100 recipes. Page 1 of 5
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This naan rises on yogurt, baking powder and baking soda, so there is no yeast and no proving time before it goes in the pan. You do not need an oven: a heavy skillet, properly hot, still blisters the top and leaves brown spots underneath.
Shaped into a flat log, baked once, sliced on the diagonal, and baked again at a lower temperature, these Tuscan cookies earn their name, which means twice-cooked. The second bake dries them until they are hard rather than merely crisp, a style long associated with Prato. Whole almonds give each slice a toasty crunch, and lemon zest and vanilla scent the dough. Dunked in espresso or vin santo, the outside softens while the center holds firm.
Baked in a fish-shaped mold, bungeoppang have a thin golden shell, a crisp tail made of batter alone, and red bean paste in the belly. The batter is kept a little thinner than pancake batter, thin enough to run into every corner of the tail and belly pattern. Keeping the bean paste in the center of the belly, away from the edges, stops it from leaking when the mold closes.
Strips of flour dough cook straight in grape juice, and the loose flour on their surface slowly turns that juice into a sauce without any separate starch. The thin strip shape follows a publicly available Cherokee Nation cookbook, made here with pasteurized bottled juice. The juice is measured for two jobs: a small portion hydrates the dough and the rest is the cooking liquid, and mixing them early leaves a batter too wet to roll. Swelling alone does not mean done. Cut a thick piece and look for a raw flour layer.
In the American South this is everyday home cooking: chicken stew with soft dumplings on top. The batter is spooned onto the broth and puffs up in the steam under the lid, so the dumplings come out light, closer to biscuit than to noodle. The thigh meat is pulled into shreds, so a spoonful gets chicken and dumpling together.
In Gunma's wheat-loving farm villages, jiriyaki, a thick wheat pancake with green onion and sakura shrimp, was the snack eaten by hand at the work breaks at 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. It once cooked slowly over the ash heat of an irori hearth, and the name is said to echo the jiri-jiri sound of the batter sizzling.
Oven-baked rather than deep-fried, these wings get their crackly skin from a thin dusting of baking powder mixed with the salt and pepper. Melted butter softens the vinegary bite of the hot sauce so it clings to the skin, and a splash of white vinegar sharpens the finish. Golden skin can hide underdone meat, so the wings stay in until the thickest part reaches 74°C away from the bone.
Bhature balloon up the moment they hit the oil. In Punjab and Delhi, people tear them apart to scoop up chole, a thick chickpea curry, and that is breakfast. Dough for bhature is usually left until it ferments a little; here yogurt and baking powder go in and it rests for just 20 minutes.
Five firm, cookie-like layers are stacked with dried-apple filling and then left in the refrigerator for 48 hours, during which they draw moisture from the apples and turn sliceable. Freshly baked layers are not supposed to look spongy. Boiled cider is reduced apple juice syrup, not vinegar or a fizzy drink.
Cocoa turns the batter dark brown in the mold, and a chocolate custard sits inside. Since the shell is dark from the start, its color says little about whether it is done. A skewer poked into the shell, away from the custard, settles it: no raw batter means it is ready.
Honey in the batter keeps these small Japanese pancakes soft and pliable for hours after they cool, and their mild sweetness leaves the red bean paste in charge. Only one side touches the pan, so each round has an evenly browned face and a smooth, pale back.
Matzo meal is ground matzo, an unleavened bread that has already been baked, so flour or breadcrumbs measured the same way will not work in its place. The balls are cooked in plain water and lifted out, and chicken broth heated in a separate pot is ladled over them in the bowl, which keeps the soup clear.
Crisp fried chicken thigh and a warm waffle share the plate, tied together with maple syrup so salty and sweet land in the same bite. Because the waffles are cooked first and held in a low oven, the chicken can go straight from the oil to the table.
In the Tsukui area of Kanagawa these buns can hold adzuki beans, dried daikon, mushrooms or pickles; this one is filled with kabocha mashed with its skin. They are browned in a dry pan first and then steamed, so they come out soft and puffy with toasted spots still on them.
Semolina makes up the batter, so each bite has a slightly coarse, sandy grain. Before baking, the top is scored into diamonds and an almond is pressed into each one. The lemony syrup goes on the moment the cake comes out of the oven.
Small cubes of raw potato are pressed onto the batter before frying, which leaves the surface knobbly. Those cubes have to cook through in the oil, so the heat stays at medium-low and the hotdog keeps rolling slowly. Inside, mozzarella sits beside the sausage and pulls into long strings when you break it open.
Brown sugar water turns this steamed cake dark all the way through, and toasted black sesame covers the top. With baking powder instead of a slow rise, farm households in Miyagi could steam one quickly as a snack for children or a break during field work. One explanation says the dark, fluffy cake reminded people of wild-goose meat, and the brown version is also called kuro-ganzuki.
Fish and chips come down to timing: the potatoes are fried twice, the cod once, and the order lets both reach the table hot and crisp. Soaking the cut potatoes in cold water rinses off surface starch, and the first fry only cooks them through, ending before they take on deep color. Cold sparkling water in the batter, mixed only until a few small lumps remain, keeps the coating light rather than bready. Any surface moisture on the potatoes or fish makes the oil spit and leaves patchy crispness, so both are dried well first. The cod is done when the crust is golden and the flesh separates cleanly into flakes. Serve right away, before steam softens the crust.
The moisture in beet puree is what makes this dark chocolate cake heavy and damp. That is also why it should never bake until it looks dry; it comes out as soon as a skewer in the center shows no wet batter.
Crisp waffles are spread on one half with strawberry jam and whipped cream, then folded over to eat by hand. Each one is filled and served right away, before the warm waffle softens the whipped cream.
Cubes of sweet potato poke out of each round dumpling like stones in a wall, which gives ishigaki dango, stone-wall dumplings, their name. On the Sagamihara plateau in Kanagawa, where volcanic ash covered the fields, wheat and sweet potatoes grew widely, and these dumplings were a snack between farm tasks. Holding back some of the potato and pressing it onto the surface makes the stone pattern stand out.
Irregular fresh curds give the light batter edges to grip, and those edges fry into small crisp ridges. Cubes cut from aged cheddar or mozzarella melt differently and will not behave the same way. A short chill in the freezer buys the shell time to set, but it does not make a long fry safe; leave them in too long and the cheese breaks through. The coating cools to the touch well before the molten center does.
Soft, cakey rounds get vanilla icing on one half and chocolate on the other, spread on the flat underside that touched the pan so the dividing line stays straight. Any warmth left in the cookies makes the two colors run together.
Baked in a chrysanthemum-shaped mold, the shell comes out with raised petal ridges. It is a winter street snack like bungeoppang, but milk, egg and butter in the batter make it taste more of bread, with a smaller share of red bean paste. Vendors now also fill them with custard cream, chocolate or sweet potato paste.