Bottles and jars

Bottles and jars of cockles and mussels in brine can be used in salads or stirred into a tomato or cream sauce for rice or pasta.

Italian-style tomato sauce in jars is an excellent standby, and tastes even better if you add some butter and chopped herbs.

Capers are useful for sauces to go with fish, and for adding to salads.

A good bottled mayonnaise is an invaluable standby; you can add ingredients such as fresh herbs, curry paste, crushed green peppercorns, chopped anchovies, tomato purée, crushed garlic, to suggest a few, to it, and then use it to coat cold chicken. Once opened keep in the refrigerator.

Jars of pesto are excellent if you like pasta, but pesto is also delicious as a filling for baked potatoes. Red pesto, which contains tomatoes too, is excellent.

Chutneys, relishes and pickles, particularly lime pickle, as well as for eating with hot and cold meat, can be added to an ordinary stew to make it into a kind of curry.

Jars (or cans) of olives are useful not only to nibble with drinks, but to add to stews, stuffings and sauces.

With vine leaves in brine you can make a quick dish with alternate layers of mince and vine leaves baked in the oven and topped with cheese sauce.

Fruit jellies are an excellent accompaniment to pork, game or lamb.

I love really special honeys; it is worth using the most fragrant kind for making ice cream, but for baking and other cooking I keep a large jar of ordinary honey. Clear honey is useful for sweetening dressings.

Mustard has countless uses; it can be added to stews and casseroles, soups, sauces or bread doughs, or used as part of a marinade. I like mild wholegrain and French Dijon mustard in sauces and salad dressings.

Soy sauce is an invaluable flavour enhancer, and is by no means only for Chinese dishes. As well as using in stir-fried vegetables, soy sauce enormously enlivens a simple dish of green vegetables, and is very good on plain cold chicken, veal or pork.

Various essences, such as anchovy, are good flavour enhancers for casseroles, stews, sauces and gravies. It is worth keeping ajar of Marmite or Bovril for this purpose, too.

Flower waters, either orange, rose or violet, give an authentic and romantic touch to exotic or old-fashioned puddings.

Many different flavoured oils are available. Keep extra virgin olive oil for salad dressings and pasta sauces, and less expensive olive oil for shallow frying. Walnut and hazelnut oils are lovely for leafy salads which include bitter leaves, but these oils must not be kept too long as they go rancid quickly once opened. Keep in the refrigerator after opening. Sunflower, grapeseed and groundnut oils are lighter alternatives to fruity olive oil in salad dressings and mayonnaise.

The choice of vinegars is enormous. Sherry and balsamic vinegars are my favourites for adding to sauces and stews as well as salad dressings, but red and white wine and herb vinegars are excellent, too. Cider is the lightest vinegar and is useful for pickling. Raspberry and other fruit vinegars are lovely for more delicate salad dressings.

Sun-dried tomato paste in ajar is good for enriching sauces, and really mouthwatering spread on to hot toast with crushed garlic.