Southeast Asian

Chef Sirichai Sreparplarn of Brooklyn's Ugly Baby doesn’t believe in using food processors for making curry paste, but we won’t stop you from using one. He also prefers a blend of two parts shorter dried chiles (prik haeng) and one part longer chiles (prik chee fah), but any Thai chile will work.

You can store this all-purpose sweet-and-spicy vinegar in clean mason jars, but it is easier to keep it in repurposed glass bottles. Note that this recipe can be adjusted as you like—try using different chiles or other spices like bay leaf.

This dish—both a backyard staple and street food treat in the Philippines—is slightly sticky when cooked and develops a nice char while the dark thigh meat stays tender and juicy.

A ubiquitous staple on Filipino tables, this rice dish is heavily perfumed with garlic oil and tossed with crispy sautéed garlic chips.

For this popular Filipino breakfast, the eggplants are heavily charred before being battered with egg and pan-fried, making them smoky, creamy, crispy, and totally satisfying.

Using ground pork instead of stew meat is a practical and easy way of making menudo on a weeknight.

Pineapple is the main ingredient in this saucy Filipino dish and makes the chicken sweet, tender and tasty.

Almondigas is a hearty Filipino soup consisting of meatballs and thin, salted Chinese noodles made from wheat flour that cook quickly.

Pansit has come to symbolize long life and health in Filipino culture, and is commonly served at birthdays, baptisms, and New Year’s celebrations.

Sinigang is adobo’s close contender for the title of National Dish of the Philippines. Like many Filipino dishes, this soup is bold in taste: sour, salty, slightly sweet, spicy, and umami.

Afritada, a traditional chicken and vegetable stew, is a gateway dish to Filipino cuisine. Spaghetti sauce, instead of fresh tomatoes or tomato sauce, is used in this recipe for convenience and taste.

If you travel to the Philippines, though, you’ll discover that you can “sisig” pretty much anything. There’s chicken sisig, tuna sisig, goat sisig, and even vegetarian sisig. This squid iteration incorporates salmon caviar and crushed prawn crackers.

Store-bought curry pastes come in varying degrees of spiciness, even if their labels all say the same thing. If the cooked tofu isn’t as hot as you’d hoped, amp it up by tucking a slice or two of Fresno chile into your wrap.

The shrimp cooks in minutes, so while it’s marinating, set out a platter of lettuce cups, mint sprigs, chopped peanuts, sliced cucumbers, and the reserved sauce.

In this Indonesian satay, the dipping sauce is used as a marinade to give the meat more intense flavor.

Tossed with crunchy cucumbers, peanuts, and fresh red chiles, this salad makes a refreshing summer dinner spooned over rice or all on its own.

Refreshingly cold noodles, Vietnamese-spiced pork meatballs, and an array of toppings like fried shallots and crushed peanuts ensure this make-ahead dinner is totally unforgettable.