In most countries around the world, it’s safe to say that steak is a minimalist affair – a dish that, in some cases, combines perhaps no more than beef and salt. In Portugal, however, people tend to go in the other direction. “It’s a steak that’s pan-fried, and served with smoked ham, bay leaf, garlic and white wine,” says Manuel Fernandes, when we ask him to describe the country’s signature steak dish, bife à portuguesa, “Portuguese-style steak.”

Unlike many other pulses, most bean varieties were not native to the eastern Mediterranean, originating instead in Central and South America. Yet they have adapted well to the climate in Greece (and across the globe) and are now quite popular and an important source of protein here, where they are cooked in a variety of ways. In fact, the bean soup known as fasolada is considered our national dish – it’s humble, affordable and easy-to-cook yet still hearty and delicious. Gigantes (“giants”) are particularly loved in Greece. These large white beans are also known as elephant beans, a nod to their size. Some of the best giant beans in Greece are grown in the country’s northwest, most famously in Prespes and Kastoria, both regions with a PGI (Protected Geographic Indication) for giant beans.

“Blue Monday,” the tune made famous by New Orleans legend Fats Domino and written by the equally legendary Dave Bartholomew, sums up how most of us feel at the beginning of the week after the giddiness of the weekend has worn off and reality beckons.  “Blue Monday, how I hate Blue Monday,” Domino sings, while the piano trills underneath his rich baritone voice. And who could blame him? Monday is a a day of toil, even in carefree New Orleans, where Monday traditionally meant laundry day. But from this toil, one of our most recognizable and renowned dishes was born: red beans and rice. Every Monday in restaurants and homes throughout the city, the slow-simmered-until-they-fall-apart, creamy beans, loaded with smoked sausage and pickled meat, are served over a bed of fragrant Louisiana long grain rice, often with a piece of fried chicken or a pork chop.

“For me, it’s a grandma’s dish,” says Miguel Peres, without hesitation, when asked about his relationship with pastéis de massa tenra, a Lisbon specialty of deep-fried, palm-sized pastries filled with meat. “She would make a lot of them and freeze them, so we would always have them around. When there was a birthday or party, we would pull them out and fry them. We would take them to the beach in boxes. As kids, we would eat them with carrot rice and salad, using the pastries to scoop the rice.” Miguel is the chef-owner of Pigmeu, a pork-focused, head-to-tail restaurant in Lisbon, where pastéis de massa tenra can be found on the menu. He’s made some subtle updates to his grandma’s recipe, but the fundamentals remain intact: a thin, golden, pockmarked, crumbly pastry concealing a fine, tender, salty, savory pork filling.

Casa da Índia is not, despite the name, an Indian restaurant. The menu boasts a pretty standard repertoire of the type of hearty, meat-and-potatoes dishes one would associate with Portugal: grilled sardines, salt cod baked with cream, stewed fava beans. “This space used to be a warehouse for spices,” says Paulo Campos, Casa da Índia’s manager, when asked about the restaurant’s rather misleading name. “We’re close to the river, so this is where spices, coffee, tea and other things from India were stored. The owners wanted to retain this legacy, so they gave it this name.”

Alongside chef and restaurateur André Magalhães in his Lisbon restaurant Taberna da Rua das Flores, we stare down a rustic clay vessel piled with a mixture of steaming clams, fragrant cilantro and garlic, wedges of lemon…and not a whole lot more. As recommended by André (“It’s tastier if you use your hands”), we pinch the clams with our fingers and, after eating the meat, use the shells to scoop up the mixture of olive oil, clam broth, herbs and lemon juice that coats the bottom of the dish. It’s savory, rich, salty, tart and fragrant, and as with many Portuguese dishes, we’re left wondering how it’s possible that so much flavor came from so few ingredients.

CB has teamed up with the creators of “Native Dish: United Flavors of NYC,” NYC Media’s new food TV series, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at some of the New Yorkers featured in these short videos. The series, which aims to celebrate New York City immigrants from all over the world, focuses on one individual and one dish at a time as a means through which to explore the myriad cuisines represented in the city and the people who make them. While each episode features a general overview of the participant’s life story, particularly as it relates to food, we are expanding that narrative by providing the full interview transcript, albeit condensed and lightly edited. This month we are spotlighting Jeannie Ongkeo and her recipe for Tam Mak Hoong, a Lao green papaya salad drenched with savory anchovy sauce.

