shiitake, wood ear, egg white and yolk sheets, carrot, cucumber and radish, each cut into fine julienne and cooked on its own, around a stack of thin white wheat crepes. Each diner wraps three or four fillings in a crepe and dips it in mustard sauce.
Utopenci (Pickled Sausages Stuffed with Onion)
The Czech pub snack eaten cold with beer: smoked špekáček sausages, peeled and slit lengthwise, stuffed with onion and left in a boiled-and-cooled brine of vinegar, water, salt, sugar, pepper and allspice for a week, better two, somewhere cold. It is a cooked meat soaked afterwards, but both the brine and the sausage are cold, so the route by which a cooling food drinks its liquid is closed. What is left is the knife and time.
Ruibe (Salmon Sliced and Eaten Frozen)
The Ainu frozen salmon of Hokkaido. Salmon left outside in winter until frozen through is sliced thin while still frozen and eaten with soy sauce and wasabi before it thaws. Raw-meat dishes such as yukhoe and carpaccio freeze only the surface, for the knife, and warn against freezing through, because the thaw makes the flesh weep. Ruibe freezes it through and removes the thaw. The same freeze is also what deals with the parasites raw salmon can carry.
Obatzda (Bavarian Ripened-Cheese Spread)
The cheese spread of the Bavarian beer garden. Ripe camembert is mashed with half its weight of butter and seasoned with paprika, caraway, finely chopped onion and a spoonful or two of beer. No heat is used at any point. What made the cheese soft is ripening rather than heat, which is why it has to be a cheese ripe right to the middle. Spread on a pretzel or rye bread.
Yukjeon (Thin Beef Slices Pan-Fried in Flour and Egg)
Thin slices of beef given nothing but a flour and egg coat and pan-fried, the way Korean jeon are. It is the flour-egg-breadcrumb coat of tonkatsu or schnitzel with the crumb left off, so the egg itself is the outside. The heat is therefore set for the egg rather than the meat, and the beef never touches the pan: it cooks inside its coat.
Wuyuzi (Seared Dried Mullet Roe with Garlic Leaves and Daikon)
Taiwan's salt-cured, dried mullet roe, seared on the outside with sorghum liquor, sliced thin and eaten in one bite with raw daikon and green garlic leaf. The salt and the wind have already done the cooking. The heat is there only to melt the fat at the surface and bring up its smell, and heated through it turns hard and bitter. A slice of daikon dilutes the salt one mouthful at a time.
Wu Gok (Fried Taro Dumplings with a Lace Crust)
A Cantonese dim sum: steamed taro mashed into a dough with wheat starch and lard, wrapped round pork and prawn, and fried until the surface stands up in a honeycomb lace. Bugak has to dry its starch hard before it will foam in oil; this paste is wet. What it has instead is lard worked all the way through, so the steam leaving the surface pushes apart a paste the fat has already loosened.
Tapenade (Pounded Olive, Caper and Anchovy Paste)
A Provençal 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.
Mirza Ghasemi (Smoked Aubergine Fried Down and Bound with Egg)
A starter from northern Iran: aubergine charred black, then fried down in oil and bound with egg. Aubergine that has collapsed over a flame can no longer drink oil, so this dish leaves the oil free in the pan and gathers it back up with whole egg at the end.
Khai Luk Khoei (Son-in-Law Eggs)
Hard-boiled eggs deep-fried whole until the surface blisters into a crackled golden skin, then halved and covered with a reduction of tamarind, palm sugar and fish sauce — a Thai appetiser. The temperature question that runs through egg cookery is settled before this one starts: white and yolk are both fully set when the egg goes into the oil, so the frying reaches nothing but the surface. The name means "son-in-law eggs".
Goma-dofu (Sesame Tofu Set with Kudzu Starch)
Sesame ground to a paste, whisked with kudzu starch and water, cooked with constant stirring and poured into a mould to set — Japanese temple cooking. It is called tofu and contains no soy and coagulates no protein: what sets it is starch. But it is not quite a starch jelly either. A paste that is roughly half fat sits inside the gel, which is why the same starch sets far more softly here and why so much more of it goes in.
