Mark Moriarty’s tips for taking your home cooking to the next level

Irish chef Mark Moriarty, the first winner of the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition, has written his first cookbook, ‘Flavour’, a collection of recipes, tips and tricks that bring a chef’s knowhow into an easy to read, dependable guide to home cooking, that promises to bring your cooking to the next level.

“When we first sat down to discuss the kind of book I wanted to do,” says Moriarty, “you can do all the fancy, chef stuff, but what I wanted to do was to make sure it was practical for people to use. For one, because it would sell and secondly, the more I do in public, it’s actually the simple things done well that people relate to. A lot of the stuff I do on television and now in the book are recipes that people have done before. I try to keep as close to the classic recipe as possible, but also bringing in tips and tricks from the professional kitchen.”

There is no shortage of new cookbooks on the shelves these days, but Flavour is a book with a timeless appeal. It has more in common with the kind of dog-eared, grease-splattered books we saw in our mothers’ kitchens, that taught generations how to cook the classics, rather than the narrative-driven, somewhat indulgent tomes of today.

“I didn’t want the book to just be practical now, it has to be a book that’s relevant in 10 or 20 years,” says the chef. “I want people to continuously come back to my book as a gold standard for the simplest of dishes. Even down to the type of paper we used and the fabric on the cover, we chose them because we want the book to be used and be covered in splatters, and the edges will be ripped. These are all dishes that everyone knows, but if you try them there’s always a tip, or a hint or a trick ingredient to use that’s just going to up your game a bit.”

Obviously, getting your hands on Flavour is going to give you the information you need to improve your output in the kitchen (you’ll also find three recipes from the book, further down), but beyond that, we asked Moriarty to share his tips on how we can elevate our home cooking.

Mark Moriarty’s tips for taking your home cooking to the next level 

1. Sourcing your ingredients

“We are all using the same simple, basic ingredients all over the world, but you have to understand how you can get your hands on the best quality ingredients that are available to you. Not everyone has access to a famers’ market, or an artisan butcher, but wherever you do get your ingredients, even if it’s just the supermarket, then you should be looking to ‘harvest’ the best of those ingredients. So, if you’re buying minced beef, find dry-aged mince beef with just 5% fat, if it’s a fillet or ribeye steak, learn how to choose the best, centre part of the steak from the counter. Just understanding your ingredients, your everyday stuff, learning where they come from, what makes them good or bad. Like understanding when things are in season – wait for asparagus to come into season and buy a better quality at a better price.”

2. Seasoning

“The difference between good food and great food is salt, it’s lemon juice, it’s a drizzle of olive oil in Italy or a knob of butter in Ireland.”

3. Equipment

“By this, I don’t mean fancy or expensive equipment. I’m looking at my home kitchen and I have a nice non-stick pan, which I look after. I have one good chef’s knife which I look after, I have a La Creuset pot for braising, and I have a Nutribullet blender, which I use for everything. If there’s a load of veg in the bottom of the fridge, I can just stick it all in the blender and cook it out in a curry or a soup or whatever.”

4. It’s useful to use less

“A lot of the time what puts people off cooking at home as that they just can’t face doing the washing up after a long day of work. I like to create recipes that create very little washing up to do. Sometimes you do recipes that use every part of the kitchen and then you have to clean it all and it kind of takes the joy out of the whole thing. So, I try to do one-pot recipes or baking tray recipes, where you just put it in the oven and forget about it. It’s the same in a professional kitchen. If you’re trying to get your mise en place set up for lunch you can’t be messing with all the equipment in the kitchen and overloading the Kitchen Porter.”

5. Watch costs

“Be effective with your costs. There’s a lot of inflation at the moment and food and energy prices are going up, so you have to be economical where you can. When I cook at home, I don’t cook fancy restaurant dishes, I buy the same things everyone else does, and I make simple food. I’m always conscious of not having any waste in the fridge or the cold room in the restaurant, it’s money in the bin. So, keep it simple, but focus on making the best simple food you can.”

Recipes from Mark Moriarty’s Flavour

Classic omelette

“I started working in a Michelin-starred kitchen when I was 18. Every new commis chef had to cook a classic omelette for the chef on their first day. This was seen as the true test of skill and detail. Mine did not pass the test! ‘I cannot serve this to a guest,’ was the chef’s reaction. In hindsight, nobody ever created an omelette good enough for his guests, so maybe that was all part of the show? Anyway, this recipe gives a pretty detailed guide to making a classic omelette, so hopefully yours will pass with flying colours.”

Serves 1

Ingredients

3 large eggs

2 tbsp single cream

1 knob of butter

Sea salt

Method

Step 1

You need a non-stick pan for this recipe. If you are not sure your pan is non-stick, cover the pan in table salt and place on high heat for 10 minutes until the salt is smoking. Discard the salt, brush away any excess, and your pan will become non-stick for about 3 omelettes.

Step 2

Put the eggs and cream in a jug or bowl and use a fork to whisk together until smooth. Season with salt.

Step 3

Heat the pan over medium heat, add the butter and allow it to melt but not brown.

Step 4

Pour in the egg and cream mixture and begin shaking the pan, using a spatula to pull the cooked outer area into the centre of the pan.

Step 5

After about 30 seconds, stop using the spatula and gently rotate the pan until the uncooked egg on top begins to set.

Step 6

Lift the handle and let the mixture move to the far side of the pan. It should be slightly loose but softly set nearest to you.

Step 7

Starting at the far edge, begin folding the egg mix over on itself, like rolling a carpet, until you reach the slightly wet centre, then fold the cooked egg over the top.

Step 8

Turn the omelette upside-down onto a plate and serve warm.

Step 9

The perfect omelette should be smooth, pale yellow in colour and shaped like a rugby ball.

Chicken and leek pie

Eton mess with strawberries and basil

“A simple dessert and a great way to showcase quality fruit. The mixture of the custard and whipped cream pulls this dessert up from the average category, especially with the vanilla pod. Basil and strawberry go wonderfully together and the better the fruit, the better this dish will eat. It looks pretty fancy as well!”

Serves 6

Ingredients

700ml/3 cups double cream

4 egg yolks

2 vanilla pods, seeds scraped out

80g/2.8 oz icing sugar, sifted, plus extra for the coulis

100g/3.5 oz ripe strawberries

4 premade meringue nests, lightly crushed

A few small basil leaves, to garnish

Method

Step 1

Place 500ml/2 cups of the cream in a saucepan and bring to the boil.

Step 2

While it’s boiling, place the egg yolks, vanilla seeds and pods and icing sugar in a bowl and mix. Once the liquid has boiled, pour the warm cream on top and mix. Then return the mixture to the pan and cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until the cream begins to thicken and coats the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat and leave to cool slightly, then chill in the fridge. Remove the vanilla pods.

Step 3

When the custard is cold, lightly whip the remaining 200ml/1 cup of cream and fold through the custard. Whisk again until thick and holding stiff peaks.

Step 4

To make the coulis, place one-third of the strawberries in a blender with a little icing sugar to taste and blend to a sauce consistency. Cut the rest of the strawberries into chunks.

Step 5

Assemble the dessert in cocktail glasses, adding layers of vanilla cream, coulis, crushed meringue and strawberries until the glasses are full. Finish with crushed meringue and some small basil leaves.

Excerpt taken from Flavour: Everyday Food Made Exceptional by Mark Moriarty, published by Gill Books.