A Spring Kitchen with Latasha's

There’s something about the change of season that makes cooking feel different.

Spring doesn’t mean putting away every warming curry or comforting bowl just yet. There are still cool evenings and rainy days ahead. But as the days grow longer and the markets begin to change, I find myself reaching for more vegetables, fresh herbs, seafood, salads and lighter meals, and thinking about different ways to bring flavour to the table.

It also feels like a really good time to be inspired in the kitchen.

After another thrilling season of MasterChef Australia, we’ve spent months watching cooks being reminded to taste their food, balance flavours, respect ingredients, think creatively and sometimes take a risk. With My Kitchen Rules returning soon to our screens, we’ll be watching home cooks doing much the same thing, but in their very own kitchens.

Obviously, cooking at home doesn’t involve judges, elaborate plating or a pantry full of expensive and exotic ingredients, although I would certainly love the chance to take my pick from that TV pantry! But I do love the idea of bringing some of that curiosity into our everyday cooking.

Taste, Balance and Play with Your Food

I’ve always believed that recipes are there to guide you, but cooking should also involve your own senses. Taste as you go. If something is rich, think about what might provide acidity or freshness, maybe a squeeze of lime or a splash of vinegar. If it’s sweet, perhaps it needs some heat, courtesy of a chilli oil. If everything on the plate is soft, add something crisp, like crumbled pappadums. Use herbs generously. Try an ingredient in a way you haven’t before.

You can see this kind of balance in so many of the recipes I share.

My King Prawn Skewers with Chilli Mayo combine my Red Chilli Onion Relish and Chilli Oil with mustard, orange and fresh coriander before the prawns hit the barbecue plate. Grilled Prawns with Pineapple Chimichurri bring together sweet pineapple, lime and my Orange Chimichurri & Jalapeno Relish, served over leafy greens.

I highly recommend that you have a go at making Spicy Eggplant Rollatini, where roasted eggplant is filled with a rich Kasaundi-spiked mixture. It’s quite simple and shows how vegetables can become the centre of the plate when you build plenty of flavour around them.

These aren’t difficult ideas. They’re simply about thinking about flavour, texture and contrast, and allowing good ingredients to do their job.

Apply a Little More Imagination to Everyday Ingredients

With grocery prices still putting pressure on household budgets, creativity in the kitchen has another benefit and I’ve been saying this for decades: interesting food doesn’t have to begin with expensive ingredients.

Chicken, eggs, vegetables, tofu, lentils, rice and noodles are all wonderful foundations when you give them plenty of flavour.

A jar of one of my concentrated Indian or Southeast Asian curry pastes can be used across multiple meals, and you certainly don’t have to make the same dish every time. My concentrates are designed so that just one tablespoon feeds two people.

Try Biriyani Masala Paste with chicken in my Chicken, Couscous & Sweet Potato Salad, packed with roasted vegetables, coriander and lime. Turn Malaysian Satay Paste into a sauce for chicken, lamb, beef, vegetable or tofu skewers, spoon it into wraps and burgers, or use it with grilled seafood.

Even Butter Chicken Sauce can take you well beyond the familiar chicken curry. Try it with chickpeas, eggplant, pumpkin, mushrooms, paneer, tofu, tempeh, fish or prawns. Sometimes being creative is simply looking at what you already have and asking, “What else could I do with this?”

Spring Cooking, Your Way

As the weather warms, the barbecue starts calling again and meals can become a little more relaxed.

BBQ Lamb Chops with Chilli Oil and Red Chilli Onion Relish are sticky, spicy and sweet, and lovely served with salads and vegetables. Tandoori Chicken (you can cook a pile of wings instead of a whole chicken) make a flavour-packed addition to a relaxed shared table. Meanwhile, Malaysian Satay Sauce can turn a mixture of grilled meat, seafood, tofu and vegetables into something everyone can help themselves to.

My Caramelised Apple Cider Vinegar is another ingredient worth playing with at this time of year. Use it as a vinaigrette, marinade or glaze, drizzle it over salads and roasted vegetables, toss it through warm grains or lentils, or use it to add a sweet, tangy finish to grilled chicken or vegetables.

And spring cooking certainly doesn’t mean curry is off the menu.

Seafood curries can be particularly lovely as the weather changes. My Fijian Seafood Curry combines fish, prawns, squid, mussels and crab with Homestyle Seafood Curry Paste, coconut cream, tomatoes, curry leaves and lemon. Keralan Fish Curry is another beautiful way to use the same paste, served with a mixed vegetable salad dressed with Caramelised Balsamic Vinegar and Zingy Tomato Chutney.

The idea is not to follow rules about what you should eat in spring. It’s to notice what looks good, what you feel like eating and what you already have, then have some fun with it.

Make Your Kitchen Your Own

One of the nicest things we can take from all those hours spent watching TV cooking shows is that you don’t need to recreate the restaurant dish you saw on television. Take the idea instead. Play with sweet, sour, salty, spicy and savoury flavours. Add freshness, introduce texture, try a different vegetable. Put something on the barbecue or in the air fryer that you usually cook in a pan. Turn a relish into a marinade or a curry paste into a dressing.

There are hundreds of recipes and ideas here on the Latasha’s Kitchen website if you need somewhere to begin. Over the years, I’ve covered everything from curries and dahls to salads, seafood, skewers, noodles, vegetables, entertaining and quick meals.

My range of concentrated Southeast Asian and Indian curry pastes, spice mixes, chutneys, sauces, relishes, chilli oils and condiments is here to do much of the flavour preparation for you. From there, what you make is entirely up to you.

This spring, I hope you’ll cook with curiosity, trust your palate and have a little more fun in your kitchen. You never know what you might create, or what might turn into a new favourite in your home cooking repertoire.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy and delicious spring.

Latasha xx