For most Western cooks, European herbs and spices are manageable: if you don't like parsley you can leave it out, and pepper fans will add it to taste without batting an eyelid. The more 'exotic' spices, however, are another story. When a recipe calls for a mixture of these spices many will follow it unquestioningly, amassing a catalogue of recipes with very little understanding for what they're actually doing.

This might not be you, and perhaps I'm addressing it to the wrong crowd. However I know heaps of people who "love cooking Indian food" yet couldn't pick fenugreek out of a spice lineup. This is okay; we're not all obsessive about food, and with so many good recipes out there it's easy to make tasty meals from obscure spices. But that said, nothing's more freeing than having the confidence and experience to improvise.

With that in mind, I had a crazy idea: to profile all of my favourite spices over a series of posts. For each I'll try to describe how they taste, and give a recipe that showcases that ingredient's best qualities. It's ambitious and I make no promises about how far into this journey I'll get, but hopefully I can inspire you to experiment with spices and learn a thing or two myself. Here goes nothing.

No wait, here goes coriander seeds.

There was a question on Ask Metafilter last year calling for good recipes with the fewest possible ingredients. There's some great stuff there, but where's the roast chicken? Roast chicken is the ultimate basic meal. It's filling enough to be dinner, and served with some mustard and potatoes or crusty bread you've got a complete meal with only four ingredients.

As is always the case with such basic recipes, you simply can't get away with using low quality ingredients. I understand the budget-conscious mindset and will buy cheaper chicken if it's going into a heavily-flavoured curry, but for roasting you have to buy the best. Free range is a sign of quality, but if you can, ask a trusted butcher to help you choose.

There are loads of techniques out there from compound butters to multi-temperature roasts, but who'd have thought the most straightforward recipe would come from Thomas Keller? Not surprisingly, it's also the best. I'm sure that at Per Se and The French Laundry he roasts his chickens suspended mid-air in a pressure-controlled bunker exactly 154 meters below sea level, but for home cooks the Bouchon method is very accessible. It will smoke out a kitchen that isn't well-ventilated, but some carbon monoxide poisoning is worth it for the crispy golden skin and juicy flesh.

I just returned from a weekend with friends in the glorious Barossa Valley. We had delicious lunches, we sat down and tried incredible wines, we laughed with cellar hands, we met one winemaker who invited us out the back and opened hundreds of dollars worth of wine and vintage tokay (aka muscadelle) for us to drink as he imparted his (slightly inebriated) life lessons.

At one point, Tim said (and I paraphrase) "I like wine, but I can only see it as something to accompany food. I can't get excited about it on its own". This is a fair point. With cooking, we can taste meals and be inspired to try it ourselves, we can experiment with different ingredients and combinations, we are free to make all manner of mistakes and enjoy each one, we can feel the thrill of creating something that makes people happy. With wine, however, we're limited. We can only taste what others have made, and (most of us) will never be able to make it ourselves. With wine, we can only be observers*.

So why wine?

I'm a little pressed for time, but I want to post this recipe for you to try because it's so damn good. To that end, I'll be brief and keep the paragraphs of bullshitting to a minimum. Chana masala is a North Indian chickpea curry that may be one of the best value dishes around. It's inexpensive, simple, quick (with canned chickpeas), and of course, really tasty — this dish is much more than the sum of its parts.

The flavours should be hearty, spicy, and a little sour. Serve it with basmati rice or even more tradtionally, battura.

This was by far one of the most satisfying lunches I've had in a while. Boiled miniature desiree potatoes, butter, and sea salt. The best food doesn't have to be complicated.

What's your idea of perfect simple food?

Lucy and I were at an Indian festival a few years ago when we ran into an Indian fried from uni. When I mentioned that we were about to get something to eat, she looked at us and said, "Oh, you should get butter chicken. White people love butter chicken!" I felt vaguely offended at the stereotype, but when you think about it, white people kinda do love butter chicken. It's on the menu of every western Indian restaurant, and its close cousin tikka masala has been called England's national dish. If you ask me, the stereotype is accurate. I can say that, too — some of my best friends are white!

