Why a Mediterranean pantry suits a small kitchen

A small kitchen punishes ambition. Buy twenty ingredients for one recipe and you will spend the next six months shuffling them around the one cupboard you have. Mediterranean cooking works the other way round: a short list of robust ingredients, combined differently each night, gives you far more meals than a bulging shelf of oddments ever will.

The logic is simple. Tinned tomatoes, chickpeas, olives, anchovies and a decent bottle of olive oil will sit happily for months, need no fridge space until opened, and can be turned into supper in under half an hour. Everything else — garlic, onions, a lemon, a bunch of parsley — is fresh and small. Build your cupboard around the five, and you will stop cooking from a recipe and start cooking from instinct.

The tins and jars worth keeping

Buy fewer things, but buy the better version of each. The difference between a cheap tin and a good one is a few pence and a completely different dinner.

• Tinned plum tomatoes. Whole, not chopped. Chopped tomatoes are often firmer and less sweet, and they break down into nothing. Look for Italian tomatoes with just tomatoes, salt and perhaps a basil leaf on the label. Keep three or four tins deep — you will use them faster than you think.
• Chickpeas. In water, with salt and nothing else. The liquid in the tin is worth keeping: whip it with oil and lemon for a quick dressing, or use it to thicken a stew. Two tins is a sensible minimum.
• Olives. In brine, not oil. Brined olives taste of the fruit rather than of the packing. A jar of decent green ones and a jar of dark, wrinkled ones covers most needs.
• Anchovy fillets. In olive oil, in a small jar or tin. This is the single most useful thing in the cupboard and the one people are most nervous about. More on that below.
• Olive oil. Two bottles, not one, and never a giant tin that goes stale before you finish it.

If you have room for a small extra, add capers in brine. They cost little and wake up anything flat.

Choosing oil you will actually use

Most kitchens need two oils. The first is a good extra virgin olive oil for dressing, finishing, drizzling over soup and bread. The second is a cheaper, lighter olive oil for roasting, shallow frying and general cooking, where the subtleties of a fine oil are wasted.

Buy extra virgin in 500ml or one litre bottles rather than tins of three litres. Olive oil fades. Once opened it will be at its best for a few months, so a bottle you finish is worth more than a bargain you do not. Look for a harvest date rather than a best-before date, and buy from a shop that turns its stock over. Taste before you commit if you can — a good oil should be greenish or golden, smell of cut grass or artichoke, and leave a slight peppery catch at the back of your throat. That catch is the polyphenols, and it is the sign of a fresh oil.

Store both bottles in a dark cupboard away from the hob and the oven. Heat and light are the two things that turn oil tired. Decant a week's worth into a small bottle for the counter and keep the rest shut away.

Olives, anchovies and other small flavour bombs

Anchovies are the quiet workhorse of the Mediterranean kitchen. Melt two or three fillets into warm oil with sliced garlic and a pinch of chilli, and they will dissolve entirely, leaving a deep, savoury base that tastes of nothing fishy at all. Do this before you add tomatoes and you have a sauce. Do it before you add chickpeas and greens and you have a stew.

Olives do a different job, adding salt, bitterness and texture at the end rather than the beginning. Buy them loose from a deli counter if you have one nearby, or in jars from the supermarket, and keep them in the fridge once opened, submerged in their brine so they do not dry out. A strip of orange peel or a dried chilli dropped into the jar will scent them gently within a week.

Keep opened anchovies in the fridge too, covered in oil, and they will last for weeks. If they are too salty for your taste, soak the fillets in milk for ten minutes before using.

Storing it all when space is tight

• Give the pantry one shelf. Keep the five staples together at eye level so you can see at a glance what needs replacing.
• Stack in squares, not rounds. Square tubs and rectangular jars waste far less shelf space than round ones.
• Decant and label. Move flour, rice and pulses into clear containers and write the date on the lid. You will stop buying duplicates.
• Keep a back-stock box. A lidded box in a cool, dark corner holding one spare of each tin means you never run out mid-week.
• Fridge only what needs it. Opened anchovies, olives and capers yes; oil, tomatoes and unopened tins no.

Three meals you can make tonight

Warm three tablespoons of oil in a pan, add two chopped anchovy fillets, three sliced garlic cloves and a pinch of chilli. When the garlic is pale gold, tip in a tin of plum tomatoes, crushing them with your spoon, and simmer for fifteen minutes. Stir through a handful of olives and toss with cooked pasta. That is dinner, and it took less time than a trip to the shop.

For a second, soften an onion in oil, add a tin of chickpeas with its liquid, a tin of tomatoes and a spoonful of capers. Simmer for twenty minutes, then stir in whatever green thing you have — spinach, kale, a handful of frozen peas. Eat it with bread and a heavy drizzle of the good oil.

And for the simplest of all: drain a tin of chickpeas, mash them roughly with a fork, and dress with lemon juice, chopped garlic, plenty of olive oil and salt. Pile onto toast. It is the Mediterranean pantry in its purest form — five ingredients, no shopping list, and a proper meal at the end of it.