Fu Pei Kuen (Fried Tofu Skin Rolls)
A Cantonese dim sum of pork and prawn rolled in tofu skin and fried. The wrapper is not rolled from a dough at all: it is the film that forms on the surface of hot soy milk as water leaves, lifted off and dried. No coagulant, no acid, and neither starch nor gluten.
Carpaccio (Raw Beef Sliced Thin with Parmesan and Rocket)
An Italian appetiser of raw beef sliced until you can almost see the plate through it, dressed with olive oil and lemon and covered with shaved parmesan and rocket. It was invented at Harry’s Bar in Venice in 1950. Raw lean beef starts weeping the moment salt touches it, and this dish answers that not by salting late but by never dissolving the salt at all: what seasons it is a dry sheet of aged cheese laid on a surface already sealed under oil, and that sheet dissolves nowhere but in your mouth.
Çılbır (Poached Eggs on Garlic Yoghurt)
A Turkish dish recorded at the Ottoman court in the fifteenth century: thick garlic yoghurt spread on the plate, poached eggs set on it, and butter heated with chilli poured over. Yoghurt splits when it is heated, and this pours butter at well over 100°C straight onto it without splitting — fat carries no water into the protein, it floats, and the contact lasts seconds. The yoghurt does have to be at room temperature.
Batata Vada (Spiced Potato Balls in Chickpea Batter)
Maharashtra street food: boiled potato folded through a tadka of mustard seed, turmeric, ginger and green chilli, rolled into balls, dipped in a chickpea-flour batter and deep-fried. Wheat batters are under-mixed on purpose; this one is beaten hard for the opposite reason — besan builds no gluten to toughen, and the air beaten into it is what makes the shell light. Same filling as a samosa, opposite oil temperature.
Smørrebrød (Open Sandwiches on Dark Rye)
Denmark's open sandwich. Leaving the lid off is not a flourish, it is what the bread allows: rugbrød is a dense wholegrain sour rye that cracks if you fold it and is already stiff enough to work as a plate on its own. One slice therefore is one course, and a meal becomes a sequence of them in a fixed order, from herring at the start to cheese at the end. It is eaten with a knife and fork.
Lo Mai Gai (Glutinous Rice and Chicken Steamed in Lotus Leaf)
A Cantonese dim sum of glutinous rice, chicken, shiitake and lap cheong folded into a dried lotus leaf and steamed. The usual leaf wrapper is banana leaf, which is chosen for being broad and hard to tear -- a container. The lotus leaf is chosen for its own smell, which is why the dish has a second name, ho yip fan, that names the leaf and not the filling. And because there is no water inside a sealed parcel, the rice has to go in already cooked.
Ricotta (Whey Cheese Set by Heat)
Italy's fresh whey cheese, made by reheating the liquid left from making other cheese. Acid, a calcium salt or rennet can set milk, and all three set the same protein, casein. Ricotta sets the other one, left in the whey, so heat does the setting and the raw material is what the cheesemaker would pour away.
Century Egg (Alkaline-Cured Duck Egg)
The Chinese cure in which duck eggs spend five to six weeks in ash, lime and salt and come out set without heat. Heat sets white near 62°C and yolk near 68°C; above about pH 12 the same proteins unfold and link up anyway. The network is coarser and scatters less light, so the white sets clear and amber.
Devils on Horseback (Bacon-Wrapped Prunes)
A British savoury: dried fruit wrapped in bacon and baked. Here the bacon is the skin, and it does three jobs: its fat renders out and bastes the filling, its salt seasons it, and it shrinks as it cooks and grips the filling tight. Baked seam side down, it holds without a cocktail stick.
Dengaku (Skewered Tofu Under a Miso Glaze, Blistered Over Coals)
A Muromachi-period dish: tofu skewered, grilled, spread with sweetened miso and put back over the coals for seconds. Miso is usually kept off a hard boil for its aroma, but that is not the goal here: rich in free amino acids, miso with sugar browns in half a minute over charcoal and makes a new aroma.
