Gurdeep Loyal

The virtues of a plentiful pantry have long been celebrated by food writers. Mrs Beeton extolled the merits of a larder filled with preserved ginger, Spanish chestnuts and port wine by the barrel load. Store-cupboard staples of the seventies perked up Fanny Cradock’s most iconic dishes – Tabasco sauce in prawn cocktail, Sauternes in trifle and fluorescent-green crystallized angelica on just about everything. For Julia Child, the heart of French cooking could be found through a bouquet garni of fresh herbs and canned truffles revived with a splash of Madeira wine. Simon Hopkinson takes joy in umami-rich anchovies, crimson-red saffron, funky blue Roquefort and bitter dark chocolate. Delia Smith showed us How to Cheat with jarred lazy ginger, ready-grated Gruyère, and Hartley’s lime jelly cubes. And Nigella Lawson’s blissful recipes are filled with the marvels of tangy Worcestershire sauce, honeyed Marsala wine, fiery sambal oelek and piquant English mustard.

With genuine curiosity about the cultural context of any new ingredient – and why it’s valued by the global communities it’s most closely associated with. Shopkeepers in local diasporic stores are the ultimate founts of this knowledge and wisdom – and their shelves a rich cornucopia of flavours just waiting to be explored.
With understanding of the significance of the ingredient in your hands, precisely what the product is, where it comes from, its individual components, how exactly it’s made, and when it’s at its seasonal best

CACIO E PEPE RISOTTO WITH BROWN-BUTTER LEMONS