Nobody Panic - How to Cook 2.0 with MOB Kitchen

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Terrible in the kitchen? MOB Kitchen’s Head of Food Sophie Wyburd teaches Stevie and Tessa how long it takes to cook onions, what kitchen equipment you absolutely do NOT need to waste money on and many more insider cooking tips that’ll blow your wok off.Follow MOB Kitchen on Twitter and Instagram: @mobkitchenCheck out the MOB website: mobkitchen.co.ukListen to the podcast: A Bit Of A MouthfulWant to support Nobody Panic? You can make a one-off donation at https://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanicRecorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Follow Nobody Panic on Twitter @NobodyPanicPodSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The time is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace.com. Single ladies, it's coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true. Saturday the 13th of September. At King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. Stevie and my good friend here. What's your name? Tessa. It's Tessa. You've said it. Hello. No way. But there's a third person in the room today. Who's here, Stevie? We have Sophie

Weibird from Mob Kitchen. She's head of food at Mob Kitchen. Mob Kitchen, if you don't know, I'm afraid I'm embarrassed for you. They're like the cool as, well, I'm going to describe it in my own way and then we're at Sophie describe it in like the proper way. For me, Mobb Kitchen is basically the best. I get them through Instagram. It's like cool recipes. You get, you can get, there's like a newsletter. You sign up and it's basically like a world of affordable, just really good, but also crucially, quite simple and easy to do recipes that you're like, that has to be a restaurant. It's not. We're speaking to the restaurant right now. So way back when, and like six months ago, we did a How to Cook episode. Tessa led it, so I've

realized that I'm, you know, I'm not going to be disparaging, but we could have done more and we could have given more advice other than buy a pan, maybe one, maybe two, a walk. Now, Sophie's here to kind of like push us into the advanced stages of cooking, which is you're in the kitchen. Sophie, thank you so much for coming on firstly. It's an absolute pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for inviting me on. Very excited to be here. So cool. Explain to us a little bit about Mob Kitchen and how you got involved in it. Obviously, I just gave like a sort of very impassioned speech. You can now tell them actually what's real. I actually think you hit the nail on the head there. I guess the key things are. Yeah, very good description. I like that. Good intro.

Mob Kitchen is basically an affordable, fun, simple recipe platform aimed at students and young professionals, but really anyone who wants to make fun, affordable, simple food. So if you're 33, for example, you can also go involved. If you're 60, you can get involved. It's just nice, simple food. Indeed. Indeed. So yeah, we've got a recipe platform. We've got a big website filled loads of lovely recipes. We've got our Instagram page. We've started doing TikToks now for the young people. Oh, I've not been on TikTok. I'm too scared, but I would watch you guys do. I bet I'm like cool. I've been in quite a serious TikTok rabbit hole the last six months. I probably need to claw my way out now the world's reopening. So did Mob Kitchen begin, it began life as a student thing and then it's

become so much more? Pretty much. Yeah, my boss Ben, set up mob just after he graduated. I think he saw that there were lots of kind of silly recipe platforms out there that were big on social media that were basically mostly doing viral giant cheese stuffed burger situations. And he thought, wouldn't it be great if we had a platform, which did that, but for food that people actually want to cook? Yes, there was a lot of that, like, food, it was called like Food Bros. And it's like, we're eating, like, can we eat 18,000 pieces of candy bacon?

can we? And then they'd be like, I don't want you to. Best not. Best not, please. Once they made like the Super Bowl stadium for Super Bowl day, like out of like bits of rib and then they like filled it full of like potato. And you were like, stop, stop doing this. But you're so right.

It was a huge thing. And also I think when we were students, the cookbook was very much like the student cookbook. And it was either that sort of yellow like cooking for dummies book or one that just like had baked beans on the front cover. And really sort of like, it was. really spoke down to you as like, you're an imbecile, hey? Well, here's some recipes. And you're like, I am, yes, but you don't need to speak to me like that. I don't know how to cook, sure.

