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Low-calorie recipes

Under 350 kcal per serving, without the sad-diet energy. Real flavour, careful fat, plenty of vegetables — the kind of light cooking you actually want to make again.

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Muhammara with roasted red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses — Lebanon recipe

🇱🇧LebanonMedium

Sauces and Dips

Muhammara

Muhammara comes from Aleppo, Syria, and the name is Arabic for 'reddened'. It's a roasted red pepper and walnut dip with a flavor unlike anything else in the mezze world: sweet from the peppers, tangy from pomegranate molasses, earthy from toasted walnuts, with a slow heat from Aleppo pepper. Breadcrumbs give it body and a slightly grainy texture that holds up on pita. The dip improves overnight — the flavors round out and the texture firms slightly. Unlike hummus, which can be polarising, muhammara tends to win over everyone who tries it.

20 min195 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌱Vegan⚡Quick

Mulled Wine with red wine, orange and cinnamon sticks — Germany recipe

🇩🇪GermanyEasy

Beverages

Mulled Wine

Glühwein is the hot spiced red wine poured from wooden huts at German Christmas markets: wine, sugar, orange and whole spices, and under EU rules nothing else — not even water. Orange and cinnamon carry the top of it, while cloves and star anise sit underneath and keep the drink from reading as syrup. Heat is the whole job here: hold the pot near 70°C and never let it bubble, or the wine browns and goes flat. Active work is about fifteen minutes, after which the pan sits on the lowest flame for another twenty to thirty while the spices open up.

15 min200 kcal4 serves

🌱Vegan🌿Vegetarian🌾Gluten-free

Mushroom Soup with mushrooms, potato and carrot — Russia recipe

🇷🇺RussiaAdvanced

Soups

Mushroom Soup

A hearty Russian-style mushroom soup with dried porcini and pearl barley. The mushroom broth is intensely aromatic, the barley makes it satisfyingly thick — comfort food at its finest.

120 min200 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Mushroom, Spring Onion and Chilli Crisp Filo Bake with mixed mushrooms, scallions and chilli crisp — UK recipe

🇬🇧UKMedium

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Mushroom, Spring Onion and Chilli Crisp Filo Bake

Layers of shattering filo pastry wrapped around a savory mushroom and spring onion filling, every sheet brushed with a mix of melted butter and chilli crisp. The result is somewhere between a Turkish börek and an Asian-inspired bake — deeply golden on top, fragrant with sesame and chilli oil, with the filling still juicy inside. One of those dishes where the technique is simple but the payoff looks and tastes unreasonably good.

55 min295 kcal6 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌶️Spicy

Mushrooms in Sour Cream with champignon mushrooms, sour cream and garlic cloves — Russia recipe

🇷🇺RussiaMedium

Vegetable and Mushroom Dishes

Mushrooms in Sour Cream

A quick, comforting Russian classic: champignons are sautéed with onion and garlic until golden, then finished with a velvety sour cream sauce. Ready in 30 minutes. Serve over toast, pasta or mashed potatoes.

30 min280 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian⚡Quick

Naan Bread with plain flour, yogurt and instant yeast — India recipe

🇮🇳IndiaAdvanced

Flour and Confectionery Products

Naan Bread

Yeasted flatbread made with yogurt, cooked on a very hot cast-iron skillet until the surface blisters and the edges char. The yogurt softens the dough and relaxes the gluten — without it, the bread would be chewier and more bready. The skillet must be genuinely hot before the dough goes in: that instant heat is what turns the moisture in the dough to steam, inflates the bubbles, and gives the bread its characteristic uneven surface. Brush with butter or ghee immediately off the heat. Makes 6 pieces.

90 min280 kcal4 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Narsharab with pomegranate juice, cinnamon and ground coriander — Azerbaijan recipe

🌍AzerbaijanMedium

Sauces and Dips

Narsharab

An Azerbaijani sauce of 100 percent pomegranate juice slowly reduced to a thick ruby syrup and seasoned with warm spices like cinnamon, coriander, and basil. Its name means pomegranate wine; this version is made without sugar, so it stays sharp and tart, and it is served with grilled meat and fish.

