⚡ Quick Recipes Under 30 Minutes — Easy Cooking

Seville's spinach and chickpea stew, Moorish in its roots and eaten through Lent in every tapas bar — the sauce is thickened with bread fried in olive oil and pounded with garlic, cumin, smoked paprika and sherry vinegar.

⏱ 28 min · 4 serves

Catalonia's pa amb tomàquet — toasted bread rubbed with garlic and the cut half of a ripe tomato until the pulp soaks in, finished with olive oil and salt; breakfast and tapa all over Spain.

⏱ 15 min · 4 serves

The Tuscan way with a good steak — seared rare, rested, sliced across the grain and fanned over rocket with rosemary oil, Parmesan shavings and a few drops of aged balsamic.

⏱ 25 min · 4 serves

The 1980s Italian trattoria favourite — short pasta in a pale pink sauce of smoked salmon, cream and a spoonful of tomato, brightened with lemon zest and dill and ready in twenty minutes.

⏱ 20 min · 4 serves

The Galician tapa of small green peppers blistered in hot olive oil and showered with flaky salt — most are mild and sweet, but every so often one is fiercely hot.

⏱ 15 min · 4 serves

India's spiced milk tea — black tea boiled with milk, sugar, fresh ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and pepper the way street-corner tea sellers make it, strong enough to stand up to the milk.

⏱ 17 min · 2 serves

Old-fashioned still lemonade — lemon zest muddled with sugar to release its oil, steeped in hot water and finished with fresh juice and cold water, so it tastes of the whole fruit rather than just its sourness.

⏱ 20 min · 6 serves

Proper hot chocolate made with chopped dark chocolate, not powder — melted into hot milk with a little cocoa and sugar and whisked until glossy and thick enough to coat a spoon.

⏱ 15 min · 2 serves

Greece's summer coffee, born at the 1957 Thessaloniki fair — instant coffee shaken hard with sugar and a little water into a thick, stable foam, then topped up with ice, cold water and milk.

⏱ 5 min · 1 serves

The Punjabi yoghurt drink — ripe mango blended with cold yoghurt, milk and a pinch of cardamom into a thick, chilled glass that tames a hot curry or stands in for breakfast.

⏱ 5 min · 2 serves

The American lunchtime classic — mature cheddar between two slices of buttered bread, fried slowly in a pan until the outside is crisp and deep golden and the cheese runs.

⏱ 15 min · 2 serves

The Scottish breakfast — oats simmered slowly with milk, water and a pinch of salt and stirred until thick and creamy, then finished with berries and a drizzle of honey.

⏱ 14 min · 2 serves

The café breakfast that went round the world from Sydney and California — ripe avocado crushed with lime, salt and chilli on thick, well-toasted sourdough, finished with olive oil, radish and seeds.

⏱ 18 min · 2 serves

The Chinese restaurant classic made at home in fifteen minutes — chicken stock seasoned with ginger and white pepper, lightly thickened with cornflour so the beaten egg sets in it as fine, silky ribbons.

⏱ 15 min · 4 serves

Rapana, the large sea snail that settled in the Black Sea last century, sliced and fried in butter with garlic and white wine — a seaside tavern dish cooked hot and fast, because rapana toughens if left too long in the pan.

⏱ 27 min · 4 serves

A bright, pourable sauce of mixed berries cooked briefly with sugar and lemon and pushed through a sieve — the partner of cheesecake, panna cotta and ice cream, made from frozen fruit in winter.

⏱ 15 min · 8 serves

The dish that made Julia Child fall for French cooking — sole dusted in flour, fried in butter and dressed with nut-brown butter, lemon and parsley; simple, quick and all about timing.

⏱ 20 min · 4 serves

Berlin's street-stall favourite since 1949 — fried pork sausage, sliced and drowned in a warm, sweet curry-spiced tomato sauce, dusted with more curry powder and eaten with a bread roll.

⏱ 28 min · 4 serves

Italy's open omelette, cooked slowly on the hob and finished under the grill rather than folded — here with golden courgettes, spring onions, Parmesan and mint, good hot or at room temperature.

⏱ 28 min · 4 serves

Mussels steamed open in white wine with shallots, garlic, thyme and butter, as cooked along the Channel and Atlantic coasts of France; the broth they release is the sauce, to be mopped up with bread.

⏱ 27 min · 4 serves

The Parisian bistro steak — a thick fillet pressed into cracked black peppercorns, seared in butter and served with a pan sauce of flamed cognac and cream.

⏱ 25 min · 4 serves

Wales's grown-up cheese on toast — a thick sauce of mature cheddar, ale, mustard and Worcestershire sauce spread over toast and grilled until bubbling and blistered brown.

⏱ 25 min · 4 serves

Chicken breasts pounded thin, coated in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fried in plenty of hot oil until the crust puffs away from the meat — the Bulgarian home take on the Viennese schnitzel, served with lemon.

⏱ 27 min · 4 serves

A slab of sirene baked in a foil parcel with tomato, pepper, butter and savory until soft and steaming — the simplest Bulgarian hot meze, opened at the table so the steam and the buttery juices escape there.

⏱ 28 min · 2 serves