Let me start with a confession. I set out to write a simple list of things I have in my store cupboard, including some things that will be removed, and some things I will be adding for this coming year. Along the way to compiling that list, I got waylaid. The thing is, in order to arrive at the ‘what’ of the ideal store cupboard, one must first address the ‘why’. And in order to make sense of the ‘why,’ it is necessary to understand the other ‘what’, i.e. what will one be cooking. I tend not to cook a huge amount from cookbooks. Much of my time is taken up with the rigour and confines inherent in creating recipes for cookbooks, so when I cook for pleasure I prefer to be guided by the vegetables I have available to me, the contents of my store cupboard, and the whims of my greed rather than by a recipe.
So, I stopped to go through a few of the recipe columns and books I tend to be drawn towards. The world is full of intriguing and engaging recipes, often with a compelling narrative that draws one in and makes one want to cook. In my experience, though, these recipes very rarely reflect the food that, day in day out, most of us want to, or are capable of cooking at home (the pressures of time, circumstance, desire to cook, all reducing our capacity and desire for even a vaguely complex recipe). I can appreciate that we all need recipes in our orbit that enable us to step up a gear, flex a little, but for much of the year, for most of the meals we produce, we need a few reliable dishes that we can turn out on autopilot; that maybe we tweak and perfect, add to and adapt, but that we can certainly rely upon without too much mental strain. It seems though that so much of the space given over to recipes is dedicated to recipes that have some pretence of authenticity. And even when the authenticity points to simplicity, the specificity inherent within can often mean simplicity of technique is undone by the specificity of ingredient. Which all too often leads to demands for niche or awkward to find ingredients that can fill our cupboards with unnecessary and unused things. It is within this authenticity trap that I get hung up when I think about my store cupboard.
A month or so ago I was discussing cooking with my sister. She isn’t necessarily a passionate, or even especially regular cook (largely, I suspect, due to my overzealous and controlling hold over the kitchen growing up,) yet she can certainly turn her hand to producing very tasty dishes when called upon. I was trying to elicit from her exactly which dishes she leans towards when the demand to cook does come calling. She listed off five or six dishes that she readily knocks up when needed, spaghetti bolognese, Chilli con carne, a couple of one-pan roasts, and a few sweet bakes. I remarked, surprised, that these were all from our mum’s repertoire when we were kids. She nodded gleefully. My personal narrative has always been that the food at my childhood kitchen table was tasty and filling, sure, but not of any particular culinary merit. And yet, for my sister, those were the things she returns to time again, those are the authentic versions of dishes that she has carried from then until now.
When I tell you that the bolognese we ate as kids has a base of Branston pickle and chopped carrot (my mum, and many other 90’s mothers I assume, having been proffered an early ‘hack’ for a tangy-salty-sweet sofrito that has thankfully fallen out of favour,) and that the chilli con Carne is often just the same bolognese mince recipe but with a tin of kidney beans and a teaspoon of chilli powder stirred in; it should be enough of an indication that a) authenticity is a nebulous and subjective thing, and b) we should place less store by the striving obsession with making something in the purest most original fashion.
It is not an original thought, I am aware, but walk door to door in any residential street from here to Puglia, and in every household, someone and their grandmother will produce the best, the most original, the most authentic way for any number of dishes. And yet they will all be wildly different, despite all being the best, the purest version of the thing.
Hell, village fetes and country fairs in the UK (and I am sure across the culinary universe) have been awarding rosettes and medals for centuries for cakes and jams and loaves and pies and roasts and pickles, and in each medal-winning chutney, therein will reside a tip, twist or trick for elevating and differentiating. Some of these will be legitimate and borne of tradition, some will be damn-right bizarre and borne of invention.
A friend’s Swiss grandmother is particularly renowned for her dressings and her way with potatoes. Eat them and ask no questions and you’re undeniably in the presence of not only authentic but also finessed Swiss cooking. Scratch the surface though and we discover that the secret to both dishes is plenty of Aromat, a hugely popular condiment or seasoning containing salt, some other seasonings, and MSG. Nothing wrong with that, not in the slightest, much of our most beloved food the world-over leans on MSG (be it artificial or naturally occurring) for much of its pep and verve, but would Aromat make the official ingredients list if the recipe for these much-feted homecooked delicacies if it was published for our delectation. I doubt it.
We all know that a nations culinary identity is in constant flux. Trade, war, colonisation, immigration, capitalism, and taste, have washed around the globe and as the tide of each wave rushes in, and then out, little culinary flotsam and jetsom are left behind. Yes, it is important to acknowledge and keep records of foods and cooking across generations, but it is also important to cook for the here and now. It is essential, also, to know which bits of a recipe and its history are crucial and which bits are circumstantial to time or place. One thing that the myth of authenticity certainly does, for me, is to push us towards a culture of needing all sorts of niche ingredients in order to reproduce a certain dish. Looking through recipes that I cherish, though, it is often the fact of seasonality that is most relevant in a recipe over and above the specificity of the ingredients. For instance, squash and garlic and chilli are great bedfellows. With those three ingredients, I can add paprika and sherry vinegar and cook something Spanish in tone, I can lean towards Italy with some ricotta and pasta dough, England with some chestnuts and sage, Sri Lanka with some coconut milk and curry leaves, or even Szechuan with some cumin and Szechuan peppercorns. So let us try and get less het up about slavishly following authentic recipes for things, and instead, let’s set up a good basic store cupboard of useful things and cook with easy to find seasonal ingredients that can transport us to wherever we might want to be.
