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Cupboard Love
Don’t be afraid to experiment with new or unusual delicacies for your store cupboard, says Elisabeth Luard. You never know when inspiration might strike.
‘If you want to know how people live,’ said my friend Mirscha, a young woman brought up in a self-sufficient household on the windy plains of Hungary, ‘just ask what’s in the store cupboard.’ At the time, the early 1980s, all food production in Eastern Europe was state-controlled and information was hard to come by. ‘And if they trust you,’ she added, ‘they’ll unlock the door and let you in.’
Excellent advice. Hungarian store cupboards turned out to be full of beautiful pickled vegetables, jams, jellies, paprika peppers and chillies – the good things of summer preserved against the hard times of winter. The recipes came from necessity but they’ve still earned their space on the shelf. We all know what we like, and when we want something special we can reach for the little jar of honey-flavoured mustard, the perfect spice mix, the pink salt with the special flavour, the sauces we never want to live without, or the unopened jar we’re just waiting to try.
Quick and simple
My own store cupboard leans towards the Mediterranean. Well, I was brought up among the Latins, so I’m never without rice (two kinds: short and long), beans (white, speckled and black), chickpeas (tinned and dried) and lentils (green and orange), and I can’t live without pasta (half a dozen types, always). For variety there’s quinoa, polenta, buckwheat and bulgar. Spices and all the rest, well, I’m flexible. I live in the wilds of rural Wales, 10 miles from the nearest shops.
Convenience counts, of course.
'For a quick pasta fix, I stir tomato paste into boiling cream to dress tagliatelle, and for spaghetti puttanesca, dress with chilli paste softened with olive oil.'
For a quick pasta fix, I stir tomato paste into boiling cream to dress tagliatelle, and for spaghetti puttanesca, dress with chilli paste softened with olive oil. For a seafood sauce, add a little drop of lobster oil to mayo – it’s gorgeous with crab or salmon. My favourite Italian starter (white beans dressed with olives, capers and little slivers of salt-pickled lemon) is assembled in minutes from the store. In Provence, a schoolchild’s midday snack is a knife-blade of tapenade on bread with a slice of tomato. Mexico’s favourite fast food, frijoles refritos, is a scoopable purée of ready-cooked black beans mashed over the heat with a little olive oil – fabulous with a fried egg, diced avocado and pickled chilli.
When inspiration strikes
It’s not all about speed and convenience. Some things are better from the store. For many of their favourite dishes, Italian cooks prefer dried pasta, pasta asciutta, over fresh: macaroni, spaghetti, butterflies or bows and shells are valued for their nutty little hearts when undercooked, and the taste of the wheat. The flavour of certain mushrooms – ceps, morels, shiitake – is much improved by dehydration, while sun-dried vegetables – tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes – have a concentrated sweetness not found in the same vegetables when fresh.
Desserts are easy when you have good things to hand: nuts in honey are the perfect topping for vanilla ice cream. For an instant Mont Blanc, drop a spoonful of sweetened chestnut purée into a pretty glass, top with crushed meringue, whipped cream and a dusting of grated chocolate, et voilà! For a quick lemon parfait, fold lemon curd into its own volume of thick yogurt and set in the freezer for an hour or two to firm. And just for the fun of the fair, try exquisite sugars in butterfly shapes to nibble with berries on a summer picnic; cone sugar for scraping onto fresh raspberries; stirring sugar – shiny crystals stuck to a stick – to sweeten a glass of mint tea, or maple sugar to sprinkle over freshly sliced peaches.
The little things
As for secret ingredients, swear you won’t tell? I use tea (Lapsang, since you ask) to colour a gravy, add a little truffle oil to anything with mushrooms, and make my vinaigrette with a dash of lemon oil – it’s heaven with artichokes. I admit to using an unreasonable amount of olive oil: non-virgin for frying and in cakes and pastries, extra virgin for everything else. And I can’t live without tins: plum tomatoes (so easy for soups and sauces), anchovies and peppers preserved under oil, sardines to slip under the grill on buttered toast with mustard, and tuna (Ventresca for its exquisite butteriness) for a quick salade niçoise. Chickpeas make an instant hummus: whizz them with lemon juice, a sliver of garlic and olive oil. But my favourite supper is Nordic: pickled herrings with a mustardy rémoulade and piping hot new potatoes.
'Chickpeas make an instant hummus: whizz them with lemon juice, a sliver of garlic and olive oil.'
Snow crab makes a beautiful crab cake (chilli sauce on the side), and sardines do a fine fishcake that’s lovely with aioli. In the kitchen, as in life and love, it’s the little things that count. The dash of mushroom ketchup in the gravy, the thread of well-aged balsamic on the wild strawberries, the tiniest capers stirred into vinaigrette perfumed with rose-petal vinegar, the smoked sea salt to eat with quails’ eggs, the rose-petal jam to spread on scones with cream, the romesco sauce
to eat with grilled asparagus…
It’s personal, of course. The choice is yours. The cupboard’s unlocked, so come right in and make yourself at home.
The 10 (cupboard) commandments
A short guide to storing some of those delicious things that can be whipped out of the cupboard
and used to add flavour or sophistication, or to finish a dish with a flourish:
1. Don’t overstock. Pay a little more for quality and replace as soon as you run out. Spring-clean the store cupboard as soon as summer shows her face and there’s a need
for lighter dishes and fresher flavours.
2. Spices don’t last forever. Whole spices – peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger root, allspice – can be kept in a dark corner in a sealed jar for two to three years. Powdered spices lose their fragrance after six months.
3. Refresh your herbs. Cardamom, cumin, chillies and dry-leaf herbs (rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme) should be replaced every year.
4. Nuts spoil easily. Pine nuts, walnuts and brazils have a high oil content, which makes them particularly vulnerable to spoilage, so keep them in the fridge and use within
a month. To add a little shelf life to shelled nuts – almonds, cashews, peanuts, pine nuts – roast in a gentle oven until golden, salt lightly and store in a sealed container as a nibble. Or stir into caramelised sugar for a praliné.
5. Preserve pulses. Dried beans and chickpeas can be soaked, bagged and frozen, cutting down preparation time and preserving freshness. They harden as they get older and take longer to cook.
6. Keep grains dry. Grain foods, including milled flour and pasta, should be kept in a dry place out of harm’s way. The only thing that spoils them is mould, mice and mites. Best within a year, but judge for yourself.
7. Keep oils dark and cool. Replace oils within the year. Nut oils should be kept in the fridge once opened. My waste-not-want-not tip: heat any elderly extra virgin to boiling point and keep it there for minutes, strain, bottle up and use for frying or in cakes and biscuits.
8. Cool condiments. Keep jams, sauces, chutneys and pickles in the fridge as soon as opened. Still sealed, they should keep for years.
9. Make dried veg last longer. Replace dried vegetables, including mushrooms, every year. Or soak, bag up and freeze. Or pound
to a powder in the spice grinder and store in a sealed jar in the fridge – so convenient when you want to add a little more flavour.
10. Honey has a very long shelf life. According to the Ancient Romans, who used it as a preservative, honey lasts indefinitely. Its characteristics change over time, however.