I like cooking. To say I am “passionate” about it might be an overstatement – one which I might have made some years ago – but without sounding any trumpets I can assuredly say that I do love to cook, and sharing what I cook with friends around a dinner table. I used to think of myself as a bit of a chef, but to be honest I don’t think I have the energy to boast that anymore. Still, if you shoved me into a kitchen that had the bare minimum by way of ingredients, I reckon I could still knock up a modest feast.

I am not one, however, to follow recipes – that is, in day to day cooking and in preparing for having friends for dinner, I hardly look anything up. Even in attempting something relatively new (like recently a biryani) I am more likely to look up ten different recipes, read them all, note their similarities and differences, and then shut everything off and wing it. I still write down some of my more “novel” creations, or things I want to remember, and post them on Instagram. It allows me to quickly revisit some ideas and know when what was made, and build memories.

But by and large I am not a very deeply-versed cook. There are a few themes I find straightforward and that I stick to, with the odd outlier here and there. This post intends really to visit each of these and take stock (ha!) of the modest breadth of my knowledge.

On Measurements

I typically discuss savoury recipes without reference to measurements because I find them falsely restrictive.

You can usually tell how much is needed by common sense when dealing with familiar ingredients, and in savoury cooking, this is usually quite forgiving, and can more often than not be corrected for after the fact. If you find yourself agonizing over “how much exactly” of an ingredient or seasoning to add, I would assume you came into the kitchen via baking – which is one of the most unforgiving disciplines of cooking in terms of quantity measurement, just behind candying; if a recipe calls for flour dough and some scales, I might complain, but I’m checking out at melted sugar where everything needs a thermometer! Understandably, you might apply this thinking to savoury cooking, but quite the opposite is true: most measurements are general guidance only, and you have a lot of freedom in adjusting quantities, and even substituting ingredients altogether.

“Two onions” can yield any quantity of chopped onion – sure there are small onions and large onions, but unless you’re dealing with the dubiously massive onions, it doesn’t matter (compare onion varieties at the shop and you’ll know if they have any of the giants – they’re 4-5 times bigger). You might just swap them out for shallots and leeks instead. A tzatziki recipe on a British blog might recommend “two large cloves of garlic” and you can bet any Greek cook is ignoring that recommendation and nudging you towards using 2 whole heads. You can look at soup ingredients and know rough quantities without noting them, there will obviously not be “ten carrots and one potato with five tablespoons of thyme.” There are quantities that look right, there are personal preferences, and that’s enough to go by.

There are however some ingredients that are worth giving a rough size-guide for – I can only speak for the ones I know, but it helps to think like this:

“Soy sauce is measured in tablespoons” should tell you that adding anywhere between one and five tablespoons of soy sauce into a cooking pot will be fine. No need to measure, just pour until it feels like anything from one to five tablespoons has been poured – the window is generous. Conversely “fish sauce is measured in drops” should tell you that very little goes a long way, and if your bottle like mine delivers the pungent stuff in drops, then anywhere between one to five shakes should be sufficient.

And so typical dosages run like this:

• Soy sauce is measured in table spoons (or more liberally yet)
• Fish sauce is measured in drops (unless you’re Thai or Vietnamese, in which case teaspoons, or even tablespoons)
• Where smoked paprika could be measured in 1/2 teaspoons, cayenne pepper would be measured in pinches (except for Ivorians, Koreans, Mexicans etc where it would be measured in fistfuls)
• Sugar is measured in three-fingered pinches – a pinch or few will work wonders on a tomato sauce
• Vinegar is measured in teaspoons (except for sweet/sour sauces and Central European soups where it’s in tablespoons)
• Lemon juice is measured in dashes (a few drops per “dash”)
• Most herbs and spices are measured in 1/2 teaspoons – each! So don’t agonize over every gram, nor whether it’s a level spoon or heaped spoon, the safety margin is wide.
  • Personal experience, nutmeg and cloves can be overpowering, do be careful with those; and to a lesser extent, be gentle with cumin

Those are the ones I wanted to call out, but mostly I wanted to give an appreciation of just how much margin for variation there is. The old “how much, mom? / oh just enough, dear” joke is real, I know, and the above is why.

The Basics

I reckon it’s worth mentioning the basics because that tends to be very much the foundation on which everything else is built – in that, these are the “techniques” (I must used the term lightly) I have down pat that allow me to avoid recipe-following altogether, and improvise on the idea from the original dish.

