Ingredient Links

My personal list of links of ingredients

Below I have links to my choice of cer­tain ingredi­ents. They are gen­er­ally to amazon but they can (and ideally should) be bought in your loc­al inde­pend­ent store.
Unsur­pris­ingly the top few are effect­ively forms of the essen­tial essence of most food — salt, fat and acid, plus of course the umami of soy.
I try to be quite exact­ing about the ingredi­ents I use. To put it in terms of spark­ling wine I’m not using the equi­val­ent of 1921 vin­tage Dom Perignon, but nor do I use the equi­val­ent of £3.99 own-brand value pro­secco. what I look for are ingredi­ents made the tra­di­tion­al way. They should con­tain no non-nutrit­ive extras like sweeten­ers, addit­ives, sulph­ites, E‑numbers, pre­ser­vat­ives, etc. They should be priced reas­on­ably for the aver­age enthu­si­ast­ic home cook. Where pos­sible they should come in con­tain­ers with no plastic. And where pos­sible they should be organ­ic, vegan and glu­ten-free — so I can use them when cook­ing for people with dif­fer­ent diet­ary require­ments. I also prefer non-GMO where pos­sible (not because of dir­ect helath reas­ons but because many com­mer­cial GMO crops are designed to be extra-res­ist­ant to strong chem­ic­als which are then used extens­ively and harm­fully to wildlife.)

Soy

There are sev­er­al vari­et­ies of Soy, but broadly they fall into 3 camps: light, dark, and sweet. Light is actu­ally the saltiest!
The soy’s from China and Japan are also dif­fer­ent — tra­di­tion­ally Chinese soy sauce is made using only soy­beans, whilst Japan­ese usu­ally con­tains wheat. Japan­ese light soy sauce is usu­ally light­er than Chinese

• light / thin soy. It’s Chinese style but I haven’t been able to find any Thai or Japan­ese-style soy that does­n’t have added E num­bers and preservatives
• Tam­ari (Japan­ese Dark soy). Halal, vegan, free of addit­ives, and glu­ten-free. Can work as a gen­er­al pur­pose dark-soy which will work in Japan­ese and Chinese dishes.
• Black / Thick soy / Cook­ing Car­a­mel. I don’t get this as I haven’t been able to find one, and I don’t often have need for it. At a push I would use Tam­ari com­bined with some molasses
• Sweet Soy / kecap manis. This is around 79% sug­ar by weight which is cor­rect for Kecap Manis. Its also free of pre­ser­vat­ives. Some­times writ­ten Ket­jap Manis — pro­nounced like Ketchup!

Salt

I mainly use coarse him­alay­an pink salt as it is lower in micro­plastics than most salts, and does not con­tain any addit­ives like anti-cak­ing agents. How­ever it misses the tex­ture of flaky salts which are great for fin­ish­ing a dish, and due to being pink isn’t ideal for pick­ling. For those pur­poses I use small quant­it­ies of oth­er salts

• Pink Him­alay­an salt
• White Him­alay­an salt for pickling
• Premi­um flaky sea salt for fin­ish­ing only

Oil

I really like the taste of Cretan Olive Oil and I don’t use much else. Extra Vir­gin OO isn’t well suited for deep fry­ing though, so I usu­ally have some extra-vir­gin rape­seed oil handy for that. I nev­er use but­ter as I am dairy intol­er­ant and 99% of the time olive oil and a pinch of salt works just as well. The only oth­er oil I use fre­quently is ses­ame oil.

• UK-pro­duced cold-pressed EV rape­seed oil
• Terra Creta Cretan EV Olive Oil
• Lyra­kis Fam­ily Cretan EV Olive Oil
• Ses­ame Oil. I use ses­ame oil mostly for cook­ing with not fin­ish­ing, so I use an oil made from untoasted ses­ame seeds.

Vinegars

These are dif­fer­ent from the wines below and have longer shelf-lives. Whilst all of the wines above are pleas­ant when drunk, these are not inten­ded for drink­ing on their own. Note that “white vin­eg­ar” is not the same as dis­tilled malt vin­eg­ar OR white wine vin­eg­ar, and is more used for clean­ing than cook­ing, although it is cheap and can be used in pick­ling and cook­ing if you wish to! Where pos­sible avoid vin­eg­ars that have added ingredi­ents or that have been pas­tur­ised. The best wine vin­eg­ars are made with the tra­di­tion­al orleans pro­cess which takes time (and hence makes them cost more)

• Red Wine Vin­eg­ar. Goes well with red meats and strong fla­vours — like red wine.
• White Wine Vin­eg­ar. Goes well with fish and poultry and light­er dishes. Good for deglaz­ing a pan
• Rice Vin­eg­ar / Rice Wine Vin­eg­ar. I prefer unseasoned — I can always add my own season­ing. This is a mild vin­eg­ar often used in east-asi­an cooking.
• Bal­sam­ic Vin­eg­ar. These can get truly silly in pricy — like premi­um wines. I go by the law of dimin­ish­ing returns — get some­thing well rated and tasty without going to crazy — in this case it means an IGP Mod­ena. In an ideal world I would get DOP but it’s just so pricey.
• Apple Cider Vin­eg­ar. A medi­um fruity vin­eg­ar that sits nicely between red and white wine vin­eg­ars. Goes espe­cially well with pork.
• Malt Vin­eg­ar. Essen­tial on chips and any oth­er potato format gen­er­ally. I get this in bulk and refill my glass bottle.
• Dis­tilled Malt Vin­eg­ar. I like to use this for pick­ling. I prefer it to plain white vinegar.

