BASICS

If you want to skip to the good bit and get straight to cooking, feel free, but for those that want some guidance with assembling a pantry that stays ready, keep reading.

Having said that, truth be told, when all is said and done, at the end of the way, I won’t lie to you, is my kitchen stocked with these things at every single waking hour of the day? No. But are these the things I keep my eye on as often as I can? Why, yes.

They are very much the skeleton items for a lot of my go-to recipes, especially the ones I document on this silly little website of mine, so having a nice amount of some of these ingredients ensures I sleep at night, and could ensure that you have the wherewithal to approach my recipe, and your cooking time, with confidence.

Basically, what I’m saying is, screenshot some of this when you do a Big Shop.

Listed below are my go-to spices, herbs, oils, and general things I keep in my pantry because they give items my recipes their soul.

• Cumin – my favourite. In tacos, on meats, on vegetables, on hummus, in curries, on life. It’s unstoppable.
• Paprika – I keep mine sweet and smoky and in the vintage, colourful tin I bought it in, just for pretty’s sake.
• Cinnamon – both sticks and ready ground.
• Nutmeg – I like the nutmeg still whole and I grate it with the same grater I use to grate parmesan and garlic.
• Mustard Powder – bright, yellow and Colman’s please.
• Cardamom – ready ground… can’t be arsed for the pods.
• Turmeric – use a rubber spatula when using this for God’s sake.
• Chilli powder and dried chilli flakes – I like them fiery. I keep my flakes in a grinder and finish off meals with it.
• Garam masala – the basis of all good curries start here, and in a pinch, could pep up a lovely cucumber, yogurt, and mint sauce.
• Coriander – ready ground and not interchangeable with fresh.
• Garlic powder – for when mincing garlic is just too much, and for flour dredges when anything is fried.

• Herbs de Provence – literally I throw this in everything. It’s a mix of a bunch of herbs so saves you the hassle.
• Thyme – sometimes. Not averse. If you find my kitchen without it, don’t be surprised, but if you find my kitchen with it, I’m happy.
• Oregano – because pizza doesn’t have that pizza’ish without it.
• Bay Leaves – in every and anything… also nothing, because they don’t do anything, but I feel safe when they’re there and I’m using them with hope.
• Mint – beautiful rubbed into chicken or lamb.
• That’s it – anything else just tastes like dusty grass
• Olive – I keep a regular fruity and deep green regular one for cooking and a punchy and sweet extra virgin to pour over things before serving.
• Sesame – noodles just don’t feel right without it.
• Flavourless – like vegetable or sunflower. This completes out my three essentials.
• Shallot – if you see shallots in my kitchen, just know I have shallot oil in the pantry somewhere – a homemade one, the recipe for which you’ll find here.
• But also truffle – an extravagance but I allow myself because I work hard, God damn it.

• Soy sauce – noodles and soups aren’t the same without it. A big bottle and as dark as I can find it. I don’t know the difference between light and dark and will one day endeavour to learn.
• Apple cider vinegar – tangy and fruity. Drowning some sliced up vegetables with salt and sugar to make a quick pickle, or tossed over chips. Also, combined with fairy liquid and bicarb of soda makes a fantastic cleaning product and will get oil stains out of a t-shirt, just saying.
• Balsamic vinegar – I guess? But only because my mother loves dipping bread in olive oil and balsamic vinegar as a snack, so I stay prepared. I could take or leave it though.
• Fish sauce – in a big, smelly bottle. Hold your nose if you’re squeamish.
• Worcestershire sauce – pronounced Whusster-chestershire or not pronounced at all.
• Smoke water – not essential but brings a huge depth of flavour to stews and meats. I buy mine from Halen Mon

You will find that the majority of my recipes include a balance of fridge and store cupboards ingredients.

This meaning, while each recipe may include the odd fresh item, the rest of the recipe is then padded out with items that will sit in your pantry for centuries and likely survive a nuclear war.

