Beef tataki with simple ponzu sauce is a great Japanese dish to share with friends. If you like Japanese, you are going to love this. Tataki is anything that is flash seared and thinly sliced. You can do it with fish but here it’s beef. It’s great any way you do it though. Traditionally I think it’s supposed to be served with ginger. So this isn’t super authentic. I went for maximum flavour here instead....

Chile verde. Chili Colorado. Braised pork with tomatillos. Add some more green chilies and some cilantro and you have what might be the state dish of New Mexico. It’s all over the southern US. It’s nowhere up north. I don’t know why. It’s flat out comfort food. Don’t overlook pork as a stew meat. That pork shoulder you make into pulled pork is perfect for stew. Rich in collagen, it gets better as it breaks down in the BBQ pit....

East. Fast. Delicious. Perfect for weeknight meals. Spaghetti with sun-dried tomatoes and pecorino romano can be ready in less than 30 minutes. Or serve a smaller portion to start at a dinner party. Like they do in Italy. Primi and secondi. It’s a nice way to eat. This is a riff on aglio e olio – the Neapolitan classic pasta with garlic and olive oil. It’s lighter on the garlic, adds a bright note with the sun-dried tomatoes and swaps out the cheese for pecorino romano....

Bengali chicken curry done restaurant style brings home cooking to the next level. All the wonderful, authentic flavours. And an incredible, lush gravy. What’s not to love? This isn’t on any restaurant menus. At least where I live. But it should be. It has all the big tastes you expect. But with a twist. Familiar but completely different. And really good. Bengali chicken curry re-imagined Bengali chicken curry done restaurant style is a riff on food I grew up eating....

Every now and then I do a post just for me. So I don’t forget. This is one of those times. Pulled pork vindaloo. Just because I love it. It’s not mainstream. Not yet. But it could be. Should be I think. If you like vindaloo. And you like pulled pork. Then this one is for you too. Pulled pork vindaloo is not authentic Indian This is not some sort of new curry....

Chili verde. Pork, tomatillos and green chilies jacked up by dry-roasted onion, garlic and jalapeño. One seriously delicious dish. This is Mexican comfort food. Eat it straight up. With beans. Make tacos. Roll it in flour tortillas and nap with tomatillo salsa . The ultimate wet burrito. No rules. Just good. Any way you go. There’s nothing here not to love. I have a thing for braised dishes. A thing for Mexican cooking....

A great shrimp cocktail sauce makes shrimp cocktail. Pure and simple. And it’s so easy to make your own at home. Fresh. Brimming with flavour. Delicious. There really is nothing to making shrimp cocktail sauce. Mix up a few ingredients. Let stand for few minutes. Good to go. So I really don’t understand why people buy it. The jarred stuff is a little dull. Lifeless. It’s been sitting on a shelf for months....

Easy chana masala. Big, bold Indian tastes. Simple and fast to make. Sometimes easy can be delicious. This is one of those times. Indian cooking can seem daunting at first. The list of ingredients is long. The steps are complicated. And it can take forever to make. The results are worth it though. You can’t that magical Indian taste out of a jar. You can get something semi-decent. I’m not saying it’s terrible....

If you want to make restaurant style curry but don’t want to spend all day prepping for it then this easy curry recipe technique is for you. You will impress yourself. And your friends. Family too. It’s a different way to get to the same place. If you’ve ever wondered why your curries don’t come out like restaurant dishes read on. This easy curry recipe is all about onions Just about every Indian curry is about onions....

Indian spiced chicken wings with tamarind dipping sauce pack tons of flavour into what is already the world’s most perfect food. Who doesn’t love chicken wings? I mean seriously – what’s better than chicken wings? Crispy chicken goodness with the maximum skin to meat ratio. Add a bit of smoky grilled goodness. Eat them with your hands. So tasty. So fun. OK – maybe I like chicken wings more than most people but how can you not love them?...