But no need for the tone. So as head of food, like what sort of stuff does that, what's your day to do? It's all sorts of fun things. Honestly, the title reflects how fun and silly it is. So it's me in the food team at the moment and also Seema, who's our food producer. And I basically just, lead on all the recipes that we're creating, which means a lot of time spent doing things I like, like reading cookbooks and trawling the internet for recipes to see what other people are up to. And a lot of recipe testing. It's actually one of the joys of working from home still some of the time is that I do a lot of recipe testing at home, which means that my boyfriend and my housemate are overjoyed. But when I leave the house and I'm working from the office, they're like,

oh, I don't know what to have for lunch today. So if you're not really... The thing with somebody that can cook incredibly well is something I've never really experienced. But also enjoys to cook. I think that's a big part of it of being like, I did this and I did pleasure in it. And testing is while you's having like a little bit.

And they're like, and then the rest for you. You're like, great. That's so good. So because Mobb is very much like, you know, for as you said, like kind of beginners in a way, like, you know, if you're not confident at cooking, there's something in there for you to be able to, and not just something simple and rubbish.

My first question would be, what in your opinion do you definitely need to like own and have in your kitchen to start off? Like, we said a pan and a knife. Is there anything you can add to that? I was having a think about this earlier. What are the most important bits? Definitely a good pan and a good knife.

I don't think you actually need more than two knives. I think you need a good chef's, knife. It doesn't have to be expensive, but I'd maybe invest in a knife sharpener, which are also fairly inexpensive. But I find that most, one of the most frustrating parts of cooking, and I think is the first obstacle where a lot of people fall down, is trying to chop with a blunt knife is so unenjoyable. Like tomatoes with a blunt knife. Oh, yeah, soaring a tomato. No, horrid. I think it just makes a job so much. It makes it feel like a job and not like a fun, relaxing task if you're having to be hacking an onion for half an hour before you can even get going.

So I'd say, yeah, a decent knife that it doesn't have to be expensive, but a knife that you can sharpen. You just get one of those little, it's kind of like a wheel that you pull the knife through, isn't it, to sharpen it? I've never sharpened a knife before. I've only seen it on Game of Thrones. Yeah, neither has ever sharpened a knife. Where could we get a decent quality, but not that outrageously expensive, good chef's knife? Well, my friend Will, who also does food stuff, said that he's got one from Tesco's which sharpens incredibly well. It's just a basic supermarket knife.

There's one that I swear by, which I think it was about 25 quid when I bought it a couple of years ago. So kind of mid-ranging, but it's a Victorinox chef knife. They're ones that kind of professional chefs use, but the cheaper end of the professional chef knives. And they just stay really sharp. And they're super easy to use. You can shove them in the dishwasher, no problem, all that kind of stuff.

So good for home cooks. I think. Lovely. Okay, so you've got your knife. Can you get like a little one as well? Because I quite like little ones to chop things. You know, like little onion chopping knives. Oh, so Victorinox to another really good one, which is a little serrated knife.

It's about how many centimetres that, trying to guess? Ten. About ten centimeters? Ten. Yeah. Yeah. Ten centimeters long. It's a little serrated knife.

I think they're about three quid. And they stay really, really sharp. They're great for chopping onions, tomatoes, chopping up fruit. My housemate Kay is obsessive. with it. She uses it for everything. Obsessed with a knife. That sounds healthy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But when you get a good one, you are like, oh yeah, this is good.

This is the one. This is the one. Yeah. Any other kind of like essentials that you think would be helpful for a person starting out? I think there's a bunch of things that you don't think about. I was thinking about this list and I left off really obvious things that you do kind of need like a potato peeler, maybe a spatula, fish slice style thing so you can flip things over in the pan. You probably want a whisk, a wooden spoon, a chopping board. And then pan-wise, you kind of don't need a ton of pans. I would say you need one good non-stick

frying pan and then maybe three different sized sauce pans and a wok, I think, is a good place to start. I slow cook a lot of food, so I've got a big cast iron casserole as well. Lecruise ones are lovely, but they're bloody expensive. I think most of the supermarkets also just have their own cast iron pots that you can buy. So I would recommend having one of those, if you're into slow cooking, if you're not, then don't bother with that. I've never slow cooked anything. And I know that it's not just cooking moving very slowly.