Allium – otherwise known as “the onion and garlic family” (genus, botanically, to quibble). It is a simple observation that no matter which cuisine of the world you look at, the homely and hearty dishes nearly always include some sort of Allium, be it outright onions and garlic, or shallots, leek, spring onions, chives, and the likes. If it’s a dish that aims to be comforting, if it is to have flavour, you can be sure Allium will be involved. I once ate a burger at one roadside pub in the back ways of Scotland ; it was the saddest meat patty I have ever eaten, second only to one I made myself at university in which I clean omitted to add any minced onion or shallot. Its importance is fundamental. It is nigh impossible to produce any semblance of a good burger without mixing in any Allium of any kind. So too is it with any stew, sauce, stock, curry, stir fry or roast. I keep saying Allium like it’s poncy – I just want to not discriminate. Switch it up. Try one in the place of another.

Aromatics mix – (aromix, to coin a term) a mix of fine-diced onion, carrot and celery sweated (pan-fried on low heat) in olive oil gives a mirepoix. Italians have a close variant called a soffrito. Cajun cuisine I discovered has a so-called “Holy Trinity” onions, carrots and bell peppers. Many cultures have their base ingredient combos. Asian dishes will often bring in ginger or lemon grass to this mix, along with garlic. Mediterranean recipes usually call for olive oil, East Asian may call for oil or lard, Indian cuisines usually demand ghee, French cuisine often calls in the butter. Alternative fats can be meat drippings or various oils. It’s all superb, mixing and matching here usually can’t go wrong. The base aromix variant brings the main character of the dish, and in some aspects, its national character. Herbs and spices are usually added after this along with other components to bring high notes, but the aromix sets the base tone of the dish. And yes, sometimes, the aromix can simply be Allium and oil (lookup gambas al ajillo).

Soup and Stock – once the aromix is ready, adding other flavoursome bits, big or small, along with boiling water and other seasonings, brings us into soup territory. Simmer it for hours, and remove the solids, and we get a stock. Either forms the basis of many dishes, and is nearly much a dish in and of itself. Usually the pieces will either be meats, bones, roots and stems. Anything that won’t disintegrate in a long cook. In particular if you’re wanting to use potatoes at this stage, try for baby/new potatoes which don’t tend to disintegrate after hours in a pot; else add the potatoes near the end of cooking.

I rarely bother removing vegetables for stock these days – soup with all the pieces is lovely. You know that “bone broth” fad that went around lately? That was stock-making. I used to keep roast chicken carcasses, steak bones, ribs and such in a freezer box, and when I had accumulated enough I would take it all and make a stock from these. Or “bone broth” as people have been calling it. Nowadays I rarely eat big hunks of meat or whole birds, so the bone box has remained barren for a while…

Roux – the technique of making a roux, ascribed to French cuisine in its development, allows the creation of all manner of sauces from pan fats and drippings: stir-in and fry flour in a fat (usually butter, but I do this for example with the leftover fat from cooking bacon) until the flour is somewhat cooked (about 2-4 minutes usually), and then add in stock very gradually, mixing all the while. I call this technique out as a means to pointedly avoid instant gravies and drypack sauces. Knowing how to use a roux to make a sauce out of any fat and any liquid opens the doors to infinitely customisable sauces – and eking the most out of leftover bacon fat.

Cream sauce – if your pan fats are a bit stuck, deglaze with a touch of cider vinegar or gin/rum/whisky, or just a splash of boiling water – and then turn off the heat and chuck in either a spoon of sour cream or crème fraîche. These have a bit of acidity to them, and even though it may be fat-on-fat, produce a beautifully rich gravy sauce, scraping every bit of flavour.

Save the dripping – I am often inclined to specifically save pan fats in a retained dip container for later use – either straight onto potatoes for roasting, or to make this kind of sauce. Drippings from a roast chicken or turkey, or from the fat rendered off of bacon, is prime for this. You could start a roux on this to make a rich sauce or gravy, or lather it on the next roast potatoes or vegetables another day.

Roast vegetables and nuts – these pack a punch. Roast vegetables don’t get enough press as a flavour base I feel, and especially roast peppers, onions, and root vegetables. Whack a bunch of these under the salamander (“oven grill”) oiled and salted, and broil until some bits of blackening start appearing. These are great over pasta directly of course, but can be added to soup or to aromix and tinned tomatoes for a luxuriant tomato sauce.

