The Perfect Pantry

Wine you'd be happy to drink, and a cookbook giveaway (Recipe: Grandma's beef brisket in the slow cooker)

Question: Why should you cook with wine you'd be happy to drink?

Answer: So you can drink the leftover wine!

That's a good reason -- a great reason -- but it's not the only reason.

Fish sauce (Recipe: Thai beef salad)

You watched it, didn't you? The finale of The Next Food Network Star?

Somewhat predictably, the judges selected the mother-of-four whose show could have broad appeal in these challenging economic times. But I was pulling for the other guy, the one who didn't win, the one Alton Brown dubbed The Ingredient Smuggler.

The one most likely to do an entire episode about salty, smelly, absolutely indispensable fish sauce.

Tequila (Recipe: tequila-lime flank steak, grilled cherry tomato salsa, and a classic margarita)

Please welcome Bryan, who with this post joins The Perfect Pantry as a guest blogger. By day, he's an experience design consultant; he's also a former bartender who studied at the Boston University Wine Resource Center. Bryan is passionate about local and sustainable food, dabbles in photography, and makes a mean mojito. He’s here to to raid that other kitchen cubbyhole most of us have: the liquor cabinet. You'll find more of Bryan's recipes at Vinilicious, which he vows to start up again.

Guest post and photos by Bryan in Boston.

I used to bartend some years back at a jazz club, and at the end of my shift it was a habit of mine to mix up a tall, classic margarita.

I’m not talking about what passes for a marg at the neighborhood Chili’s, made with dash of Jose Cuervo, a bit of triple sec, and two or three glugs of sugary sour mix. This was the real deal: 100% blue agave tequila, Cointreau, topped up with freshly squeezed lime juice, rimmed with salt crystals the size of small stones.

The jazz club doubled as a restaurant. Nothing fancy, really -- steak tips, buffalo wings, and the sort -- but after an eight-hour shift standing behind a counter and slinging cocktails to parched salsa dancers, an order of overcooked steak tips tasted like just the closest thing to heaven.

After one particularly busy night, I accidentally spilled my margarita into my steak tips. I don’t remember what I was thinking -- perhaps I was just way too hungry to pick up takeout on the way home -- but I ate them anyway. What I do remember was that they tasted better than they did when they'd come out of the kitchen. (The soaked fries, not so much.)

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.

Aphrodisiacs in the Pantry (Recipe: beef stew)

Two years ago, in February, I discovered bookworms in my pantry.

This year, the pantry is filled with aphrodisiac foods.

What's a girl to do when she finds foods of love hiding on her spice rack, in the cupboards, even in the fridge and freezer? 

Annatto/achiote (Recipe: vaca atolada, or "cow stuck in the mud")

Guest post and photos by Peter in Brazil, chef and co-owner of Pousada do Capão

I mentioned urucum (which means "red" in the Tupi language) in my very first guest post on The Perfect Pantry as one of the 21 essential and ever-present items in any Brazilian pantry. When Lydia told me she had some urucum (achiote in Spanish, annatto in English) in her pantry just begging to be used, I figured it was time to get to work.

Annatto (the English name that might be more familiar to you), though very subtle in flavor, is huge on color. Some people swear it lends depth to food, tasting a bit of nutmeg and black pepper, but more importantly it gives that gorgeous, appetizing, mouth-watering red glow to so many Brazilian dishes: fish moquecas, chicken ensopadas, braised meats, rice and beans. The Indians loved red. The Portuguese loved red. So when the two met in the 1500s…

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.

Salsa (Recipe: ropa vieja)

Ten things I know about salsa (you'll be glad to know them, too):

Dill seed, dill weed (Recipe: stuffed cabbage)

Guest post and photo above by Peter in Brazil, chef and co-owner of Pousada do Capão

Dill is one of the few herbs that I've had success with here in São Gonçalo, ever since I put up a bamboo fence to keep out the rabbits. The very picky bunnies would single out the tender seedlings and nibble them right down to the ground. (I'll bet dill-fed rabbit would be delicious.)

Many of the other culinary herbs I've tried to grow here just don’t seem to have much flavor. It must be something about the climate, the sandy soil, the extremes of wet and dry, the seasons that I don’t yet understand.

The tarragon I planted is thriving -- in fact it’s invasive -- but it's tasteless. Time to pull it out. My garlic chives, oregano and marjoram have fared reasonably well until now, but six months of daytime heat without a drop of rain have begun to take their toll.

And then there's the dill that keeps coming and reseeding itself and coming again.