Cooking Must-Haves!

List of My Cooking Must-Haves!

• Sriracha chilli sauce – great to have on hand  if you want to add some flavourful spice without chopping up chillies.
• Sweet Chilli Sauce – great on so many levels–use it as a condiment for burgers, add to a stir-fry, mix it up with tunafish for a tasty sandwich!
• Dried Dill– an overlooked herb, in my estimation, and great with so many things besides fish!
• Maggi– its great to use as a vegetarian alternative to some Worcestershire sauces and stocks. Great taste, and awesome to add to salad dressings, or even as a flavour boost to ANYTHING. Side note–some of the Maggi you can get in Asian stores has five spice or star anise added to it.
• Mrs Dash — ok, its not available in the UK (generally anyway), but if you can score some, DO.
• Smoked Paprika–usually comes in hot or sweet varieties (the sweet isn’t really sweet, its just not spicy). Great to add some smokey flavour to a dish, especially veggie ones!
• Low-Fat Cream Cheese – I LOVE using this to make creamier sauces instead of putting in actual cream or even some yoghurts. It comes out a little cheesy, but creamy and delicious. And you don’t have to worry about it breaking up in the sauce.
• Soda water/Fizzy water– great to have in the kitchen to make interesting drinks–mix it with juices or squash!
• Almond essence – I love adding this to coffee for an unsweetened version of Amaretto syrup. Also, its nice to put in baking recipes instead of vanilla. OR–mix it in with some cherry pie filling before baking a pie, or putting ontop of cheesecake.