Galantine (Boned Bird Rebuilt Inside Its Own Skin)
A whole chicken boned out through the back, its skin lifted off in one piece and used as the mould for a forcemeat made from its own meat, rolled into a cylinder and poached. The three things that hold it together all come from the same bird: the skin is the casing, protein drawn out of the meat by salt is the binder, and collagen from the carcass sets the poaching liquid into jelly as it cools. Nothing is brought in from outside. Where pyeonyuk keeps the muscle intact and presses it together, a galantine takes the structure completely apart and rebuilds it into a shape the animal never had.
Sisig (Chopped Pork on a Sizzling Plate)
One of the Philippines' national dishes: pig's head boiled, then grilled, then chopped fine and served on a cast-iron plate heated until it smokes. Three applications of heat, each doing something the others cannot. Boiling turns the collagen to gelatine, which is the only thing that makes this cut chewable. Grilling does what boiling never can — dry the surface and brown it. And the plate fries only the underside, so one dish arrives with two textures. The plate is a piece of cooking equipment, not a serving dish; the egg cooks on it too.
Ojingeo-sundae (Squid Stuffed and Steamed)
A Sokcho speciality from Korea's east coast: squid stuffed in place of a pig's intestine and steamed. A sausage casing is usually an inert bag; squid is not. Heated, its muscle contracts and loses up to a third of its length, pushing the filling out, so it is filled two-thirds full, stitched, pricked and steamed briefly.
Mozzarella (Fresh Stretched-Curd Cheese)
Italy's fresh cheese, set with rennet and then stretched in hot water. Acid-set curd loses the calcium from its casein and turns grainy, while rennet cuts one spot on the casein surface and leaves the calcium inside. That is why this curd can later be worked in hot water until it flows and stretches.
Crab Cake (Chesapeake Bay Style)
The Chesapeake Bay crab dish, where the whole problem is binding. A sausage draws glue out of raw meat, but crab arrives already boiled, its protein spent. So the binder is brought in: egg and mayonnaise with little breadcrumb, firmed in the fridge and set by the egg in the pan, which keeps the lumps whole.
Haring (Cured Herring)
The Dutch cured herring. It is neither cooked nor smoked: a light salting and a few days is all, and the flesh turns soft and buttery. What does that is not microbes and not acid but the fish's own digestive enzymes — which is why, when it is gutted, the pancreas is deliberately left in. Nothing is added; the whole dish is a matter of not throwing away what was already inside.
Kamaboko (Grilled Fish Cake)
The Japanese fish cake: white fish minced, rinsed repeatedly in iced water, then worked with salt and set with heat. The point is not what goes in but what is taken out — wash the fat, the blood and the water-soluble proteins away and almost only muscle-fibre protein is left, which salt dissolves and heat sets into a springiness no meat paste can reach. A good many recipes buy fish cake off the shelf; this is what they are buying.
Tiradito (Sliced Raw Fish in Ají Sauce)
Peruvian white fish sliced sashimi-thin, with a spiced ají sauce spooned over it at the last second. It shares almost everything with ceviche and uses acid in the opposite way: ceviche cubes the fish and marinates it so the acid cooks it, while tiradito puts the acid on too late for that to happen. So what decides the texture is not the acid but the knife — cut at 3mm, the fish needs no marinating at all.
Lo Bak Go (Steamed Radish Cake, Chilled and Pan-Fried)
A Cantonese dim sum cake of shredded daikon set with rice flour. The trick is that no water is added at all: daikon is about ninety per cent water by weight, and what comes out of it while it cooks is what hydrates the flour. So the ratio cannot be measured out of a jug — it has to be judged from how much liquid the radish gave up. Steamed, it then has to be chilled overnight before it will slice, and only then does frying give it a skin.
Hongeo-hoe (Sliced Fermented Skate)
Skate fermented and sliced, from Jeolla province. Most ferments keep spoilage out by pushing the pH down; skate goes the other way. Cartilaginous fish carry urea in their flesh, and as it breaks down the ammonia pushes the pH up towards 9, just as hostile to spoilage. No salt, starter or sugar goes in.
