The Perfect Pantry®

Cake flour (Recipe: spice cake)

For thirty years, as I learned about cooking, Ted looked over my shoulder.

And he did all of the baking, which consisted of making hundreds of dozens of Toll House chocolate chip cookies.

In the past few years, Ted has become much more interested in cooking, and when Dorie Greenspan's book arrived in our house, Ted began to bake something new every weekend. Now I'm the one looking over his shoulder.

I didn't grow up in a baking house; I grew up in a Weight Watchers house. No cookies, no pies, no cakes.

So, until recently, I'd never used cake flour.

Old Bay seasoning (Recipe: Florida crab cakes)

As the crow flies, it is 430 miles from my house to Crisfield, Maryland, epicenter of the Chesapeake Bay crab world.

In 2007, Crisfield will host the 16th annual Soft Shell Spring Fair (May), the 31st annual Crab and Clam Bake (July), and the 60th annual National Hard Crab Derby (September). In fact, nearly every weekend from May through October, there's a crab festival (with or without jazz, with or without oysters, with or without crab racing) somewhere along the bay coast.

Nothing says "regional American cooking" more than Old Bay seasoning, born of the Bay area in the 1940s, popular from the Chesapeake to the Gulf Coast in crab and shrimp boils. Developed by a German immigrant, Gustav Brunn, it's now marketed by McCormick & Company, but the formula hasn't changed a bit.

La Bookworm in le pantry

Those of you who know Mimi from her elegant food blog, French Kitchen in America, will understand when I tell you that her list of favorite food-related non-cookbooks could not possibly be limited to five; her blog often delights readers with literary references, interviews with authors, and her obvious love of books. I've split the list in two parts, and will share the second half later this spring. A professional writer and the daughter of a chef, Mimi cooks and photographs in her Wisconsin kitchen.

UPDATE. Mimi recommended:

• Chocolat
• From Here You Can't See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and Its Restaurant
• On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town
• Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of MFK  Fisher
• Vie De France: Sharing Food, Friendship, and a Kitchen in the Loire Valley
  

We'll have a new Bookworm every Saturday, for the next few months.

Want to be a Bookworm in the Pantry? Start here.

Tamarind (Recipe: pineapple shrimp curry)

What fruit can ward off night demons (stick the pod in your ear, as the British did in Victorian India), polish copper and silver, cure a sore throat, enhance a woman's sexuality, and make amazing curries and vindaloos, chutneys, soups, sorbet and drinks?

And had an Omar Sharif/Julie Christie romantic thriller named after it?

You're right — it's tamarind.

The first time I brought home a block of tamarind, I had no idea what to do with it. It was heavy and squishy, the consistency of moist modeling clay, and the only word in English on the label was ... tamarind. No clues there, but it turns out that tamarind is easy to use, and the sweet-sour taste and aroma add authenticity to Thai and Indian dishes.