I do know that it's a thin of the ban on day. But my mum used to have a slow cooker and it was like a big deal. I always used to be like, when I was like, yeah, but why don't you just do it fast? Like, why is it going to take all day in the slow cook? Mom, like, we can make something really quick. But actually all of the flavors and. not yet. I'm aware that it's a good thing to do. I'm an enormous fan of it. I think it's just a good way of getting a lot of flavour into food. And it's usually really cheap ingredients that you slow

cook. It's the more expensive cuts of meat are the more tender cuts. So when you go to the cheaper cuts of meat, that's the stuff that you really do need to slow cook. And then this is if you eat meat. You can do it also really lovely stuff with mushrooms, slow cooking them. I've seen a couple of really lovely recipes doing that. Yeah, it seems like, is it casseroleau? and like stews and things like that be so good. It'd be quite nice to have that to like look forward to at the end of the day and you've just like boshed it in. Oh yeah. I see the I see the merit of them now because I similarly was like it's too slow and also let's just eat all those bits separate now. Let's eat those bits now. If you're like okay but I got these cheap bits of meat that are maybe aren't

going to be that delicious to eat now but if I slow cook them for 12 hours oh they'll be falling off the bone or oh, suddenly those vegetables that maybe weren't that delicious if I had them right the second are going to transform into something else. Listen, you've changed my mind. I immediately see the merit of slow cooking. Excellent. Are there any like, yeah, common

things that people are like, oh, I must have that. It's like you don't actually need to buy that. Yeah, for sure. I can think of a ton, actually. I mean, there's loads of electric stuff which I think, a lot of electronic kitchen stuff is good if you've got a lot of space or if you cook loads. But if you don't do either of those things, then they're actually just a bit of a pain because they take up all your surface space.

But the one which is an electronic that I don't get the point of and think that everyone should just stop using is garlic crushers. Oh, is it? It is. I know that people don't like the smell of garlic on their fingers. I love it. I love it. When you have to wash up a garlic crusher, you have to get all the pulp out anyway, and then you're going to smell of garlic anyway. I love to squash a garlic with the flat blade of the knife, you know, like the... Oh yeah, good pummel it. Hello. If you're feeling really chefy, do that and then get a little bit of flaky sea salt on there

and then just keep pummeling it, slice it up, pummel it up and the salt helps break it down. When you say pummel it up, what are we doing there? What are we doing? You're getting the side of your knife and you're just smacking the side of the garlic and then occasionally turn over the blade and just chop it up a bit. And it really doesn't take very long. The salt is making a salty garlic. It'll put it all up.

Okay. Yeah. So if I'm putting it before it goes in the pan or something, I'm doing that to it. Oh, wow. If you had to chop garlic and it does it weirdly quickly. If you can't be bothered with that, the other thing I think is good is grating garlic. Okay. Grate is a way less fafy to clean.

Is there anything else that you need or don't need? Yeah. I mean, I think most of the bulky stuff on the side of your kitchen, those people love juice makers or they love bread makers. or, yeah, air fryers, deep fat fryers. I don't think any of that kit is very necessary in a home kitchen because most of it you can just do with the stuff you have already. I think the most important electronic stuff to have is probably a toaster,

if you eat as much toaster as I do. You can grill it, but it's a bit more fun to have it in the toaster, isn't it? And then your kettle, obviously. And then maybe a stick blender because they don't take up very much room. And it means you don't have to have a big bulky blender. If you want to make smoothies and stuff, you could just get a tool jug, put your stuff in there and make a smoothie with your stick blender. Won't it wish out the top? It only will if it's not fully covered.