Lamb vindaloo is on every menu of every Indian restaurant in the world. And it’s there because it is one of the greats. Like madras. Or jalfrezi. It’s just really, really good. OK. Maybe not every Indian restaurant. But almost all of them. Not easy to find one that doesn’t have it. I’m biased, mind you. Lamb vindaloo is one of my favourites. Right up there with lamb madras. There’s just something about lamb and spicy curries that works....

While a grilled steak can be pretty good I’m not happy unless there’s a sauce. For me, a pan fried steak is where it’s at. A splash of wine, a bit of stock – in this case veal stock – and a couple of flavour highlights and you move into serious territory. The French have mastered at least 100 different pan fried steak dishes – and yet there’s no grilled steak recipes in the Cordon Bleu at Home…...

Thai fried rice or khao pad is just about the best thing you can do with rice. Toasty rice flavour. Egg. Chicken. Or shrimp. Or pork. Fast food. Really great fast food. Thai fried rice eats like a meal. Big tastes. Satisfying. I don’t know why. But it works. A culinary mystery I guess. Khao pad is street food. So there aren’t a lot of ingredients. And it cooks in no time at all....

Bagara baingan. Hyderabadi eggplant curry. South Indian flavours. Hotel gravy. Rich eggplant. This is just good living. It’s serious fare. Big enough to be the star. The main attraction. Unless your idea of a vegetable is the potatoes next to your steak. If you can handle eating a carrot. Or a slice of cucumber. If you have any omnivore tendencies at all. Then maybe this will do it. It does for me....

Enchiladas verdes. So simple. So tasty. Easy to get right. Easy to get wrong as well. Keep a few things in mind and you can make better enchiladas verdes than you can buy. If you believe the internet, enchiladas verdes are a casserole. They are made with flour tortillas. Baked for 30 minutes. Full of bland chicken. Just not good. A big soggy mess. Forget what the internet says. Wait. This is the internet....

Korean beef stew mixes up traditional Korean ingredients with a bit of western technique to make something new and delicious. Think gochujang braised short ribs without the short ribs. Beef stew re-imagined. But different from any stew you’ve probably tasted before. East meets west in a delicious jumble of cultures. Gochujang makes this Korean beef stew I actually don’t think there’s anything like this served in Korea. Not that I could find....

Thai basil beef – pad gra prow – is one of the really great stir fried dishes from Southeast Asia. Garlic. Chili. Thai basil. Beef. A bit salty. The slightest hint of sweet. In wonderful balance. And it comes together in no time flat. This is weeknight cooking at it’s best. Super easy and super delicious. Nothing better than that. A bit more work than takeout maybe but you can say you did it yourself....

Authentic pho ga takes some time. Takes some attention to detail. But it’s worth it. This is one of the world’s greatest chicken noodle soups. I’m a bit of a pho addict. OK – maybe not just a bit. Card carrying member of pho lovers anonymous here. Now you know. I read the Lucky Peach Pho issue cover to cover. That’s 160 pages dedicated to pho. The definitive pho manifesto. As far as I know, anyway....

Japanese grilled chicken yakitori skewers are crazy tasty addition to your grilling arsenal. Little bits of onion and chicken grilled over high heat and finished with a little drizzle of teriyaki or yakitori sauce. Who doesn’t like meat on a stick? Indian Chicken tikka. Indonesian satay. Spanish pinchos morunos. Even a hot dog on a stick over an open fire can be a treat. Yakitori is just another great example of meat meets stick meets fire....

Korean bulgogi sauce is a great marinade for grilled beef. It’s also absolutely awesome brushed on burgers, on chops or as a stir fry sauce. Or even just drizzled on rice. Beef bulgogi is probably the most famous Korean meal. Before you say it – bibimbap is arguably the other. But bibimbap just means stuff on rice. Bulgogi counts as stuff so bulgogi on rice is bibimbap as far as I can tell....