Cooking without meat or with less butter or salt, you may find that you miss certain long-familiar flavours, This is where good seasoning makes such a difference: herbs, spices, and condiments will give a booster shot of flavour to your new diet.

There are several seasonings that I consider indispensable to life on this planet. Garlic, tamari, and nutritional yeast form a triumverate which helps to replace some of the rich flavour of meat. The rich dark taste of toasted sesame oil, the pungent bouquet of cilantro, a grind of fresh black pepper…these may be all it takes to translate a plate of steamed vegetables into a simple feast for the senses.

Many herbs and spices are classic features of more than one international cuisine. Keeping these in stock allows you to be versatile, with cumin, coriander, and chilis on hand, for example, you can cook Mexican chili and an Indian curry in the same week. Same seasonings, very different results. Fresh garlic packs a punch in most cuisines, whether it’s called ajo or aille. Considered sacred in Central America, basil is also widely used in Indian and Thai cooking, and throughout the Mediterranean. Hot chilis add fiery interest from Jakarta to Santa Fe to Addis Abbaba.

Check the glossary for more information about herbs and spices: what they are, where they come from, how to use them.

The following tables give a quick overview of the predominant seasonings in several international cuisines. You’ll see that a representative stock of herbs and spices permits you to move around the culinary world with ease, making your meals more interesting and extending the range of your cooking skills.

An example: if you’ve never previously cooked with cilantro (fresh coriander leaves) and wonder what you might do if you bought some… recipes from several traditions.