• Salt – flaky, from the sea and in industrial quantities. That’s how I like my salt. I have several variations – white sea salt flakes as my go-to, smoked salt, chilli and garlic salt and celery salt for a Bloody Mikey (all from Halen Mon)
• Black pepper – bought from any old where. I like to buy them whole and then grind them myself, but keep the whole ones hand for stock making and poaching.
• White pepper – for my partner. I may use it occasionally but that’s a him thing, not a me thing, usually.
• Bready type things – a hefty old sourdough, some long, pillowy flatbreads, some plastic, white bread for grilled cheese sandwiches, and a bagel now and then.
• Cans, cans and cans – chickpeas, red kidney beans, butter beans , black beans when I find them in the shop, chopped tomatoes (I like cherry tomatoes in the can and then I crush them by hand), tuna, mackerel, anchovies, sweetcorn, peaches (pickled and then to eat with ham), pears, pineapple, mandarins (specifically for this recipe only), custard and full-fat coconut milk (or none at all).
• Eggs – out of the fridge, Welsh, large, free range and organic, preferably. I also like them when the shell is white, just cos. I buy them in cartons of 12, and they’re used for baking but mostly for stirring through fried rice or boiled to make really chunky egg and cress sandwiches.
• Rice – white long grain and risotto at all times. That’s it. Sometimes, also, rice in a microwavable packet, to make one of my favourite recipes. Sue me.
• Pasta – I’m fine to only keep a short pasta and a long pasta on the go. Just having penne and linguine in the house will keep me safe.
• Noodles – I like the thinner rice ones I can soak in water, the thicker eggy ones, and instant ones. Always instant ones, so that I can do this.
• Lentils – small, red, cute. Tonnes of them. All the dal for me, please.
• Couscous – I cook couscous more than I care to admit. All you need is some seasoning and a kettle.
• Oats – big, puffy and rolled.
• Lemons and limes – unwaxed and not kept in the fridge
• Garlic – big fat bulbs of the stuff.
• Tomatoes – plump and always on the vine.
• Onions – the whole lot. I keep white, red and spring at all times. I will often have a leek or three hanging about too because I’m Welsh.
• Seeds – I will always have pumpkin and sunflower.
• Granola and cereal – I make my own granola and always keep a jar of it to hand. Otherwise, it’s Kellog’s Crunchy Nut for me.
• Mixed nuts – I like to keep walnuts on the go and I always have some kind of coated peanut around (salt and vinegar coated peanuts for me) but often I just buy a bag of mixed nuts and then fish out what I need when I need them. It’s cheaper, plus it’s the basis of a banging pesto.
• Peanut butter – thick and crunchy for me and smooth for the dogs when I need to coax them into taking their medicine.
• Marmite – don’t be a hater. Great melted with butter and Parmesan for pasta but also just on buttery toast. My favourite treat happens to be a rice cake or a cracker smothered in peanut butter and Marmite.
• Coffee – pods. Any pods. As long as it’s hot and strong, I’m fine.
• Salted popcorn, wine gums, peanut M&Ms, and pretzels – my favourite snacks.

