The Perfect Pantry®

Instant couscous (Recipe: sweet couscous with pistachios)

Updated November 2010.

Some day, I want to make couscous.

The real way. The fluffing and steaming way. The takes-all-day way. The star of the show, Paula Wolfert, transcendent, main event way.

Some day, but not today.

For everyday, I stick with instant couscous, one of the most frequently replenished items in my pantry.

A mysterious Bookworm

From her natural products shop in Keene, New Hampshire, Susan Ginsburg writes Views from VitaSource, a blog about "good health, natural living, and the hope for a great green world." VitaSource, her current business, focuses on supplements, herbs, body care and teas, and on her blog Susan shares the knowledge she's accumulated in 25 years of running stores and a restaurant. She also delves into philosophical and ecological issues of the day, so you'll always find something interesting when you visit. Susan loves culinary mysteries (as do I), and as this week's Bookworm in the Pantry she gives us five deliciously crafted series.

 UPDATE. Susan recommended:

• Killer Calories (Savannah Reid Mysteries)
• Killer Pancake
• The Body in the Bouillon: A Faith Fairchild Mystery
• The Nantucket Diet Murders (Eugenia Potter series)
• Vineyard Blues
  

Would you like to be a Bookworm in the Pantry and add to our collective library of good reads?

Start here.

 

Seasoned rice vinegar (Recipe: Asian slaw)

Take a good look at the last bottle of seasoned rice vinegar I'm ever going to have in The Perfect Pantry.

Beautiful, isn't it? Clear, and light. Well, lite, as it says on the label. And that's part of the problem.

Seasoned rice vinegar is rice vinegar (also known as rice wine vinegar) with salt and sugar (and sometimes sake) added. That's it -- no big mystery. Also known as sushi vinegar, seasoned rice vinegar makes a nice dressing for salads or vegetables, and it saves time when you're making sushi rice -- not that dissolving a bit of sugar and salt in plain rice vinegar is such a taxing task (it takes two minutes on the stove).

Marinara sauce (Recipe: salt cod and potato cannelloni Alfredo)

Bye-bye, Bertolli.

Adieu, Ragu.

So long, Newman's Own. (Not that I'd ever say that to the real live be-still-my-heart Paul Newman.)

Thanks to a reader who lives nearby in northern Rhode Island, my pantry once again holds a couple of jars of my favorite storebought marinara sauce.

For a few months earlier this summer, the Mayor's Own Marinara Sauce -- a fixture in my pantry because it's versatile, delicious, and completely vegetarian -- could not be found on a supermarket shelf anywhere. Those of you who are from Rhode Island will know that Vincent "Buddy" Cianci, the former mayor of Providence, until recently could be found -- in a New Jersey prison. Now Buddy's back in town, the sauce is back on the shelves, and Providence schools are benefiting from the proceeds. (Thanks, Jane, for scouting all the local groceries and emailing to let me know which market had restocked!)