While fungi foraging is a popular autumnal activity, many of the special varieties of mushrooms are commercially unavailable in Australia. Fortunately, French and Italian producers have perfected the art of drying mushrooms, and this means we can enjoy them year round by adding texture, flavour and complexity to many dishes. The Essential Ingredient packages and […]
Category Archives: The Essential Ingredient Inspiration
15
Oct
Oct
Seaweed is a nutritious ingredient that’s rich in glutamate, the amino acid responsible for umami, and has been gaining popularity in the mainstream culinary world. This sea vegetable is commonly found in East Asian cuisines, but parts of Great Britain also have a rich history of incorporating it into their diets. Aside from being highly nutritious […]
15
Oct
Oct
No culinary tradition is more treasured in Australia than the barbecue. While there’s always time for a sausage and grilled onions in white bread, we also love to amplify our outdoor cook-offs with grilled vegetable salads dressed with quality wine vinegar or our The Essential Ingredient Tahini, by soaking meats in rich marinades that become sticky glazes when […]
15
Oct
Oct
There are few ingredients as versatile, impactful and easy to use as miso. Most commonly utilised in paste form (though freeze-dried crystals can be used to make soup or broths), miso is produced by fermenting soy beans, barley or other starches with salt and a flavourful fungus known as ‘koji’. Over the course of months – […]
15
Oct
Oct
Dried chillies, whether whole or in flaked form, add not only a hit of heat to any recipe, but an incredibly diverse range of flavours as well. Take, for example, the intense smokiness of dried chipotle chillies, the ripe fruitiness of dried ancho chillies, and the fiery umami of the dried habanero chilli. Dried chillies are far more […]
02
Mar
Mar
Seasoning food perfectly is one of the greatest skills both a chef and home cook can possess. A lack of salt equals a lack of flavour, while too much salt can easily ruin an otherwise perfectly-cooked plate of food. While recipes often simply call for ‘salt’, the type of salt you choose to deploy will affect not […]
02
Mar
Mar
Along with flour and salt, sugar is one of those fundamental pantry staples that’s never too far from reach. Our first memories of cooking include measuring out a cup or two of sugar for a batch of biscuits or a celebratory cake, and checking to see if we have enough sugar is a customary part of writing […]
22
Feb
Feb
Yotam Ottolenghi is renowned for his ability to pack the maximum amount of flavour into every dish he creates. Appropriate, then, that his latest book is named just that. ‘Flavour’, takes the philosophies espoused in his hugely successful previous offerings, ‘Simple’ and ‘Plenty’, and evolves them for today’s home kitchen. Vegetables are treated as the […]
29
Jul
Jul
Written by Grace Mooney At the Essential Ingredient we have been steadily growing our range of oriental ingredients, with new favourites including Tasmanian grown shima wasabi, a range of premium soy and fish sauces, and nori komi furikake rice seasoning – to name but a few. It is said that the food of Japan speaks […]
23
Jun
Jun
Dried chillies, whether whole or in flaked form, add not only a hit of heat to any recipe, but an incredibly diverse range of flavours as well. Take, for example, the intense smokiness of dried chipotle chillies, the ripe fruitiness of dried ancho chillies, and the fiery umami of the dried habanero chilli. Dried chillies are far more […]
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