Vegetarian dishes from around the world

Dense chocolate biscuits with cornflakes, under icing and half a walnut.

45 min · Easy · Dessert

A relish of roasted red pepper and aubergine, cooked down in oil to a thick paste.

150 min · Medium · Sauce

Two crumbly cornflour biscuits joined with dulce de leche and rolled in coconut.

75 min · Medium · Dessert

Oat biscuits on golden syrup and bicarbonate, without eggs, keeping for weeks.

38 min · Easy · Dessert

Apples with cinnamon and raisins in a dough stretched until it is transparent. It is pulled by hand, never rolled.

105 min · Takes practice · Dessert

A hot thick purple corn drink with cinnamon and cloves, with fried pastries.

65 min · Easy · Drink

Cakes of precooked corn flour, griddled and split open to be stuffed.

40 min · Easy · Baking

Forty layers of yufka with pistachio, soaked in syrup. Hot baklava takes cold syrup, and only that way round.

120 min · Takes practice · Dessert

Diamonds of eight layers of dough with a nut filling, under a saffron syrup.

145 min · Takes practice · Dessert

A wheat flour tortilla folded over refried beans, soured cream and crumbled cheese.

60 min · Easy · Breakfast

Cornmeal biscuits from Elbasan, beaten by hand in a wooden bowl for the spring festival.

75 min · Medium · Dessert

A filo spiral with white cheese and eggs, doused in yoghurt and bicarbonate before baking.

75 min · Medium · Breakfast

Squares of yeast dough deep-fried into hollow puffs. The bread of the tea table and of every feast.

55 min · Easy · Baking

Rice and lentils fried before the water goes in. Bengali food for a rainy day.

65 min · Easy · Main course

A many-layered enriched bread brushed with ghee, drenched in honey and scattered with nigella.

115 min · Takes practice · Dessert

Oats soaked overnight with grated apple, cream and nuts.

20 min · Easy · Breakfast

Chocolate sponge soaked in kirsch, with whipped cream and sour cherries.

110 min · Takes practice · Dessert

An Afghan flatbread with a potato or leek filling, cooked on a dry pan.

80 min · Easy · Snack

Kyrgyz fried dough diamonds, hollow inside, for tea and the dastarkhan.

120 min · Easy · Baking

Yeast buns with plum jam or curd, baked packed together so their sides fuse.

135 min · Medium · Dessert

Shortcrust tartlets with a butter, sugar and syrup filling, runny or set.

67 min · Medium · Dessert

A pie of thin pastry layered with spinach and brined cheese, each layer soaked in oil.

80 min · Easy · Main course

Thick pancakes of ground fresh corn, folded around a soft white cheese.

40 min · Easy · Breakfast

A thick purée of taro leaves with okra and coconut milk. The Trinidadian Sunday table.

80 min · Easy · Soup

A spicy vegetable relish of carrot, pepper and beans with curry. For a braai, for pap, or on its own.

40 min · Easy · Side dish

Strained cultured cheese with herbs and garlic, the Tajik spread for flatbread.

25 min · Easy · Snack

Flower-shaped biscuits deep-fried and steeped in honey with sesame.

150 min · Takes practice · Dessert

Gruyère and Vacherin melted in white wine with starch. The acidity of the wine keeps the cheese from seizing.

35 min · Medium · Main course

Dumplings of whole cherries and sugar. The juice stays inside if the fruit is tossed in starch first.

65 min · Medium · Dessert

Poblano peppers stuffed with cheese in an airy egg batter, fried and served under tomato sauce.

70 min · Takes practice · Main course

A sauce of parsley, oregano, garlic and vinegar. A knife rather than a blender: texture matters more than smoothness.

15 min · Easy · Sauce

Bread rings of cassava starch and cheese, with no wheat and no yeast.

50 min · Easy · Baking

Pancakes of ground fresh corn, served with natilla soured cream.

40 min · Easy · Breakfast

Rice cooked in coconut milk with caramelised coconut solids, dark and faintly sweet.

60 min · Medium · Side dish

Mashed potato with cabbage and spring onion, a lake of melted butter in the centre.

55 min · Easy · Side dish

A yolk custard baked in a water bath under a lid of burnt sugar.

65 min · Medium · Dessert

A laminated yeasted dough with twenty-seven layers of butter. Temperature decides everything: dough and butter must be equally cold.

