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In Asian Larder, veteran food journalist Sylvia Tan, with several cookbooks to her name, opens up her larder to readers and demystifies common and notso-common ingredients found in a typical Asian kitchen.

She describes the characteristics of some 130 Asian food products that are indispensable when cooking Asian food – from bottled seasonings, sauces and pastes, to dried food products, spices and herbs. Aside from traditional and well-known standbys such as soya and oyster sauces, Sylvia has also included newer pastes such as laksa, mee siam and green curry that have conveniently come up over the years to cook these very dishes, which our parents had to make from scratch.

The chapters are organised around groups of ingredients, such as sauces, soya bean products, dried vegetables and seafood and so on. And most ingredients will be supported by at least one recipe that illustrate their use in the kitchen. These recipes, which number around 120, can be either traditional or updated; some will illustrate new ways of using the ingredient, but they are all well-loved and valuable standbys in an Asian kitchen.