Asian

The essential ingredients for this Portuguese-inspired Indian dish are wine, vinegar, and garlic. Additions of mustard seeds, cumin, turmeric, and chiles make it specifically colonial Goan.

An elegant dish that may be served to the family or at a grand party. Rice is the ideal accompaniment.

This is a South Indian–inspired sweet, mild curry. Serve it with steamed white rice and a tangy fruit chutney like cranberry or mango for a perfect rainy day meal. The recipe calls for a rather small quantity of butternut squash, so you may want to reserve the rest for another recipe.

Shrimp are quick to cook, but still manage to feel rather special. This recipe borrows spices from the southern shores of India; I tasted a dish similar to this when I was learning about the local cuisine. At first, you get pure heat from the chiles; when it subsides, you're left with delicate and delicious flavors. Here, I have toned down the chiles and added some background warmth by using fresh ginger instead. I’ve used tiger shrimp and removed most of the shell, apart from the tail. I prefer to leave the tail on, as it means that you have something to hold on to when biting into the shrimp, but you can take the entire shell off if you prefer. Just make sure the shrimp are raw and that they have been deveined.

Fermented black soy beans—a Chinese cousin to miso paste—are the key to this flavorful weeknight stir-fry.

There is no better use for leftover rice than chahan. A brief trip in a pan resurrects the grains and a few pantry ingredients—little more than eggs, oil, and salt—transform tired rice into a super-satisfying meal. To give the humble dish a little flair, I whip up a saucy broth filled with vegetables and shrimp and pour it on at the last minute. Of course, you can add any ingredients you like—peas or asparagus, kimchi or Japanese pickles, pork, or even, as I do at Morimoto Napa, duck confit.

The most popular person at any Japanese street festival is the yakisoba guy. Standing at a small cart with a hot griddle, he wears a twisted hair band and holds two giant spatulas, one in each hand. With great energy and fanfare he stir-fries a heap of vegetables and pork with chukasoba noodles—the yellow, springy Chinese-style wheat noodles more commonly known as ramen. He finishes with a glug of the special bottled sauce that tastes like a spicier version of tonkatsu sauce, and customers walk toward him like zombies. At home, however, the dish is best cooked one portion at a time.

These pillowy steamed buns are delicious in all the same ways as Parker House rolls, with the sweet flavor of cornmeal.

For this nontraditional okonomiyaki recipe, you need to julienne the potato. Use a mandoline with the shredder attachment, or slice it very thinly into planks and then crosswise into very thin strips. Makes a terrific appetizer!

If you don’t have cinnamon and star anise in your pantry, don’t buy them just for this congee recipe. You can tweak the flavor profile by using black peppercorns and parsley stems, or fennel seeds and crushed red pepper flakes instead.

The best thing about this salad is how it comes together in no time at all. Asian rice noodles generally cook more quickly than wheat noodles and with the addition of the precut coleslaw mix the prep time is very minimal.

Rasam, as prepared in most homes in Southern India, uses either tamarind or tomatoes as the base. It is a piquant broth poured over steaming hot rice. In our home—both in Kerala and America—rasam was a staple part of everyday meals. One night when I was a teenager, I was out to dinner with my brother Tom in New York City’s Little Italy and ate mussels cooked in a light tomato broth very reminiscent of rasam. I couldn’t wait to get home, buy fresh mussels, and cook them in rasam. This dish has made its rounds in my kitchens for close to three decades now. Make sure to have some fresh crusty bread to soak up the tomato-mussel broth.

The power trio of butter, kimchi, and gochujang produces an umami ballad so beautiful in this udon recipe, you’ll want to play it over and over again.

Sticky rice is worth using for this porridge-y, comforting chicken soup recipe; it releases lots of creamy starches and helps builds nice body as it cooks.

The ingredient list for a curry can be a little daunting with all those spices, but the technique isn’t very far from a pasta sauce: you just toast the whole spices and then move on to a sort of sofrito of onion, garlic, and ginger. From that flavor base, you add tomatoes and whatever veggies you desire. At the end, a quick chutney, really just a rough chopped blend of herbs and coconut, gives the stew a bright pop of flavor (the way a few torn basil leaves make that tomato sauce sing).