Don’t Feck with the Fish – this is nearly an anti-technique. Fish cooking I find to be perhaps of the simplest, when sticking to white fish and trout/salmon types. In fact, if you try to do too much to fish, you run the risk of ruining it. Set it on a baking try, filleted or whole-and-butterflied, oil it, season it, and let it bake for 15-20min. Or pan-fry it and baste it. If you leave the lid on, you can call it steaming and can add more delicate aromatics, liberally chopped. Serve with potatoes or rice or pasta. Maybe a sauce over roasted/boiled vegetables. Seriously, don’t overcomplicate it.

Flavour boosters – I keep some basic flavour boosters at the ready always, which come in handy in nearly every recipe:

• tomato paste – anything tomato-based of course, just to up the punch
• soy sauce – not just for Asian cuisine. I’ve jujed up tomato sauces and French stews with this to great effect
• fish sauce – in its raw form, it smells off-putting for sure, but when cooked down, it sweetens and emboldens any pan fry, stew or roast. An alternative is to use minced anchovies. Get anchovies from a tin and mince them, job done; do note that for a dish serving four, one or two anchovies will largely suffice!
• pickle juices & tinned fish brines – don’t throw these out, they add brightness to soups and stews

The last thing I note is that in most cases, it is better to pan-fry at medium heat instead of high: it’s more forgiving, and cooks-through more evenly. As I reflect on cases where I would deliberately use high heat, I find myself needing to add multiple caveats, warranting whole posts on their own, indicative of a more advanced technique altogether.

All in all, these techniques are used for European style stews, Eastern hotpots, Italian tomato sauces, good old British (and worldly) meat roasts and their accompaniments, South Asian and Caribbean curries, Latin American moles , and probably much more. If I stuck only to these techniques and went hardly further, I would be still eating well and varied indeed.

Dishes from Basics

As a point of illustration, these are dishes I like to make, along some vague themes

Sauces and Stews

Tomato Base Sauce

So much can be done with a tomato sauce base, and it can be made in bulk and frozen in portions, so you can easily have a custom tomato sauce from which to make any number of dishes. With pasta, a good tomato sauce remains delicious when cold, so much so that it’s our go-to dish for making before traveling: on the road, in airports, and glamping. We even make it as our standard when staying in self-catered accommodation (we’re not fans of weeks-long of eating at restaurants).

A fundamental tomato sauce is easily achievable: start with the aromix, then add other chopped vegetables (my usual is courgette, bell pepper, broccoli, and the likes), and once these havecooked a few minutes in the pot, add chopped tomatoes (tinned is great here), and a dose of tomato paste (several tablespoons) and optionally a few spoons worth of soy sauce (heretical). This could be dished up as-is on pasta for a cozy evening meal, but how about

• add chilis (or at least copious amounts of black pepper) to turn it arabiatta
• adding in roast vegetables and pan-toasted nuts/seeds (veg arabiatta) brings a rich flavour, and something to do with leftover veg roast
• pan fry aubergine and courgette in olive oil and salt+pepper, then add this base sauce, and you’ve got a ratatouille with a kick
• pan fry some chicken and serve alongside the sauce, or shred up some leftover roast chicken for a chicken tomato sauce
• add the sauce to pan-fried mince and onions (this is not a true ragù di bologna, but very close to what we know outside of Italy as “bolognese sauce”)
• make store-bought ravioli fancy by cooking them and adding the sauce over them
• using as a base for lasagne, shepherd’s pie, or cottage pie
• with pan fried chorizo slices, roasted pumpkin chunks, or whatever you want to cook on the side

The fun part is, you can combine a lot of these variants, all already good in their own rights, into ever more fanciful feasts – the only limit is your imagination! (And fish. I do not recommend fish)

Freeze portions for later – I would usually make the base sauce and freeze potions of that, and every so oten take a portion out, bring it gently back to heat in a saucepan, and add my variations to that portion.

A lot of red curry-style dishes call for tomato – use left over roast chicken for example, re-fry in ghee, add a garam masala (or any mix of spices you have on hand, the more varied the better) and finish off with the tomato sauce, and you’ll have something to smile about. It might be careless to call this an actual curry – but if it’s comforting and it’s yummy then that’s all that matters.

Coconut-Base Curry

When I left home, I only knew how to make one type of curry: a coconut-based beef curry, somewhat loosely based on Thai-style green curry. My mum used to make this on occasion, and I liked it so much I made a point of learning it.