• Milks and creams – blue lid milk or nothing for cooking and for my partner’s tea, but generally oat milk for me in coffee and tea. However, double cream for sauces and puddings. If your double cream is near the end of it’s like, make butter.
• Chicken – a whole one, always, because a home is not my home unless a whole chicken has been roasted there, but then also some thighs – sometimes for us, sometimes to roast plainly for the dogs. Bones saved for broth, of course. Also, wings. Can’t imagine a fridge or freezer without some wings cut into party wings.
• Ham – a boiled and roasted ham is a staple in this house. Get it smoked from your local shop, don’t bother going fancy with it. Makes the best baps with some mustard to take to the beach.
• Bacon – I like it in thin strips, smoked and streaky. Of course fried and slapped between two thick pieces of white bread for a sandwich but also snipped into cooked linguine with some butter and black pepper. When it’s baked they also make fantastic pancake toppers, dunked into maple syrup.
• Sausages – cooked whole with lentils or the meat taken out of the skins and rolled into little meatballs, or on standby for when you want a midweek, ‘Sausage Sunday Dinner’ 90’s style. We also need to know we have the wherewithal for Toad in the Hole at all times, so sausages are always present in the fridge in our gaff.
• White fish – cod or haddock fillets. I rarely buy salmon although I do like it for this salad. It’s just that salmon always tastes like salmon but white fish will take on the flavours you give them, like this, and I like that kind of versatility.
• Coconut yogurt – a breakfast in a rush with some cut-up fruit and granola, also good spooned on top of cake. Makes a fabulous dip with some cut up mint, tahini sauce and olive oil stirred into it. Great with some curry powder added to it to marinade chicken or little cauliflower florets.
• Potatoes – both regular Maris Piper ones, small baby potatoes for bashing and making potato salads, and also beautiful orange sweet ones. Mashed potatoes always made in abundance to have leftovers specifically for cheese and potato pie, fish cakes or potato cakes.
• Pre-rolled pastry – for savoury nonsense like this and sweet nonsense like this.
• Ginger – ready to be peeled with a spoon, but can I be honest with you? I’m sick of peeling and grating ginger. I lean more and more towards jarred ginger the older I get. Stay tuned for developments in this area.
• Chillies – long, red, thin and fiery, and smuggled into as many dinners as possible without my partner noticing.
• Cheese – I only ever keep 1 or 2 at a time. A block of mature (for Mac & Cheese, grating on beans on toast or a grilled sandwich) and a block of blue will do me fine, plus Parmesan and a tub of soft cheese. Soft cheese is a god send actually, go buy some, because it makes a good toast topper, cake topper, and pasta sauce when you’re struggling.
• Mushrooms – for soups, noodles, gravies, salads… for life.
• Carrots – because I’ll always end up need them for something. When I have a few strays left in the bag, I’ll either turn them into this amazing dal, or grate them into stir fried rice like this one, or grate, mix with some sweetcorn and bind with an egg and fry for quick fritters or roast them and blitz with some vegetable stock to create a soup, stir some miso paste through it, dunk in some good bread.
• Butternut Squash – because I know I’ll get three meals out of it.
• Courgettes – only 2 or 3 but always there. Wonderful sliced up and fried to be eaten with some rice and smoked mackerel or simply put into a super broth and oily soup. Any leftover fried courgettes can get smashed up with some pesto and put in a thick, melty omelette.
• Cauliflower – to do this with or for a soup, even though boiled cauliflower smells foul. Also, good just steamed, tossed in garlicky butter and served with some pork chops. Don’t throw away the stalks. Cover them in oil, roast them until crispy, drench them in hot sauce, and consume. Banging snack.
• Broccoli – long and leggy. Maybe chopped up, legs and all, thrown into some stir fried rice or steamed and dressed with some olive oil, some lemon juices and eaten on the side of a chicken. Love them on a Sunday dinner too.
• One or two red peppers – meh. Could take or leave these. I prefer the red peppers packed into a jar with oil because they are the basis of the most fabulous curry paste (my go to curry paste, in fact) but fresh ones sometimes get sliced up into stir fries or added to a tomato soup for a little extra sweet silkiness.
• Leaves – Romaine for Caesar Salad, and then a nice big pillow bag of rocket, and then some spinach, wilted down to nothing at all times.  I love a really bitter purple leaf but only once in a while and I will buy them separate, not when they’re thrown into a bag with other odds and ends.
• Herbs – I’ll always have fresh thyme, dill, coriander and parsley. Anything else can come and go as it is needed.
• Pickled stuff – plump green olives, oily roast red peppers, gherkins, jalapenos, little onions, preserved lemons, kimchi, but also some homemade pickles.
• Jars – cherry jam, blackberry jam, lemon curd, redcurrant jelly, all the jars of marmalade I can fit, one good chutney on the go, Branston pickle, mint sauce on every Sunday roast, Colman’s mustard, Dijon mustard, pesto (green and red) and a random jar of Shrimp Paste I’ll never use
• Sauces – Frank’s Hot Sauce forever and always and maybe some Sriracha when I fancy it. A bottle of red ketchup too – Daddy’s only – and it goes in bacon sandwiches, and nothing else.
• Alcohol – bottled beer and Prosecco for the house and guests, a vanillery, buttery Chardonnay for me and a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc for him.

• Peas – always on hand. I want the wherewithal to make some version of a pea soup at all times.
• Ice cubes – because the only things in life that should be served room temperature water are house plants and kettles.
• Chicken bones – my freezer is like the Elephant’s Graveyard, with chicken bones being stored for this purpose.
• Chicken fat cubes – hear me out. When I roast a chicken, I will pour the fat into a jug, fill little ice moulds, freeze them, and then pop them out into a ziplock bag and stash away. That way, I always have chicken fat available, just melted in a pan straight from the fridge, to fry anything that will benefit from being coated in chicken fat, which is almost everything.
• Fish fingers – for quick fish tacos and of course, sandwiches. Lots of butter and ketchup. Also Nigella’s Fish Finger Bhorta which has become a weekly staple for me.
• Stock – usually vegetable or chicken from the bones of a roast. Made from scratch and frozen in ziplock bags.
• Parmesan rinds – don’t throw these away. Freeze them and throw them in a soup after you’ve blitzed it.
• Breads ends – to defrost and blitz up for breadcrumbs
• Birthday cake – because I like to keep the celebration going for as long as possible.

Baking is a slightly different approach and I do have a shelf on my pantry that is dedicated to such an ordeal.

The beauty of baking is that you can buy a handful of ingredients and you are literally set for months because they maintain themselves for ages and are always useful to have on the shelf to snatch at when the mood takes me.

