Some dishes are designed to impress. Pasta e fagioli was designed to feed people, cheaply, reliably, and well, using little more than pasta, beans, and whatever vegetables were on hand. It has no pretension...

Long before "zero-waste cooking" became a phrase found on restaurant menus and food blogs, Italian home cooks had already perfected the concept in a single dish: the frittata. Born from necessity rather than trend,...

Ask most people to name a great beef stew braised in wine and Beef Bourguignon comes to mind almost automatically. Ask a Belgian, and they will point you instead towards carbonnade flamande — a...

Some pastries earn their reputation through complexity — endless lamination, precise temperatures, years of practice. Pâte à choux earns its reputation the opposite way. It is a simple, almost improbable dough, cooked twice before...

Of all the desserts that sound intimidating and taste impressive, crème brûlée might offer the best return on effort. There is no pastry to laminate, no whipped egg whites to fold, no delicate flip...

Walk into a Parisian bistro on a Tuesday evening and there is a good chance tarte tatin sits quietly on the dessert menu, unbothered by trends, exactly where it has sat for decades. Cross...

Few dishes have travelled as far or been loved as widely as butter chicken. From humble beginnings in a Delhi kitchen to menus in nearly every corner of the world, it has become the...

Few dishes carry as much mystique as the soufflé. Mention one at a dinner party and someone will inevitably share a story of collapse, of oven doors opened too soon, of hopes rising and...

Indian cooking is not one cuisine. It is a vast, layered, regional food culture shaped by climate, religion, trade, agriculture, migration, caste, empire, coastline, forests, rivers and home kitchens. To speak of Indian food...

There comes a moment at every dinner party when the main plates are cleared and the table holds its collective breath. Cheese or dessert first? The answer, I've come to realise, reveals not merely...