Fry the aromix, add garam masala and other spices, add diced meat, fry til seared, add your chopped vegetables, cook a few minutes, then cover with coconut milk. Simmer this with a loosely covering lid for 20min, and dish up over white rice.

Some things you wouldn’t usually think of to go in here are green beans, broccoli, bell pepper chunks… whatever vegetables you want really.

Freeze portions for later.

Tomato-Base Curry

I only understood that many wet curries used a tomato base late in my life. How I had never know this before, I cannot explain.

Fry the aromix in ghee (or in oil, and add butter at a later stage, for a passable approximation), blend in your spices mix, add meats and/or hardy vegetables, cook a few minutes, and chopped tomatoes and several dollops of tomato paste, dash of soy sauce and fish sauce, and a quantity of coconut milk or coconut powder, and simmer this for 30min at least, up to just over an hour.

Freeze portions for later.

The Everyspice Curry

The (lack of) specificity of spices in my curry recipes is astounding, no doubt – but as far as I am concerned, they are templates, and I exhort to exploration. There’s little can go wrong, especially with the tomato-based curry. If not using a pre-made masala, or Western “curry mix,” try combining at least turmeric, cumin, and three other spices. Whichever you want.

A little anecdote: at one point as a child I had the idea of making “instant potion” – melding “instant soup” and “magic potion” into a single blast of inspiration, which led me to collecting a teaspoon sample of every ground spice in my mum’s spice cupboard indiscriminately. There was coriander seed, cinnamon, ground fennel, cumin, turmeric, nutmeg, fenugreek, white pepper, chili powder, commercial garam masala and five-spice… a medley nobody would usually recommend. Of course, when I combined a spoonful of my mix with hot water, it didn’t potion at all, and so I hid the container in my room never to be seen again.

Until over ten years later, when my mum was clearing my room when I was moving out. “What’s this?” she asked. I shrugged. “I… don’t know…. probably… just spices….??” Let me tell you, she made a lamb curry with it. And it was delicious.

Get creative, and don’t get too hung up.

Soups and broths

Pot au feu

Literally, “pot on the fire” or “pot on the hob.” Arguably my favourite winter dish, and a good go-to when having a sizable number of people to feed, as it scales up very well. I once made 10L of it one weekend and just fed off of it for an entire week without getting tired of it.

Start with the aromix, add meats (I tend to use diced gammon and top side, and cured sausage if available – it was a good way of using a too-tough dry-cured boar sausage to make it tender), and new potatoes, adding thyme, oregano, or any herb mix you fancy (avoid tarragon, sage or mint, which won’t work here). For laughs why not a bit of curry powder, cumin, coriander seed, cardamom… I’ve done the curry powder and cumin variation before, it was great! Simmer this for 2 hours or more.

Freeze portions for later.

I’ve tried to think of a way to veganize this dish but in the end, the meatiness is essential to its identity. Remove the meat and sub in celeriac and squash/pumpkin with smoked paprika, and you do get a delicious vegetable stew.

Dumpling Soup

If you are familiar with East Asian eateries, you will no doubt have come across wonton soup. I am not going to here claim that making wontons or other Asian dumplings is easy – it takes a good amount of practice – but they can be bought. Making a broth using the soup/stock method gives you the control over flavour you will want. To get that real Asian flavour kick, you’ll likely want white pepper, Sichuan peppercorns (or at least star anise), fish sauce, and perhaps lemon grass. At the very least, five-spice mix from the grocery.

But riffing on a variation, if you stick with a European stock, you can take it in interesting directions: store/deli bought tortellini work here (the style is known as tortellini in brodo, “tortellini in broth”), or pierogi from the Polish grocers will also shine. Vermicelli is more typical in this setup than noodles, and vegetable pieces are welcome in all cases.

This does not typically do freeze portions, but it’s very quick to make from single portions to full meal.

Superquick Noodle Soup

This is something I make every day for breakfast. I use a type of noodle that’s similar to what’s found in instant noodle packs, but it’s sold as a multipack of noodle nests without extra packaging – I aim to reduce waste. Similarly, some supermarkets carry dried rice noodles which come in handy nests and serve very well here too.

And so, instead of a series of little packets of flavourings, I do this:

• in a small pot, dissolve half a stock cube (of any preference) in boiling water and keep at a simmer
• add a shaking of Chinese five-spice
• add white pepper and chili powder
• add chopped spring onion and a shredded cabbage leaf
• add a nest of noodles and simmer until noodles are cooked

If I’m being fancy I might add a wonton or some leftover meat or chopped frankfurter (ooh la la), but usually, the veg is enough.

