All those odds and ends of chillies, garlic skins and rind can be used to flavour oil for dunking, dipping and marinating
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oday’s recipe began life as a way to use up garlic skins and herby leftovers, all of which contain a surprising amount of flavour, but it has evolved over time. Infused oil has countless uses – drizzle it over carpaccio, pasta or salad, use it to marinate meat, fish and vegetables, or simply as a dip for chunks of sourdough – and some of my favourites include lemon rind, garlic skin and rosemary; star anise, cacao and orange rind; and makrut lime leaf, lemongrass husk and coriander stems, which I found especially delicious drizzled over some noodles and pak choi. Freshly infused oils of this sort aren’t suitable for long storage, however, so use them up within a day to two.
As I look around my kitchen, I’ve got a two-year-old jar of remarkably tasty chillies gathering dust, a bowl of clementines (I think of citrus rinds as harbingers of incredible flavour, rich in essential oils and highly aromatic terpenes) and a small jar of long pepper, a pungent, complex spice that’s been sitting on my kitchen shelf for years without a purpose. When put together, however, and left to bubble gently on the hob, they fill my kitchen with a wildly aromatic and exotic aroma.
