Coscorões belong to the fried-dough trinity of the Portuguese Christmas — alongside filhós and rabanadas — and in my family they appeared by the towering plateful: thin sheets of orange-scented dough fried into crisp,...

No Portuguese Christmas table is complete without aletria: fine vermicelli cooked in sweet, lemon-and-cinnamon milk until it becomes a creamy pudding, finished with the traditional lattice of ground cinnamon on top. Drawing that lattice...

Queijadas de Sintra are proof that Portuguese pastry genius is not limited to the pastéis de nata: these little cheese tarts from the fairy-tale town of Sintra have been made since the Middle Ages...

Bacalhau com broa brings together two pillars of Portuguese cooking — salt cod and broa, our dense, slightly sweet cornbread — in one gloriously simple baked dish. Flaky cod over sweet golden onions, buried...

The folar transmontano is the patriarch of the folar family — the rustic, meat-laden Easter bread of Trás-os-Montes, my family’s corner of Portugal. Presunto, chouriço and linguiça layered inside a simple dough: abundance made...

Mexican picadillo is comfort in a skillet: ground beef simmered with potatoes, tomato sauce and warm spices until everything melds into a rich, savory stew. It is the kind of dish that feeds a...

Posta à Mirandesa is Trás-os-Montes on a plate: a thick, well-marbled veal steak, nothing but coarse salt and hot embers, and a garlicky olive-oil sauce on the side. My mother made it for special...

Sancocho panameño is Panama’s answer to the universal question: what do you eat when you need comfort in a bowl? This hearty chicken stew, thick with cassava, malanga, yam and corn on the cob,...

Besitos de coco — “little coconut kisses” — are the most charming cookies I know: crisp at the edges, soft and chewy inside, with a deep caramel note from panela. They are a beloved...

Nuegados de yuca are El Salvador’s irresistible Easter fritters: grated cassava and cheese fried into crisp-outside, chewy-inside bites, then drowned in miel de panela — a spiced raw-sugar syrup with cinnamon and cloves. The...