200 min · Takes practice · Baking

Lentil soup with rice and a vegetable tarkari. Nepal's everyday meal, eaten twice a day for a lifetime.

65 min · Easy · Main course

A lentil stew finished by pouring sizzling spiced fat over it. That step is the dish.

45 min · Easy · Main course

Kuwaiti buns of date paste and cardamom, rolled into spirals.

120 min · Medium · Dessert

Five thin sponge layers with chocolate buttercream under a caramel lid.

135 min · Takes practice · Dessert

Two soft fried breads called bara with spiced chickpea channa between them. Trinidad's street breakfast.

160 min · Medium · Breakfast

Potato pancakes from raw grated potato, fried to a crisp edge and served with soured cream.

45 min · Easy · Main course

Green chillies stewed in cheese. Bhutan's national dish, where chilli is a vegetable rather than a seasoning.

35 min · Easy · Main course

Layers of fried pita, hot chickpeas and garlic yoghurt with browned butter and pine nuts.

110 min · Easy · Main course

A salad of vegetables and herbs with fried pieces of flatbread and sumac.

30 min · Easy · Salad

An Albanian bake of peppers, tomatoes and curd cheese, served in its clay pan.

65 min · Easy · Main course

A layered pie of thin batter, poured one layer at a time under a heated iron lid called a saç.

120 min · Takes practice · Main course

Small doughnuts with raisins, citrus zest and rakija, deep-fried.

55 min · Easy · Dessert

Fava beans stewed to a cream with olive oil, lemon and cumin.

255 min · Easy · Breakfast

Tomatoes cooked down in olive oil with chilli and garlic to a thick sauce.

50 min · Easy · Main course

Yesterday's rice fried with black beans and Salsa Lizano. The Costa Rican breakfast, every day.

35 min · Easy · Breakfast

A layered sweet bread with khoriz, a dry filling of flour, butter and sugar.

115 min · Medium · Dessert

A cold tomato soup blended with bread and oil into an emulsion — that is what makes it thick rather than watery.

20 min · Easy · Soup

Tomatoes and peppers stuffed with herbed rice and baked with potatoes in olive oil.

125 min · Easy · Main course

A whole pumpkin baked with rice, dried fruit and nuts. A festive dish, cut open at the table.

120 min · Medium · Main course

A pie of crumpled filo sheets in a cheese and egg custard, baked to browned ridges.

80 min · Easy · Main course

Cypriot cheese seared to a crust, with cold watermelon and mint. The island's summer plate.

30 min · Easy · Salad

Potato fritters with onion and parsley, deep-fried crisp. Christmas market food.

50 min · Easy · Snack

Avocado, lime, onion and chilli crushed with a fork. No blender and no sour cream: both turn it into a dip rather than guacamole.

15 min · Easy · Snack

A sour soup of fermented dried greens with potato, soybeans and chilli.

55 min · Easy · Soup

A thick Sudanese pan bread, served with meat stew or sauce.

110 min · Easy · Baking

Thin bowl-shaped pancakes from fermented rice batter with coconut milk, often with an egg.

80 min · Takes practice · Breakfast

The village salad, with no leaves in it: tomato, cucumber, onion, olives and a whole slab of feta on top.

15 min · Easy · Salad

Chickpeas whipped with tahini, lemon and iced water to a cream. The skins come off.

110 min · Easy · Snack

A sweet dark rye bread baked in a sealed tin for twelve hours at a low temperature.

740 min · Easy · Baking

A round flatbread with the cheese inside rather than on top. The dough is made on matsoni, and there is as much filling as there is dough.

110 min · Medium · Baking

Maltese pastry diamonds with an aniseed date filling, deep-fried.

110 min · Medium · Dessert

A sour, porous flatbread of teff on a three-day ferment, serving as both bread and plate.

70 min · Takes practice · Baking

Rice cooked in a thick sauce of tomato, pepper and onion. The sauce is reduced dark before the rice goes in.

80 min · Medium · Main course

Maize porridge with potato, beaten with cheese and kajmak until it pulls into threads.

60 min · Medium · Main course

A dessert of roasted mixed-grain flour stirred into kefir. Estonian breakfast and summer pudding at once.

10 min · Easy · Dessert

Cinnamon buns knotted rather than rolled. The cardamom in the dough matters more than the cinnamon inside.

