OLIVE OIL
Get yourself a bottle of really good extra virgin olive oil, and use it with abandon. Both a cooking fat and a seasoning, olive oil might be the only ingredient I use as often as Maldon salt. I’ll drizzle some over soup at the last minute, add it to bean cooking liquid, or lash it onto slightly charred rustic bread for a snack or side, among a thousand other uses. At home I like to keep a nice mild oil and a peppery one around.
CHILLIES
Halfway through writing this book, I started to fret that every recipe had chillies in it. Then I realised that’s quite okay. The food isn’t spicy – for me, adding chillies, whether dried or fresh, is about adding another layer of flavour, rather than scalding your tongue.
I mainly call for two types of chillies. The first are dried pequin chillies, lovely little things, each one barely bigger than a grain of rice. I love their bright flavour, but if you must, you can substitute red pepper flakes, as long as you replace the jar often so you don’t end up using stale, flavourless ones. For every crumbled pequin chilli I call for, you can swap in a pinch of red pepper flakes.
The second type is Dutch chilli, a slender fresh red chilli that’s about the size of your index finger and a bit spicier than a jalapeño. If you can’t find it, use any long, red, moderately spicy chilli.
SPICES
There’s nothing like buying whole spices and toasting and grinding them yourself. These simple steps amplify their flavour and fragrance. Here’s how to do it: put the spices in a small pan and set it over medium-high heat. (If there’s more than one spice in a recipe that requires toasting, I like to do them separately.) Toast, shaking the pan frequently, until the spices smell really sweet and inviting, anywhere from 2 to 4 minutes. Remember that it’s less about precise timing than it is about feel – rather than toasting them for 1 minute and 33 seconds, keep a close eye on the spices and take a whiff every now and then. After they’re toasted, use your mortar and pestle or spice grinder to reduce them to a powder.
GARLIC
The garlic you get in the shops is often a bit old, with little bright green germs growing inside or, if you’re really unlucky, peeking out. Whenever I’m chopping garlic, I slice peeled cloves lengthwise and flick this green bit out if I see it. If you don’t do this, it won’t ruin your dish (though the garlic may turn a blue-green colour), and it won’t kill you, though it won’t make you stronger either.
ANCHOVIES
In some of my dishes, anchovy makes its presence known. In others, it’s a bit sneaky, contributing a salty umami quality, the source of which your friends might not be able to identify. Whatever their role, I always use whole salt-packed anchovies of the best quality I can find. Sure, you have to fillet them yourself, but it’s quite easy. Plus, they last forever in your fridge. If you must, however, you can substitute the oil-packed kind as long as they’re top quality and you gently wipe off the oil from the fillets before you use them.
Filleting Salt-Packed Anchovies
Rinse the anchovies one at a time under cold running water, rubbing them gently between your fingers to get the salt off. Put them in a small bowl and add just enough water to cover. After about a minute – if you soak them for too long, they’ll lose their umami quality – give them another quick rinse.
To fillet the anchovies, hold an anchovy under cold running water. Pull off the loose muck near the head and at the belly. Rub the outside to remove any remaining salt or hard bits. Keeping the anchovy under the water, gently work a fingertip along the belly to start to separate the fillets. Gently pull the fillets apart – this should be easy, especially once you get the hang of it. Drape the now-boneless fillet over the edge of a bowl to drain. Pinch the backbone and gently pull it away from the second fillet; discard it. Put the second fillet next to the first, and do the same with the rest of the anchovies.
POTATOES
I almost always rinse my potatoes after I chop or peel them, to wash some of the starch away. Doing so helps prevent potatoes from discolouring, keeps mashed potatoes from becoming gluey and sticky, and is just generally a good practice. Here’s how I do it: give the peeled potatoes a rinse under cold running water. Add them to a good-sized pot, run more water over them, and pour it off; repeat if necessary until the water runs clear.
TOMATOES
Nothing gets me grumpy like rubbish tomatoes. You know the kind – bland, crunchy, and paler than my English legs. You don’t want to go near a fresh tomato in the winter. And even when you use lovely ripe tomatoes, you should still be fastidious about them, trimming away any pale or hard bits you might spot inside.
I’m equally persnickety about tinned tomatoes. I urge you to buy the best quality you can. Any brand of good quality tinned tomatoes you find to be consistently bright in flavour and deep red throughout is a keeper. I also always mean for you to drain off the liquid they come in (unless you’re buying those fantastic but expensive jarred tomatoes packed in clear liquid). I find the liquid tastes artificially sweet and salty. Finally, I trim off any horrible bits: yellowish patches, skin, and the tough ‘eyes’. I suggest you do the same.
In several recipes, I call for fresh tomatoes to be blanched and peeled. Here’s how to do it: bring a large pot of water to the boil. Use a knife to make a shallow X through the skin in the bottom of each tomato. Working in batches of tomatoes of similar size, carefully plunge them into the boiling water and blanch for 20 seconds for larger tomatoes, about 10 seconds for small ones. Transfer them to a big bowl of ice-cold water. Drain them and pull the skin off the tomatoes. You can gently scrape them with a knife to loosen any stubborn skin. Cut out the tough core, unless you’re working with cherry or grape tomatoes.
BEANS
Buy the freshest dried beans you can find. The idea of ‘fresh dried beans’ might sound like a contradiction, but many of the dried beans you find on supermarket shelves have been dried for so long that they take forever to cook and never achieve the same lovely texture as fresh dried beans. You can identify old beans by looking for bags where lots of beans have begun to crack and split. But your best bet is buying from a reliable source, a brand or shop that has sold you nice beans in the past.
MALDON SALT
When people ask me to name my favourite ingredient, I think about fresh beans and ramps, artichokes and parsnips, tomatoes and Parmesan, but in the end I always go with Maldon salt. Made by a 200-year-old company, the clean-tasting, delicately crunchy flakes of salt are carefully gleaned from the Blackwater River estuary in Essex. I use it to season just about everything, whether at the last minute, so as to preserve a bit of the salt’s crunch, or earlier on. Really, the only times I prefer sea salt are for seasoning meat (a sprinkle of Maldon crystals would tumble right off) or salting pasta water or a brine (who can afford Maldon salt for that!). That said, if you don’t have it on hand, another flaky sea salt will do.
BREAD
Filone, a crusty Italian loaf with an airy crumb, is my bread of choice. But if you can’t find it locally, you can substitute any bread with similar qualities when you make the following:
Breadcrumbs
When I call for breadcrumbs, I mean stale bread (two days or so old) pulsed in a food processor until it’s coarse (about the size of lentils) or fine (slightly larger than