If it's completely immersed, if the blade is immersed in the liquid or the fruit or whatever you're blending, then it shouldn't josh up at you. Yeah, I think if you're just after minimal kit, I mean, I have a stick blender and a blender and a food processor. Well, you're a professional head of food. That's different. But if you didn't cook a lot or if you were kind of trying to choose which bit of kit was the most important, I would probably say a stick blender is the most important. Very helpful. Maybe get a pestle and mortar as well. No, I've never had one of these.

If you need to make a curry paste or to bash up spices, I think a pestle and mortar is really good because it might not do it very easily with a stick blender. This is showing my basic level here. I've seen pestle and mortars about. Do people not just put the herbs and spices in the sauce in the pan? Okay. What I mean is, so with lots of spices and stuff, they come in their whole form. So you can get obviously ground cumin, but then you also get your cumin seeds. So if you were using cumin seeds for something, but then maybe you wanted to grind it down a bit more.

Basically, toasting spices makes them more fragrant. Toasting spices. Either in the oven or in a frying pan. I like doing a frying pan just so you get a bit more heat control. I'm sweating. I love cinnamon a lot, like too much. And I can't really eat porridge and I have cinnamon.

Sometimes when I'm like pouring the cinnamon from the pot, it's not enough cinnamon-y flavour. So would I, in this instance, and this might be wrong, would I buy the cinnamon stick things, bash them up in my pestle and mortar, and then put them up and would that be nicer? Cinnamon sticks are actually, weirdly and anomaly here because they're quite hard to bash up in the pestle and mortar.

But what I might do if you love cinnamon in your porridge is infuse your milk with a cinnamon stick. Oh, this is good stuff. If you kind of heat up your milk, regular milk, oat milk, whatever you're using, get your cinnamon stick in there, in your pan and gently warm it up so that the cinnamon releases its flavour into your milk and then maybe let it hang out for a bit. maybe 15 minutes and then get your porridge jotes in there. This is very moving. And it should be quite cinnamony, I hope.

Let me know if you try it. I'm quite moved to tears, but the prospect of... Wow, that's lovely. I just feel like this is obviously the people will be listening to you going like, yes. And we're like, what? Okay, so, okay, so I didn't get the personal anymore to write in that instance. Okay, here's another go.

Yeah. So I make a pasta sauce and it's my mom's recipe and the herbs in it our basil, oregano and thyme. And I just get the little jars that they've got the dried herbs in it. Lovely. And I just sort of pour it in and I know roughly the amount's fine. If I poured those dried herbs into a pestle of mortar and ground it together and then put it in with that taste better or am I barking at the wrong tree?

I sometimes find I go a bit overboard on dried spices and something. Sometimes it's a bit bit bit in your mouth. Yes. Yes. If you ground it into a powder, then it would probably be. have less of a capacity to do that. Like the, yeah, a gritty sort of, yes. Okay, that's good. And then, but if I toasted the basil of the oregano at the time.

I think it might burn with dry herbs. Okay, I'm having a terrible time with a vessel and mortar. Stevie, those are herbs and what you're toasting is the spicy seeds. I've misunderstood what a herb of spices. I didn't, I misunderstood until this moment where I'm explaining it to you. So, right, so we're talking spices.

Don't put your herbs. Don't try and put your herbs in the oven. But a way that a herb is good in a pestle and mortar, there's a lot of contradictory stuff happening here, is fresh herbs. So the traditional way of making pesto is in a pestle and mortar. So you could get some nuts in there with some fresh basil and pound that to a paste.

Add some parmesan, some garlic, some olive oil, and then just kind of keep pounding it. until it's at the consistency you want and you've got fresh pesto. I would marry myself if I did that. Wow. I love how much we stand on me trying to understand what a basil and mortar is.

It's hard. I feel like I do now. Have I helped? Are you joking? More confusing. Our minds have been blown open. I'm worried I've just opened you up to a world of inconsistencies and confusion. No, you just open the door and no doubt will be confused for some time when we're in there, but now we're in.

