The Perfect Pantry

Cashews (Recipe: Muhammara, a pomegranate, pepper and nut spread)

Sometimes you feel like a nut.

Sometimes you don't.

Sometimes you feel like a peanut, walnut, pine nut, or even an almond, but sometimes you feel like a cashew, and nothing else will do.

Even though it's not a nut.

Thyme (Recipe: herbed cheese spread)

New England, famous for its exuberant display of Fall foliage, seldom disappoints us.

Here in the southern part of the region, the leaves are just beginning to turn, mostly to yellow, but I see an occasional bright red or orange sugar maple along the roads from my house to anywhere. Right outside the window nearest to my desk, the dogwood's leaves have a bit of a purplish tinge today.

My garden senses the change of season, too. The tomato plant should win an award for tenacity, as it continues to produce lovely little green tomatoes that hang on the vine just long enough, it seems, for the deer, or rabbits, or woodchuck to discover them.

In the herb beds, some plants linger while others have begun to fade away. Parsley: gone to seed. Sage: still lively, waiting to be called upon for Thanksgiving turkey stuffing. Rosemary: surprisingly vibrant, though not much left.

And thyme. There's always thyme, hanging on well into winter, when I dig down through the snow to grab a few sprigs for my cooking.

Eggs (Recipe: Italian style omelet appetizer)

Brown eggs are local eggs,
and local eggs are fresh.

If you're not singing along, you're not from here.

Here is New England, where our Rhode Island Red hens lay brown eggs, and where we've heard that jingle on radio and television ads for almost forty years. There's no difference in nutrition value, or in taste, between white eggs and brown; they just come from different breeds of chicken. Hens with reddish-brown feathers and earlobes (yes, chickens have ears!) lay brown eggs.

If brown eggs aren't your local eggs, you might pay more for them, because chickens that lay brown eggs tend to eat more than chickens that lay white eggs.

Who knew?

Dark soy sauce (Recipe: shrimp teriyaki)

One of my favorite Asian pantry ingredients, in a post updated from the archives, with new recipe, photos and links.

Yoda, the wise jedi master who seemed to know everything about everything, taught us all about the dark side, but I'll bet he didn't know that there's also a dark side in The Perfect Pantry.

There's dark chocolate, dark chili powder and, occasionally, dark ale.

And always a bottle or two of dark soy sauce.

The not-yet-perfect pantry: What's missing? (Recipe: white bean garlic dip)

My friend Bob sent me an email last week:

So...... what's going to be the 250th ingredient in your pantry?

I know what you're thinking.

Frozen puff pastry (Recipe: asparagus and cheese tart)

I'm having fun updating some favorite posts from the archives, like this one, from the days when I didn't photograph the food I cooked. If you missed these posts the first time around, please enjoy them now. With photos and new links, too.

Pâte feuilletée.

POT FEH-YOU-TAY.

Just the thought of making something with such an elegant name scares the bedoodles out of me. If I hadn't watched Julia Child on television, smearing the butter and folding and turning and folding and turning again, making it all seem so utterly doable, I never would have tried to make puff pastry from scratch.

I did make it.

One time.

Then I discovered frozen puff pastry. Someone else does the smearing and folding and turning for you. Imagine that! Puff pastry any time, without devoting an entire day to making it.

Madras curry paste, a Pantry Special (Recipe: potato and broccoli samosas)

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. 

Madras curry paste and Madras shorts share a place of origin, but otherwise don't seem to have much in common. Along with Thai red and green curry pastes, Madras curry paste, also called madrasi masala, makes frequent guest appearances in my kitchen, which Madras shorts do not. A specialty of the South Indian region around Madras (renamed Chennai in 1996), this yellow paste is a blend of coriander, cumin, brown mustard seed, black pepper, cayenne, turmeric, garlic, ginger and vinegar; sometimes it will have cinnamon and paprika, as the blend varies from cook to cook. The amount of cayenne determines the heat level of the final product, but as a rule, Madras curry is considered medium hot. Stirred into coconut milk, it makes the base of a quick weeknight curry, and pairs well with almost any vegetables, tofu or fish. Stored in the refrigerator, it will keep for up to one year.

Is this Pantry Special new to you?

Black olives (Recipe: goat cheese and olive stuffed peppers)

My friend Bob, tagine-maker extraordinaire and photography guru, has many good qualities, and one flaw.

He doesn't eat olives.

On a scale of one to ten, where not eating chocolate would be a ten, this ranks as a seven or eight.

My son-in-law Nick doesn't eat canned black olives, but eats all other olives -- a four or five on my scale.

I've never met an olive I didn't want to take home, but canned black olives have a permanent place in my pantry.

Onions (Recipe: salsa and shrimp stuffed avocado)

Adapted from the archives, with new photos, recipe and links.

When I cook, I hear voices.

I hear Jacques Pepin, Diana Kennedy, Ina Garten and Martin Yan, all urging me to try, experiment, enjoy. I hear Julia Child, or Dan Aykroyd channeling Julia, encouraging me to keep going, even if what I'm creating looks like a googly mess.

When I cook Cajun, I hear Justin Wilson.

A humorist, storyteller, and talented home cook who spent the first part of his career as a safety engineer inspecting warehouses in South Louisiana, he hosted a cooking show on public television thirty years ago, long before the rest of the country had heard of etoufeé and andouille.

From Justin Wilson I learned about the Cajun trinity, the basic flavorings that start every soup and stew: celery, bell pepper, and onion. What he actually said was SEL-ray, bell PEP-pah, and un-NYUANH, way up in the nasal back of his throat, and whenever I make anything that begins with the trinity, I hear his voice.

Discos (Recipe: empanadas filled with chicken picadillo)

Olé Olé Week, Day Two.

To give credit where credit is due, my husband Ted discovered discos.

Not the John Travolta, dancing queen, glitter ball kind of discos.

The take 'em out of the freezer, stuff 'em and bake 'em, empanadas don't get any easier than this kind.