Hungary

Duck into a Budapest market hall and the air hangs with ropes of dried paprika — the ground red pepper the Ottomans left behind, now the very soul of Hungarian cooking. It goes into almost everything, and above all into the national obsession with slow-cooked meat: order gulyás and you get a brothy, paprika-red soup, not the stew foreigners expect; ask for that thicker stew and it's pörkölt, ladled over little pinched nokedli dumplings.

The great street pleasure is lángos, a disc of deep-fried dough the size of a dinner plate, blistered and hot, smeared with garlic and buried under sour cream and grated cheese — market food and lakeside-summer food both. Sit-down tables bring halászlé, a fiery river-fish soup, and prized goose liver. Then comes the drinking: sweet golden Tokaji, the inky red they call Bull's Blood, and a shot of pálinka fruit brandy pressed into your hand the moment you arrive, because in Hungary that is simply how you say welcome.