The Perfect Pantry

Basmati rice (Recipe: aromatic rice pudding)

One rice, two rice, basmati-wrapped-in-blue rice. (No doubt Dr. Seuss would have conjured a rice to fit the rhyme.) Late Summer Rice Week, Day Three.

If you've been watching Top Chef (of course you have), you must remember this season's Episode Six, the quickfire challenge that asked the chefs to identify a range of food products by sight or by taste.

Some of the tests were easy: tapioca pearls, oatmeal, bow tie pasta (Top chefs? My six-year-old grandchildren could identify bow tie pasta.). Some were a bit more difficult: hearts of palm, fish paste, Thai eggplant.

So, here's my quickfire challenge.

Should a Top Chef be able to identify basmati rice, just by looking at it?

Yes, indeed. Pure basmati grain is four-to-five times as long as it is wide, and has a slightly and uniquely twisted tip, almost like the toe of Ali Baba's shoe.

Long grain white rice (Recipe: golden festival rice)

One rice, two rice, red rice, new rice. (Thanks for the inspiration, Dr. Seuss.) Late Summer Rice Week, Day Two.

Sadly, I'm not much of a linguist; it's taken me a lifetime to master English, and a few dozen key words (hello, thank you, where, toilet -- sometimes used all together, just like that) in a few other languages.

Occasionally I've had the experience of being in my own country and not being able to speak the language. While this most often happens in ethnic food markets, I also had to learn the local lingo in the Cajun country of South Louisiana (pronounced, locally, loo-zee-ANN-ah), where I fell in love with jambalaya (jam-boh-LIE-ah).

For years, jambalaya was a fixture in our kitchen. I'd make it a couple of times a month or more. The heat of the Tabasco sauce is compelling; the more I used, the more I could tolerate, the more I wanted to put in the next batch, the more I craved that next batch (yes, this is the definition of addiction...).

So I needed to keep more and more long grain white rice on hand. I graduated quickly from the one-pound to the three-pound box. Now I go straight for the five-pound bag that fits perfectly into my one-gallon storage jar.

Brown rice (Recipe: vegetable fried rice)

One rice, two rice, sushi rice, gooey rice. (Dr. Seuss would be proud, don't you think?) Welcome to The Perfect Pantry's Late Summer Rice Week, Day One.

I know what you're thinking.

Good grief, three quarts of brown rice!

What is she doing with so much rice?

Mortaring a brick patio? Filling a sandbox? Making a bean bag chair?

Blind-baking a year's worth of pies???

None of the above. This brown Nishiki rice, perfect for the rice cooker to which I am unrepentantly addicted, isn't all that easy to find in the grocery store, and the smallest package in my favorite Asian market happens to be five pounds. But I'm glad to have it in my pantry.

Sake (Recipe: pesto soba)

Accidents happen.

Blue cheese, vinegar, wine, yogurt, fish sauce, yeast breads, sake.

If modern government-regulated food storage requirements of today had been in place hundreds of years ago, we'd have none of these products, because all are the result of storage mishaps.

Thank goodness for accidents, for food left out of refrigeration too long, left in a barrel for too many months, left out in the sun or in a dark cellar, or carried through the desert in hot saddle bags on a camel's back.

Sambal oelek (Recipe: spicy turkey rolls)

In my files, I have dozens of photos of hot stuff.

Chili paste with garlic, Tabasco, piquin peppers, ground chile (green and red), New Mexico chiles, canned chiles, Rhode Island Red Hot Sauce....

I have dozens of photos, and I've got the goods to back them up.

In The Perfect Pantry, I've stashed sauces and spices, from every corner of the world, the use of which will make food hot hot hot. Everything from a mild tingle on your tongue to sweat-running-down-your-head, don't-try-this-at-home hot.

On the warmer end of the heat scale, sambal oelek derives from the Dutch spelling, which in modern Indonesian spelling has become ulek; both have the same pronunciation. According to Wikipedia, ulek is a kind of Indonesian (particularly Javanese) stone mortar (ulek-ulek) and pestle (ulekan) made from a mature bamboo root, used for crushing chiles, peppers, shallots, peanuts, and other ingredients.