My store cupboard essentials:
Theese are the things that I try and have in stock always. There is also, of course, a revolving cast of other bits and bobs that come into, and then out of, circulation on a whim. This is all also bolstered by the constant presence of eggs, some cheese, a large jar of gherkins, a large jar of pickled chillies, and a weekly veg box delivery.
An oil, any oil - I personally don’t fetishise premium oils. Yes, a peppery or grassy oil can be delicious when drizzled across a dish at the end, but for your day to day cooking, a mild or relatively flavourless olive or rapeseed oil will do just fine for me. My main tip would be to buy in the largest quantity you can and decant into a little bottle with a pouring nozzle for cooking with.
Salt - always have a healthy stock of fine sea salt. If you must, Maldon or similar flaky sea salts are nice, but unless you’re comfortable grinding them between your fingers as you season, they can lead to patchy seasoning, and in addition, no one wants to have to front the cost of seasoning pasta water with Maldon. Rock salt is a nuisance as you need a good grinder to use it at all, and standing over a dish seasoning with a grinder is a ball-ache that no one needs. Thus, I find a good quality fine sea salt is perfect for 95% of all kitchen tasks.
Black peppercorns (and a grinder) - never, ever buy pre-ground black pepper. Invest in a grinder and buy whole peppercorns. They stay fresh longer and you’ll actually be able to taste the pepper you add to a dish. One thing to note, pepper is a spice and should be used as such. Salt (and sugar) are flavour enhancers, they can be added to almost all things to make them taste more of themselves. Pepper is not in the same category. Too often people reach for salt and pepper as a knee-jerk when salt alone, or salt and something more appropriate such as paprika, cumin, chilli flakes, etc, is actually what the dish needs.
Ground spices - I have found that with cumin, cinnamon, ginger, coriander, sumac, chilli powder and turmeric, you can get to most destinations, culinarily, without too much trouble. What about spice mixes? Well, my garam masala goes in one or two curries I make, yet my cumin, coriander, ginger, etc go into various Indian, Szechuan, Greek, Middle Eastern, etc dishes that I cook. This keeps my spices fresher as I use them more broadly and therefore more often. If you have a regional spice mix that you lean on heavily, add it to the repertoire for sure, but otherwise, having an understanding of the constituent parts of different spice mixes and stocking most of the relevant spices could be the route for you.
Whole spices - here I keep cumin, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, caraway, clove, star anise and fennel seeds in the cupboard. Again, I can get most places with those.
Herbs - The only dried herb I would suggest keeping in-store would be dried oregano. You could add bay leaves to that list, but I’ve always found you can generally find a source of bay leaves somewhere locally if you look hard enough. For all other herbs I buy them fresh (or for some like mint, rosemary and sage, I grow them in a little pot outside.)
Chillies - Dried chilli flakes (I like either a bog-standard dried chilli flake or a Turkish pul biber, but will use either across any dish that calls for it.) Also sweet and smoked paprika is a must. If you have a particular cuisine that you lean towards a lot in your cookery you will likely know of the dried chillies you need. I tend to keep a chipotle paste in the fridge and often some dried ancho chillies in the cupboard. If you have a freezer, keeping a stock of green finger chillies and some little red chillies will stand you in good stead for most dishes.
Sauces and pastes - I buy tahini in bulk and use it for Middle Eastern, Japanese and some Chinese dishes I cook. You could buy specialist sesame sauces in each instance, but to be honest I do find tahini is a pretty good catch-all. I also always have some pomegranate molasses in the cupboard.
Vinegar - I tend to use a run-of-the-mill red wine vinegar for almost all vinegary applications. If I had to add one other vinegar it would be a good sherry vinegar, or maybe a rice wine vinegar. Commercial balsamic vinegar is more often than not an atrocity of harshness and cloying sweetness so I would avoid it. White wine and cider vinegar are wonderful, but I often find that when red wine vinegar doesn’t suit, leaning towards lemon or lime juice, or even pomegranate molasses can solve the issue.
Condiments - I will always have Dijon and English mustard, Worcestershire sauce, a jar of mayonnaise, tabasco, tomato puree, tomato ketchup, and a bottle of Encona or Cholula in the fridge. I am happy knowing I have lime pickle in stock, but not overly anxious if I have run out. The same is true for Sriracha.
Tins - I keep a constant stock of whole tinned tomatoes, a simple passata, coconut milk, and often cannellini or borlotti beans.
Dry stores - I always have plain flour, cornflour, caster sugar, light brown sugar, baking powder and bicarb, set honey, runny honey, a maple syrup, peanut butter, a bar of chocolate, long-grain rice (such as basmati), short-grain rice (such as arborio), a long pasta (I find linguine most versatile) and a pasta shape (rigatoni is my go-to), lasagna sheets, oats, polenta, split red lentils and whole green or brown lentils.
You will, of course, have your own particular peccadilloes when it comes to bits and pieces that you need to have with you in the kitchen, and indulge those to your heart’s content, but do me a favour; go through your cupboards and toss out any dry herbs and spices that you cannot specifically remember purchasing. They’ll be old and dull and unnecessary. Better still, and in order to avoid undue wastage, why not bring your most underused store cupboard ingredients out onto the kitchen counter and find a specific recipe that calls for them in quantity. Give it a cook. It might remind you why you bought that particular thing in the first place and encourage you to bring it back into circulation, or it might remind you why you have masses of it unused and taking up space in your cupboards.
Below is a list of some specific ingredients and some non-essentials that I would heartily recommend you bring into your life.
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