Category: Cook’s notes

Chestnut Crumble

I’m always tempted to buy fresh chestnuts. It’s their rich glossy brown shells that get me, but as soon as I’ve bought them I start fretting about what I’m going to do with them.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is slightly sweet, slightly earthy and slightly hot

Coconut milk, coconut cream and coconut flakes

Rich, creamy and intensely coconutty. Here’s the low-down on all things coconut.

Coconut sugar

If coconut sugar has only just popped up on your radar, you’re not alone. Here at Shared Kitchen, we’ve really taken to it.

Coriander/cilantro

Coriander has a pungent cut-grass cat-pee character offset with an intriguing lemony metallic overtone. As you’d expect, it’s not to everyone’s taste.

Couscous

The little dried semolina pellets which constitute instant couscous are quickly reconstituted in water.

Creamy Dreamy Hummus – I know how!

I might just have to suck this one up … yep, the old wive’s trick works.

Crushing aromatics in a mortar

Don’t pussy around. Get in there and crush the life out of them!

Cumin – make it pop with flavour

The work-horse of spices – earthy, warming, smelling of toasted nuts and roasted coffee beans. I have it on great authority that it is pronounced ‘come in’ (not q-min), though I usually forget that!

Curry leaves

Aromatic spicy leaves that splutter and scent the air when dropped into hot oil …

Dill

Dill is a tricky little devil. It looks so innocent, all soft fronds and sweet anise scent, but it packs a potent punch, and the taste lingers. That makes it perfect with oily fish such as salmon.

Dried figs

Dried figs are honey sweet, fruity and sort of figgy tasting, and a bit gritty, but that grittiness is a good attribute as it provides texture. The skin might look like elephant hide …

Ducks in your pie

What do these creatures do? Apart from quack …

Dukkah – get doing the dukkah jig!

Labna and dukkah and dukkah and labna … make it your summer mantra.

Feijoas are right show-offs. Stick one in a fruit bowl to ripen and it’ll soon fill the room with its heady, tropical scents of banana, sweet strawberry, ripe pineapple and guava. The creamy-coloured flesh, apart from the jellied seeds, is granular like a pear in some varieties, smoother in others. Feijoas ripen from the inside […]

Fennel – fancy things up with feathery leaves or pollen

If I could resist harvesting my fennel bulbs, they would have babies, slim fennel-ettes would start forming that I could pluck out leaving the plant to continue growing and forming more of the same. But I can’t, of course.

Fennel seed and other such things

Letting some fennel plants go to seed, (accidentally or on purpose), will ensure you have fresh fennel seeds to use in dishes.

Feta

It may be a cliché, but feta served with a salad of olives, tomatoes and bread and drizzled with olive oil, makes a fabulous summer lunch.

Flageolet Beans

Creamy pale green and white beans, pretty as a picture, luscious to eat

Freekeh

Freekeh is smoky and slightly chewy and gives salads some heft and a depth of flavour.

French Tarragon

Russian tarragon is all puffery and little substance – you want taste, not masses of greenery.

Funny Spellings

You may notice some funny spellings of words on Shared Kitchen and that’s because I am a New Zealander. We spell colour with a u, as they do in England, and fibre, centre, metre as they do, too. I think it is easy enough to understand these words, but there are some words which have […]