Masterclasses

Hi, I'm in Chinatown and I'm outside one of the oldest Chinese supermarkets here. If you've never been to a Chinese supermarket before, I want to show you some of the ingredients you can expect to find.

I think shopping in a Chinese supermarket is like trial and error. You come in, you might be overwhelmed, but the trick is just to relax, enjoy and ask the manager or the shop assistant and they'll be able to help you.

Condiments are crucial in Chinese cooking. As well as the usual suspects you can get in the Western supermarkets, like your light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and fragrant sesame oil, there are more than a few that you just cannot get. Chilli bean sauce, this is really crucial in Sichuan cooking, creating a fiery, hot dish. XO sauce, this is the crème de la crème of all dipping sauces, it really does fuse a lot of extravagant seafood ingredients together with chilli, garlic and ginger.

Rice is so crucial in Chinese cooking. If you want to vary it sometimes and not just serve plain jasmine rice, you can always go for the sticky Thai glutinous rice.

This is great, this is seasoned seaweed, just like little pieces of nori. You have them as an appetiser, you put them on the tongue and they just melt. Delicious.

You can also get different pickles - from bamboo shoots, to fish, to onions, to ginger, and it all helps to create the sweet, sour flavours in Chinese and South-east Asian cooking.

This is brilliant, you definitely can't get this in a Western supermarket, these are fermented bean curds. They make a gorgeous, wonderful marinade when you rub them on meats.

Crushed yellow bean - this is great for making a delicious yellow bean sauce. Not stuff that comes from a jar, these are fermented whole pieces of soya bean that really have a fantastic, savoury, umami-like taste.

Obviously there is a huge array of spices and seeds, and of course you can get most of them in your Western supermarket. But what I can't live without is some fermented black beans. These are great for making an authentic black bean sauce. And whole dried chillies are essential in my kind of food because I love spicy Sichuan cuisine.

You can also pick up some Chinese utensils here. Spiders - now these mini spiders are great, especially if you're just frying some small pieces of prawns or small pieces of meat. Then to the big, humungous spider, great for lifting in maybe half a roast duck.

In the Chinese supermarket you can get an array of fresh vegetables - from root vegetables to herbs to tender leaves. One of my favourites has got to be this. It's Chinese chive flower. This, finely diced, together with minced pork in a dumpling, is just fabulous.

And some long snake beans. They are really very much like runner beans and you can stir fry these with just a little bit of garlic and they provide great texture and crunch. Taro - a fantastic root vegetable used in sweet and savoury dishes in Chinese cooking.

Dried ingredients are essential in Chinese cooking, especially dried fish. I would rehydrate them in a little bit of hot water, finely chop them up, add them into some hot, sizzling oil and you can then add lots of other stir-fried ingredients.

That's my shopping done. I hope that's going to be enough to feed my friends for my feast!