135 min · Medium · Dessert

A rye shell filled with rice porridge, brushed with butter out of the oven and served with egg butter.

85 min · Takes practice · Baking

Swabian egg noodles layered with cheese and buried under fried onion.

55 min · Medium · Main course

Toasted bread with kaya coconut egg jam and cold butter, with soft-boiled eggs.

70 min · Medium · Breakfast

A soft layered flatbread of wheat dough coiled into a spiral before rolling.

105 min · Medium · Baking

A condensed milk and lime filling on a cracker crumb base, set by acid rather than heat.

50 min · Easy · Dessert

A cold beetroot soup on kefir with sorrel, cucumber and egg, pink and sharply sour.

70 min · Easy · Soup

Biscuits of date paste and cardamom, rolled into a log and cut into slices.

85 min · Medium · Dessert

A curd bar in chocolate glaze, the Estonian dessert from the fridge.

50 min · Medium · Dessert

A pudding of ground black-eyed beans with palm oil, steamed in banana leaves.

190 min · Takes practice · Main course

Rice, lentils and pasta in one bowl under a vinegary tomato sauce and fried onion.

90 min · Medium · Main course

A creamy mushroom soup with dill, potato and a poached egg, sharpened with vinegar.

55 min · Easy · Soup

Fine shredded pastry with a cheese filling, baked and drenched in sugar syrup.

80 min · Medium · Dessert

Two meringue layers with nuts, filled with a charlotte buttercream.

240 min · Takes practice · Dessert

A salad of fermented tea leaves with fried beans, nuts and garlic.

35 min · Easy · Salad

Cubes of sponge dipped in chocolate icing and rolled in desiccated coconut.

75 min · Medium · Dessert

A yeasted flatbread deep-fried, rubbed with garlic and buried under soured cream and cheese.

110 min · Medium · Snack

A dense caramel custard made on yolks alone, steamed in a metal mould.

70 min · Medium · Dessert

Dense yeasted waffles from a stiff dough with pearl sugar that caramelises on the outside.

125 min · Medium · Dessert

Potato cakes with cheese inside, fried in achiote oil and served with a peanut sauce.

60 min · Easy · Side dish

Crisp balls of yeasted batter in date syrup. The Ramadan sweet of the Gulf.

95 min · Medium · Dessert

Semolina diamonds with a date filling, fried and steeped in honey.

105 min · Medium · Dessert

A milk pudding set with cornflour and rose water, under a sweet syrup and nuts.

30 min · Easy · Dessert

A firm cornmeal porridge, cut with a thread rather than a knife.

45 min · Easy · Side dish

Triangular doughnuts on coconut milk with cardamom, lightly sweet, for tea.

100 min · Easy · Snack

A thin crisp crêpe of fermented rice and lentil batter with a spiced potato filling.

105 min · Takes practice · Breakfast

Green bananas steamed in banana leaves and mashed to a purée. The staple of the Buganda table.

110 min · Medium · Side dish

A starch and cheese flatbread set in a dry pan without a drop of water.

45 min · Medium · Baking

Layers of fried aubergine with tomato sauce, mozzarella and parmesan, baked to a crust.

110 min · Medium · Main course

A milk tart with cinnamon: a barely-egged custard filling in a shortcrust base.

80 min · Easy · Dessert

Eggs cooked into tomatoes and green pepper. They are never beaten and rarely stirred, or you end up with ordinary scrambled eggs.

30 min · Easy · Breakfast

A red lentil soup blended smooth and finished with lemon and paprika butter.

45 min · Easy · Soup

Red lentils in a berbere sauce. A fasting dish eaten in Ethiopia on fast days all year round.

85 min · Easy · Main course

Bagels boiled in honey water and baked in a wood oven, sweeter and thinner than New York's.

145 min · Takes practice · Baking

Rice cooked in the liquid from black beans, which darkens it and gives it all their flavour.

110 min · Easy · Side dish

Yeast figures of eight glazed with honey and walnuts for the day of the Forty Martyrs.

125 min · Medium · Dessert

A paste of roasted red pepper, walnuts and pomegranate molasses, from Aleppo.

55 min · Easy · Snack

Collard greens stewed in peanut butter with tomato. The side to sadza in every household.

40 min · Easy · Side dish

Rice fried with red beans. The Nicaraguan version: red beans, and no Salsa Lizano.

