Regardless of your prior relationship with the kitchen, the social distancing and “shelter in place” rules imposed by governments across the globe in response to the coronavirus pandemic have changed everything: you and the kitchen are a couple now and you spend most of your waking hours together. It’s not feasible to be flippant or neglectful any more, to exist on a fridge stocked only with beer, takeaway boxes, spreadable butter and occasionally the makings of a half-fresh breakfast. Neither can you be in lust: gone is the ability to survive on gourmet produce purchased on the way back from work or at the weekend farmers’ market. Your relationship is more involved and more complex than ever, and the act of preparing three meals a day, every day, is likely beginning to drag.

I cook and write about food for a living, and have spent the past eight years doing so mostly from home, yet the change is jarring over here, too. Occasionally, I just want a break and long for lunches at gourmet sandwich shops and noodle bars, and dinners in London’s best restaurants. The current situation, however, is not merely navigable, but a potentially rewarding project. In this series, I will provide helpful advice, tips and recipes to demonstrate that the new normal can be better than palatable and that there are a few ways of thinking and doing, which will make cooking at home better and more varied – and for good.

Thinking about how, what, where and when to shop for food has become a new challenge. The answer is to do big, relatively non-specific shops and do them remotely through mixed (ie, non-choice) vegetable boxes, meat selections, fish drops and other deliveries. On the face of it, this is easier said than done; yes, delivery slots with established supermarkets are like gold dust these days. But beyond those outlets, there are new opportunities presented by a changed world in which restaurant suppliers have seen their customer base drastically reduced and as such are adapting quickly to get their (outstanding) produce to market. Use them.

Your favoured local news or food outlet will also already have a list of the grocers, butchers, fishmongers, dairies, bodegas (not to mention delis and wine, beer and liquor sellers) who have pivoted to delivery. Check back on those sources, or indeed in the direction of the restaurants you used to love, as they may now be fronting or advertising their old suppliers. Instead of shopping by a list or on demand, get into a new rhythm of weekly or bi-weekly food box deliveries if you can, from which you can then react and plan.

Whether you get weekly deliveries as suggested, or go out for limited shopping trips (and find that this results in buying the same items from a limited range), if your cooking is to thrive while we’re all stuck at home, you’ve got to prioritise the sides. Your meals will be better if you focus on what goes around the edges or underneath, rather than in the centre. As someone who wrote a book on side dishes, I have long thought this the best approach, yet never has it been truer to stress that sides have the capacity to transport meat, fish and veg centrepieces (especially if you are limited to what those might be) across continents and cuisines, therefore providing much needed variety.

Fresh vegetables will be covered in the next instalment of this series, but in any event, it’s the dried and the basic carbs that are the building blocks of great sides. Make sure you stock and cook a wide selection, then take a step back and look at how these might interact with the fresh items you have on hand. Is today a beans, rice, noodles or flatbread day? Shall I cook them as, say, an Italian, an Indian or Thai person would? And then, finally, which of my fresh ingredients can I match them to?

Store cupboard bases to add to your repertoire

Of course, you don’t need to rush to buy all of these base ingredients straightaway, but a varied diet is a good one, so if you can gradually add to what you have in stock, do. Online sources in the UK for quality “dry store” ingredients include Belazu, Sous Chef, Brindisa, Hodmedod’s and Wai Yee Hong.

Pasta: you’ve got this.

Dried (or tinned) beans and pulses: butter beans, haricot, cannellini, red kidney, black and borlotti beans, chickpeas, split peas, lentils. Cook in batches and serve loose in the cooking liquor, as a feature of broths and stews, or stirred through salads, mashed or puréed.

Rice: risotto, paella, basmati, wild and mixed rice, jasmine, glutinous, sushi, pudding. Now is the time to master cooking rice in its many varieties.

Whole grains: quinoa, bulgar wheat, spelt, pearl barley, wheat berries. Whenever you think “rice”, would one of these be more interesting?

Ground grains: polenta, chickpea flour, semolina, 00 flour, strong bread flour, masa harina. Serve polenta soft and sloppy, enriched with butter and cheesy, or set and re-cooked, or the various flours as pancakes (whether a dosa or galette), unleavened breads and tortillas for scooping up spiced stews, curries, sauces or as wraps.

Noodles: soba, udon, rice vermicelli (of varying thickness), egg and, indeed, instant noodles. Broaden your horizons by getting used to and experimenting with different varieties.

Potatoes (not technically dried, but conceivably stored in a dark cupboard and included here because it’s easy to forget the king of carbs when writing about “varied” bases): there is great and easy variety to be had here, ideally with a mix of waxy (Charlotte, Jersey Royals, Ratte) and floury (Maris Piper, King Edward). As a reminder, boiled, mashed, roast, baked, sautéed, wedged or chipped.

While it’s true that store-cupboard bases have the capacity to take your food in multiple directions, they must work in tandem with condiments and spices. You will need an eclectic selection of these, too, as herein lies the flavour.

It is evident that the impact of the pandemic on what and how we eat will last months; the initial guides to “stock up for a three-week lockdown” are already out of date. To avoid feeling overly abstemious and dreary the whole time, audit your cupboards and fridge regularly and upgrade if necessary. Make your larder a place of inspiration and provide yourself with an opportunity to have fun. The following items are “flavour bombs” that will ensure the recipes in your cookbooks and internet searches are immediately achievable without having to venture outside again.

Flavour bombs to have on hand

A dash, splash, sprinkling or spoonful of these seasonings and condiments make all the difference. With them to hand, so many cuisines become accessible; perhaps the restaurants you miss most are the ones that cook foods atypical to your kitchen. Time to fill that hole.