Asian Hot Pot

Many of the Asian countries will have their own hot pot tradition, each with their own customs and flavours. The two I am acquainted with are the Chinese hot-pot, a convivial add-and-take type of cooking at the table with everyone, and the Japanese nabe, which is prepared in the kitchen, the ingredients nestled in aesthetically, and served as a completed dish.

Most hot pots won’t take to freezing, but the broth can be kept as a soup for a good few days. Consider adding cooked noodles and dumplings to individual servings of leftover soup as lunch meals.

Chinese Hot Pot Ersatz

For this you need a heating plate on the dining table, a broth, and all ingredients pre-chopped. The soup base I would recommend buying from store, but can be approximated using stock cubes, chili oil, five spice, star anise, and a good simmer, before bringing to the table.

From there, the usual items to add involve a lot of Chinese staples including rice cake, fish ball, tofu skins, enoki mushroom, hot pot meat slices, dumplings, and the list goes on. But if you’re after the technique simply, but with Western flavours, go for it: the simple rule is that all items to go into the pot should be chopped to a size that will cook within a couple of minutes. Cabbage leaves, various roots, potato slices, diced beef and chicken. Add to the pot, fish it out however you may.

You may recognise in this as a fondue. You would be right, it shares much in common.

I find this way of operating messy and am not a fan of its haphazardness. I often lose my food, either to the depths or to other diners. At home I prefer to do nabe.

Nabe Ersatz

A Japanese purist would probably whack my over the head for what I am about to suggest, so I should preface that this is the lazy man’s re-interpretation of a hot pot, loosely inspired by a Japanese dish. Voila, be at peace. The point here is not to make “authentic” food, but rather, I want to show techniques I use to vary the pleasures of making and eating meals that can be shared with friends – without fuss and stress. So for this, I am going to use predominantly Western ingredients.

In a wide cooking pot, fry some chopped onions, ginger, and a couple of chopped anchovies in some neutral oil. Add salt, pepper, and chopped parsley, and several cups of water, and a couple nests of vermicelli rice noodles or udon noodles. Arrange the next ingredients into distinct areas of the cooking pot, aesthetically: some sliced carrots, peeled baby potatoes, topped and tailed radishes, some thick bacon rashers, slices of celeriac, and nests of chopped cabbage. Sprinkle some Lea & Perrin’s/Worcestershire sauce and some dry sherry over the lot. Cover and simmer until the ingredients are cooked. Uncover at the table to the amazement of your guests.

Alternatively, use stock cubes or Chinese hot pot soup base with enough boiling water for the amount of desired soup, add various chopped vegetables, mushrooms (rehydrated as needed), dumplings/ravioli/pierogi from the freezer, meat you have to hand, kimchi/pickles from the jar, simmer til cooked, and serve up in bowls. I have used this technique after a heavy night out and needing a hangover prevention dish before going to bed.

Either works.

Fish

Buttered cod (or any white fish)

Take a fillet of cod/haddock/sea bass/mackerel. Sprinkle sea salt over the top. Dot the top with copious noisettes (hazelnut sized pieces) of butter. Season with pepper, and if you’d like, chilis, and coriander leaf (sub with parsely if you prefer). Bake 15min or until cooked. I would usually serve this with rice.

Baked salmon

Salmon is always tasty, but when it’s in season it’s off the charts. Salmon fillet, on a baking tray, seasoned with salt and pepper, and gently drizzled with cider vinegar. Bake 10min til cooked. Can be served part-cooked with good grade salmon. I like to serve this with peas and rice.

Smoked fish things on sushi rice

This is something I adapted from a Japanese dish, “Ochazuke.” Typically cooked fish sitting atop sushi rice in a bowl, with kelp tea poured over it, half way up the rice. This works well with smoked mackerel or haddock, deskinned and flaked off the bone, sushi or risotto rice cooked soft, and a light stock.

Alternatively, I’ve also used roast gammon chunks or chicken, black tea with soy, and various such substitutions. Typically in Japanese serving there would be other bowls of sides along with it, but for a Western sensibility, add multiple extra toppings like roast vegetable slices and pickles. Just call it….. “things on rice.”