We didn't even know this door was here. If it's a seed, then you need to toast it. If it's a herb, don't be absurd. There we go. Oh, thank you very much. It's very helpful because you can't really remember what you need to do. I'm not rhymed the key word. You've rhymed the sort of connective word.

Okay. Okay. I like it anyway. What are the most common cooking mistakes that you view and you see? And you go, oh, you're doing that again. Because I think it was Mob Kitchen that first introduced me to the context. of putting in your garlic after you've put in the chopped tomatoes and sauce in a garlicky pasta dish. Because I was putting it in with the onions, as is my want as a woman. They would burn or like, you know, it would be very difficult to make them not burn.

And I was like, it would drive me insane. And now my pasta sauce is a second to none because of that tip. Yeah. I think you've actually led me on to what I think is one of the things that I see people doing the most often wrong. And that is not cooking. onions properly. Oceans take longer than most people think to cook nicely.

And if someone thinks that they can cook an onion to be the base of a pasta sauce in two minutes, then it's not going to taste very nice, basically. The onions need to be cooked on quite a low temperature, probably for a minimum of about 15 minutes to fully soften. Because otherwise, what you'd get is similar to if you put big chunks of garlic in a pan, you'd get onion that was burnt on the outside but raw on the inside. And really, onions taste their best when they're really, really soft and the sugars have caramelised and they're just buttery and delicious.

Put the time in. Yeah. If I'm in a rush, I tend to just not cook with onions because they long it out too much. Traditionally, in Italian cooking, people don't use onions and garlic in the same dish. They use one or the other. I mean, I tend to use both. but you can make a really nice pasta sauce with just a little bit of oil and then cook your garlic, your chili flakes,

and then add your tin tomatoes. And you don't need the onion at all. The amount of times that I've not had an onion would be like, I can't make anything. Also, I think it's because when I was growing up, my mum would often like, we'd be like, oh, what are we making for dinner? What are you having for dinner? And she'd just be cooking onions.

She's like, I don't know yet, but I've cooked the onions and then I've sort of figure it out once I figured it. And it was all, everything would start with onions. I knew that. Now, like a year ago, I would have said, what the hell are you talking about? But now I just put the pan onto a low heat and then do the onions. And then it feels like it smells like something. And then I hope to like have inspiration at it. And then it maybe gets the juices flowing, the smells of the onion. Do you have it where people you live with come into the kitchen and they just go,

God, that smells amazing. What is it? And it's literally just onions. It adds on a weekly basis. Yeah. Oh, that's the best. So what are the things? do you see people doing in the kitchen and you go like, oh, one of the things that I find is the mistake people make most of the time, but it's not really a mistake. It just comes from a lack of confidence is not tasting it as they go and following recipes too rigidly and then not tasting it to see if they like it, if there's anything they'd change. I know that it's a thing

that comes with being more confident in your cooking ability and being able to look at a recipe and go, oh, actually, I don't think I've got any smoked paprika, but maybe I'll add a bit of chili powder and something else. That's such a big thing, isn't it? And I do spend a lot of my time going, like, Googling like, what is a substitute for lemon grass? Lemons, question mark? Or like, you get to a point in the recipe.

You're like, oh, my God, I haven't got that. And then you do, that is a huge confidence thing of being like, okay, X and Y is adjacent to this. Or, you know, paprika is adjacent. I haven't got paprika, but I have got margaram. She guesses. I have got saffron. And I think that is both,

that is what lets you down. I think in early days you are like, oh, that's, look, is that a herb? Wack that in. And that's not it. And it's actually a spice. Yeah, it's actually a spice. You just like named anything in the cupboard and like put that in.

