Some things are just as easy to make at home

For a lot of people, cooking at home is a big deal. They'll look up a recipe, make a shopping list, spend an hour or two getting everything, and then devote the whole evening to making a meal. But then, after spending hours on their chicken, they'll dress their salad with Ranch out of a bottle and serve it with store-bought pasta that feels like boiled cardboard. Traditionally, of course, condiments and cooking broths never used to come in vacuum-sealed cans, and by and large they're simple, fast things to make, and well worth the trouble. Here are a few things that take only a few minutes' work, but will add as much to your home cooking as the work you do making a main course.

1. Mayonnaise

There's nothing wrong with Hellman's - I certainly always eat it on my fries - but if you're going to the trouble of eating at home you might as well make your own mayonnaise. Made fresh from olive oil rather than the heavy vegetable oils in store-bought mayonnaise, it's a light, delicate sauce, which goes well on almost everything - fried fish, leftover meat, even on green salad as a dressing.

To prepare:

Take one egg yolk and a cup of olive oil (not extra virgin, or the sauce will taste like an olive pit. If you only have extra virgin, dilute it a bit with a flavorless vegetable oil), put the yolk in a bowl with a dollop of decent mustard (this helps bind the sauce together), and, very gradually, add the oil, beating the mixture like hell. Because it's an emulsion - a mixture of two things which don't naturally mix together, like oil and water - you must make sure that each few drops of oil are fully incorporated into the whole before adding the next, or they won't really mix. Finally, season the mixture with salt and pepper and, if it doesn't taste slightly too sour, add lemon juice or a mild vinegar - remember that it'll taste weaker when it's over something, so mind that it's more sour than you like it.

Homemade mayonnaise keeps well in the fridge for four days or so, and will make your leftover meals better than they were hot. Plus, most people don't realize how easy it is to make, so your guests will think you're a wizard.

It's worth learning to make your own vinaigrette, too, as it's so easy - just mix three parts extra virgin olive oil with one part light vinegar, and add mustard and chopped shallots, plus herbs and spices if you feel like it.

2. Pasta

Trust me. Unless you know a market which sells fresh-made pasta (Bay Cities in Santa Monica does), it's worth the trouble.

You don't need a machine, just flour, eggs and a rolling pin. Half an hour of work will make noodles that are light but strong, with a real backbone rather than the rubbery texture of store-bought dried pasta, good enough to eat on their own as a minor delicacy. All you really have to do is to mix and kneed a very simple dough (get directions online, better than mine) wait twenty minutes (make your sauce while you do) and then roll it out into very, very flat sheet. If you want a preview of the difference, visit Daikokuya in Little Tokyo or Yabu in Hollywood and the West Side--they serve handmade ramen and udon, which have the firm texture of all freshly-made noodles.

If coated in salt, they'll last a few days in the fridge, but make sure to rinse it off before you cook them.

3. Stocks

I'm rather a recent convert over broths and stocks, having thought for years they took hours to make. But, while putting in a whole day to make one of Escoffier's base sauces does pay off (I can't vouch for this podcast recipe, but it's cited on Wikipeida), making it easy to produce an enormous range of derived sauces, you can make a perfectly good broth in about ten minutes. All sorts of recipes will call for the addition of some kind of flavored broth (or should--a pasta sauce, for instance, will more or less always be unsatisfying without some broth), and the quality of the broth will make a major difference to the finished dish. In most recipes involving broth, it's the chief source of umami: the savory flavor of meat, mushrooms and MSG, which gives the whole thing body.

To prepare:

Just before beginning, take some bones you conveniently have lying around (save them when you cook), plus any handy scraps of meat. Give the bones a good crack with the back of a big knife so the marrow can get out, and then throw them in boiling water (think about how much stock you want, as on the one hand adding too much water will make the broth weak, but on the other you'll lose some volume as it boils) with some onions, thyme, salt and cracked peppercorns, plus more if you feel like it.

In ten minutes you'll have something ready to go, though the longer you let it boil off, the more intense and better it will be. Do the same thing with tomatoes, celery, or any other flavorful vegetable in place of meat, and you'll have a real vegetable stock, good for a light sauce - or for a vegetarian substitution if you're trying to impress a girl.

4. Roasts

Roasts do take a while, but over a few days they'll let you eat well a lot faster. Put in an afternoon (I like to have some friends over for a proper Sunday roast) to make one and make enough for leftovers, and for days you'll have nice, juicy cold cuts. Of course you can reheat it and you'll have great sandwiches, especially if you make some mayonnaise (see above), but then you can also make salads, fry it for pasta, or just eat it cold with a sauce.

No bought meat will compare, and the truth is most roasts are pretty simple to make.

Chicken is an exception, actually very difficult to get right - you can make it edible easily, but to get the inside tender and the skin crispy you need a good deal of experience and a pretty intimate relationship with your oven.

For red meat and pork, go to a proper butcher with a handful of herbs and some garlic, and ask him to wrap them into a pork loin or a leg of lamb, or conceivably some steak if you're feeling wealthy. You should ask them how to cook it, but all you need to know is the temperature and how long; turning, basting, seasoning and such complex work is for poultry. You might, however, want to rub olive oil over the surface if it's a long, low-temperature roast, in order to stop it from drying out.

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Put in a Sunday afternoon trying these things out, and for the rest of the week you'll have a fridge full of high-quality basic ingredients for other cooking. Check back next week, and I'll suggest some good things you can get from a shop to cut some time out of your cooking.