All of these items can be easily found online. Again, Belazu, Sous Chef, and Wai Yee Hong are reliable sources, as well as Arabica London for Middle Eastern supplies.

Salts and salty things: flaky sea salt, light soy sauce, tamari, Worcestershire sauce, Marmite.

Oils: extra virgin olive oil, cold-pressed rapeseed oil, toasted sesame oil.

Vinegars: red, white, muscatel, balsamic and sherry wine vinegars, apple vinegar, rice vinegar.

Sweet and sharp: golden caster sugar, palm sugar, mirin, honey, maple syrup, pomegranate molasses, tamarind (paste or block).

Pastes: tahini, miso, gochujang, Sichuan chilli bean paste, Thai-style curry pastes, zhug, harissa, tapenade, nduja or sobrassada.

Dried herbs: just a few single herbs ­­(oregano and thyme are enough), plus a za’atar blend.

Dried spices: again, if your cupboard is not already full, start with just a handful of single spices ­­– cumin, coriander, turmeric, fennel seeds, sumac, Kashmiri chilli powder and pul biber (Aleppo pepper flakes) ­­– plus Sichuan or sansho peppercorns and shichimi togarashi.

Ferments: kimchi, sauerkraut, chillies, olives, tomatoes (whether shop-bought or home-made).

Pickles: for a variety of cuisines, from Indian aubergine pickle to sushi ginger, US-style bread and butter pickles, pickled walnuts and other British chutneys.

Crunchy bits: crisp shallots, spiced, raw and salted nuts, seeds, dukka.

Tinned, bottled and dried fish and seaweed: anchovies, fish sauce, dried shrimp, shrimp paste, instant dashi powder, nori sheets, dried dulse.

Hot sauces and oils: you have your favourites already, plus sriracha and chipotle in adobo.

By mixing up the bases and having an eclectic flavour cupboard to hand, you’ll be able to take any centrepiece item (for which you may have little choice) in a number of directions. All of your cookbooks (whether you have two or 200) and the whole of the internet will suddenly be open to you. Rather than staring at that chicken breast and wondering what to do with it, by concentrating on the other elements, the possibilities open up. If you’re feeding just yourself, you could even use this approach to stretch one piece of protein across a number of meals without suffering Groundhog Day each time.

The ideas below demonstrate how you can take a bavette or onglet steak (also known as flank or hanger), cook it the same way, yet end up with three entirely different dishes.

The beef could easily be swapped with a premium steak, chicken thighs or breasts, pork chops, lamb rump, salmon or cod fillets, or even a roast aubergine or squash. Each dish serves one, but will also double up well.

The centrepiece: cooking your steak

You may have a favoured technique for cooking your steak already. If not, set a heavy-bottomed frying pan over a medium to high heat, add 1 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil and, when nearly smoking, add a 180g bavette steak. Fry for 90 seconds, flip and cook for a further 90 seconds, then add 20g butter and repeat, while basting (so each side has about 3 minutes of cooking). Rest for 4 minutes, slice and season.

Side option one: butter beans and nduja

Place 120g of cooked beans and 150ml of cooking liquor (if not cooked by you, use the liquid from a tin or jar, topping up with water if necessary) in a small pan and heat gently for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, char and soften each cut side of a quartered small onion or halved banana shallot for around 8 minutes in a small pan over a medium heat, using either oil or butter and a pinch of salt. Separate the petals of the onion or shallot and stir them through the beans along with 30g nduja, so that most of it melts but there are clumps of the cured meat and chilli remaining. (If you don’t have nduja, add a teaspoon of tomato paste, a finely chopped small red chilli and ½ teaspoon of sweet paprika.)

The beans should be loose and swimming in plenty of cooking liquor. Ladle into a wide bowl or plate with a rim, add the sliced steak and finish with a glug of extra virgin olive oil and whichever blanched greens you have to hand (sprouting broccoli or similar would be perfect).

Side option two: soba noodles, sesame dipping sauce and pickles

Cook 100g soba noodles according to the packet instructions. Drain through a sieve and chill under cold running water. Once cool, dress with 1 tbsp light soy sauce and ½ tbsp sesame oil.

In a little bowl (that you’ll use to dip things into), combine 1½ tbsp tahini, ½ tbsp light soy sauce, ½ tbsp mirin, 1cm finely grated fresh ginger and ½ tbsp tepid water. Serve with a significant clump of sushi ginger. Again, greens like broccoli or asparagus are a welcome addition.

_Side option three: squashed potatoes and deli tapenade _

Put 300g baby new potatoes (waxy) in a saucepan of cold, salted water. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes, until just cooked through. Heat the oven to 200C fan/Gas Mark 6. Drain the potatoes, cool under cold running water, then lay them on a baking sheet and gently squash them so that they compress but don’t break up. Drizzle with vegetable or cold-pressed rapeseed oil and roast for 35-40 minutes until golden and crunchy. Season with plenty of flaky salt.

Finely chop 3 tbsp of pitted, deli-style marinated olives and loosen with olive oil and spoon this over or next to the steak (either green or black olives are fine, but ideally they’re plump and filled or slicked with flavours like garlic, anchovies, fresh herbs and sun dried tomatoes – all of which add up to a ready-made seasoning for a chopped salsa-style dressing). Fresh tomatoes sliced, seasoned and at room temperature are the perfect partner here, or a green salad.

Mr Ed Smith is a cook and food writer. He is the author of On The Side, a sourcebook of inspiring side dishes and The Borough Market Cookbook. Follow him @rocketandsquash