Shared Kitchen

Real food from scratch

Category: Cook’s notes

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!

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 …

Feijoas

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 […]

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.

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 […]