Fortified and cooking wines

Dif­fer­ent for­ti­fied wines have quite dif­fer­ent fla­vour pro­files. They also have a bit of a lim­it on their life span once opened so I tend to get smal­ler bottles when I can, and once one is opened try to use it with­in a few weeks. A vacu­um-seal (inten­ded for reg­u­lar wine) can help them last longer too

• Port. The richest and darkest of the 3 most com­mon for­ti­fied wines, think of it as a for­ti­fied red-wine. Works well with meaty cas­ser­oles. Both Tawny and Ruby port work well, but Ruby port adds a bright­er more appeal­ing col­our and tends to be cheap­er. The extra com­plex­ity of fla­vour in tawny port tends to be lost in most dishes port gets used in so ruby port is usu­ally the bet­ter choice
• Sherry. The light­est of the 3 com­mon for­ti­fied wines, basic­ally a for­ti­fied white-wine. Tends to have a nutty fla­vour and is good in soups and stews. Dry sherry is what is needed — sweet sherry is for drink­ing and desserts.
• Mars­ala Wine. A bal­anced medi­um between port and sherry. It works well in mar­in­ades, sauces, and with both meat and sea­food. The dry (secco) ver­sion is gen­er­ally bet­ter for cook­ing, whilst the sweet (dolce) is more use­ful for bak­ing and desserts. As I mainly want it for cook­ing I get a dry one — of which there are far few­er to choose from.
• Saki. Rice wine. Ideally should be Junmai (made from 100% rice with no brew­ers alco­hol added).
• Mir­in. A rice wine sim­il­ar to Saki but sweeter and with less alco­hol (around 14%)

Sauces & Condiments

I try to make as many sauces and spice mixes as I can at home, because that way they have the freshest fla­vour, no addit­ives or pre­ser­vat­ives, and I can con­trol the amounts of salt, refined sug­ar, etc that go into them. But like the soy-sauce above some things just aren’t prac­tic­al to make at home

• Fish Sauce. It’s always going to be salty, but you also want the umami so try to get a good qual­ity one and don’t go over­board with it.
• Molasses
• Tomato Ketch­up
• Tam­ar­ind Paste
• Tomato Pur­ee. This is double con­cen­trate, also known as tomato paste in the US.
• Ses­ame Paste. It is not easy to make this your­self from ses­ame seeds so I tend to get it pre-made.
• Lem­on­grass Paste. Home mak­ing this would be quite a chal­lenge I ima­gine, and I dis­like hav­ing to pick around whole lem­on­grass in food so I always use this instead of whole lemongrass.

Special Mention: Tomatoes

Ahh. Toma­toes. Abso­lut­ley fant­ast­ic when I eat them in Crete (or Greece, or Italy etc.), but almost always dis­ap­point­ing in the UK. We simply have the wrong vari­et­ies — ones that have been grown for a uni­form appear­ance and a long shelf life (and abso­lutely zero fla­vour). Dur­ing the sum­mer I can grow a few of my own and enjoy the real thing. And farm­ers mar­kets and the green­gro­cer have some pretty good ones too. The rest of the year though it’s really just a choice of 2 options — the best cherry toma­toes I can find in the green­gro­cer, OR tinned toma­toes. Salads and gar­nishes obvi­ously must use fresh, but for any toma­toes that will be cooked I tend to use tinned — because good tinned toma­toes will always have more fla­vour (and prob­ably arrived by road, rail, and/or sea so are lower car­bon I hope).
I use tinned toma­toes year round for some pizza and pasta sauces even when reas­on­able fresh ones are avail­able — so I tend to try to get San Mar­z­an­o’s des­pite the astro­nom­ic cost (and des­pite know­ing that they prob­ably aren’t actu­ally strictly San Mar­z­an­o’s because after­all only so many toma­toes can be grown per year in an area of only 70 square miles! That said, the “San Mar­z­an­o’s” that I get do taste great, they are sweet, and they are low acid — as San Mar­z­an­o’s should be. The best value place I have found to get these is for £1.33 per can by buy­ing 24-packs from a places called Mer­canti. As they have a long shelf life I tend to buy 2 or 3 cases to make best use of the deliv­ery cost. It’s still a lot more than the cost of your every­day super­mar­ket essen­tials but for an extra 20–30p per head it can make all the dif­fer­ence to a meal. For a slightly more budget friendly altern­at­ive I recom­mend look­ing for Corbarino or Pien­nolo toma­toes. And if you’re in a rush then the best widely-avail­able toma­toes are the brand Mutti which you can usu­ally find in most spe­cial­ist gro­cers and even some­times in the super­mar­ket. Also note that I nev­er buy chopped tinned toma­toes as these almost always have addit­ives, where­as whole tinned toma­toes rarely have any­thing added. Note that there are sev­er­al places online that also sell a 24-case of 400g for around £32 (£1.33 per tin / £3.33 per kg) but most of them appear to be whole­salers that will only deliv­er to busi­ness addresses.

Things to make at home

Most oth­er key things I try to make at home. E.g.

• Chilli Paste (aka Sam­bal Oelek / Sriracha)
• Gar­lic-Ginger Paste
• Red-pep­per paste (aka Harissa paste)
• Ter­iyaki Sauce
• Hoisin Sauce