The Perfect Pantry®

A Bookworm's additions

After she perused last week's Bookworm list, Susan at The Well-Seasoned Cook noticed a few gaps. Her blog features beautiful photography and interesting recipes from all around the globe, and her reading list is just as eclectic as her cooking.

UPDATE. Susan recommended:

• Road Food
• Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
• Fast Food Nation
• Fat Lane: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World
• The Omnivore's Dilemma
  

Want to be a Bookworm in the Pantry and add to our collective "library" of good reads? Start here.

Wonton skins (Recipe: wonton skin soup)

In the annals of medicine, nobody writes about it.

There are no tests, no consultations, no second opinons, no clinical trials.

And yet, this condition, this very real affliction, can be cured.

For those who, like me, occasionally succumb to wonton lust (defined as the overwhelming urge to eat Chinese food), there is no remedy more effective, more immediate, more satisfying than a bowl of steaming hot soup, redolent with ginger, and filled with lovely, pillowy dumplings floating here and there.

Alas, I live five miles from the nearest Asian restaurant. Thank goodness for my pantry, and a ready supply of wonton skins in the fridge or freezer.

Canola oil (Recipe: spicy green beans)

If olive oil comes from the pressing of olives, and sesame oil from the pressing of sesame seeds, does canola oil come from the pressing of canolas?

Ah... you're laughing, or groaning. After all, there's no such thing as a canola.

Or is there?

Canola -- an abbreviation of "Canadian Oil Low Acid" -- is a product of traditional plant breeding technology, genetic engineering, and clever marketing.

In the late 1960s, plant biologists created canola by crossing four varieties of rapeseed to reduce the levels of erucic acid (which makes oils go rancid quickly) and glucosinolate (which tastes bitter). The oil pressed from this new seed had a lower level of saturated fat, and a higher level of "good" fat, than other similar neutral-tasting oils like safflower and sunflower.

Celery seed (Recipe: refrigerator zucchini pickles)

If it weren't for potato salad and pickles, my celery seed would be toast.

All winter, it sits on the spice rack, pushed farther and farther to the rear of the shelf.

In summer, when I'm ready to make pickles and potato salad (Why only in summer? I don't know.), I retrieve the celery seed, dust off the jar, use a few teaspoons here and there, and send it back to its place. Every other year or so, I throw out the mostly-full but decidedly less-zesty spice, buy a new jar, and start the cycle again.

Time to admit that maybe celery seed shouldn't be in The Perfect Pantry? Time to broaden my culinary repertoire?

Time to start drinking Bloody Marys?