The Perfect Pantry

Juniper berries (Recipe: lamb stew)

Guest post and photos by Marcia in Rhode Island.

Every family has one. A non-conformist.

In the pine family, juniper is the rebel. Unlike its cousin, the slender and erect red cedar, juniper spreads low to the ground, sloppily, in all directions. Another cousin, white pine, can be lumbered, while juniper is almost impossible to uproot. And a third cousin, hemlock, has feathery soft needles; juniper’s are nasty, vicious little things.

Most of the pine cousins have woody cones that send seeds flying into the wind; the fruits start off as a cluster of fleshy scale, and when they dry out, they look like the familiar pine cones.

Juniper holds its cones tightly on the branches; the scales stay fleshy and look like berries, but they’re not. What we call juniper berries are actually soft purplish “pine cones”.

Other People's Pantries #44

From Cousin Martin and Ted, reporting on their homestay hosts' pantry in Amantani:

On our recent trip to Peru, one of our many wonderful experiences was a homestay with a family in the Colquecachi Community on Amantani Island in Lake Titikaka. Silvestre and Irma Suaña Calsin and their 11-year old daughter Nelida were our hosts. The house is made of mud and straw brick with a corrugated roof.

Tourists are encouraged to bring gifts of food and we brought a kilo each of pasta, rice and sugar. At 12,500' elevation, the steep climb up to their house was exhausting, and the food seemed to grow heavier with each step.

The kitchen and eating area is in a separate building with a dirt floor. Along with a small table, a bench and two log seats, they have a small gas cooker and a mud brick oven in which they burn eucalyptus wood and leaves, which smells wonderful.

Irma, using clay pots and wooden spoons, cooked us a wonderful lunch of soup, quinoa with llama and potato, and a dinner of soup, pasta and fried yam. In the morning, we had our farewell breakfast of pancakes, coffee and mate de coca.

This is the entire pantry.

We enjoyed our stay and were amazed at the good food that came from this tiny pantry, especially in contrast to our "perfect" pantries back home.

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

Come on -- show us your pantry.

Here's how.

All-purpose flour (Recipe: cheddar cheese biscuits)

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

For the most part, I don't believe in "one size fits all," because I am a size and shape that one size never seems to fit.

And while in my pantry I have half a dozen types of flour -- surprising, given that I'm a notorious bake-o-phobe -- the one I reach for more often than not is "one size fits all," also known as all-purpose flour.

Gifts for food lovers: Art and craft (Recipe: four-fold gratin)

Part Four of an eight-part series.

My little log house in Rhode Island is the old-fashioned kind, with lumpy-bumpy walls inside and out.

Some logs stick out more than others, as though trees were felled and simply piled up in a rectangle, holes cut here and there, until someone said, "Okay, that's enough -- let's put a roof on it!"

I know the construction wasn't quite that haphazard, but try hanging artwork on a log wall, and you'll know what I mean. Nails or hooks go into the logs that protrude; then the art must be shimmed out on the bottom to make it more-or-less level, or it looks like it's sliding down the wall. And you'd better like the height, because those protruding logs aren't always quite where you want them to be.

Except in the kitchen.

The kitchen has one long plastered wall. No lumps, no bumps, no logs. Perfect for art.

If the food lover in your life has an art wall, or an art corner, or a tiny space above the countertop for a little painting, here are gift ideas galore for art-loving foodies or food-loving artsies.

Urfa pepper, a Pantry Special (Recipe: roasted vegetables with yogurt and fresh tomato sauce)

Pantry Specials are great ingredients that find their way into my pantry from time to time, but not all the time. In this occasional series of short posts, you'll find information and recipes for foods that might not be on your local supermarket's shelves, but are available online.

An interesting and limited-production pepper from Turkey, urfa pepper (also known as urfa biber) is similar to, but a bit hotter than, Aleppo pepper. Cultivated in the town of Urfa, near the Syrian border, the peppers are picked, dried in the sun by day, then wrapped and sweated at night for more than a week. This sweating process gives the chile (which is actually a bit more purple-brown than it appears in my photo) a rich, earthy taste and smoky aroma, and a flavor that hints of raisins. Urfa peppers have a moderate heat level; the heat develops more slowly than what we in Rhode Island call pizza pepper, but a little faster and with more sharpness than Aleppo pepper.