35 min · Easy · Breakfast

A chewy halwa of starch, rosewater and saffron, stirred two hours in a cauldron.

155 min · Takes practice · Dessert

Spinach blanched and blended, with cubes of paneer. Spinach must not be stewed or it goes brown.

45 min · Easy · Main course

Cheese balls of tapioca starch — a crust outside, a stretchy hollow inside. No wheat and no yeast.

50 min · Medium · Baking

Curd doughnuts shaped as a ring with a ball on top, with soured cream and jam.

60 min · Medium · Dessert

Flaky pastry cases of custard baked in extreme heat until the surface blisters black.

55 min · Takes practice · Dessert

Flaky pastries filled with ricotta or mushy peas. Maltese street food on every corner.

125 min · Takes practice · Snack

A lenten dolma of soured cabbage leaves with lentils, beans and grains.

150 min · Medium · Main course

Twice-fried potato under a hot paprika sauce. The Madrid version has no tomato in it at all.

50 min · Easy · Snack

A meringue with a crisp shell and a marshmallow centre, under whipped cream and kiwifruit.

115 min · Medium · Dessert

Basil ground with garlic and pine nuts. No heat and no blender — a mortar and a cool room.

20 min · Easy · Sauce

Dumplings of potato and curd cheese, served with fried onion and soured cream.

70 min · Medium · Main course

Squares of shortcrust with a dense filling of reduced pineapple and winter melon.

180 min · Takes practice · Dessert

A long-fermented dough, uncooked tomato, mozzarella and basil. Time decides everything here, not the number of ingredients.

70 min · Medium · Main course

A flat pie of stretched dough with cheese, pumpkin or apple, cooked in a dry pan.

90 min · Medium · Snack

Tiny yeasted pancakes of buckwheat and wheat flour, served with butter and icing sugar.

90 min · Easy · Dessert

A yeasted roll with a walnut filling, coiled into a ring. Slovenian baking for every celebration.

150 min · Takes practice · Dessert

Yeasted balls of loose batter, deep-fried crisp outside and airy within.

50 min · Easy · Snack

Flaky fatir bread soaked in reconstituted dried qurut, under fried onion and fresh vegetables.

45 min · Easy · Main course

A Provençal vegetable stew where each vegetable is cooked separately before they meet — otherwise it turns to mush.

65 min · Easy · Main course

Balls of ripe plantain purée filled with sweetened black beans and chocolate.

90 min · Medium · Dessert

Rice cooked with red beans in coconut milk, with thyme and a whole scotch bonnet.

110 min · Easy · Side dish

A cold rice pudding with whipped cream and almonds, under a hot cherry sauce.

85 min · Easy · Dessert

A saffron risotto built on stock and near-constant stirring, which is what pulls the starch out of the rice and makes it creamy.

35 min · Medium · Main course

A vegetable omelette rolled in a chapati. Kampala street food, the name a slur of "rolled eggs".

65 min · Easy · Breakfast

A potato cake of coarsely grated potato fried crisp on both sides. The potatoes are boiled the day before.

45 min · Easy · Side dish

A flatbread stretched translucent and crumpled before frying. The layers come from air rather than butter.

50 min · Takes practice · Baking

A dense sourdough rye bread, sour and with almost no wheat flour in it.

100 min · Takes practice · Baking

Layers of dark rye breadcrumbs, whipped cream and cranberry jam.

40 min · Easy · Dessert

Pita with fried aubergine, boiled egg, amba and salad. The Iraqi-Israeli street classic.

105 min · Easy · Main course

A dense chocolate sponge with apricot jam under a mirror chocolate glaze.

120 min · Takes practice · Dessert

A spiked tree cake baked layer by layer on a turning spit over a fire.

135 min · Takes practice · Dessert

A Sudanese salad of fried aubergine with peanut butter and lemon.

50 min · Easy · Salad

A cold beetroot soup on kefir, vivid pink, with cucumber, dill and boiled potatoes served alongside.

60 min · Easy · Soup

Triangles of potato and pea in a ghee-rich pastry. Fried on a moderate flame, never a fierce one.

90 min · Medium · Snack

A ring of fermented rice batter deep-fried crisp outside and soft within.

100 min · Takes practice · Baking

A dense curd cheesecake on a shortcrust base, made with twaróg rather than cream cheese.