But then when you get, and then it sets you free. But now the Googling thing is quite helpful. The moment I realize you could do that, it was like, oh, okay, I can just, if I don't have something, I can actually swap it. But it takes a lot of confidence. I do it too. I still cook all stuff. Oh yeah. It's too easy, isn't it? Yeah. So not being like frightened or intimidated if you don't, if you, I think if you taste it, you're like, oh, I don't know what that needs. That's the fear, isn't it? But the more you do it, the more you'll be able to be like, oh, okay, you kind of get used to it. A lot of it comes from experimentation, doesn't it? I've definitely made a lot of incredibly disgusting meals in my life. That's good to know. And then you just know not to do that again.

is there is that if you've made it and you're like right that's absolutely disgusting is before it gets the table you're still at the you're still at the oven the oven you're still at the cooker you're tasting it you're like wow is there anything that can be can it be salvaged or does it have to be just like this is a writer off this is too this is too gross most things can be salvaged by if it's something that's tomato base and you think it tastes really gross add another tin of tomatoes and just water it down a bit equally use Water is an ingredient. If you think that you've burnt a sauce and it tastes a bit nasty and burnt now and it looks

a bit thick, then just get a splash of water in there to loosen it up and that will mellow out any of the burnt flavour. And then you can taste it again, see if there's anything else you might add. It's really just having the confidence to step away from the method that you're reading and just go with your taste buds and think, what do I want this to taste like? what flavours do I like? And I think lots of the ability to do that comes with having spices at your disposal, which are super cheap, or lots of tinned tomatoes, condiments, all that kind of stuff. Things that mask flavours of things that go wrong are a learning cook's best friend.

Can I put you in a quickfire scenario? You're in a situation. Go for it. Okay, you're at university. It's your second year and you just moved out of halls where you got fair. and now you're into student living for the first time. You live with six other people. Alice has made a rota in the kitchen. Oh, she has. And it says, we'll divide it up. And everyone does one day a week where you cook

and then other days we'll eat everybody else's. And you haven't got any money and somebody's probably made like a horrible budget. And it's all like either way, you have to be as cheap as possible with this. And it's Wednesday. And it's your day. What are we making for multiple people, cheap, easy vegetarian? I think the easiest things in these scenarios are things that involve ready-cooked pulses. It's something that I lean on very heavily or ready-cooked beans even.

Okay. Tinned beans and tinned lentils I'm obsessed with or butter beans or chickpeas or anything like that. I used to eat a lot of those. And they're packed with protein, taste great, good for you, all the things. What I would do is probably either make some kind of big chickpean spinach curry with loads of ready-cooked chickpeas, tin tomatoes. I cook with a lot of frozen spinach as well, which is really, really cheap. And because you know, you buy a bag of spinach in the supermarket and then you cook it,

and it's like maybe a palm full of spinach. And you have the giant bag that's now shrunk to nothing. You buy frozen spinach and it's already wilted and it's been frozen in these little pucks. And then you can just chuck that into curries and they defrost into these big lovely leaves. So that's a good cooking on a budget. thing to have in the freezer. So what's like going in this spinach and chick piccura?

How are you making it? Talk us through it. So what I would probably do is get the onions on first. Let those get really soft. Now Alas I'm in and they're like, wow, something smells amazing. I go, yeah, don't worry, guys. And your confidence is through the roof. Yeah, step one confidence boost and then flying from there.

Yeah. So then once you've got your onions cooked, I'd add some chopped up garlic. You could do the pummeling with the knife thing. With the salt, with the knife. Yeah. The world's your oyster. You do anything. I would also add some ginger. Some fresh ginger and maybe a chopped red chili. And then to that I would start adding spices, add some cumin, some coriander, maybe some turmeric, some chili powder. And then tip in tin tomatoes, chickpeas, spinach and let that simmer for about 45 minutes. Season it with salt. You could even whack a tin of coconut milk in there if you wanted it to be creamy.

