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Sea spaghetti looks like dark fettuccine and has a similar texture - you can get it in health food stores or online.
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Plums are a good substitute for gooseberries.
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Stereotypical vegetarian food looks gray and brown.
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I have a terrible tendency to lick my fingers when I cook. So much so that I got a telling off from my pastry teacher years ago, who said it would hinder my prospects.
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Apart from its famous healing properties, manuka has a strong, woody flavour.
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Most of my recipes start life in the domestic kitchen, and even those that start out in the restaurant kitchen have to go through the domestic kitchen.
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Sweet potatoes are ideal for lazy days: just bake, then mash and mix with yogurt, butter or olive oil.
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Rice and vermicelli is a common combination in Arab and Turkish cooking - it has a lighter texture than rice on its own.
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Having grown up in the Middle East, eating beans for breakfast always seemed like a bizarre British eccentricity.
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These days, meals are more open to personal preferences. People like to serve themselves.
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A great ratatouille is one in which the vegetables interact with each other but are still discernible from each other. The trick is to cook them just right: not over, not under.
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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.
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Kirmizi biber has a sweet aroma and can vary in spiciness.
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Yogurt sauce, as you may have noticed by now, is a regular presence in my recipes - that's because it has the ability to round up so many flavours and textures like no other component does.
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I am sure that in the story of Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit was a fig and not an apple, pear or anything else.
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Mackerel is sustainable and healthy.
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Celery leaves are an underused ingredient, most likely because supermarkets sell mostly leafless stalks.
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The main distinction for fresh chillies is whether they are red or green, the difference being one of ripeness.
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A great fig should look like it's just about to burst its skin. When squeezed lightly it should give a little and not spring back. It must be almost unctuously sweet, soft and wet.
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Seasonality in winter doesn't have to mean sleep-inducing, stew-like, starchy casseroles.
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Taleggio is the perfect cheese to melt over a warm dish.
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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.
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The only way reliably to gauge the heat of any particular chilli is to cut it in half, so exposing the core and membranes, and to dab the cut surface on your tongue.
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Almost every culture has its own variation on chicken soup, and rightly so - it's one of the most gratifying dishes on the face of the Earth.