115 min · Medium · Dessert

Eggs poached in a thick sauce of tomato and pepper with cumin and paprika.

40 min · Easy · Breakfast

Thin flatbreads fried in oil, the memorial bread of Kazakh tradition.

60 min · Easy · Baking

Tomato, cucumber and pepper under a cap of grated white cheese. The vegetables are cut large, the cheese grated fine.

30 min · Easy · Salad

Cold barley porridge on soured milk, Latvian field-day food.

85 min · Easy · Soup

A rye pastry case with two layers of purée, potato and carrot, dusted with cinnamon.

90 min · Medium · Dessert

A cardamom-scented bun with custard in the centre, icing and desiccated coconut.

80 min · Medium · Dessert

Home-made skyr, the Icelandic cultured dairy, strained thick, with bilberries.

50 min · Medium · Breakfast

Bread on bicarbonate and buttermilk, with no yeast and no proving. Three minutes from mixing to oven.

55 min · Easy · Baking

A dense corn and cheese bake with onion which, despite its name, is eaten with a fork.

80 min · Easy · Side dish

A filo pie of spinach and feta. The spinach is squeezed bone dry, or the base stays raw.

90 min · Medium · Main course

A thick omelette of potato and onion, where the potato is not fried but poached in oil until it is nearly a purée.

50 min · Medium · Main course

A soup of matsun and wheat groats. The whole difficulty is keeping the yoghurt base from splitting.

50 min · Medium · Soup

A moist date sponge under a hot sauce of cream and dark sugar.

65 min · Easy · Dessert

A roll of thin dough with a curd filling, boiled in cloth and cut into rounds.

115 min · Takes practice · Dessert

Ful beans cooked soft and mashed in the pot, with sesame oil, cheese and egg.

105 min · Easy · Breakfast

Collard greens stewed with onion and tomato. The everyday accompaniment to ugali across East Africa.

35 min · Easy · Side dish

Mongolian salted milk tea with butter, boiled rather than brewed.

30 min · Easy · Drink

Potato dressed in warm stock with vinegar and oil. No mayonnaise — southern Germany does not admit it here.

40 min · Easy · Salad

An apple cake with cinnamon under a crisp butter crumble, served with vanilla sauce.

75 min · Easy · Dessert

A sweet dessert cream of red beans with coconut milk, sweet potato and biscuits.

115 min · Easy · Dessert

Curd cheese fritters with as much curd as possible and exactly enough flour to keep them together.

30 min · Easy · Breakfast

A parsley salad with a little bulgur in it, not the other way round. There is ten times more herb than grain.

25 min · Easy · Salad

Rice with a golden crust on the bottom of the pot, made from rice, potato or flatbread.

150 min · Medium · Side dish

A cold yoghurt soup with cucumber, garlic, dill and walnuts.

20 min · Easy · Soup

An upside-down apple tart: the apples caramelise at the bottom, the pastry goes on top and becomes the base.

90 min · Medium · Dessert

White beans baked in a clay pan with onion, paprika and peppers. North Macedonia's national dish.

140 min · Easy · Main course

Savoiardi in coffee under a mascarpone cream. No baking, but two places where it can go wrong.

30 min · Medium · Dessert

Flat rounds made on rendered fat and deep-fried, which Uruguayans make when it rains.

65 min · Easy · Snack

Green plantain fried twice, flattened between the fryings, with a garlic dip.

40 min · Easy · Snack

A ribbon of yeasted dough wound round a spit, baked and rolled in sugar and nuts.

110 min · Medium · Dessert

A layered flatbread beaten into rags on the pan, served with chicken or goat curry.

130 min · Takes practice · Baking

Apples poached in syrup and filled with walnuts under whipped cream.

60 min · Easy · Dessert

Stewed peppers with tomato and harissa, eggs broken into the sauce at the end.

65 min · Easy · Breakfast

Chickpeas in a garlic broth poured over torn stale bread, with an egg, cumin and harissa.

105 min · Easy · Soup

Rice cakes on coconut milk, cooked in a pan of hemispherical wells.

70 min · Medium · Breakfast

Rice and black-eyed beans cooked with sorghum leaves, which turn it deep red.

100 min · Easy · Main course

Thin dough with a curd filling, boiled and then baked under cream.

105 min · Takes practice · Main course

Thin potato pancakes with garlic and marjoram, fried crisp.

50 min · Easy · Snack