The Perfect Pantry®

Paprika (Recipe: salmon tagine with chermoula)

In the house where I grew up, paprika was the curly parsley of my mother's spice rack.

She used it to "fancy up" a dish like egg salad.

Or to "color up" a dish like flounder.

Or to cover up a blooper.

My mother never used paprika as an ingredient, at least not that I can remember, though the red-and-white Szeged tin, ubiquitous on supermarket shelves, was a fixture in her pantry.

If only she'd put that paprika in contact with some heat, she would have realized that paprika is more than just a pretty red spice in a pretty red tin...

Dried fruit (Recipe: sweet potato, lentil and raisin stew)

For a short time during high school, I was an addict.

A fruit leather addict.

An apricot fruit leather addict.

After tennis practice, on my way home from school, I'd dig into my backpack and pull out a roll. Every bite tickled the back of my mouth, and I couldn't get enough of it.

My addiction to apricot leather lasted only a few months, but I loved -- and still love -- almost every type of dried fruit, and I always have raisins, craisins (Ocean Spray's clever name for dried cranberries), dried cherries, prunes, figs and apricots in The Perfect Pantry.

Water (Recipe: bailout bean soup)

Guest post and photos by Marcia in Rhode Island.

Times a gettin’ hard boys,
Money’s gettin’ scarce.   
                ~1930s dustbowl tune by Lee Hays

Ours is a town of rock and water. Underground streams and pockets of water secreted within granite ledges supply our wells. Our water is pure, delicious, and abundant -- a fact which is appreciated by much of urban Rhode Island.

Today, in the early morning mist, I walked along the banks of a brook until I came to the river.  This river feeds the reservoir, which in turn supplies the drinking water for much of the state, though not for our town.

The essential ingredient of my pantry is not in a cupboard; it’s stored a couple of hundred feet underground. When asked, it races to the house at a breakneck pace of 22 gallons a minute.

Other People's Pantries #39

From Teresa, in Burlington, North Carolina:

I enjoy cooking very much and find that a well-stocked pantry and freezer allow me to make a pot of soup on the weekend without making a special trip to the store or stir up a stir-fry dish for dinner when I get home and decide that is what I want to eat.