Oh my God. Make it go a bit further. And then season it to taste at the end. Just see, do I want to add any more spices in there? Do I want some more salt in there? See, this is great because it really, like, immediately when you were listing those spices as a, when I was at a uni student, I would have been like, what? But actually, you just Google like, what sort of like spices work with, you know, a spinach? And you just, they're not difficult spices to obtain. They're not, difficult herbs to get. It seems to be like the next level is like, it is seasoning. If you can learn to season, you can do it. You can literally do anything. It's exactly that. You don't need expensive ingredients. You don't need loads of ingredients. I would immediately have gone for a jar. If you make

this curry, like even to think of the curry already, I'm so impressed, then I would have gone for the jar of curry sauce. It's like, you don't have to do that. You can save your money and just do it with the spices. Like it's in your powers to make your own curry paste. Yeah. And those spices last for ages. Yes. I can give you a run-through of the spices I think are important to have in the cupboard. Yes, please. So the main ones I would say are smoked paprika. Well, I reckon the spice I'm going to say are ones that you can use across lots of different cuisines. Could you maybe give us a little, yeah, can you say like smoke cream? Say some things that it would go in. Otherwise, go in. Otherwise, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. And where are we putting that smoke paprika, please? Smoke paprika would be good to give I guess it's used a lot in like Eastern European food and in Spanish food. Smoke paprika is the main flavour in a chorizo sausage. So if you're making some kind of, this is another classic thing, I eat a lot, which is just pork and beans, essentially. If you cook chorizo in a pan

and then take it out, add your onions, cook it in the chorizo fat, add some smoked paprika, some chickpeas or butter beans, and tin tomatoes, and just simmer that for a while and then add the truizo back in. Smoke paprika is amazing,

in those kind of situations. Or it can be quite good in Mexican food. If you were having like a fajita night, you could put a bit of smoked paprika on your chicken before you cooked it or on your tofu or your hulumi or whatever you're going to put in your fajita. Cuman and coriander are the two other really important ones, which you can use a lot in Mexican food, but they're also important in Indian food, Sri Lankan food.

And I think there may be the two most important ones to have in the house at all times. You could put a pinch in a shepherd's pie in like your mince for your shepherd's pie. And that would be delicious as well. Just to give it a bit of warmth. Chili flakes, I think are very important. I use them a lot in Italian cooking. If you cook that with your garlic to make the tomato sauce that I was talking about earlier. Or they're also good, yeah, in Indian food.

If you don't have fresh chili or chili powder, you just whack some of those in instead. Likewise, in Mexican food, use that to add the same. spice to your meal. I think of the dried herbs, the most important one is probably dried origano, just because you use that a lot in Italian cooking and in French cooking and stuff, but then you might also use that in Mexican cooking. Origano's used a lot. So in my opinion, if you're going to buy one of the herbs, oregano's your guy. That's your one. The spinach and the chip-pea curry is like a really good dinner thing. Do you have a good sort of like quick, nice, lunchy sort of thing? I guess one of the most studenty things that I started.

still do all the time, but I back it and it's delicious, is pimping up instant noodles. I mean, they're so cheap instant noodles. What I do a lot of the time is I just cook. I just get maybe like a chicken pack, but you could do it with any pack you want. Cook it in its seasoning. And then you just go to town with the condiments. You get maybe some chili oil or some chili sauce on there. You get sliced up spring onions on there, some sesame seeds. Maybe you throw in some pack choy while you're cooking the noodles to get some greens in there. You could even put a boiled egg on top, cut it in half, make you feel like you're in a fancy

ramen bar. Oh, this is great. I want to live with you so badly. Yeah, I've really enjoyed you in my house, mate. Another good instant ramen thing that I started doing recently is like a Cheats laxer. So laxas that some Malaysian noodle soup, it's kind of got a really lovely red curry paste in there and coconut milk. So what you can do is just get a dollop of shot.

pork curry paste. Cook it out in a little pan. Add a little bit of curry powder as well, which is another spice I didn't mention, which is so good to have around, really elevate stuff. So cook out your curry powder and your curry paste. Then tip in some coconut milk, some water, your seasoning from your noodles and your noodles, and simmer it in there. And that is so tasty. Talk with some coriander, some bean sprouts, a bit of lime. Oh my God. That sounds just amazing. The elevating is such an important word that you're saying there of like basically there's so many bits of the supermarket that you maybe ignore on your day to day to day to day round. You think, you're like, maybe you just head to the crisps and hummus section. Maybe say,

