Grilled sardines and tomato and anchovy pie – Irina Janakievska’s Balkan recipes for summer

Along the Adriatic coast, sardines are usually grilled over an open fire (na gradele) and served with lemon, excellent local olive oil and blitva, a side dish of young swiss chard, potato and garlic. Fresh sardines are key (they should smell of the sea) and do cook them whole (the heads add wonderful flavour and the small bones soften during cooking). On the Croatian island of Vis, two beloved pogačas (bread)– viška and komiška – tell a tale of friendly rivalry. Both are savoury bread pies (pogača being the word for bread and similar in both composition and etymology to Italian focaccia) filled with onions and salted fish (typically anchovies or sardines), a nod to the island’s ancient fishing and seafaring heritage. The key difference? Tomatoes

How to make perfect bún chả – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

When I visited Hanoi a decade ago, I was living in Hackney, east London, an area with a large Vietnamese community, so I felt, if not quite an expert, at least a little familiar with the cuisine. But it turned out no number of nights out on Kingsland Road could prepare me for the assault on the senses that was my first meal in the city, crouched on a plastic stool by the roadside and enjoying what Uyen Luu describes as “the irresistible sweet, treacly smell of barbecued patties and caramelised pork”, all mingled with traffic fumes.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more

Lapin, Bristol: ‘We’re not in Cafe Rouge now’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

Peculiar, meta, slightly earnest, definitely deliciousThe French, at least at one stage in culinary history, would not have balked at eating the entire cast of Watership Down in a robust dijon sauce. The British, on the other hand, have always been rather less keen, so it was surprising to hear reports that Lapin, a new French restaurant in Bristol, had been struggling to keep fluffy bunnies on its classic, single-sheet menu due to supply reasons, apparently because its game dealer couldn’t shoot them quickly enough to meet Lapin’s demand. Instead, its diners had had to settle for confit duck leg, coarse sausage and deep-fried pig’s head.Lapin patently aims to offer actual French cooking, albeit stopping short of the likes of pungent andouillette, complete with its tubey innards escaping on to the plate. That said, I’d bet that chef Jack Briggs-Horan and restaurateur Dan O’Regan tinkered with the idea before accepting that serving something quite so smelly in a small, repurposed shipping container was probably one Gallic step too far

It’s sexy! It’s Swedish! It’s everywhere! How princess cake conquered America

This spring, something strange started happening at the Fillmore Bakery in San Francisco, which specializes in old-school European desserts.Excited customers kept asking the bakery’s co-owner, Elena Basegio, “Did you see about the princess cake online?”The dome-shaped Swedish layer cake, topped with a smooth layer of green marizipan, had suddenly gone viral, increasing sales of the bakery’s already-bestselling cake.After nearly a century of demure European popularity, “prinsesstårta” suddenly seemed to be everywhere: on menus at hip restaurants in Los Angeles and New York, trending on TikTok, even inspiring candle scents at boutique lifestyle brands.The Swedish consulate in San Francisco confirmed the phenomenon, telling the Guardian that the trend appears to be driven by innovative American pastry chefs such as Hannah Ziskin, whose Echo Park pizza parlor has offered up a sleek redesign of the palatial pastry, as well as by online food influencers, some of whom have offered American bakers more “accessible” versions of the elaborate dessert.The reinvention of one of Sweden’s most cherished desserts as a trendy indulgence might seem like just another retro fad, like the renewed popularity of martinis or caviar

Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for passion fruit jaffa cakes | The sweet spot

I don’t buy jaffa cakes nearly as often as other biscuits, but when I do, I’m reminded how much I love them. They’re surprisingly easy to make from scratch, too. The base is an incredibly light genoise sponge that’s topped with a layer of jelly, and it’s this section that allows for some creativity. I chose to go down a summery route with passion fruit. Juicing enough passion fruit to get 200ml of liquid is tedious (and expensive), so by all means use a carton of juice instead

Noodle salad and fried shrimp: Mandy Yin’s recipes for Malaysian home-style prawns

The 14 states of Malaysia are located on a peninsula to the south of Thailand and on the island of Borneo, so it is no surprise that we absolutely adore seafood. Prawns are my seafood of choice at home, and I lean into store-cupboard staples to bring together easy, quick meals for my small family. Today’s glorious noodle salad is perfect for summer, not least because it’s a simple assembly job, while the second recipe, if you make a little effort to devein some shell-on prawns, rewards you with the most magnificent plate of them that you’ll ever eat.Kerabu is an umbrella term in Malay denoting a vibrant salad of vegetables and herbs, dressed with a fiery sambal, shrimp paste and lime to bring everything together. The dressing is spicy, sharp and smells wonderful from all the herbs