The Perfect Pantry®

Cider vinegar (Recipe: dried cranberry and pear chutney)

Ten things I know about cider vinegar (you'll be glad to know them, too):

Hearts of palm (Recipe: hearts of palm, shrimp and cheese pizza)

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

For several months I’ve been meaning to write about hearts of palm, so Lydia’s recent visit to our inn provided the perfect opportunity to kill three birds with one stone: I could cook with her; test the recipe for my hearts of palm, shrimp, and requeijão pizza; and photograph the results.

In my Boston and Rhode Island pantries, a can of hearts of palm was what Lydia would classify as a “pantry special” -- not a staple, but something purchased for curiosity’s sake, on impulse, or for a particular recipe.

Here in my Brazilian pantry, I always keep a jar or a can or two on hand. While they don’t hold a candle to fresh hearts of palm, in a pinch they add texture to a salad or a jardinière, depth and crunch to empadinha filling, body to a soufflé, or interest to a pizza, and they are a pretty decent substitute for artichoke hearts, which are completely unknown in these parts.

Other People's Pantries #87

From Perla, in Houston, Texas:

I have been watching your pantries for a few months now and finally got the courage to send my pics in. I do believe that my pantry is special! The pantry is a large 8x10 room. 

Brazil food: Cachaça (Recipe: caipirinha)

The second in an occasional series of posts over the next few weeks about Brazilian food and ingredients we discovered during our visit.

When my friend Peter told me he was moving from Rhode Island to Brazil, I understood why he was going.

He'd fallen in love with a wonderful woman from Belo Horizonte. (Some day, he'll tell you the story.)

I didn't know anything about where he was going, but I should have known that Peter, a professional chef, would land in a part of the world famous as much for its distinctive cuisine as for coffee, diamonds, and colonial architecture.

Located in the mountainous region of southeast Brazil, the state of Minas Gerais produces some of the country's finest farmhouse cheese, beef and cachaça, the fire-water alcohol used to make America's new favorite cocktail, the caipirinha.

So, when Epaminondas Pires de Miranda ("Nondas"), owner of Cachaça Velha Serrana, invited us to tour the distillery where he produces artisanal, organic cachaça, we set off for Serro, where we would meet at a gas station and follow his truck to the farm.