We recently spoke with travel writer Caroline Eden about her culinary travelogue, Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light (Hardie Grant; May 2019). Eden has written for the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Financial Times, among other publications, and has filed stories from Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent. Eden is also co-author of Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus (Kyle Books; July 2016), a Guardian book of the year in 2016 and winner of the Guild of Food Writers Award for best food and travel book in 2017.

We spoke to Joe Yonan, the James Beard Award-winning food and dining editor of The Washington Post, about his cookbook, Cool Beans: The Ultimate Guide to the World's Most Versatile Plant-Based Protein. And he provided us with a recipe for his garlicky great northern beans and broccoli rabe over toast. The humble bean plays a starring role in many of the culinary cultures we cover, as evidenced by our “Bean Week” series, which included dispatches from Catalonia, Beijing, Mexico, Greece and Istanbul. So we were delighted to talk to Joe about this delicious, versatile and environmentally friendly protein, one that has gained new prominence in the current pandemic.

Legumes have been at the core of the Greek diet since antiquity, with chickpeas being especially popular. We find references to them, and the ways they were cooked, in the works of several ancient writers and poets, including Homer, whose epic poems provide insight into the eating and cooking habits of the time (roughly the 8th century B.C.). Revythi (ρεβύθι) is the Greek word for chickpeas, and it derives from the ancient Greek word erevynthos (ερέβυνθος), which referred to both the plant and the seed. Sappho (c. 630-570 B.C.), the greatest female Greek lyric poet, spoke of “Χρύσειοι ἐρέβινθοι ἐπ ̓ ἀιόνων ἐφύοντο,” which translates roughly as “Golden chickpeas that have for centuries been growing.”

We recently spoke with Mexican chef Pati Jinich about her new cookbook, Treasures of the Mexican Table: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets (Mariner Books; November, 2021). Pati is host of the James Beard Award winning and Emmy nominated public television series Pati's Mexican Table and has published two other cookbooks on Mexican cuisine – the first also called Pati's Mexican Table (Mariner Books; March 2013) and the second, Mexican Today (Mariner Books; April 2016). She is also the host of the new PBS Primetime special La Frontera, where she travels along the Texas-Mexico border to explore its food and culture.

Encompassing the entirety of the old city and all of its historic glory, Istanbul’s Fatih district is home to a large population of Syrians, who settled in certain neighborhoods following the outbreak of civil war in that country. Yusufpaşa is one such place, and so is the area around Akşemsettin Street, which is lined with a variety of shops and restaurants run by Syrians. Aksaray is another, with the working-class neighborhood now full of signs advertising “Syrian shwarma” and “Aleppo cuisine,” spelled out in Turkish and also in the curly, coiled letters of Arabic. Restaurants serving displaced Syrians familiar dishes like fatteh and muhammara now dominate the main boulevard.

We spoke to travel writer and cook Yasmin Khan about her latest cookbook, Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus (W. W. Norton & Company, May 4, 2021). Author of two cookbooks, The Saffron Tales and Zaitoun, Yasmin turns her focus to the Eastern Mediterranean in Ripe Figs. Using the kitchen table as a lens through which to explore the issues of borders and identity in an interconnected world, she traces various migration stories in her travelogues and recipes. We chatted about the inspiration behind the book, her research process and the importance of documenting both the good and the bad in travel writing.

Greek Easter – this year celebrated on Sunday, May 2 – involves a great deal of baking, from breads to cookies and sweet treats. Many of these traditional recipes are rich with symbolic meaning, usually referencing the regeneration of the earth, the blooming of spring, as well as the honoring of the dead. Some of the themes are clearly rooted in ancient Greek traditions and practices that Christianity later adopted and incorporated into their own celebrations. The egg is the star of most typical Easter recipes. An important ancient symbol of fertility, life and rebirth, eggs are also dyed for the holiday and used in various ways as decoration.

Vegetable main dishes abound in Greek cuisine. Those cooked in olive oil on the stovetop fall under the broader category of ladera (ladi means “olive oil”). They feature seasonal vegetables – usually one main vegetable is the star of each dish, with others adding flavor and color. In the lead-up to Easter – when there is a traditional fasting period of 40 days and lots of new vegetables come into season – ladera dishes enter the spotlight. One of my favorites is fasolakia (the diminutive of fasoli, or “bean”), which features fresh green beans cooked in tomato sauce with a few potatoes, carrots and often zucchini. It’s a dish that’s prepared all over Greece as well as in other Mediterranean countries like Turkey, with small variations.