Southeast Asian

This dish can pack a lot of heat—or not. If you like a lot of spice, feel free to up the amount of fiery bird's-eye chiles. If you prefer a slightly milder dish, you can remove the seeds from the chiles.

Replacing full-fat coconut milk with a light version reduces fat, not flavor.

This soup has many layers in its complexity, but the overall effect is of cleanness and freshness. An optional addition of jasmine rice makes a heartier meal.

Inspired by Vietnamese pho (pronounced "fuh"), this soup creates its own broth as meaty short ribs and beef shank simmer with ginger, garlic, chile, and the sweet spice of star anise and cinnamon—supermarket ingredients that come together with slippery rice noodles to produce a wonderfully fragrant and authentic-tasting dish. It’s a great choice for a party, because everyone gets to customize their bowl to their own taste with a spritz of lime, some fiery Sriracha sauce and sweet hoisin, and a scattering of mint and cucumber.

The rich, intense flavor base of this traditional Malaysian dish comes from the rempah, or curry paste, that is made from scratch and infused into the oil before cooking the remaining ingredients. This recipe uses whole chickens that have been broken down into 10 pieces (2 drumsticks, 2 thighs, 2 wings, and 4 breast pieces each). If you're not comfortable cutting up a chicken yourself, you can ask your butcher to do it or buy chicken pieces.

Dau Hu Rang Muoi Luke Nguyen: I enjoy the simplicity and texture of this dish—it's like a vegetarian's version of salt and pepper squid.

Nuoc Cham Chay Luke Nguyen: This is the vegetarian equivalent of dipping fish sauce. This sauce is quick and easy to make, and if you want to liven it up, add some pickled vegetables and chile.

Since emigrating from Vietnam in the 1970s, Kia Dickinson has been generously sharing her incredible recipes with everyone she meets, including food editor Ian Knauer. This colorful mix of moist poached chicken, cabbage, carrots, and fresh herbs tossed with a wild, tongue-searing dressing is the quintessential summer salad—cool, colorful, and very fresh. When preparing this recipe, Dickinson uses the leftover poaching liquid to make rice.

We love the many textures and flavors of this spicy coconut curry with butternut squash, spinach, and cashews. Bottled red curry paste keeps it supermarket-friendly.

Jasmine rice is native to Southeast Asia. When cooked, its long grains become soft, seductively aromatic, and nutty in flavor.

Satay is an Indonesian-style kebab served with a spicy peanut sauce. Here, we've amped up the sauce's flavor with some sweet peach nectar.

Nutty and faintly sweet, our fast peanut sauce tops pork chops for an American take on the Southeast Asian specialty.

This soup from Tien Dinh at Pho, in Las Vegas, delivers vitamin A.

The curries that are sold in the markets of southern Thailand inspired this heavily spiced dish. Chef Boetz says this delicious main course is a hybrid of an Indian and a Thai curry. The use of dried spices (coriander, cardamom, cumin) is common in Indian curries; coconut milk and fresh, aromatic ingredients (cilantro, lemongrass, galangal) are often used in Thai curries.

Surf-and-turf like you've never had before—whole fried trout topped with crisp pieces of sweet and spicy pork. For a traditional Thai dinner, serve the mains and sides family-style with a large bowl of steamed jasmine rice.

In this appetizer, the spicy squid and the cooling relish are wrapped in betel (pronounced "beetle") leaves, which have a slightly bitter taste. If you can't find betel leaves, Boston or romaine lettuce leaves make a good substitute.

Just to clarify—there are no tangerines in this recipe and it doesn't look like a pie. But it's still delicious. In Singapore, these turnovers, also known as kuey taht, are a highly prized gift for Chinese New Year. Traditionally, people give away fresh tangerines (tangerine is a homonym for "gold" in Chinese). When Western-style baked goods were introduced, this round turnover was created to resemble the real thing: thus its crackly orange egg yolk wash and clever little clove on top. CHEF'S TIP: Don't eat the cloves. They are only a decorative touch, and biting into one will definitely be a shock to your palate.