The Perfect Pantry®

Slow cooker Sindhi beef curry recipe

Though I love to try new dishes at Indian restaurants, I'd always been a bit intimidated about tackling those same recipes at home. I didn't have many of the unfamiliar spices and ingredients in my pantry, didn't even know where to buy them, and I froze in fear at the number of steps of preparation many recipes required. Then, a $19 slow cooker came into my life, and with it, a couple of cookbooks that made cooking Indian food fast and easy and not at all scary. My husband Ted and I loved this recipe for Sindhi beef curry adapted slightly from 150 Best Indian, Thai, Vietnamese & More Slow Cooker Recipes, a must-have book for slow-cooker cooks who love Asian food. Unfamiliar as I am with regional Indian cuisines, I researched the origin of this dish, and learned that it is from the Sindhi people who come from the area of west India that is now, geographically, in Pakistan. It's a simple tomato-based curry that's perfect over rice. Make it ahead, if you can; like all stews, it's even better the second day.

Tomato paste (Recipe: my own meat sauce)

First published in September 2006, this updated pantry ingredient post features new photos, links, and a few tweaks to the recipe. Please enjoy some fun facts about cooking with tomato paste, and the recipe for my "house special" meat sauce. In Rhode Island, we call it gravy, and we make it all year round.

My mother, like many "let's have TV dinners" cooks in the 1960s, made spaghetti sauce with Spatini, which I think was mostly a packet of salt mixed with a few flavor enhancers.

I don't blame her. After all, it was the Age of Convenience Foods, and my mother worked and didn't have a lot of time to cook. Her mother never cooked pasta, or made sauce, either, so my mother really didn't have a role model.

My own spaghetti role model was Patty, my freshman-year Italian-American roommate, who taught me to make her grandmother's sauce with canned tomatoes, onions, peppers, oregano and tomato paste. It was the perfect college meal; pasta was cheap, and the ingredients for sauce were cheap, too. And it was so easy to make the real thing.

Bye bye, Spatini.

Recipe for slow cooker sweet and smoky beef

Technically, summer won't arrive here in Rhode Island for a few more days, but the temperature and humidity settled in a couple of weeks in advance. Last winter I fell in love with brisket braised in apple cider, and this sweet and smoky beef spins off that flavor combination. The slow cooker, in constant use in my kitchen as the weather heats up, transforms a basic chuck roast into shredded beef that can fill sandwiches or tortillas or wraps, and tastes great on its own or with some quick and easy cole slaw on the side. Bring it on, summer -- we've got our slow cookers out, and we're ready for you.

Recipe for grilled beef teriyaki skewers with ramps (or scallions)

Did you know that ramps are an endangered plant? That there's only one natural habitat in all of Rhode Island? That the location of that habitat is a closely-guarded secret? And that I know someone who knows where it is? I didn't know any of that until last week, when my husband Ted went out for a bike ride, fell in with a friend who lives up the road, and returned home with a bag of ramps, roots and dirt attached. Right away I thought of these grilled beef teriyaki skewers, substituting ramps for the more traditional scallions. My panini press cooked the beef in less than two minutes; you also could use a stove top grill pan or cast iron skillet, any pan that gets hot enough to create a nice sear on the meat. Because we don't like raw onions, I grilled the ramps first, then rolled the marinated beef around them and grilled the meat. Before I began cooking, Ted and I took half of the ramps and stuck them into our garden. If they take, I'll let you know -- but you'll have to keep it a secret.