Starting this Wednesday (Subscribers Only): Monthly Pantry Dilemma Chats

A candid shot of part of my pantry.

“Above my cooker, tucked in around the extractor housing, is my spice cupboard. It’s obviously not the optimum storage facility, but it’s perfectly located for access while cooking. It’s also complete chaos. Heavy-bottomed jars are stacked up one atop the other in misshapen walls, invariably hiding the one you’re looking for. There are bags of dried, friable leaves and tubs of sticky-rimmed pastes. Some I use a lot. Others were bought for just one recipe, possibly written by a lovely chap called Yotam, and haven’t been touched since. Here is asafoetida, and fennel pollen. There’s sumac and sansho peppercorns, and tamarind paste looking like a biodegradable stunt double for crude oil.” Jay Rayner, The Guardian

If even someone like Jay Rayner, who has been writing about food for a living for decades, struggles with a haphazard mix of different spices gathering dust on their shelves then none of us are alone in purchasing the odd single purpose ingredie…