• Flours – a bag of plain, a bag of self raising, and a bag of ground almonds just for fun.
• Rising powders – a jar of baking powder, bicarb of soda and a few sachets of yeast will do me fine. Extra bicarb thought to put in a tiny jar and keep in the fridge to ward off smells, like my Nan used to do. Don’t know if it works but we live in hope.
• Butter – unsalted and always kept in the cupboard, never the fridge, unless needed for a crumble.
• Sugars – white, caster, soft brown and dark brown.
• Dried fruits – apricots, dates, cranberries and sultanas and some shredded coconut flakes. I need to know I can make Welsh Cakes when my heart leads me to them.
• Syrup – smoky maple and thick golden. Also, honey. Does honey count as a syrup? For the purpose of this, let’s say yes.
• Vanilla extract – never essence of
• Chocolate – bars of dark chocolate at all times for sauces, bakes and even adding to chillies.
• Condensed milk – for fudge and ice creams

Every food writer is meant to say they don’t use gadgets or specific items in fear of you seeing that they have used one in a recipe and if you do not possess said gadget, you would sooner light your phone on fire than follow another recipe again.

So I’ll be honest – I have some gadgets. Not a lot, but some. Do I use them? When I think the recipe benefits from their use. Are all of my recipes possible without them? Dunno. Depends. A bundt cake is possible in a normal 9-inch or a loaf, but then it’s not a bundt, is it?

I think what I have is reasonable. I like a food processor when I’m making a ragu or a risotto or a chilli, when the onions and other bits benefit from being tiny, but this is possible with a lot of patience and a knife? I use a freestanding mixer for making cakes, but that’s because it can beat butter and sugar together far better than my arm could, but as centuries before us would have it, it’s certainly possible to bake without it.

The only piece of equipment that, in its absence, would make life harder, is the hand blender. Not impossible, but harder. Like… when you blend a soup or a sauce or a dressing… I’m sure you could get a smooth(ish) consistency just with a fork or something… but it wouldn’t be smooth, would it? So yes. I use a hand blender.

Other than this, the rest of my equipment is pretty tame. I recall moving house and having to boil down my kitchen to it’s barest essences when everything else was put into boxes, and we pretty much got through months of torturous living with just a skillet, a deep stock pot, a saucepan, a large measuring jug, some roasting trays, and then the usual plates, bowls, and cutlery and whatnot.

You’ll always be able to find something that will do.

However, something I don’t think I’ll be able to live without is my cast-iron skillet, which has been through wars with me and when I am buried, I want it to be buried with me. There’s a lot of talk about maintaining a seasoning and caring for a skillet, but to be honest, don’t wash it with soap and water and oil it with a paper towel after every use, and that’s pretty much all the care it needs.

I do also collect wooden spoons everywhere I go. As a result I have three plant pots near my stove CRAMMED full of scorched and distressed wooden spoons.

Some people collect stamps, I collect spoons, and I’m fine with whatever that implies about my personality.

I pre-plan a lot of meals and cannot recommend this enough.

Not because I’m anal, but because I don’t want to trek to a shop more than I need to so knowing what I am eating through the week saves me unnecessary trips.

Every weekend, I take 5/10 minutes to think about what I am going to cook Monday-Friday. This tends to happen when I’m still in bed on a Sunday morning with a coffee.

I make a note of each meal I want to eat in my Notepad on my phone and underneath each meal, write the ingredients I will need to buy to make it.

This helps me figure out which meals can carry over to the next day and I can take into work. This also helps me figure out ingredients I will need to buy and what I will have in excess so that I can make use of it across the week.

For example, if I buy a butternut squash for a meal on a Monday but won’t be using the whole thing, I’ll come up with something to cook with a squash on the Wednesday.

However, eating needs to be flexible. While I do tend to stick to the plan as much as I can, I’m also aware that sometimes I just want to eat out with or order in. We’re human. You have to allow room for spontaneous acts like this otherwise you’ll be a slave to your Kitchen.

Food and cooking is all about being in a rhythm and being connected to life.

It may look like it takes a lot of energy and money to put a decent meal on the table but it really doesn’t.

Like I have said time and time again, I assume you and I have the same life commitments. Work, partner, friends, families etc. I have the same exposure to my kitchen that you do, and I only cook this way – not least because it’s a passion – but because it’s so simple.

Cooking can connect you to your life. Not from a health or dietary perspective, but to get you aligned with moments that are important and helping you find the soul in the smallest of occasions.

The popcorn you share with your partner on movie night, the stew you could cook blindfolded that your mum used to make or the chocolate cake you cook for your child’s birthday. These are all small life celebrations without you even knowing it, and food can connect you to these moments in a very simple way.

Once you get to the core of WHY you want to eat, this will then guide WHAT you cook and ultimately HOW you cook it.

These are recipes for the rhythm of REAL living.