MasterChef winner Tim Anderson says everyone can “level up all (their) cooking” using just five Japanese ingredients, taking their food to “flavour town”.

What’s more, the father-of-two, who lives in London, says these ingredients are readily available from most supermarkets now – and they won’t break the bank.

“Japanese food has just been in this perpetual motion machine of popularity – the more people learn about it, the more they like it,” says Anderson, who won the BBC cookery show in 2011. “So, things are different now. More people are cooking it, which is great, and more people have the ingredients on hand.

“It’s actually amazing how available they are. In fact, I was just doing my normal weekly shop the other day and noticed that there are even more brands of ponzu available, for example.

“Japanese seasonings are a shortcut to flavour town”.

Born and raised in Wisconsin, the 41-year-old has been studying Japanese food culture for more than two decades.

However, he says he did not “come across” Japanese food until his teens – and his curiosity for it was sparked when he started watching a cooking show called Iron Chef.

Growing up, he says he mainly ate meals such as pasta, meat and vegetables, casseroles, chicken pot pie, Wisconsin specialities like “beer bratwurst” and pizza, with the “most exotic” being Mexican food.

In high school, he says his “image of Japanese food” was limited, mainly focusing on “the classics” such as sushi and Yakitori (grilled chicken skewers). “I don’t think I had any Japanese food at all until I was a teenager,” he says. “There wasn’t a single Japanese restaurant in my hometown.

“There were a few here and there in Milwaukee, but I didn’t know about it until I was a teenager, and that’s when I started watching Iron Chef – and that’s what set it all off.

“So after that, I started going to these limited restaurants in Wisconsin and Chicago – I grew up not far from Chicago – and trying the odd recipe at home.

“Then I went to school in LA, I went to college there, partly because I knew that there was more Japanese food to experience and learn about.”

Anderson says venturing to LA “expanded [his] horizons”, but it was not until he moved to Japan and lived there that he truly fell in love with the cuisine.

He says trying ramen changed his life – and even now, ramen would form part of his”‘death row meal”.

He continues: “It was ramen after I moved to LA that really became my obsession, especially with tonkotsu ramen, which is why I wanted to move to Kyushu after I graduated, because that’s the home of ramen.

“I tried, for years, to make ramen and that’s what my restaurant was based on, but while I was in Kyushu, that’s when I got to understand the local food culture in Japan.

“Everywhere you go, every prefecture, every city, every little town, they all have not just one but multiple local specialities to try.”

Anderson says Japanese food is “not very easy to even define or contain”, but this means “there is just no end” to his recipe ideas.

He has already published nine cookbooks, but his latest, JapanEasy Kitchen, features simple recipes, centred on a core selection of go-to Japanese ingredients.

Anderson says the top five ingredients that everyone should have in their cupboard are Japanese soy sauce; Japanese or short grain rice; dashi powder, which is a stock; mirin, a rice wine; and miso.

While these ingredients are affordable, he recommends spending more on a hon mirin, which translates to “true mirin”, where possible.

“For this book, for JapanEasy Kitchen, I wanted to make it as easy as possible, so I set a no deep frying rule,” he says. “Plus, lots of people have these ingredients already, so my thought was, let’s get people using them.

“It’s not so much about getting people to use the specific recipes – obviously that’s the point of any cookbook – but to get people to build their confidence using them as a matter of routine.

“So, goal one is get people using Japanese ingredients and cooking Japanese food on a regular basis, and goal two is improve all your cooking by familiarity with Japanese seasonings.

“It’s about how to improve all your cooking, level up all your cooking, using the power of Japanese ingredients.”

With his book, Anderson says people will learn to cook recipes such as katsu curry parmo and no-churn soy sauce caramel ice cream, along with other dishes with a Japanese twist, and many are vegan or vegetarian.

For a complete beginner, Anderson suggests trying the scampi rice bowl as it is “simple, delicious and a crowd-pleaser”, and it uses four out of those five key ingredients – dashi, soy sauce, mirin and rice.

There are more than 100 recipes in the book, but he says the recipe he is “most proud of” is a tofumisu, which is a vegan tiramisu.

He hopes others enjoy experimenting with Japanese ingredients in their cooking as much as he does.

“I started off with a much larger shortlist of recipes, because the brief is limitless,” he says. “But as long as it’s using Japanese ingredients, I could do anything, really.

“Everybody’s got a dish, eating Japanese food, or multiple dishes that they want to learn, so I’d say focus on those and then you will learn about other things along the way.”

