With cooking, I’ve found on my own culinary journey, that whilst I continue to develop, acquire and hone skills. The special sauce to producing great food at home, can often be helped significantly by the actual ‘Special Sauce’ you happen to have around in the cupboard or fridge.
The culinary evolution of any aspirational cook (should they reach sufficient maturity in the subject) will inevitably turn towards the produce and ingredients they use, with the enlightenment of quality and simplicity rather than complexity and superficial razzmatazz.
When you strip away the non essentials and any distracting gimmickry, the clarity of perfection and detail in what remains can float to the surface and emerge from the murky clutter.
Great food doesn’t necessarily rely upon great cooking per se, but can organically evolve towards a skill of compositional choices rather than the practical skill of the cooking itself.
Find the producers who bake, rear, grow, ferment, combine, roast, assemble or make the best stuff and the likelihood is that your (much easier) success can be built upon their hard earned foundations.
I’m fundamentally reluctant to ever compare cooking to art, usually because a cook who calls themselves an artist is probably in all but the rarest of occasions, a wanker; but understanding composition via a deep understanding, discovery and appreciation of the components you use, is one of the endlessly gratifying life journeys of any enthusiastic cook.
The cooking once you’ve got the best ingredients and know which direction you’re heading is the easy bit.
Whilst this particular subject is of course vulnerable to the worst kind of pretentious ‘food loving’ arse heads – you see them on Youtube eating Beluga Caviar with their gold caviar spoon, eyes blissfully closed (except to peak if they are in still in shot and looking sufficiently blissful).
Amazing ingredients have no hierarchy, they are simply as susceptible to any supply and demand economics as anything else. The nobeds just pick the obvious cliches because they don’t know any better. The truth is that the most amazing example of a tomato, olive oil, courgette or apple is just as wonderful an experience as a White Truffle from Alba, lobster from Nova Scotia or Beluga Caviar.
This can be felt just as much in the supermarket, when a usually low traffic aisle suddenly becomes ransacked because one of the many current banal influencers was seen either chucking one of its items in their basket, or has made a claim that a particular product will reset the climate emergency, make fillered lips actually Look good or bring back the Dodo.
Safe in the knowledge that my influence is so low impact, I’m comfortable to say that there are numerous fantastic cupboard staples you can have around which help massively to elevate the food you cook when the low food miles, seasonal, organic, farm to fork, artisan ingredients are less accessible.
The art of simplicity, is the pursuit of mastery.
The experts who specialise on a subject with focus and passion, achieve skills and wisdoms in their field that you can never hope to match. The cheat code is finding them and buying the stuff they produce.
Pastes
Not a glamorous ingredient but an absolute cracker to stand on the shoulders of others and bring some Kapow! to your dish. Most cuisines have some kind of flavour paste that can sit in your fridge for a chunk of time ready to elevate the mundane.
Harissa is a regular for us and can be chucked in everything from a lamb pasta ragu to blobs in an omelette, mixed through a slaw or just combined with a mayonnaise, ketchup or yoghurt for a spin on a dip or sauce. It isn’t usually spicy in terms of heat but offers a lovely background of aromatics and complexity.
A decent chilli paste is another taste enhancing ‘hard man’ to have in your entourage. There are loads of different chilli pastes depending which continental flavour or direction you want to head in, but to prevent jar overload, I stick with a chipotle paste for a vibe of all things South American. It’s got the right balance of heat, complexity and smokiness to supercharge a chilli, salsa or Mexican marinade.
Gochujang, is a Korean fermented chilli paste, usually with a fair whollop of heat and a complex umami that can glamourise any variation of stir fry, noodles or rice simply as a big blob on the side. Miso is a gentler Japanese fermented soybean paste that comes in different variants, with its own magic trick to transform a bowl of water into a base for soup, or a hot mug of tummy friendly tonic.
Chunky bits
Not quite sure how to categorise these bits and this is by no means a comprehensive list but these are cupboard heroes that can live in your cupboard until we reach the singularity and bring much more to the party than your best friends kids.
Preserved lemon is great for anything that’s emulating a North African or Persian theme. The chopped rind brings a soft, aromatic citrus vibe to anything it’s chucked into, whether cooked like a Tagine style casserole or just chopped into salads, chutneys or relishes.
A jar of giant chick peas (butter beans are also really good) tend to redefine the image of ‘beans and pulses’ and if you have an opinion formed form only ever experiencing the hard, ‘rabbit shit’ style chickpeas out of a tin, I suggest you give these a go. They are pretty much a meal ready to go, and are just as good as a Catalan style salad with tomato and olive oil, as part of a Moroccan style stew or Indian style as a Chana Masala.
A jar of roasted peeled peppers is a sidearm ready to handle a plethora of situations and can go in, or on, pretty much anything. Blended with a bit of vinegar, chilli, salt and pepper and you are entering a cheffy realm of ‘roast pepper coulis’ (if you can say that without hating yourself) that can wow your vegan dinner party crashers. And as anyone who has been through the process will agree, life is just too short to be spent roasting and peeling peppers.
Runny bits
Hendersons is a constant in our house and gets added with gusto to most things that we eat. To learn more about it, keep it distinguished from Worcestershire Sauce and let go of the affiliation to Bigfoot, check out the post it has all to itself here.
Pomegranate molasses is a nice alternative to a good Balsamic vinegar, to be used in a similar fashion drizzled on stuff and added to dressings or anything that needs a bit of a lateral sweet and sour. We always have a nice Balsamic vinegar around but to keep a bit of culinary aloofness, I left it out of this particular post.
Passata is something I will bore the shit out of people about, despite learning that they will never listen. For some reason folk refuse to spend money on a good passata and continue to scrimp on cheap tins of tomatoes thinking that there is some win to doing so.
A good passata is like that cheap tin of tomatoes, cooked out to get rid of the excess water and concentrate the flavour, blended and then passed through a sieve so you are just left with a rich bright tomato pulp – only you’ll never get there cause your starting tomatoes were shit.
Fundamentals
These last two items aren’t highbrow but if I was stocking a kitchen cupboard from empty, this is where I would start.
The first is salt. An absolute essential.
Ideally pick a cheap table salt to use for things like salting your cooking water. For everything else get yourself some nice sea salt crystals and maybe a salt pig – it will change your life.
The second is an olive oil.
Olive oil is a subject in itself much in the way that wine is. Yes I know there are other oils out there, but until climate change takes this wonderful ingredient from us, it’s still my favourite.
There’s an olive oil for different tastes and occasions. Only by tasting a load will you begin to learn the style that you like yours. For us, a first pressing, young Arbequina olive oil from Catalunya is one of nature’s treasures and we’ll pour it liberally over almost anything, sweet or savoury.
The combination of salt flakes and great olive oil is like having Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively arrive at a party. Rarely does it not lift the vibe.
Epilogue
This is my shopping list for some of these items – no affiliation just versions I currently think are the best examples (Belazu just happen to do a particularly good job curating their product list).
- Gran Luchito – Chipotle chilli paste
- Belazu – Rose Harissa Paste
- Belazu – Early Harvest Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Belazu – preserved Lemons
- Maldon sea salt
- Hendersons relish
- Mutti – Passata
- Clearspring – Brown rice miso paste
- Cooks&Co – Roasted red peppers
- El Navarrico Chickpeas (or Belazu – Chickpeas)
