The Perfect Pantry

Ritz crackers, a Pantry Special (Recipe: baked stuffed shrimp)

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.

In America, it's hard to imagine a place where you can't find Ritz crackers in every supermarket and corner store, yet I seldom keep them in my pantry. Since 1935, a year after they were test-marketed in Baltimore and Philadelphia, the round, scallop-edged crackers, salted on the top side and flaky on the inside, have been sold nationwide. Topped with peanut butter, they're a favorite afterschool snack for kids, but when crushed or ground, Ritz crackers work much like Cheddar cheese-y, buttery bread crumbs, in stuffings or as a coating.

Long grain white rice (Recipe: chicken and shrimp jambalaya)

Who will be the next Chef de Riz?

If you love rice, and you love to cook, and you get yourself to Crowley, Louisiana, in October, you could be crowned Chef de Riz at the 73rd Annual International Rice Festival.

To earn the title, you'll have to wow the judges with a dish that includes at least one cup of cooked rice, and the rice of choice in South Louisiana is long grain white rice.

Baking powder (Recipe: blue corn muffins)

From the archives, a favorite post, updated with a new recipe, photos and links.

If baking powder were an opera, the libretto might read:

Act I: Poor little BP lives a quiet life on a cool, dark shelf. Enter The Baker, who introduces BP to Wet. Bubbles appear.

Act II: The Baker, sensing something dramatic might be happening, then introduces BP and Wet to Heat, and kaboom! Bubbles appear again. The Baker encourages BP, Wet and Heat to travel together to Muffin Land, and they have adventures along the way.

Act III: Out of the oven the Baker pulls beautiful muffins, all puffed up and proud, thanks to BP's double-bubble action.

And they all live happily ever after.

Actually, except for The Baker, they all get eaten in the end...which, of course, is a happy ending for us.

Beer (Recipe: oven-barbecued brisket)

For a few years around the very early 1980s, Ted and I became inadvertent landlords when the person with whom we'd bought our Boston house went bankrupt, leaving us with an empty apartment and a large mortgage to manage on our small salaries.

Our first tenants were not so great (one was a weekend DJ, and it was the '80s), but then the fates smiled upon us, and sent us for many years a series of tenants who worked for one company.

A microbrewery.

Our home was home to the brewer, the graphic artist, the bookkeeper, and the administrative assistant. They all had one thing in common, in those early days of the company: access to free beer. All the beer they wanted, for friends (and landlords), too.

Cayenne pepper (Recipe: Bob's smoky beef ribs)

Twenty-five years ago, the City of Boston planted a tree in a hole in the brick sidewalk in front of our house.

Every dog in the neighborhood loved, and I do mean loved, that little sapling.

To discourage the gifts those dogs left us (in the days before pooper-scooping was mandatory), we sprinkled cayenne pepper on the ground at the base of the tree. Every so often we'd hear a little sneeze... and we'd watch a very surprised puppy move along, to find a kinder and gentler tree hole.