Tasty little things that make a difference

"all the added extras that dress up a meal, making an already good dish deliciously better." Tara Wigley?/Extra Good Things

After my minor meltdown the other day I have indeed been trying to spend time doing a few other things, one of which is working on that cookbook for the grandchildren. Although I seriously do wonder whether it's worth it. After all they have the internet to help with everything via their phones.

Nevertheless I persevere and this brings me to flavour bombs - a phrase possibly coined by one of the Ottolenghi crew, although I don't like to ascribe everything 'flavourful' to them because so many others in the foodie world have played their part in making us realise the power of all those jars, bottles and packets hidden away in our pantries or our fridge. I mention 'flavour bombs' because that is the section in my cookbook that I am working on at the moment, and it's a phrase I did indeed get from the Ottolenghi crew.

This is the first page of this little section in my cookbook - a quick aside - I didn't do the design - it's a template that I have modified a bit with respect to placement and colour. As is this entire blog.

If you remember I'm trying to create a 'cookbook' which isn't so much a collection of recipes as a 'how to' manual on cooking something from what you have in your kitchen. The kind of cooking that most of us do on a daily basis with greater or lesser success depending on what we have, our mood, our attitude to cooking, but mostly what we have learnt over years of experience of knowing what goes with what, and years of looking at recipes - however fitfully or disinterestedly. So I thought I should suggest things that would boost flavour early on.

I wonder when man first discovered that adding one little thing like a herb, a spice, a squeeze of lemon juice or a touch of garlic improved the taste of what they were eating? Possibly earlier than you think, and certainly all those ancient civilisations were well into it.. The Romans for example added their pungent fish sauce - garum - to just about everything. And it is interesting how particular cuisines have an overriding favourite - tomato sauce for the Australians, tahini for the Levant, harissa for North Africa, garlic and olive oil for the whole of the Mediterranean, soy sauce for the Chinese, chutneys and pickles for India, salsa for the Mexicans - and so on. Today because of the movements of peoples across the globe these flavour boosters are becoming known in the countries in which they settle. There is a massive amount of cross cultural adoption and blending going on. To me it seems that every week at least one new spice mix or paste, vegetable or other kind of ingredient comes to my attention.

I divided my 'flavour bombs' into sections - herbs, spices, spice mixes and spice pastes, liquids, ferments, condiments and other oddments, pickles and vegetables so far. Maybe I will think of others, although I think I am running out of neat space. Most of them, I recognise they will just buy off the shelf. Some of them you can only buy off the shelf - e.g. Worcestershire sauce - people will give you recipes for this but they don't really know and besides why would you? Some of them are very easily made at home, and indeed should be because they will be so much better - pesto for example, Plus it's easy to make from ingredients that are easy to find - as long as you have a blender of some kind - an essential piece of kitchen equipment I think - a mini one at least. Dukkah, pickled red onions, za'atar, chicken stock and preserved lemons are others, and believe it or not so is mayonnaise. And so I have told them how to make these massively useful and now commonplace flavour boosters. Although za'atar does not yet seem to have made its way on the supermarket shelves, which is a bit of mystery to me.

The professionals however, make their own. Invent their own even, as well as having a whole range of ready-mades available to them. The two sets below show two of Ottolenghi's protegées - Noor Murad and Ixta Belfrage - experimenting in a professional kitchen. I wonder whether the condiments they invent come first as a result of needing something to create yet one more way of improving roast cauliflower, say - or whether it's the other way round. They create the sauce and then find something to use it on.

I confess I have been experimenting a little bit myself of late but completely without any real knowledge of what will go with what. A couple of times now I have made what the books loosely call 'green sauce'. This is one that I made. Check out your fridge for all the green vegetables and herbs that are past their best, add some fresh ones, and the essential flavour boosters that every kitchen should have - things like garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, honey ... and a few they might not - capers, cornichons, anchovies ... Chuck it all into a blender and hey presto a sauce for everything. Well that's what they say. My two experiments were OK if not miraculous. I don't know whether they really made anything taste better, but I sure had a lot of fun doing it, and they did actually taste better that I thought they would. It doesn't have to be a green sauce of course - it could be any other colour, and even if it doesn't look good at the end - a sludgy brown perhaps - it might be amazing.

Also every time I make a made up stir fry, not one from a recipe, I tend to just throw in a few things that I think are vaguely Asian. Like last night. I think last night I used garlic, of course, crushed chillis - just a little, soy sauce, five spice powder, Greg Malouf's cumin spice mix, the dregs of a bottle of rice wine vinegar and lemon juice. No ginger - I always forget ginger, because it's not my favourite. And you know it was alright. Actually quite tasty although it really didn't look that great. Maybe not worth repeating though and there's no way I could reproduce it, even if I did write it down in my little book of Rosemary creations - because I really don't think it is worth writing down.

Which makes me wonder how many recipes, recipe writers discard. What they discard would probably be a miracle recipe for me. No that's probably not right. Some of the self promoted recipes I see online, are really not that original or mind-blowing. They are things that I and my grandchildren I hope, could cook up any old time with their eyes closed - a simple pasta sauce for example. At the beginning of his book Flavour, Ottolenghi himself confesses:

"to a small niggling doubt that creeps in every now and then: how many more ways are there to roast a cauliflower, to slice a tomato, to squeeze a lemon or to fry an aubergine? How many more secrets are there to be discovered in a handful of lentils or a bowl of polenta?"

He is delighted to report that "there are many", although I do sometimes wonder if there are really any more ways you can cook a bowl of pasta and tomatoes. Well it seems that Ottolenghi at least did find at least one way with his Spaghetti with cherry tomato sauce. You look at the ingedients list in the recipe and you think - boring. But apparently not, due to two things, long slow cooking of those tomatoes in olive oil and a touch of water, the addition of an ancho chilli (which might be difficult in this house) and also I should say - a touch of sugar. Several bloggers have tried this and raved. Now we know he and his team are geniuses - or is it genii? - but who knows maybe one of those unknown bloggers is out there waiting to be discovered - I should not dismiss them.

Maybe that's a project - pasta and tomatoes - and not much else - has anybody unknown, invented something marvellous. Or maybe it's just a challenge to me to think about it and invent something myself. But how many extras should you allow before it becomes more than pasta and tomatoes?

Now I have a pantry and fridge full of 'flavour bombs', some of which I use all of the time, some of which have been neglected and unloved and pushed further and further back on the shelf. I'm trying to be better about this but somehow the number of them doesn't seem to go down. Some were bought for one recipe and then never used again. Some I just don't know what to do with really - miso, tajín, mirin, raspberry vinegar ... so I should really make an effort and perhaps dedicate a month to one of them, trying out a few actual recipes so that I can learn. It might be a good idea to concentrate on just one ingredient for a month - one a week.

My grandchildren however won't have such a wide range of options - at least when they leave home. So I suppose I should also have a page on what they really must have. I will think on that. I did a page on equipment essentials - down to the bare minimum, so perhaps a page of absolutely essential flavour bombs. Trickier I think because that's more of a personal taste thing.

Lemons, garlic, olive oil for me - I'm obviously a Mediterranean at heart.

YEARS GONE BY

November 10

2024 - Free, $15, $30 or $600?

2023 - The internet does not know everything

2022 - One soup or four?

2021 - Smoke can be liquid

2020 - MIssing

2019 - Moro is actually Australian/Italian, not Spanish

2018 - Rice pudding

2017 - A word from Jamie Oliver

2016 - Daily bread inspired by the Shakers