Chefs don't use white pepper just to avoid spoiling the whiteness of pommes puree or bechamel. It has a more peppery aroma, with sharpness and sweetness, too.
Pizza was made for television in so many ways: it is easy to heat up, easy to divide and easy to eat in a group. It is easy to enjoy, easy to digest and easy-going. It is so Italian!
Small okra pods have a much more attractive texture than large ones, which, when cooked, can be gloopy, stringy and totally spoil a dish.
My maternal grandmother made fantastic ox tongue with velvety roasted potatoes. She cooked sweet red cabbage and lovely cauliflower with butter and bread crumbs.
There is a unique freshness when eating buckwheat noodles cold with plenty of herbs and citrus acidity. I can't think of any better use of chopsticks on a hot and sweaty evening.
Infants have around 30,000 tastebuds, only about a third of which survive into adulthood, so a child's sensitivity towards extremes of sweet, sour and bitter flavours is heightened.
Just-poached vegetables show off their natural attributes and taste fresh and light in a way you never get with roasting or frying.
Polenta is to northern Italy what bread is to Tuscany, what pasta is to Emilia-Romagna and what rice is to the Veneto: easy to make, hungry to absorb other flavours, and hugely versatile.
When it comes to cooking pasta, the first essential is to make sure you have a big enough pot: it needs room to roll in the water while cooking.
I have to admit that I can't take a whole fig and eat it on its own as I would a peach or mango. It's just too much.
I now understand how varied the world of cultivated rice is; that rice can play the lead or be a sidekick; that brown rice is as valuable as white; and that short-grain rice is the bee's knees.
As with lemon juice, the more sorrel you use, the more it has to be balanced with something sweet, starchy or creamy - it's a yin-yang approach to cooking that I find rather calming.
Buckwheat, like Marmite and durian, is a seriously divisive foodstuff, so it needs a seriously capable defence team if it's ever going to make it on to most people's dinner tables.
Leeks, like other oniony things, reach a certain peak when fried. It's the subtle sweetness that suddenly becomes evident and works so well with their creamy texture.
Hardly any of my most memorable meals have been eaten in a restaurant, and definitely none in one of those fancy marble-floored, polished-silver establishments.
As for pineapple, it's far more versatile than you might think, and certainly merits wider use than in Hawaiian pizzas and pina coladas and on cheesy cocktail sticks.
Though not a true cereal but a fruit, buckwheat seeds resemble cereal grains and are often used in a similar way to rice, barley, bulgar or quinoa, usually as a side dish.
Barberries, or zereshk, are tiny dried red fruit with a tremendously sharp flavour. They come from Iran, where they're used to add freshness to rice and chicken dishes.
I have been cooking with preserved lemon for years, using it left, right and centre, but I am still far from reaching my limit.
Stuffed vine leaves tend to burn and/or stick when you cook them. To avoid this, use a heavy based pan lined with a few layers of second-rate leaves.
Nearly all edible seaweeds - or 'sea vegetables,' as they ought technically to be called - belong to one of three broad groups: green, red and brown algae.