Soufflé (Cheese Soufflé, the Rise That Cannot Be Kept)
Whipped egg whites folded into a thick béchamel and driven up in the oven. A soufflé is at its height the moment it comes out and only falls from there. Heat expands the gas in the foam and egg protein sets around it, but that set is too thin to hold when the gas cools and contracts. Eat it at once.
Saganaki (Pan-Fried Cheese with Lemon)
The fried-cheese meze of Greece. In a hot pan most cheese stretches, melts in or clumps; kefalotyri and graviera do none of these. Low in moisture, with a tight casein network, they brown outside while the inside only softens and never flows, so it arrives as a slab to cut, with lemon, eaten at once.
Cheung Fun (Steamed Rice Noodle Rolls)
Cantonese dim sum: a rice batter as thin as milk, poured into a shallow tray and steamed for two minutes into a sheet like paper, then rolled while hot and dressed with a light sweet soy. There is no gluten anywhere in it, so starch alone holds the sheet together. Which is why the batter has to be stirred again before every single pour — rice flour does not dissolve in water, it only hangs in it, and a minute standing still is enough for it to settle to the bottom.
Pyeonyuk (Pressed Boiled Beef, Sliced Thin)
Korean banquet food: meat simmered until soft, wrapped in cloth while still hot, pressed under a weight until it sets, then sliced very thin. The simmering is the same as for suyuk; what makes this dish is the pressing. The gelatine dissolved out of the collagen has to still be liquid when the weight goes on, because it sets as it cools and glues the fibres into one block — which is the only reason a 2-3mm slice holds together.
Polbo á feira (Galician Octopus with Paprika)
Boiled octopus cut into coins, laid on a wooden plate and dressed with nothing but coarse salt, paprika and olive oil. With an ingredient list that short, the whole dish is the boiling. And the key to that is counter-intuitive: octopus is better frozen first. Ice crystals rupture the tough connective tissue, so the freezer does the job the fishermen used to do by beating it against the rocks.
Kushikatsu (Osaka Skewered Cutlets)
Osaka skewered cutlets. Rather than tonkatsu's flour, egg and panko in sequence, the skewer goes into a thin batter and then into finely crushed panko, and that one difference is what gives the smooth, thin crust. The sauce sits in a communal pot on the counter, which is why dipping twice is forbidden — and why the sauce is made thin enough that one dip is enough.
Char Siu Bao (Steamed Barbecue Pork Buns)
Cantonese dim sum: char siu tossed in a sweet-savoury sauce, enclosed in a leavened dough and steamed. A good one splits open into three at the top so the filling shows, and that split is not luck — it comes from using yeast and baking powder together and steaming over very hard heat. It shares a steamer with har gow and siu mai but belongs to another family entirely: those are thin wrappers, this is risen bread.
Menbosha (Deep-Fried Shrimp Toast Cubes)
Chopped shrimp packed thickly between two squares of crustless white bread and deep-fried. A Chinese dish, brought to Korea by Shandong immigrants. The only hard part is oil temperature: too low and the bread drinks the oil, too high and the outside burns before the shrimp is cooked. Frying twice — low to cook, hot to crisp — is the answer.
Stinky Tofu (Changsha-Style, Deep-Fried from Fermented Tofu)
Fermented tofu deep-fried and dressed with garlic and chilli — Chinese street food. The fermentation itself needs a brine kept for months, so this recipe buys the fermented tofu rather than attempting it: here the ferment is the ingredient, not a shortcut.
Steak Tartare (Hand-Chopped, Not Minced)
Lean beef chopped by knife, seasoned with capers, cornichons, shallot and mustard, topped with a raw yolk and served cold. A mincer makes something else entirely, and the clock starts the moment salt and acid touch the meat.
