The Perfect Pantry

Instant coffee (Recipe: outrageous brownies)

I was a Beatle-loving, poetry-writing, hooky-playing, hippie-dippy, sometimes-vegetarian, coffee-guzzling teenager.

My parents drank instant coffee, and when I was growing up, so did I.

At some point in my junior high years, I received one share of Chock Full o'Nuts stock as a gift, so I announced that, as a loyal stockholder, I would ("henceforth," I'm sure I said) drink only Chock Full. They didn't make instant coffee, so my mother went right on buying whatever brand she usually bought, and my principles disintegrated after a day or two of coffee withdrawal.

My parents were easy-going about the coffee thing, and I can't remember an age when I didn't drink it. Black, no cream, no sugar. I was no coffee sissy back then, though I add a bit of skim milk now.

Capers (Recipe: chicken marbella)

I love capers — the classy film "To Catch a Thief," the ditzy "How to Steal a Million", the ridiculous "Pink Panther", and anything funny with Robert Redford. 

I'm not quite as in love with the kind of capers you put in your mouth — and yet they are always in The Perfect Pantry, because sometimes a recipe calls for them, and nothing else will do.

Powdered buttermilk (Recipe: apple spice bread)

When most people think of Rhode Island, they think of Newport mansions and the America's Cup.

Jazz festivals.

Clambakes on the beach.

Rhode Island Red chickens. (Okay, not everyone thinks of chickens....)

Until I moved here, I was one of those people. If you'd told me I was moving to apple country — that, in fact, I'd be buying my Macouns at an orchard named Apple Land — I would have said "hah!".

But here I am, smack dab in apple land, where I can buy Jonagolds and Cortlands, Mutsu and Macintosh, from August until March.

The thing about apple land is that it's miles from here to anything like a grocery store. So I always keep powdered buttermilk, an essential ingredient in my favorite apple spice bread and other baked goodies, in my pantry.

What is buttermilk? And what makes it cultured? 

Instant couscous (Recipe: sweet couscous for a crowd)

Last winter, I treated the Ninecooks kitchen to a couscoussier, a double-decker pot used to create traditional Moroccan stews and couscous. The stew goes in the bottom, and rising steam infuses and plumps the couscous resting in the perforated top compartment.

It's a beautiful thing, but I have yet to use it.

I tried. I really did. The #1 Cooking Group made a menu called Preserving the Lemon, which included three dishes inspired by Moroccan cuisine. We used our tagines, but when it came time to set up the couscoussier — and start the slow process of rinsing, drying, steaming and steaming again — we looked at each other and, in unison, said, "Instant couscous!"

Black vinegar (Recipe: cold aubergine salad)

For some reason — I'm not questioning — I've received many wonderful cookbooks as gifts this summer.

(PS: I love gifts of cookbooks much more than gifts of food, and just as much as gifts of wooden spoons and cooking utensils from faraway places...in case you were wondering, or making a list and checking it twice....)

Barbara brought an encyclopedic cookbook from Argentina, and Bev returned from Peru with a charming locally-published volume filled with recipes we can't quite understand (though both books have been translated into English, which might be part of the problem). Kate's son Max brought two local cookbooks from his travels in Turkey and Greece; I discovered them in my mailbox one Saturday morning — a delightful surprise.

Ted hit the bookstores in Toronto on a recent business trip, and came home with three treasures, including Flavours of Vancouver, a fundraiser for Save The Children Canada, and the original British edition of Ken Hom's Quick Wok: The Fastest Food in the East.

I always open books in the middle or at the end, never at the beginning. I don't know why. I read newspapers and magazines back-to-front, too. So, I stuck my thumb in the middle, opened Quick Wok, and landed on Cold Aubergine Salad, a recipe that calls for black vinegar.

It was a sign.