Kitchen Notes›Ingredients & staples
Kitchen Notes

Ingredients & staples.

Cardamom, good olive oil, flaky salt, kosher salt, butter, all-purpose flour, eggs, lemons. The pantry staples worth tracking down, and the ones that don't deserve the upgrade. The brands I keep buying, the substitutes that work, the ones that don't. Cardamom is worth ordering from a real spice house. Olive oil quality matters less than you think for cooking and more than you think for finishing. Butter is the thing it is worth spending 50 cents more on. Here is the working pantry.

Five bottles and tins of extra virgin olive oil lined up on a marble counter in soft window light, with a small dish of oil and torn bread beside them.
Staples8 min read
The olive oil I cook with every day, and four more worth knowing

The extra virgin olive oil I actually cook with, plus a workhorse bottle, a bold Sicilian tin, a finishing oil, and the best olive oil for every kind of kitchen.