I'm there all the time. Sure, but then you also go to the spices section and the pack toy section. You'd get in the good stuff, you know. So it's just about like sort of gateway drugging yourself in to the more advanced things. It's experimenting with it. Yeah. Experimenting with the gateway Okay, this, I get what it's supposed to look like at the end, and I feel like I could make this for cheaper and possibly not nicer objectively, but nicer subjectively, because I personally really like coconut milk or garlic or whatever, and I would like more of that in this. And I mean like, oh, I can, I can do anything else. You're like, pimping stuff out immediately, then you are, you are cooking, but you feel like you're not. Like, I think, yeah, I did having this like curry kits and then you say in their test, like, maybe I'll pop some curry milk, curry milk, some coconut milk or some coconut cream or maybe I have some like, you. yogurt in that or maybe I'll try more coriander or whatever.

And then you feel like you're cooking, but you're not fully cooking because you're pimping. But then, then when you go to cook, then it's like a little sort of, yeah, like a halfway step, isn't it? Yeah. It's like stabilises when you're learning how to ride a bike essentially. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

That's what you need. Oh, well, I mean, thank you so much. Like, it's been genuine. I'm also starving. Yeah. And I also feel like very excited and very like, okay, okay. Get me in that kitchen. Even like the salting your garlic thing.

You're like, these are a little tiny stuff that makes you be like, oh, I'm not just a cook. I'm a chef. Like, this is, I'm doing the good stuff. It's flair, isn't it? A bit of flair. It makes you feel nice because you feel like you're kind of adding it a little like extra special thing that you didn't necessarily have to do because it's just for you. But you're like, yeah. It's like, like Liam Perrin's like a square of dark chocolate or something.

And when you would do like chili con carne or bolognades. Yeah, exactly. And it feels like so like. Oh, wink, wink, wink, wink. This is just something I, this is something I learned training at the manoir, you know, so I look at my me. I just, I just picked up a couple of, a couple of trips of the train. Exactly. Go and find Mob Kitchen, basically, on Instagram. Yeah, at Mob Kitchen. You'll find all the chickpea recipes there that you could desire. And you've got a podcast. And we've got a podcast. Yeah, me and a couple of my colleagues doing a podcast as well.

It's called A Bit of a Mouthful, and you can find us at a bit of a podcast. on Instagram. Very nice. And what kind of topics will you be talking about in a bit of a mouthful? I assume food. It's a lot of very silly food chat. Mostly laughing hysterically and eating a lot. We have a section where we eat crisps and we like crunching into the microphone really aggressively. Oh, good ASMR. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's where you want. There's a lot of mob. I mean, there's a lot of Mob Kitchen books, isn't there? There is, yeah. Can you give us some of your names of your Mob Kitchen books? Speedy mob is the most recent one, which is a great one. I've got speedy mob.

We've actually got a new one coming out in a few months called Comfort Mob, which you can pre-order now, I believe. It's coming out in September. And it's filled with lots of very lovely, kind of big, nourishing, comforting foods. Oh, yes, please. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been absolutely eye-opening. I'm going to go and cook now. If you have any topics that you'd like for us to tackle in the future as episode, please get in touch with us at Nobody Panic Pop. and the email address, Tessa. It's Nobody PanicPoncast at gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter at Stiviam, the S's of Five, and at Tessa Coates, and at Mob Kitchen, all over the internet,

and all over the book shop if you walk in and ask to be taking to the... I want the best cooking book, please, you say, if you go to your nearest bookstore. Please bookkeep. Thank you so much, and have a lovely week. See you next week, guys. And thank you so much, Sophie. Thank you, guys. And we'll see you again.

Bye-bye. Thank you.