Other People's Pantries #43

From Biggie (Lunch in a Box), in San Francisco:

This past summer I totally overhauled the inside of my pantries and refrigerator for a fun yet terrifying photo shoot with Apartment Therapy's kitchen blog. Before the reorganization things were crammed into cabinets willy nilly, and sometimes fell out when I opened the doors. I needed a system that would bring my overstuffed cabinets under control, and help me reach everything on top shelves without pulling out a stepladder.

I was inspired by the super-organized ideas shown in Japanese-language books about freezing and bento lunches, and made liberal use of cheap organizer baskets and trays from dollar stores in San Francisco. I documented the process with before and after photos on my blog, and feedback on what worked for me and what didn't. On the whole, I've been able to maintain the new system with a few adjustments, and my husband seems much less frustrated when he ventures into the kitchen!

[Read more: Spice pantry, main pantry, refrigerator and freezer, remaining cabinets and garbage containers for the prep area.]

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

Come on -- show us your pantry.

Here's how.

Diced tomatoes with green chile (Recipe: Mexicali meatloaf)

With the election behind us and unity on everyone's mind, what I'm about to say might come as a shock.

We are still a country divided.

Divided not by politics or preferences, but by Ro*Tel®. Either you live in a Ro*Tel state, or you live somewhere else.

I live somewhere else, and until last week I had no hope of ever finding Ro*Tel in my local Rhode Island supermarket.

And then, last week, I found diced tomatoes with green chiles, made by our local Italian-products company whose yellow/red/green labels are familiar to any shopper in the Northeast, at the market in my little town!

It's not Ro*Tel, exactly, but it is, give or take a spice or two.

Gifts for food lovers: From travels near and far (Recipe: Suspiro de Limena)

Part Three of an eight-part series.

A strip of edible seeds of the Andes, from a market in Peru.

When I was growing up, my parents loved to take me to the theater.

Not the movie theater.

Broadway shows, and off-Broadway, and incredibly-far-off-Broadway, in unfamiliar neighborhoods and alternative spaces like the room behind the room behind a restaurant, or an empty warehouse with some folding chairs, or an elementary school auditorium or church basement. Going to the theater was an adventure.

In the years before there were half-price ticket booths, there were twofers. Two, for the price of one.

Scoring those twofer tickets required cunning and good luck, and when my parents found a twofer, we looked on it as a gift from the theater gods.

For the food lover in your life, a gift from your travels -- near or far or armchair -- can be a twofer, too.

Pineapple (Recipe: Love in pieces)

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

Back in Rhode Island, whenever I could afford it (when Dole ran a Maui Gold supermarket special), I would stand in the produce aisle and carefully smell, pull the leaves from, and gently press my thumbs into dozens of fresh pineapples, until I found the perfect one.

I would nurse that perfect pineapple to full ripeness over the next week or so. Then, my daughters and I, in a rare and special ritual, would sit around a bowl of freshly cut pineapple chunks and savor each golden morsel, each juicy bite.

Like many Northerners, I had been brainwashed to associate pineapple with Hawaii, colonial New England hospitality, Cantonese cocktails, and the archway on Federal Hill in Providence (I know it’s a pine cone on that arch over Atwells Avenue, but it’s amazing how many people think it’s a pineapple.).

Forgive me, Carmen Miranda.

Other People's Pantries #42

From Cora (Cora Cooks), in Southern Illinois:

When I was growing up, there was really no such thing as a pantry in our house. My mother went to the grocery store every day and kept little food on hand. You see, I had five younger brothers -– no sisters -- and no matter how much food my mother brought in from the grocery store every afternoon, it would all be gone by the next day. 

My dad would always say something like, “Why don’t you buy things by the case, so you don’t have to go to the store every day?” She knew that even if she went to the store to stock up for a week, those boys would have just eaten all the food in one day anyway. And she might have gone berserk -– the grocery store was her refuge.

When I got my own home -– along with a husband who frequently left an annoying bite or two of food on his plate, claiming to be too full to finish it -– I was in a quandary. I only knew how to shop and cook for a family of eight! Food began to stack up in my apartment-size cupboards.

Years of living wherever the Air Force sent us also introduced me to many wonderful local and regional food  specialties, to which I became quite attached. I began to collect these new ingredients to take with me when a move was imminent. And anywhere I traveled, I would make it a point to go to a grocery store to see what was peculiar to that area.

Now that we have moved back to my hometown and I have the kitchen of my dreams, I have more than enough space for storing pantry items, especially for just the two of us, and we live about five minutes from some really great markets. But, as you can see, I still like to keep my pantry well-stocked.

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

Come on -- show us your pantry.

Here's how.