Dried black beans (Recipe: moros y cristianos)

Way back when -- we're talking decades ago -- my best friend Joyce had a boyfriend named Tom, who had a series of uninspired jobs to support his dream of hosting a public-radio show about military history.

The jobs, all odd and of fairly short duration, were entirely forgettable. All but one, which involved the packaging of glass stopper-topped jars, presumably for storing chemicals, as the tops were quite tight-fitting. The jars came in a whole range of heights, from just a couple of inches to, well, spaghetti length.

Now you see where this is going.

Of course Joyce and I began to stockpile the jars Tom would bring home (Were they seconds or damaged? We never knew.), and we would fill them with pasta, nuts, peppers, M&Ms, and beans and pulses of every imaginable size and color. No matter that we could spend a lifetime soaking and cooking all of the beans we collected. We were "evolving" (i.e., decorating) our kitchens with beautifully filled glass jars.

Of all the beans, my favorite, then and now, are dried black beans.

Frozen artichoke hearts (Recipe: vegetable paella with spicy garlic sauce)

While working on a new recipe index, I began revisiting some posts from the early days of The Perfect Pantry. Here's a recipe we love to cook outside over the fire pit (with s'mores for dessert, because we have the fire going). Welcome to the end of Oldies Week.

I love artichokes, and there's nothing more sensuous than pulling off a leaf, dunking it in melted butter, and sucking the tender part between your teeth. When I'm planning a veggie paella or pasta dish, however, I'd rather put that energy into the cooking, and that's why frozen artichoke hearts have a place in The Perfect Pantry.

Szechuan peppercorns (Recipe: salt and pepper prawns)

While working on a new recipe index, I've been revisiting some posts from the early days of The Perfect Pantry. Here's one of my favorites, about my search for an elusive pantry ingredient. Welcome to Oldies Week, Day Three.

File this under "explorations in an ethnic market where you don't speak the language and can't read the package labels and you've wandered up and down the aisles and looked and looked and know what you want is somewhere in the store but you cannot find it."

So you ask everyone in the market, which by the way is in Boston's Chinatown, "Do you have szechuan peppercorns?" Blank stares. You try different pronounciations — sesh-wan, setch-wan, setch-u-on. Pep-per-corn. Pep-pah (the Boston dialect).

Nobody speaks English.

Nobody understands your pantomime.

Fair enough. After all, you are the only one there who doesn't speak the language.

Frustrated but determined, you ask your husband Ted to bring his Chinese friend Margaret to the market to search for these peppercorns. A few days later on their lunch break, they go — but they come home empty-handed, too. Which, frankly, makes you feel a teensy bit better.

This is a true story, by the way. It happened in 1998.

Miracle Whip (Recipe: wild rice and chicken salad)

While working on a new recipe index, I've been revisiting some posts from the early days of The Perfect Pantry. Here's one of my favorites -- a true confession! Welcome to Oldies Week, Day Two.

Strangers are about to learn a dirty little secret my family has known for years.

I eat Miracle Whip (gasp!).

In fact, I like it better than real mayonnaise (gasp!).

My favorite thing is to smoosh up Season sardines, mix in some Miracle Whip, and scoop it up on wheat crackers (gasp, gasp!). I learned this from my dad. My cousin Martin used to ship the sardines to me from Maryland (no other brand will do, just like no other mayo will do), because until recently I couldn't find them here. Finding the Miracle Whip was never a problem.

Allspice (Recipe: shish taouk/garlic chicken on skewers)

While working on a new recipe index, I've been revisiting some posts from the early days of The Perfect Pantry. Here's one of my favorites -- my very first ingredient post -- and the story of how I became a food writer. Welcome to Oldies Week, Day One.

Do you think it's easy deciding where to start?

I was this close to logic and predictability, beginning at the beginning with the quintessential pantry items: salt and pepper. And then, this morning, the universe sent me a sign. Two signs, actually.

First: While Ted was watching the World Cup soccer matches on TV, I entered all of the pantry items willy-nilly into a database on my computer, and kicked out an alphabetized list of more than 200 items that are always in my fridge, freezer, spice rack and cupboards.

Top of the list? Allspice.

Hmmm.