With such a popular dish, everyone has an opinion on how it's meant to be made. This recipe belongs to Alfred Prasad, the head chef of Michelin-starred Indian restaurant Tamarind (that's how you know it's good). I first saw him teach a chef how to make it on Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, and a bit of googling turned up the recipe and an instructional video online. I find those videojug recipes dreadfully slow to watch, so I've reprinted the (slightly modified) recipe here and broken it down into its separate stages. Give it a go, you'll have white people falling to your feet in no time.

(1) The easiest way to do this is in a mortar and pestle with some coarse salt. However it should be fine to add them whole.

It would be nice, wouldn't it, if there was a place in the world where you could live in a city that was blessed with a lovely climate, endless kilometres of sunny beach 20 minutes drive from your house, and approximately four hundred wineries within an hour of the city.

Oh, hang on, there is: Adelaide.

But since you poor sods aren't here, you'll have to buy your wine from the trusty bottle-o instead of the cellar doors themselves. And that means you'll need someone on the inside. What else are you going to do? Go to some stranger on the internet for advice?

To overcome this problem, I've got some great advice after the jump.

Cooking's a great hobby to have. Everyone's gotta eat, which means dedicating time and money to preparing food whether you like it or not. Enjoying cooking is like some kind of tax exemption from domestic drudgery — dinner doesn't get in the way of a relaxing evening, it's part of it. If only I could get into ironing in the same way.

Fresh pasta would be one of those recipes that would have most people saying, "Sorry Tim, I've got work at 8 am tomorrow and I'm not spending my entire Tuesday evening making a bowl of fettucini". Well I'm not going to do that either, but necessity is the mother of invention. And for me, it is absolutely necessary to eat the best food without wasting time or expense.

Now, this doesn't mean cutting corners. Here's what's going on in pasta dough (simplistically): flour and egg are combined, and kneaded to develop gluten. The traditional method has worked for centuries, but it's only one way. I use a food processor, adding half the flour at first to get a sticky dough that stretches, developing the gluten in the same way that kneading does. There comes a point where the dough becomes so dry that the processor stops stretching and just chops it up, but I've tried both ways and any difference is imperceptible. Try both ways yourself, if you don't believe me.

I'll never forget my first risotto. Unfortunately. It was a first in more than one way — I'd never cooked a risotto before, but I'd also never eaten one. It showed, too — it was two years before I was ready to cook it again, and before Lucy was ready to eat it.

My problem was thinking of risotto as just another recipe. There are surely plenty of great recipes infinitely more reliable that the lemon I tried, but to make great risotto all you need is to get your head around three things: good rice, good stock, and good technique. With the basics down, you can easily improvise with whatever additions you like. The idea of a risotto recipe will become as ridiculous as a recipe for making a sandwich.

Good rice
Almost everyone says to use arborio. While I hate to get sanctimonious about these sorts of things, almost everyone is wrong. Objectively wrong. Especially autumn from the carbonara comments. Seriously though, arborio is a fine choice. You want a thick, starchy variety of rice and from that category you won't have any trouble finding arborio. Most risottos are made with it, and if you have good technique you'll make a good risotto.

But carnaroli is better. Let me put it another way: in the bizarro world where food eats people, in Bizarro Pirates of the Caribbean arborio fills Orlando Bloom's shoes while Captain Jack Sparrow is played by carnaroli. Arborio is inoffensive with mass appeal, but for totally badass risotto that everyone is going to remember, carnaroli is the rice you're after. The texture is better and it's much more forgiving and consistent. It's harder to find, but worth the search — try specialty shops and Italian delis, or order it online.

On the topic of rice, vialone nano is another well-regarded variety that I've never actually tried. I've heard it's best for seafood risotto, but if you've got more information leave a comment.

Good stock
If rice is the texture base, then stock is the flavour base. There are two things to consider with your choice of stock: does it taste good, and is it appropriate?