Katsu curry parmo

“A parmo is a Teesside speciality of breaded chicken topped with béchamel and molten cheese,” Anderson says.

“It’s insanely delicious, but it’s the kind of dish you’ll need a long nap after. You’ll want pickles to go with this for a much-needed cut-through.

“The classic choice is fukujin-zuke, but I’d recommend something a bit sharper: pickled ginger. Both gari (the kind you have with sushi) or beni shōga (the red kind) will work.”

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

1 tbsp butter

65g plain flour

250ml milk

½ pack (45-50g) curry roux

100ml water

120g panko

4 skinless and boneless chicken breasts

Salt, pepper and MSG, as needed

Vegetable oil, for shallow-frying

150g medium Cheddar or Red Leicester (or a mix of both), grated

Japanese pickles, ideally pickled ginger or fukujin-zuke, as needed, to serve

Method:

1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a medium-high heat and whisk in 15 grams of the flour.

2. Pour in the milk, a little at a time, whisking as you go, then bring to the boil while whisking frequently to form a smooth, thick sauce.

3. Add the curry roux and whisk to dissolve and thicken even more. When the roux is completely dissolved, remove from the heat.

4. In a large bowl or dish, whisk together the water and the remaining flour to make a batter. Place the panko in a separate bowl or dish.

5. Butterfly the breasts by cutting through them horizontally, almost all the way to the other side, so you can open them up like a book and lay them flat. Season them with salt, pepper and MSG.

6. Dredge the seasoned chicken in the batter, then in the panko, pressing down on the breadcrumbs to ensure an even coating.

7. Preheat the grill to medium. Pour enough oil into a wide pan to come up to a depth of about one centimetre and set it over a medium-high heat. Every now and then, check its temperature by tossing some breadcrumbs into the oil. When they sizzle rapidly, the oil is hot enough.

8. Carefully lower the chicken cutlets into the oil – you will likely only be able to cook two at a time. Cook for five to six minutes on each side until well browned and cooked through.

9. Transfer the chicken to a wire rack set over a roasting tray. Spoon a generous amount of the curry sauce onto each chicken cutlet, then cover them in grated cheese and slide under the grill. Cook for about five minutes until the cheese is fully melted, bubbly and beginning to brown.

10. Serve piping hot, with pickles and rice, chips or salad.

Miso e pepe

“Italy: once again, I’m sorry,” Anderson says.

“This is cacio e pepe – pasta with cheese and pepper – but, you know, with miso. I can’t help it if miso is such a versatile stand-in for cheese!

“It’s pretty simple, but it requires some attention to get the sauce’s consistency right.

“When you plate it up, it should look a little thin – this is because as it sits, the pasta will absorb water, and if too much water is absorbed, the emulsion will break and fat will separate out.

“It will still taste OK, but it will be oily rather than creamy, so keep that sauce loose!”

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil

30g butter

30 grinds of black pepper, plus a little more to finish

30g white miso

150g spaghetti or linguine

Grated Pecorino cheese, to garnish (optional)

Method:

1. Heat the olive oil and butter together in a frying pan over a medium-high heat.

2. Add the pepper and let it sizzle in the foaming butter for a few minutes, then whisk in the miso until no lumps remain.

3. Remove the pan from the heat and cook the pasta according to the package instructions.

4. In the final one to two minutes of cooking the pasta, add two ladlefuls of pasta water to the miso-butter mixture and raise the heat to bring it to the boil. If it’s very watery, let it reduce in the pan for one to two minutes, but don’t let it get too thick – the consistency should be more milky than creamy.

5. Drain the pasta and tip it into the pan, then quickly toss it through the sauce, switch off the heat and dish up. Garnish, if you like, with grated Pecorino or some furikake.

Tip: To make it vegan, use plant butter and vegan furikake to garnish.

No-churn soy sauce caramel ice cream

“I whipped this up (literally) when I was looking to use up half a can of dulce de leche and some whipping cream,” Anderson says.

“I have never rushed to write down a recipe so quickly. It’s DELICIOUS.”

Makes: about 600ml

Ingredients:

300ml whipping cream

200g dulce de leche (milk caramel)

2 tbsp icing sugar

1 tbsp vanilla bean paste

1-2 tbsp soy sauce (to taste)

Method:

1. Combine everything in a large mixing bowl and use an electric whisk to whip the mixture until it is thick and airy, and holds soft peaks.

Note: start with a little soy sauce and taste halfway through whipping, then add a little more if you want it saltier.

2. Transfer to a container and freeze until set.

‘JapanEasy Kitchen’ by Tim Anderson (Quadrille, £26).