The Perfect Pantry®

Recipe for white bean dip (or sandwich spread) with goat cheese and herbes de Provence

On any given holiday weekend, an unexpected guest might appear out of nowhere to fill an empty chair at my table. Unexpected does not mean unwelcome, but sometimes it means a few rabbits need to be pulled from hats to stretch the food. At times like those, it's great to have some quick appetizer ideas that use ingredients from the pantry. Fancy up this quick-and-easy white bean dip with crackers, pita wedges, raw vegetables or slices of fruit. In other words, raid the fridge and raid the pantry; all the "rabbits" you need are right there.

Recipe for cod cakes with red pepper, tarragon and yogurt remoulade

Here in coastal New England, we pride ourselves on fierce regional loyalty: to baked beans, clam chowder and stuffies, Del's frozen lemonade, and the Red Sox, our perennially heartbreaking baseball team. We also love our cod, the local white fish spawned in the cold water of the North Atlantic. Fishing boats bring cod to market all year long, which makes cod cakes a popular appetizer on restaurant menus. You can make them at home for a fraction of the price; serve minis for a dinner party appetizer, or larger ones for a light lunch or dinner entree. If cod is expensive or hard to find in your area, substitute salmon or crab meat. To make this really quick and easy, whip up a batch of the remoulade a day or two in advance.

Recipe for sweet potato and apple potstickers

Fun with sweet potatoes, all week.

When I was younger, I loved the predictability of holiday meals. Turkey, sweet-and-sour meatballs, brisket, overcooked green vegetables, undercooked mashed potatoes -- I loved it all. Now that I'm the cook, though, I like to stir things up. Take sweet potatoes, for example. Why not have them as an appetizer? These sweet potato and apple potstickers are a bit of a cultural mash-up, to be sure, yet I predict they'll be the hit of any Thanksgiving menu. Kids can help stuff the potstickers, and everyone will have fun with this finger-food app. An inexpensive Chinese dumpling press makes quick work of filling and pleating, but you can make potstickers just as easily without one. And, like risotto, once you master the technique, you can create infinite variations.

Recipe for roasted shrimp appetizer with spicy peanut sauce

This vibrant roasted shrimp appetizer looks like a midsummer night's dream, but with shrimp in the freezer and a few ingredients you already have in your pantry, this dream can be a midwinter reality, too. The shrimp get their bright color from turmeric, and the quick-and-easy peanut sauce from She Simmers gets its zing from Thai red curry paste. Instead of heating the oven to roast the shrimp, I grilled them on my new panini-press-griddle-waffle-gizmo with which I'm unabashedly in love. A hot oven will do the job in minutes, as will a stove-top grill pan, and you can make the peanut sauce a day or two ahead and store it in the refrigerator. The sauce recipe yields a big batch, so double or triple the quantity of shrimp and invite your friends for cocktails or a picnic.