Sundry

Fried Rice

There’s traditional fried rice dishes, and there’s “home style”/”use the leftovers” fried rice. For the latter, use whatever you have to hand, so long as:

1. It can be chopped to small size
2. It doesn’t need to be cooked long in the fried rice pan
3. It’s not overly wet – if so, cook it til most moisture is gone before adding to the fried rice pan : for example:
   • no to raw eggs, yes to cooked eggs
   • no to fresh tomato, but sun-dried tomato could be interesting!)

A typical home frying pan, even large, will make at most enough fried rice for two people without crowding the pan. The rice should be able to toss at any time, but that means if cooking for many, you either need to serve smaller portions alongside other dishes, or cook in batches. Other than that, fried rice is one of those dishes that has a 5 minute cook time, but a 30min prep time. You cannot prep as you fry – do all the prep up front.

Pre-chop all ingredients, and pre-cook any ingredients that need it (e.g. eggs). Fire up a pan, add the oil, and when hot, add minced ginger and garlic, then follow up with tough vegetables, then follow up with cooked meats, add spice and seasonings (typically five spice and MSG), stir more, then follow up with light vegetables and season with a bit of soy, and finally add the cold cooked rice, breaking it up and stirring it around. Season with sesame oil, mix a few seconds and turn out onto a plate.

Mashed Potatoes

Plenty of people, especially Brits and Irish, will have their take on what makes good mashed potatoes, and I will be no exception.

1. People usually prefer mash without potato skins, but I don’t care. Just scrub the dirt off the potatoes under running water, and don’t bother peeling
2. Smaller bits cook faster, mash easier, and show up blighted tatties. Chop your potatoes to small chunks, discard any sections that are black/blackening or greening, the rest is fine to keep
3. Salt the cooking water well. Once the potatoes are cooked, ditch the water, mot of the salt content will go too, but the potatoes’ flavour will be much enhanced
4. When the potatoes are still hot, add copious amounts of butter, in chunks, and start mashing, until the butter is integrated
5. Add a few dashes of milk. I know some may consider this heresy. I call it indispensable. Keep mashing til integrated.
6. You can mash in whatever else you want now. Herbs, mustard, chives, your heart’s desire.
7. If you’re using a slotted/mesh masher, wash that potato out immediately – if it dries, it’ll be like concrete.

Omelette

The last item I want to mention is omelettes. They are very versatile, and a great way of using up vegetables and leftover meats. You could opt to stick with the simplest omelette, with seasoned eggs fried in butter, or use it as a vehicle for all kinds of ingredients, hence its mention for versatility. They can also be quick to prep and quick to make, and are a good choice for packed lunch – they eat well cold, so can be prepared the day before.

There are a number of ways of doing an omelette, I favour two:

• Omelette campagnarde, or the countryside omelette, as opposed to the omelette classique (the latter favoured by Jacques Pépin as a test for a chef’s culinary skill)
• Tortilla , or the Spanish omelette

I am uninterested in the unbrowned, bland-looking omelette classique, it just looks uninteresting for the amount of work that needs to go into it.

For the omelette campagnarde, two eggs should be enough for one person, three for luxury. Season with salt and pepper, add a dash of milk, and beat til homogenous. In a pan with melted butter on medium heat, fry up some onion, and optionally some ham or bacon or whatever vegetables you want – courgettes and yellow/red bell peppers work well here, but just about anything chopped reasonably small, just make sure to fry the water out of any ingredients and cook them through before adding the eggs. Once the eggs are in, bring the heat down to medium-low resist the temptation to move it around. Every so often, give the pan a little shake, and observe how much of the egg is cooked. Once most-way there, add grated cheese if you wish, and cover, cooking for just another minute. If you feel brae, give the pan a nudge to flip half the omelette over onto the other half. Serve with a side salad.

For the Spanish omelette (hereafter “tortilla”), beat three eggs with seasonings and a couple spoons of crème fraîche or soured cream. You may want a whisk for this, to incorporate a bit of air. Preheat an oven to around 150 degrees celcius, and grab an oven-proof pan. In olive oil, fry some onions and garlic, and then add whatever items should be embedded in the tortilla – chunks of par-boiled potato are popular, or courgette, or spinach, salmon… be inspired. Cook a few minutes, then add the egg. Let cook a few minutes, then transfer to the over, and let cook for about 10min.

Wrapping up

I thought this post was going to be shorter, and there is a lot I haven’t touched on, but there are quite a few things in here that invite variety and exploration to provide a ton of varied meals to last a while – all of which are conceptually easy to make and to expand upon.

I hope this is of use to someone. Haphazardly written as it may be.