The Perfect Pantry

Lavender, and a purple haze (Recipe: pork tenderloin with lavender grilled peaches)

Please welcome Marcia, who with this post joins The Perfect Pantry as guest blogger. She lives up the road from me, in a lovely old house with several vegetable and flower gardens, surrounded by acres of woodland. Professionally, she's been a teacher, children's librarian, naturalist and goat farmer. An avid cook and baker, Marcia will share stories and recipes once a month or so.

Guest post and photos by Marcia in Rhode Island

Lavender is a frivolous yet ever-present staple in my pantry. Occasionally my garden yields a few tablespoons, just enough for lavender madeleines when I’m feeling peckish and reminiscent, but most of the time, I buy buds and flowers embalmed in plastic packets.   

Until today.
   
“Pick your own lavender and distill the color of our garden into your kitchen,” promised the ad that ran in our local paper a couple of weeks ago.

And I’d been waiting. Because I am sure you don’t pick lavender on just any day.

Other People's Pantries #31

From Laura, in Oakland, California:

My pantry has evolved over the eight years I have lived here. I put the most frequently used items on the low shelves since I am not very tall. I buy small quantities of spices, dried herbs, dried beans, etc. in bulk and store them in recycled jars with post-it labels on the outside. I try to keep the dried herbs and spices in alpha order.

Black vinegar (Recipe: peanut dipping sauce)

There's a saying -- a joke -- in my house:

The more you have, the more you buy.

Now, I am not a shopaholic. Really. Oh, occasionally I might go a bit over budget in restaurant supply stores, or a certain favorite used cookbook shop near Fall River, Massachusetts. Or late at night on eBay, when I'm cruising the melamine bowl listings. Or in a shop that sells hand-dyed yarns or Japanese note papers embedded with bits of leaves and gold flecks...

No, in this case, the "you" is me, and the "more" is vinegar. I've had a mental block about it for years. I never remember how much regular distilled vinegar I have in the pantry, or whether I have any of the special ones like champagne or raspberry or seasoned rice or organic cider vinegar hand-pressed somewhere in Canada.

So I buy them all, over and over again, which explains why I have two bottles of black vinegar in my pantry.

Red curry paste (Recipe: mussel stew)

Sometimes it takes a waiter with attitude to remind me of the value of a great pantry.

Last month, while visiting San Francisco, Ted and I and two of my favorite blogging friends went to dinner at the Fog City Diner, which has been a fixture on the dining scene since 1985.

We ordered a few different starters; I recall a tuna-avocado thing, and a nice salad with local greens. Ted chose a curried mussel stew, served with slices of baguette. While the other appetizers were good, the mussel stew was transcendent, and the four of us descended upon it until we'd dunked and devoured all of the bread and had to ask for more to mop up every bit.

When our waiter returned to clear the licked-clean soup bowl, we asked whether the chef would be willing to share the recipe.

Oh, it's not that hard, he replied. I'm sure you can figure it out.

And he walked away.

After a few seconds, we realized that no recipe would be forthcoming, but we agreed that yes, we surely could figure it out.

And so I returned to Rhode Island, to my well-stocked pantry, to extricate a can of coconut milk and my stash of red curry paste, for clearly those were the key ingredients in the mussel stew.

Sweetened condensed milk (Recipe: microwave dulce de leche)

Native Americans, when introducing themselves to each other, identify by their clan name.

In that tradition, I am Salt Craver, married to Sweet Tooth.

Put a bag of potato chips in front of me, and you can kiss that bag goodbye. Except for chocolate, though, most things sweet -- a box of candy, sugar-coated cereal, leftover cake -- could sit untouched for years.

So, not being a natural-born sweets person, and growing up in a house where Weight Watchers was the dominant culinary influence, I didn't add sweetened condensed milk to my pantry until I met my husband. Ted defines Sweet Tooth; he'll leave all of the salty chips to me, but he goes for anything with sugar.

Other People's Pantries #30

From Denise and Lenny (Chez Us), in San Francisco:

On Saturdays, we peek into Other People's Pantries.

Come on -- show us your pantry.

Here's how.

Chili powder (Recipe: "turkey taco" salad)

Updated from the archives, a summer favorite, with new photo, links and recipe.

Some like it hot.

I like it really hot.

I like it hot enough to make my scalp tingle, my sinuses drip, and my eyes water. (Do I need to mention that I'm talking about food now, not the weather?) I wasn't always like this, but a trip to New Orleans years ago started me down the pepper path, and there was no turning back.

Sometimes, though, unadulterated heat isn't the goal. When I want a more complex depth of flavor in Mexican and Southwestern dishes, I often reach for chili powder.

Assorted frozen fruit (Recipe: strawberry fruit whiz)

Updated from the archives, with new photo and links, and a favorite summer recipe.

In the beginning (1973), Carl Sontheimer, an engineer who loved to cook, created the Cuisinart food processor.

Not long after that -- well, okay, fifteen years later -- I created frozen fruit whiz.

Peter's traveling pantry (Recipe: green shrimp or fish curry)

Guest post and photo by Peter in Brazil, chef and co-owner of Pousada do Capão

All this talk about the perfect pantry and peeking in other people's pantries makes me wish I had taken a few photos of the mobile pantry I put together while working as a personal chef in Rhode Island, before I moved to Brazil.

My traveling pantry was a work of art.

Other People's Pantries #29

From Amanda (My Daily Diner), in Gold River, California:

What do flours, beans, grains, herbs, spices, oils, and vinegars have in common? They are pretty much the only items I keep stocked in my cupboards.