Kitchen Essential

Herbs, spices, flavourings, colourings and decorations are just as important
to good cookery as the basic ingredients

THERE are a number of things, apart I from basics- like tea and flour, which everyone ought to keep in their kitchen. They crop up, as apparently minor ingredients, in countless recipes, but they are important. They are as vital, in their way, as the contents of a sewing basket, and a cook will need them to work on the basic materials. If you have not got them at hand, you must either forgo the dish you intended to make, or make it imperfectly.

Herbs

Chief of these are the cooking herbs. Most recipes for stews, and things cooked in a pot, demand a “bouquet garni,” which is nothing more than a bunch of herbs. Generally it consists of 3 or 4 sprigs of parsley, a sprig of thyme and a bay leaf, but some dishes require rosemary, chives, cummin, mint, sage, sorrel, fennel or marjoram, and all these should be kept. In the summer many of them can be grown in the garden or, in the city, in flower pots or a window box on the kitchen sill. Fresh herbs are best, but out of season they can be bought dried. As well as the individual plants, it is useful to keep a packet of mixed herbs for omelets, etc.

Garlic is another essential. It comes in roots like a very small onion and, although supposed to be foreign to British palates, it is widely used in good cooking everywhere.

Spices

Next come the spices. Paprika, cinnamon, ginger, mixed spice, black peppercorns, curry powder, Cayenne, cloves, mustard, nutmeg, chillies, mace and allspice. Like the herbs and garlic, all these, except the curry, can be kept indefinitely, either in the neat matched jars with coloured tops which are everywhere available or, equally well, in the screw-topped bottles in which many liquids are sold.

Nom: Allspice is known in some places as Jamaica pepper or pimento.

Sauces and flavourings are necessary too. Gravy browning, beef extract, horseradish, chutney, pickles and the favourite family sauce. Tomato purée (in tins or tubes), celery salt and always some cheese for cooking.

Olives are useful, and capers, gherkins and anchovies. There should be a bottle of olive oil and of vinegar, and with these, as with curry powder, it is best to stick to a chosen brand because strengths and flavours vary a lot.

Finally, before turning to sweeter things, there should be a bottle of cheap red cooking wine, and a bottle of dry cider which can often be used when the recipe calls for a white wine.

WHAT GOES INTO CAKES AND SWEETS

Cake- and sweet-making is an important part of good cookery, particularly to those who have children, and it is a good idea to devote one corner, however small, of the kitchen to the ingredients that may be needed at one time or another, for sponges or fruit cakes, fudge or peppermint creams. Perhaps you have a corner in your grocery cupboard or store-room, or, failing this, why not invest in one of those wonderful expanding contraptions which have a number of baskets made of enamelled wire on legs? It will sit or hang literally anywhere.

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