55 min35 kcal16 serves

🌱Vegan🌾Gluten-free

Negroni (Classic Italian Aperitivo Cocktail) with gin, Campari and sweet vermouth — Italy recipe

🇮🇹ItalyEasy

Beverages

Negroni (Classic Italian Aperitivo Cocktail)

The Negroni is a classic Italian cocktail made with equal parts gin, Campari, and sweet red vermouth, stirred over ice and garnished with an orange peel. One of the world's most iconic drinks, it's the cornerstone of Italian aperitivo culture — the tradition of a light, bitter drink before dinner that wakes the palate and stirs the appetite. Created around 1919 at Caffè Casoni in Florence, when Count Camillo Negroni asked bartender Fosco Scarselli for a stronger version of the Americano, replacing soda water with gin. Its ruby-red color, bittersweet flavor, and spirit-forward strength made it an icon of la dolce vita. The drink is a direct descendant of the Americano (Campari, vermouth, soda), which itself came from the Milano-Torino. The sacred formula is 1:1:1 — equal parts of all three ingredients. Key technique: stir, never shake (a spirit-only cocktail without juice should be gently chilled, not aerated and over-diluted), and quality matters because there are only three ingredients. Campari is the one irreplaceable soul of the drink. Served in a rocks glass over a large ice cube or straight up, it's sipped slowly as an aperitivo between 6 and 8 PM, paired with olives, taralli, or salty snacks. Recently revived worldwide through Negroni Week and ambassadors like Stanley Tucci, it remains one of the top three most-ordered cocktails in bars globally. Yields 1 cocktail in 5 minutes.

5 min215 kcal1 serves

⚡Quick🌾Gluten-free

New York-Style Bagels with bread flour and yeast — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAAdvanced

Flour and Confectionery Products

New York-Style Bagels

A New York bagel is a ring of stiff wheat dough that is boiled and then baked — the New York take on a bread of Ashkenazi Jewish origin. The dough is lean, with no fat and no eggs: only bread flour, water, yeast, salt and barley malt syrup. With 58% water it is much stiffer than ordinary bread dough and has to be kneaded until smooth and elastic. After a night in the refrigerator, which builds flavour, the bagels are shaped and boiled for a minute a side in water with malt syrup, to which this home version adds a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda for a darker crust; the boil gelatinises the starch on the surface, sets the crust and gives the dense chew that separates a bagel from a roll. They are then baked in a hot oven until deep golden-brown and shiny. Seeds or 'everything' seasoning go on while the bagels are still wet from the pot, and they are eaten split with cream cheese and smoked salmon, or warm with nothing at all. Start the day before: the work and the oven take about 70 minutes, but the dough also rises for an hour, spends 8 to 24 hours in the refrigerator and rests for 30 to 45 minutes once shaped.

150 min280 kcal8 serves

🌿Vegetarian🌱Vegan

Nigerian Beef Suya with beef sirloin, roasted peanuts and cayenne pepper — Nigeria recipe

🇳🇬NigeriaMedium

Meat Dishes

Nigerian Beef Suya

Suya is Nigerian street food at its most elemental: thinly sliced beef, threaded on skewers, coated in yaji — a dry spice mix built on ground roasted peanuts, cayenne, ginger, and paprika — then grilled over high heat until the edges char and the spice crust sets. It originated with the Hausa people of northern Nigeria and has become a national dish. The yaji goes on twice: once as a marinade before cooking, once as a dry finish sprinkled over the hot meat right off the grill. That second application is what separates suya from ordinary grilled meat. Serve with raw onion, tomato slices, and another pinch of yaji. Newspaper optional but traditional.

45 min320 kcal4 serves

🌾Gluten-free💪High protein🌶️Spicy

No-Knead Bread with flour and yeast — USA recipe

🇺🇸USAAdvanced

Flour and Confectionery Products

No-Knead Bread

Four ingredients, five minutes of actual work, twelve to eighteen hours of waiting, and a screaming-hot Dutch oven. Jim Lahey published this method in the New York Times in 2006 and it changed home baking permanently. A very wet dough and a long slow fermentation do everything that kneading normally does — they develop the gluten structure and build the flavor. The result is a crackly crust, an open airy crumb, and depth of flavor that shorter methods can't produce.

780 min180 kcal10 serves

🌿Vegetarian

Nuoc Cham with fish sauce, lime and garlic — Vietnam recipe

🇻🇳VietnamEasy

Sauces and Dips

Nuoc Cham

Nuoc cham is the essential Vietnamese dipping sauce — a bright, balanced mix of fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, garlic, and chili that ties together spring rolls, grilled meats, rice bowls, and noodle salads with sweet, sour, salty, and spicy notes in every drop.

5 min35 kcal4 serves

⚡Quick🌾Gluten-free🌶️Spicy

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