Every cook has a secret, a little kitchen hack they use, often without thinking, to make their cooking easier, quicker or more downright delicious. It might never occur to us that other people don’t know about our habit of introducing pickle brine to a salad dressing (or pretty much anything), how to put to rights an over-salted sauce or how to add a deep, toasty nuttiness to our cookies.
Well, we have some brilliant ideas for you. Generous friends of Food Monthly are sharing their kitchen tricks and tips with us, from the most glorious fat for your roasties; a way to stop your scrambled eggs from overcooking; the trick for enhancing the flavour of your fried onions and what to do with those spicily fragrant tomato vines that you usually put on the compost.
We also have a great bunch of recipes from potato queen Poppy O’Toole – think salt and pepper chips, or a sweetly spicy, cheesy mash. These are the ideas that have given her 4 million followers on Tik Tok. Fortunately, for those us you can live without that platform’s frenetic pace, she writes books too. We have recipes and an interview.
Jay Rayner has been having a January tidy up, ridding himself of the spice-cupboard clutter that collects when you are not looking. So out with asafoetida and tamarind paste and in with a shiny new spice box. He has tidied, polished and labelled his jars and wiped his sticky rims. Me too, as it happens, though superstition saw me spring cleaning just before the bells rang the New Year in.
There are also some winter salads ideas from me, starting with celeriac and sausage remoulade; Fury from TV’s Gladiators gives us her Life on a Plate; and we take lunch in Paris with Alex Kapranos of the band Franz Ferdinand. Oh, and we sing the praises of a much maligned and underused dried herb. That is, if Jay hasn’t thrown it out.
