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.

Pecans (Recipe: classic pecan pie)

When Harry met Sally, sparks did not fly.

What did fly were some of the funniest ad libs in movie history.

In one of my favorite scenes, Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harry decides they will speak only in funny nasal voices, and ad libs the line, "I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie."

Sally tries to repeat it in just the same singsong way, but cannot, and Harry coaches her. Pee can PIIIEEEEE. She tries again. Pee can PIIIEEEEE.

Would the scene have worked as well with if Harry had said pee KAHN? Who knows?

Ketchup (Recipe: barbecue sauce)

At any time, more than fifty bottles and jars and tubes, fancy and oh-so-ordinary, jostle against each other in my refrigerator door.

Condiments come and condiments go, but some are forever, like hot dog mustard and mayonnaise (well, this stuff), soy sauce and oyster sauce, chili paste with garlic and harissa.

And ketchup.

I'm never, ever without ketchup. Not just because it is the only acceptable adornment for a perfect burger, but because there's so much more you can do with it.

Refrigerated pie crust, and a cookbook giveaway (Recipe: rum raisin pear pie)

Dear readers, you know that I'm a bake-o-phobe, and I know how much you love desserts. I'm really trying, all this week, just for you. Welcome to The Perfect Pantry's first-ever Baked Desserts Week, Day One.

When I turned 40, which was oh-so-many years ago, I made my first two-crust pie.

Well, honestly, it was my first any-crust pie.

And it wasn't even my crust. It was refrigerated pie crust, from the supermarket.

I couldn't have been more proud if I'd made the crust from scratch.

Which I never, for a single minute, considered doing.

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.

Brown sugar (Recipe: mulled cider)

If you've been reading The Perfect Pantry for a while, you know a lot about me.

You know that I live in Rhode Island, in a log house in the woods, with a nice kitchen and an herb garden and a fire pit outside.

You know that I love Asian noodles and coffee and that stuff that isn't really mayonnaise.

You know that I am old... old enough to think of this whenever someone says brown sugar...