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Was it Peter Piper who first pickled a peck of prickly perennial pods?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I want to know.
Who first thought that pickling the unripened flower buds of Capparis spinosa, a bushy Mediterranean plant, would be a good idea? An adventurous cook who lived before 3,000 BC, because history records capers used as a food at least that long ago.
A few Junes ago, Ted was mowing the occasional blades of grass in our lawn.
Along the edge of the woods, underneath the oak trees, he spotted a couple of oddly shaped mushrooms. Are they morels, he wondered?
Oh, yes, they were morels. And the more we looked, the more we found.
Two quarts of morels!
Have I told you that our land was once used by a charcoal maker? He was known as "The Indian," because he was a member of the Narragansett tribe that has its roots here in Rhode Island. (Nobody we know remembers his name.) There are large concrete platforms buried beneath our grass; on those platforms, more than forty years ago, The Indian burned wood into charcoal. A mushroom forager told us that the residual ash in our lawn creates a happy environment for morels.
I noted the date on the calendar, and the following year, with anticipation -- and with recipes in mind -- we hunted and hunted, but didn't find a single morel. The year after that, just a handful. Last year, none.
We should have dried our harvest that first year.
Dried mushrooms I've purchased from farmers and farm stands in France (cepes) and in the Pacific Northwest (mixed morels, chanterelles and porcini) have kept for more than two years in tightly-sealed glass jars in my pantry, with no significant loss of quality.
Continue reading "Dried mushrooms (Recipe: potato and mushroom soup)" »
I'm the same age, give or take a couple of months, as Peeps and Swanson TV Dinners, but I'm forty years older than panko.
Neither a dance, nor an exercise regimen, nor very cool drum-beating music, panko are the Japanese bread crumbs that have taken Western cooking by storm over the past five years or so. More coarse than traditional dried bread crumbs, panko are really bread flakes; the flakes absorb less moisture and, therefore, food made with them stays more crisp.
Ted built this spice rack to hold many of my everyday herbs and spices.
I have another "holding area" in the cellar, for things I use less frequently (yes, I'll show you that, too). And I keep larger quantities of some herbs and spices in the freezer. If my pantry were really perfect, the spice rack would be the length of a supermarket aisle, and everything would be stored at the eye level of a five-foot-two woman. No reaching, no bending.
Our log house kitchen features bumpy walls inside and out. Ted rummaged around in the barn and found an old wooden door, part of which became this spice rack, custom sized (28 inches wide, 22 inches tall) to hold my assortment of old and new jars and tins. The best part is that it looks like it's been there forever.
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I've shown you mine. Now, you show me yours.
Show me your pantry: cupboard, shelves, closet or cellar. Or your spice rack. Spice box. Spice cabinet. Or the corner where you've stacked boxes of pasta or cans of tomatoes.
Show me, and I'll show everyone else, because -- admit it -- we're all curious about Other People's Pantries.
Send (to lydia AT ninecooks DOT com):
If you want to write something about your photos, please do -- but it's not required. If you've already blogged about your pantry, be sure to include a link to your post.
Photos should be JPGs, ideally 460 pixels wide --and if what I just wrote is gibberish to you, don't worry; just send the largest size photos you have, and I'll make it work.
On Saturdays, I'll post the photos, one each weekend in the order in which I receive them (alternating with Market to Pantry), along with your first name, and, if you're a blogger, a link to your blog.
Send everything to lydia AT ninecooks DOT com.
Come on -- snap a photo or two. Give us a peek inside your pantry.
