Croatia.

The coastal kitchen runs on a handful of moves repeated with confidence. There is grilling over embers — fish, lamb, squid — finished with a shower of chopped garlic and parsley in olive oil that Dalmatians call šalša or simply the dressing. There is the lešo, a plain boil of fish or vegetables served warm with oil and vinegar, which sounds austere and tastes of the sea. And there is the slow, covered pot: brudet, a fish stew built in layers and never stirred, and peka, in which meat and potatoes go under a heavy iron bell that is then buried in embers so everything steams in its own juices and olive oil for two hours.

Continental Croatia belongs to a different empire, and the food admits it. Zagreb, Zagorje and the Podravina were Habsburg for centuries, so the repertoire is full of breaded veal, roast goose with mlinci (dried flatbread softened in the roasting juices), potato and cream, and dumplings both savoury and sweet. Štrukli — thin dough rolled around fresh cottage cheese and baked under cream — is the region's calling card and appears as a starter, a main and, sweetened with sugar, a dessert. Slavonia in the east adds Hungarian influence and its own paprika culture: kulen, the coarse paprika-spiced sausage that ages for months, and fiš paprikaš, a fiery river-fish stew cooked in a kettle over open fire on the banks of the Drava and Danube.

Istria is the third kitchen and the one food writers have been quietly obsessed with for two decades. Its interior grows white and black truffles in the Motovun forest, wild asparagus in spring, and the acorn-fed pigs behind Istrian pršut, which is air-dried in the bora wind rather than smoked. Istrian cooking is also the home of maneštra, a family of thick one-pot soups, and of fuži and pljukanci, hand-rolled pastas served with game or truffle.

Curing and preserving underpin everything. Pršut hangs in coastal larders, paški sir — hard sheep cheese from the island of Pag, where the sheep graze on salt-blown herbs — is shaved thin and eaten with oil, and salted anchovies, dried figs and jars of ajvar carry the year through winter. The famous olive oils come from Istria and the islands, and a good one is used as a finishing ingredient, poured over a dish at the table rather than cooked away.

The meal structure is Mediterranean at heart. Marenda — a late-morning working meal that sits between breakfast and lunch — is a real institution on the coast, and lunch is the main event. A Dalmatian table starts with something cured or a salad of octopus or beans, moves to fish or a braise, and ends with fruit rather than pastry; inland the same slot ends with strudel or fritule, and the wine is likely to be diluted with sparkling water into a gemišt.