New Year, new food

New cuisines

If you're trying to avoid restaurant spending in the new year, cooking a new type of cuisine at home could be a way to treat yourself without breaking the bank. And if you're feeling shy to embark on an entirely new cuisine, just take some elements of a country's cooking and apply it (with a light touch) to your favourite British dishes. Some Indian spices on your roast chicken perhaps, or some Mexican chillies stirred into a Welsh rarebit topping or Chinese-five-spice powder or star anise in your gravy… the possibilities are endless.

Japanese

Japanese food is just the ticket in the new year - it's all about elegant ingredients, light-as-air tempura, small bites of top-notch meat and super-fresh fish. Miso paste is essential to Japanese cooking. This fermented paste is most often made from soy, but can be made from rice, barley or rye. It's the base for miso soup and is also delicious smoothed over vegetables or fish, or used as a marinade for meat.

'Yaki' means grill in Japanese, so yakitori are grilled skewers of anything you fancy. Teriyaki is the sweet soy sauce marinade that often comes with grilled Japanese food. If you can afford it, beef made from Wagyu cattle is out of this world - eat it as the Japanese do, in very small quantities. And if you can get hold of black cod (also sold as sablefish), it's worth the effort - it tastes sweeter and has a softer texture than cod.

• Grilled aubergines with miso (video recipe) by Paul Merrett from Get Cooking
• Teriyaki salmon by Mike Robinson from Saturday Kitchen
• Chicken yakitori by James Martin from Housecall
• Prawns and fresh seaweed tempura by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
• Quick and easy sushi maki (sushi rolls) by Merrilees Parker from Saturday Kitchen
• Wagyu beef salad by James Martin from Saturday Kitchen
• Sea bream marinated in white miso with pickled onion salsa by Nic Watt from Saturday Kitchen
• Black cod in miso by Tracy-Ann Oberman from Taste of My Life

Mexican

Add a Mexican chilli kick to your cooking over the winter months. Use pinto, kidney or black beans to provide a filling (and inexpensive) hearty base for your dishes. Watch our video for Sophie Grigson's Mexican-style bean soup, dotted with chopped avocado and dollops of soured cream. And start your day the Mexican way: try serving flour or corn tortillas filled with refried beans, cheese, salsa and avocados; or classic ranch-style eggs, made with fried or scrambled eggs with a spicy sauce.

For The Hairy Biker's Mayan stew, you'll need to source a few unusual chillies, which are available from specialist online suppliers. Once you discover the relative merits of, say, fruity Ancho, smoky Chipotle and liquorice-like Pasilla, you'll want to experiment with them time and again. We've also listed a traditional dish served in a molcajete. A molcajete is a lava stone pestle (with mortar) that can be used as a serving dish - not only does it keep food hot, it looks stunning too. One to ask for next Christmas!

• Mexican-style bean soup (video recipe) by Sophie Grigson from Get Cooking
• Breakfast burrito by Celia Brooks Brown
• Quesadillas by Celia Brooks Brown
• Enchiladas potosinas by Sofia Craxton from Veg Talk
• Mexican steak burrito by Angela Hartnett from Take on the Takeaway
• Mexican fish tortillas by Sophie Grigson from Saturday Kitchen
• Aztec molcajete by Fernando Stovell from Saturday Kitchen
• Mayan stew by Simon King and David Myers from The Hairy Bikers
• Chicken tacos with green pepper salsa by Mike Robinson from Saturday Kitchen
• Huevos rancheros (ranch-style eggs) by Simon Rimmer from Something for the Weekend
• Real guacamole by Simon King and David Myers from The Hairy Bikers