The Perfect Pantry

Cinnamon (Recipe: cranberry rice pudding)

Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus — he who reportedly fiddled while Rome burned — clearly had issues.

Who could blame him?

His mother, the ambitious and manipulative Agrippina, married the emperor Claudius and, to ensure the continuation of her own position of power, she schemed to have her son become the next emperor. To that end, Agrippina managed to get Nero betrothed to Claudius' daughter, Octavia. Whom he divorced soon after, at mom's urging. And then had killed.

And then, to demonstrate the depth of his supposed grief, he burned a year's supply of very expensive cinnamon on her funeral pyre.

Maybe that's why cinnamon is called a warm spice. (Groan.....)

Homemade chicken stock (Recipe: chicken soup)

Some people get hit with seasonal affective disorder, suffering in winter when the days are short and light is fleeting.

I get hit with seasonal annoying head colds. One each season, predictable as clockwork, when the weather goes from hot to cold, or from cold to hot. Or, seemingly, for no reason at all.

There is no cure, but there is amelioration: orange juice, hot tea with lemon, and soup made from homemade chicken stock. Trust me. If the stock isn't homemade, the soup doesn't work. I can't say why, exactly, but I know this to be true.

Cooking spray (Recipe: frittata ring)

One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi....that's the sound of 21 calories of canola cooking spray.

Three long spritzes, three seconds, 7 calories per second.

Compare that to a tablespoon of butter (104 calories) or olive oil (122).

No contest.

Powdered ginger (Recipe: spicy peanut noodles)

Ginger Rogers (remember Top Hat?).

Ginger Baker (remember Cream?).

Ginger Grant (remember her???).

Trader Joe's triple-ginger cookies.

What do they all have to do with powdered ginger?

Well, in their own way each is or was a little bit over-the-top, like the zing my cooking gets from good quality powdered ginger, a staple ingredient in the cuisines of Asia, North Africa, Europe, the West Indies and Caribbean — and a staple in The Perfect Pantry.

Green chiles (Recipe: turkey-green-chile chili)

The second of two posts for people who kinda, sorta want turkey — but not a turkey — for Thanksgiving.

Earlier this fall, three friends visited New Mexico.

All three, separately and without any coercion from me, came home with Hatch green chiles for my pantry. This made me happy.

One brought a can, one a jar, and the third a frozen brick. One was mild, one was hotter, and one was marked "hot" but should have come with a fire extinguisher attached, as it was truly incendiary.

Guess which was my favorite? (Can you hear me sniffling?!)

Dried fruit (Recipe: turkey meatloaf with fig gravy)

The first of two posts for people who kinda, sorta want turkey — but not a turkey — for Thanksgiving.

In the house where I grew up, prunes were the dried fruit of choice.

Nobody liked the taste, but prunes were, quite literally, the magic bullet that kept all of us, well, regular. To this day, if I close my eyes, I can picture the bag of prunes always in the cupboard, and the Sunsweet prune juice, with its yellow label, always in the refrigerator.

To be honest, if it weren't for my love of Silver Palate chicken marbella (still one of my favorite party dishes), I'd probably never have prunes in the house.

Eggs (Recipe: albornia de chayote)

A few years ago, while working on a magazine article (never finished) about "designer eggs" (never found them), I interviewed a woman in our town who's  both a licensed veterinarian and a holistic practitioner. I needed a chicken refresher course, and she invited me to her farm for a lesson in which-came-first.

Of all the things she told me, the one I remember is this: you can tell what color an egg will be by checking the ear lobes of the chicken.

I'm not kidding.

White ear lobes, white eggs. Brown-ish ear lobes, brown eggs.

Anyone who's lived in New England knows the famous advertising jingle: "Brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh!" But if, as they say, you're not from here, you might not know that brown eggs are the norm in this part of the country, thanks primarily to our very own state bird, the Rhode Island Red — a brown hen, with brown ear lobes.

Dried mushrooms (Recipe: mushroom paté)

C'mon, you know you're thinking it.

How can something so ugly taste so good?

Dried mushrooms may not win any beauty contests, but I love their shriveled caps, curly stems, gritty texture, woodsy odor, and concentrated flavor.

Even if I didn't use them in my favorite risotto, I'd keep dried mushrooms in my pantry. Stored in an airtight container, they last longer than fresh (a year or more, but read on for true confessions), and are available year-round.

Molasses (Recipe: Indian pudding)

On January 15, 1919, the temperature in Boston reached a balmy 40 degrees. Fifty feet above the street, an enormous cast iron tank owned by the United States Industrial Alcohol Company burst, sending more than two million gallons of crude molasses — destined for the rum distillery — cascading onto the streets of the North End.

The sweet, sticky flood of molasses devastated the area; people tried to outrun it, but the Great Molasses Flood spilled down the streets at 35 miles per hour, demolishing buildings, upending vehicles, causing fatalities and injuries.

And, some say, on hot summer days, with the wind just so, you can still smell the faint scent of molasses wafting up through the cracks in the sidewalk.

(You can't, actually, but it's a nifty urban legend.)

Cayenne pepper (Recipe: Ethiopian chicken in red pepper sauce)

Turn Up the Heat Week comes to an end.

Twenty or so years ago, the City of Boston, in a brief spate of urban beautification that would have made Lady Bird Johnson proud, bestowed upon us a Norway maple sapling to fill the empty tree hole in the brick sidewalk in front of our house.

We loved that little tree.

So did every dog in the neighborhood.

To discourage the small gifts those dogs left us (in the days before pooper-scoopering was mandatory), we sprinkled cayenne pepper around the tree hole.

It worked! Every so often we'd hear a little sneeze...and we'd watch a very surprised puppy move along, perhaps to find a kinder and gentler tree hole.