Three things that live permanently in this kitchen, and what they are actually for. Less "superfood" listicle, more how to get them into a Tuesday dinner without thinking about it.
Rosemary
Fragrant, resinous and much stronger than it looks. Rosemary is one of the few soft-looking herbs that behaves like a hard one — the oils sit in tough, waxy needles and need heat and time to come out, which is why scattering it raw over a finished dish gives you very little except something to pick out of your teeth.
Put it in early instead. A whole sprig thrown into the roasting tray with potatoes at the start will perfume the entire tray; the same sprig added in the last five minutes will not. It is also the herb that most rewards being bruised — press the needles between your fingers before they go in and you will smell the difference immediately.
Where it earns its place: roast potatoes and root vegetables, white beans, lamb, focaccia, and infused oil. Warm a sprig gently in olive oil for ten minutes off the boil, let it cool in the jar, and you have a bottle that improves everything it touches for a fortnight.
Go easy. Rosemary is the herb people most often overdo. It does not blend into a background the way parsley does — past a certain point the dish simply tastes of rosemary, and there is no coming back from that.
Ginger
Bright, hot and quietly structural. Fresh ginger is the one that matters here — the dried ground stuff is a different ingredient with a different job, warmer and duller, and swapping one for the other rarely works in either direction.
Grate it rather than chop it. A microplane breaks the fibres open and releases the juice into the pan, where chopping leaves you with woody threads that never quite soften. Peel with the edge of a teaspoon, which follows the knobbly shape far better than a peeler and wastes almost nothing.
Where it earns its place: anywhere with garlic, in dressings alongside lime and sesame, steeped in hot water with lemon, and grated raw into a stir-fry right at the end for the sharp top note that cooking takes away.
One to know: fresh ginger contains an enzyme that breaks down protein, so it will stop dairy setting and turn a yoghurt marinade loose and watery if it sits too long. Brief contact is fine. Overnight is not.
Blueberries
Small, sweet-sharp and the most forgiving fruit in the freezer aisle. Frozen blueberries are genuinely as good as fresh for anything cooked or blended, and often better — they are picked ripe and frozen immediately, where the fresh ones in February have travelled a long way to get to you.
Do not defrost them before they go into a batter. Straight from the freezer they hold their shape and stay as distinct pockets of fruit; thawed first, they collapse and bleed grey-purple streaks through everything. Tossing them in a spoonful of the dry flour before folding them in also helps keep them suspended rather than sunk at the bottom.
Where it earns its place: porridge, yoghurt, pancakes, a quick compote with lemon zest, or eaten by the handful standing at the open fridge, which is the intended use as far as this website is concerned.
A note on the health talk: blueberries turn up in a lot of confident claims. What is genuinely uncontroversial is that they are a fruit with plenty of fibre, not much sugar by fruit standards, and a colour that comes from anthocyanins. That is a good enough reason to keep a bag in the freezer without needing them to be medicine.