Yukhoe (Seasoned Raw Beef with Pear and Egg Yolk)
Lean beef cut against the grain into strips, dressed with sesame oil, and served cold with julienned pear and a raw egg yolk. Nothing is cooked, so the cut and the knife work are the whole technique — and when the salt goes in decides whether the plate weeps.
Golbaengi-muchim (Spicy Whelk Salad with Somyeon)
Canned whelks tossed in a sharp, sweet-hot dressing and served with cold somyeon noodles — Korean drinking food. What goes wrong is almost always water: once liquid from the whelks and the vegetables thins the dressing there is no way back, so when you toss it is half the recipe.
Siu Mai (Open-Topped Pork and Prawn Dumpling)
The dim sum that is not closed at the top. Instead of sealing it like a dumpling, you push the wonton wrapper down through a ring of your fingers to make a cup and pack the filling in. So the skill is not in the pleating but in the springiness of the filling, and that comes from salting it first and then slapping it against the bowl.
Har Gow (Crystal Shrimp Dumplings)
The Cantonese dim sum whose wrapper you can see the shrimp through. The translucency is not a technique but an ingredient: only wheat starch, with the gluten washed out, turns clear as it steams. Plain flour gives you a white dumpling skin no matter what you do to it.
Ota Ika (Raw Fish in Coconut Cream)
Tonga's signature dish: sashimi-grade fish cured briefly in lime, drained, then dressed with coconut cream and vegetables. The lime juice has to be poured off before the cream goes in or it splits, and 15–20 minutes of curing keeps the centre translucent and tender.
Buffalo Wings
Crispy chicken wings tossed in a tangy, spicy buffalo sauce (hot sauce plus butter) — the bar snack born in Buffalo, New York. Serve with blue cheese dip and celery to cool it down. Crisp them in the oven or air fryer, no deep-frying needed.
Gyoza (Pan-fried Dumplings)
Ground pork and cabbage folded into thin wrappers, then pan-fried crisp on the bottom and steamed tender on top — Japan's beloved gyoza. With a garlicky filling and a chili-oil soy-vinegar dip, they're impossible to stop eating.
Baba Ghanoush (Smoky Eggplant Dip)
A Middle Eastern eggplant dip: eggplant charred until smoky, then mashed with tahini, lemon, and garlic. A cousin of hummus, perfect scooped up with pita or vegetables.
Gỏi cuốn (Fresh Spring Rolls)
Vietnamese fresh spring rolls: shrimp, vegetables, and rice vermicelli wrapped in rice paper. Barely any cooking, light and healthy, and irresistible with a savory peanut dipping sauce.
Gamja-jeon (Potato Pancake)
Korean potato pancakes made from finely grated potato. Stir the settled starch back in and they turn out crisp outside and chewy inside with almost no other ingredients — a rainy-day favorite.
Bruschetta (Tomato & Garlic Toast)
Italy's classic antipasto: toasted baguette rubbed with garlic and topped with olive oil and tomato. Barely any cooking and ready in 15 minutes — it shines in tomato season.
Tzatziki (Yogurt-Cucumber Dip)
A cool, tangy Greek yogurt dip of strained yogurt with cucumber, garlic, olive oil, and herbs. No cooking and ready in 10 minutes — scoop with pita and vegetables, or spoon over kebabs and grilled meat. Squeeze the cucumber dry and it's foolproof.
Guacamole (Avocado Dip)
Mexico's classic dip — ripe avocado mashed with lime, onion, cilantro, and chili. No cooking and ready in 10 minutes. Scoop it with tortilla chips or pile it on tacos and nachos; with good ingredients, anyone can make it.
The rest of this kind10
- Xiaolongbao (Shanghai Soup Dumplings)
- Empanada (Stuffed Pastry)
- Hummus (Middle Eastern Chickpea Dip)
- Ceviche (Lime-Cured Fish)
- Falafel (Middle Eastern Chickpea Fritters)
- Mandu (Dumplings)
- Kimchijeon (Kimchi Pancake)
- Gambas al Ajillo (Garlic Shrimp)
- Karaage (Fried Chicken)
- Haemul Pajeon (Seafood Scallion Pancake)