The taste part is easy: Homemade stock is better than bought, and if buying stock get a salt-free or salt-reduced version. The salt thing has nothing to do with snobbery or health, by the way. By simmering the stock until absorbed you will concentrate its saltiness and your risotto will be unbearably salty before even adding the cheese.

Appropriateness. A good rule is to match the stock with the additions/main course eaten with the risotto. For example, chicken and asparagus risotto? Chicken stock. Braised oxtail risotto? Beef or veal stock. Of course this isn't always possible — how likely are you to make rabbit stock for a rabbit risotto? In these cases a white chicken, veal, or vegetable stock are adaptable. Avoid using seafood stock in a non-seafood risotto unless you have some master plan for how it's going to not taste odd. These are guidelines rather than rules — try mixing it up a bit. In the mushroom risotto above I used duck stock because it goes well with mushrooms, and added the liquid that the dried porcinis soaked in for extra mushroominess.

Technique tips and a few recipes are after the jump.

There are the serious wine buffs. These guys know what baume is, know why wine bottles have that little thing on the bottom, and know the best vintages from Chateau de le Nousseau Francais le Pois ooh la la (roughly translates to: Chateau of the something french the something ooh la la).

Then there are the rest of us. The wine bluffs. We know which wines are red (hint: look at the colour), which ones are cheap (hint: look at the price), and which ones are liquid (hint: all of them). This isn't a guide to being a wine buff, just a way to seem a bit buffer. Think about it as the vinified equivalent of stuffing balloons in your shirt to make your biceps look bigger. One note before we begin though- this isn't because there's anything wrong with being a wine bluff, but because it's hilarious to pretend to be fancy. By no account should these 'Bluff to Buff in Fourteen Days!' tips be used to be the kind of whiney winey wanker who thinks that saying something about the nose of a wine makes him special. That's just not on. You must only use your powers for good.

Enough about that. Let's get down to business.

There is a basic equation for all Winespeak:

nose + palate + finish = Bufftastic!

What this means is that you just need to say something about the nose (you can also call these the 'aromas' or 'bouquet':
Fruit, citrus, honey, oaky, butter, and floral are good for most whites, and the reds tend to align with earth, fruit, undergrowth, smoke, liquorice and chocolate. So, your first sentence will be something like "this opens with a lovely bouquet of honey and oak". The more outrageous your descriptors are, the more buff you seem. Kerosene (for riesling), pencil shavings, and barnyard have all been used to describe a wine's nose.

After you've waxed lyrical about the aromas, it's time to get to the tasty side of things. Many of the same terms can be used here (fruity and earthy and so forth), but now it's time to add some texture:
Chewy, silky, powerful, delicate, subtle, rich, vivid, bright, zesty, and smooth are all reasonable things to add here. Czech it out: "the grenache begins with a earthy nose which is followed by a subtle touch of chocolate on the palate". See how I put the nose and the mouth together? Oh yeah.

Time to rock this baby home. Let's get to the finish. This is what the wine leaves you with right at the end, and it's generally bigger with reds than whites. Here you can describe the length of the finish (sustained, lingering, etc) as well as the flavour. Again, many of the same terms can be used, but words like tannic and astringent are particular to the wine's finish. Hence: "this year's cabernet merlot announces itself with vivid aromas of cherries and stone fruits, which are delicately balanced by smooth tones of oak and plum on the palate. A lingering touch of smokey, tannic richness adds a welcome layer of complexity to this fine blend".

If you want to get ultra fancy, you can describe the acidity (crisp, sweet, or dry), the 'fullness' (full-, medium-, or light-bodied), and the complexity (well structured, balanced, nuanced, etc). And there you have it. Instant wine buff, just add water.

See how easy that was?*

*So, ah, even though this is easy, all the times I write about wine here it's, er, totally different. Not easy at all. I'd exlpain how it's different, but, well, it's so special and complex that you fools wouldn't understand. Yeah.