New from the archives: four fresh posts (Recipes: white chocolate brownies, Cuban shrimp, wild rice salad, and sorbet with orange-vanilla sauce)

Every month, I'm revisiting a few posts from the first two years of The Perfect Pantry, in the days before I photographed the food I cooked.

It's so much fun to make some of my favorite dishes again, with some of my favorite pantry ingredients, and while I'm back in the archives, I'm also updating the recipes and links.

This month's updates use walnuts, vanilla beans, tomato sauce and, yes, Miracle Whip.

Cuban shrimp, inspired by a recipe my husband Ted and I tasted in Varadero, Cuba, is one of my absolute favorite dishes for entertaining. It takes just minutes to make, and never fails to impress.

The opposite of elegance, this casual wild rice salad starts with a boxed mix of Uncle Ben's, plus vegetables and chunks of chicken. It's a great dish for a picnic or potluck.

 

White chocolate brownies, from the Nantucket Open-House Cookbook, define the term "sinfully delicious." They're as dense as fudge, and the nuts (walnuts, or pecans or hazelnuts) add just the right amount of texture.

For a lighter dessert, fill a frozen orange with chocolate sorbet (top photo), topped with a light vanilla-orange sauce and a sprig of mint from your garden.

Enjoy!

Comments

Wow! They all look marvelous! What time is dinner? ;)

shrimp for dinner tonight for sure.....even if its half as a good as the jambalaya its going to be delicious....many thanks for sharing

They all look good, but I think the Wild Rice Salad is what I want to eat right now.

Why must I be tortured at work where I can not run out and make this food immediately!
The rice salad is a perfect summer dish and the brownies..I can't even speak about them - my sweet tooth is zinging!!

I am wondering if the rice salad could work with a little yogurt instead of the MW? If I attempt to buy MW my husband might walk out of the house... he is anti-mayo, anti-anything remotely close to mayo...

but yogurt could work... I guess

Nice to "re-visit" your old posts!

Susan, all of these dishes together would be quite the meal! But I do like the idea of two desserts.

Milton, this shrimp dish really comes from a hot culture, so it's perfect for the heat wave we're having here in the Northeast.

Kalyn, the rice salad is a fabulous comfort food. Whenever I make it, I remember how delicious it is.

Carol, blog reading before lunch time can be dangerous!

Sally, the salad would work with yogurt, but you might want to add a bit of sweetness (agave nectar would work) to mellow the sharpness of the yogurt and mustard.

The sauce for the shrimp was really very good and I have enough leftovers to feed an army. The shrimp i totally destroyed....either I over cooked them or they were bad shrimp to begin with, but they were very rubbery. The recipe was easy to follow and very easy to prep and cook. As an aside I bought only 2 pounds of shrimp to keep the dish manageable price wise, and it was more than enough

It's so funny you should mention this! My co-blogger (mom) and I are going to start doing this with our 'archives' from just a year and a half ago or so; many of the recipes don't have pictures or just have terrible ones, and we have a larger readership now, many of whom have never seen some of these perfectly good but aesthetically lacking posts. :O)

Also? That sorbet? Looks to die for.

*dies*

I want that sorbet filled orange!!!