When she lived in Italy, Melbourne-based food writer Julia Busuttil Nishimura kept a small red notebook in which she jotted down things that captivated her – recipes from friends, dishes on menus, produce at markets and in delis.

Those notes, and the shopping habit she acquired during her stay, still guide the way she cooks, steering her onto a path towards becoming one of Australia’s favourite food writers.

This is some of the essential kitchen wisdom she wants to share with home cooks.

Grocery shopping is as important as cooking

To be a good home cook, you need to be a good grocery shopper. The results of your cooking efforts rely on what you did before you even set foot in the kitchen.

As a first rule, always shop in season. I know this has been said before, but fresh produce in season will always be the most flavourful, the best quality, and the most affordable. Plus, there is real joy in cooking a particular ingredient for just a month or two in the year, enjoying it at its best, then saying goodbye to it for another year. Your cooking will be better for it, I promise.

One of the best ways to shop well is by visiting smaller independent shops, where you can lean on the fruiterers, butchers, bakers and fishmongers for their specialist advice. They are so full of knowledge and usually more than happy to answer questions about what is good that day and what they recommend.

While I know, in our busy lives, shopping like this isn’t always feasible, it really does make the whole experience rather joyful. So even if it can’t be your everyday shopping experience, try it out every so often.

Plan but be prepared to be flexible

I rarely head to the shops with a list. Sometimes, if I’m making something specific for my column or books, it’s a bit different. But if I am just doing the weekly shop, I rely entirely on what catches my eye or looks good on the day.

If you are a list-maker, be prepared to be flexible. Spinach not looking so great? Perhaps today it’s silverbeet’s turn instead. Substituting ingredients at the shops is part of good home cooking.

Similarly, knowing when you can make a swap in a recipe is a good skill to have in the kitchen, and one that develops the more you cook. Swapping red wine vinegar for apple cider vinegar – great! Using basmati rice for a risotto instead of carnaroli, not so much. Flexible, intentional cooking is key.

Complicated doesn’t automatically equal delicious

I sometimes think people believe that the more steps or ingredients in a dish, the better it will be. More often than not, nothing could be further from the truth. Keeping it simple with good-quality ingredients has usually given me the best results in my cooking. Give me tomatoes bursting from the sun’s heat turned into a quick sauce to coat spaghetti over a convoluted dish any day.

Electric scales are essential

I don’t have a long list of things I must have in my kitchen. I am incredibly attached to my marble mortar and pestle (mine is from Costante Imports in Preston), I love my Japanese knives, and I often wonder what I did before Microplanes. To this short list I would add a set of good electric scales. I avoid cup and spoon measurements where possible and I think my cooking is better for it. It’s less messy, more accurate and so much simpler. Scales are essential for baking, for weighing out the right amount of dried pasta and for any dried goods, really!

Pantry as building blocks

I think of my pantry as the wardrobe for my kitchen. Like buying a good T-shirt, I have my kitchen basics: tinned tomatoes (I like Rosso Gargano, Paolo Petrilli and Mutti), cans of fish (Good Fish, Stock Merchant, Ortiz and Yurrita), dried pasta (Rustichella d’abruzzo, Martelli, Gentile, i Due Pastori and Benedetto Cavalieri are some of my favourites), good olive oil (Mount Zero, Goldi and Primo Estate are lovely Australian ones) and different vinegars. These are the building blocks of my cooking.

Then there are things that are still important but used less often (like that beautiful dress in your wardrobe): whole piquillo peppers, the sun-dried cherry tomatoes I carted home from Italy, and a jar of vine leaves in brine. I may not use them every day but they still create abundance in my pantry, giving me flexibility in my cooking.

And like a wardrobe, you don’t wear everything at once. Knowing what to use and what to take away applies to your cooking, too. Often, less is more.