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.
My relationship with this cupboard has long been sharply divided. On the one hand, I despair that I can’t be an organised cook; one of those fragrant, well-groomed types who has an alphabetised spice carousel, and can find exactly what they need with a fingertip’s casual spin. On the other hand, it has given me comfort. I must be a proper cook, for look at this cluttered spice cupboard of mine, which smells thickly of culinary ambition. No, I may not use sansho peppercorns and tamarind paste on a daily basis. But I could, you know. If I wanted to.
