The Perfect Pantry

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.)

Frozen fruit (Recipe: pink yink ink drink)

A week of ingredients featured in kid-friendly recipes from the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook by Georgeanne Brennan. Welcome to Dr. Seuss Week, Day Two.

In our neck of the woods, berry season lasts for six or eight weeks a year.

Even if you don't have your own strawberry fields or raspberry brambles, you know when it's berry time, because PYO (pick your own) or U-Pik signs appear on electrical poles all over town.

For the other forty-four weeks of the year, our best option is frozen fruit.

I'd never choose frozen fruit over in-season ripe fresh fruit, but individually quick frozen (IQF) fruits, prepared commercially or in your own kitchen, frozen at the peak of ripeness, retain almost all of their nutrient value. IQF fruit is 100% natural, with no added sugar or preservatives. It's trimmed and washed, and economical to use. Take what you need, and leave the rest in the freezer.

Coffee (Recipe: how to brew the perfect cup of coffee)

Guest post and photos by Sarah in Boston

Like every dad, mine gave his opinion freely, but there were some things he considered life skills. He couldn't understand how you would ever be able to get through life without them.

These included: how to drive a car while shifting between gears so you could glide through curves and down hills instead of using the brake; staying at a consistent speed on the highway to conserve gas (in the days before cruise control); parallel parking in three turns of the wheel. 

He also felt very strongly about his coffee. This wasn't about buying expensive coffee or the perfect coffee pots -- just the basics on how to brew a strong cup of coffee. And whether you planned to use the brewed coffee in a recipe or drink it straight, the method was still the same.

Marshmallow Fluff (Recipe: Rhode Island hot chocolate, with faux fluff)

Despite having close to 250 items in The Perfect Pantry, I can think of dozens of ingredients that might be in your pantry but are not in mine.

Almond extract. Anchovies. Bacon. Wild rice. Fennel pollen. Marshmallow Fluff®.

I know... you think Fluff is not an ingredient. But here in New England, it is.

Without Fluff, there would be no Fluffernutters or Whoopie Pies, two of our regional claims to fame.

Fresca (Recipes: Fresca cake, salad, and a cocktail)

When we were in college, my best friend Joyce and I went on a Fresca®-and-tuna-sandwich diet.

Two weeks later, we'd each lost a couple of pounds and gained a life-long addiction to the grapefruit-flavored sugar-free soda.

Last week, in a post about food gifts for food lovers, I wrote that Fresca did not meet the test for a pantry item, though I drink it every day and always have copious amounts in my refrigerator, because it's not used as an ingredient in creating other dishes.

I was wrong.

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...

Gifts for food lovers: Think outside the box (Recipe: hot buttered rum)

Part One of an eight-part series.

Mighty World Farmer's Market, from Jeffrey's Toys, Market Street, San Francisco

My father wasn't the most creative gift giver in the world.

For every occasion, he went to the same jewelry store and picked out a brooch or necklace much fancier than anything my mother would wear for everyday. Some she loved, some she didn't, but she believed that gifts should be for the person, not for the household, and, to his credit, my dad never put a big red bow on a washing machine.

My mother wasn't a food person. If she were, she might have loved a sesame seed grinder, a tagine, a stack of cookbooks, or a Viking six-burner stove -- all gifts for the household, but all things a foodie might love. I know. I love mine.

Call me crazy, but I'd much rather get a hand-carved wooden spoon than a piece of jewelry.

My husband Ted knows that about me, and over the past 18 years, since food writing became my work, he's become the most creative searcher-outer of eclectic, fun, practical, interesting, wacky, lovely, and downright cool stuff, whether from halfway around the world, or around the corner.

Inspired by Ted's ideas, and by gifts I've received and purchased for my food friends, every Tuesday from now until your favorite December holidays I'll be sharing gift suggestions for the food lover in your life.

Lemons, flamenco, and a summer sangria recipe

It's an upside-down summer day.

A thank-goodness-it's-almost-Friday day.

A tomorrow-is-my-friend-Cindy's-50th-birthday day.

So please, just for today, make the recipe first. Get it into the fridge. You'll have plenty of time to read all about the lemon and its many attributes while the sangria is chilling.

SANGRIA
Of course you'll want to invite some friends to celebrate the end of the week, or even the birthday of someone you don't know, so double or triple this traditional recipe.

1 bottle red wine
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 lemon, sliced
1 orange, sliced
1 lime, sliced
1/4 cup Triple Sec, Cointreau or brandy (optional)
1-2 cups sparkling water

Add the sugar, water and the end fruit slices (6 total from the ends of the lemon, lime and orange) to a pan and heat until boiling and all the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Meanwhile, pour the wine (and optional Triple Sec) into a big pitcher and add the uncooked fruit slices. After the syrup has cooled, remove the end slices and add the syrup to the pitcher. Squeeze as much juice out of the end pieces as you can into the pitcher and then discard. Stir.

Make this a couple of hours before serving, or the day before, and refrigerate. When you are ready to serve, add a cup or more of the sparkling water, to your taste. Serve over ice.

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Okay. Your sangria's chilling?

Now it's time to kick back.

Listen to the wonderful flamenco guitar of the incomparable Paco Peña, sip some cold sangria, and read everything you ever wanted to know about lemons.

And if you feel like some tapas -- and how could you not, with the music and wine to influence you? -- prepare some small plates of calamari salad, marrow beans, artichokes, or shrimp in garlic.

It's an upside-down summer day, hazy, hot and humid, and we're taking it easy.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Lemon-currant johnnycake biscotti
Zucchini-lemon muffins
Spiced lentils with squash and raisins
Lemon-yogurt cake
Confetti spaghetti

Hibiscus (Recipe: apple-tea liqueur)

Guest post by Peter in Brazil

Hibiscus is in season in São Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras, and Cí­ntia's quintal (yard) is full of ruby-red-calyx-laden bushes. She sells them by the kilo (R$3,00 or about US$1.80 for 2.2 pounds), and so while her gardener, Maurí­cio, clips the pods from the plants, I wait and sip a glass of cool, pink, hibiscus ade in the shade of her orchidarium, thinking about exactly what I am going to do with three kilos.

I don't remember my first encounter with hibiscus, but I know it was in the 1970s. Perhaps it was Red Zinger, the popular Celestial Seasonings tea of that time, but more likely it was during my liqueur phase.

I had a cupboard in my Beacon Hill (Boston) apartment, the bottom shelf of which was packed full of jars and bottles of aging cordials -- Almond, Apple Tea, Artichoke, Banana, Bay Leaf, Cherry Leaf, Coconut, Coffee, Green Tomato, Hibiscus and Chamomile, Melissa, Mixed Mint, Dry Orange, Peach, Pineapple, Rhubarb, Tangerine and Lemon Verbena -- all from recipes in Emilio Cocconi's Liqueurs for All Seasons.

I bought dried hibiscus blossoms by mail order from a potpourri supply store in New York City, thinking they were the petals of the houseplant variety. I never bothered to do any more research and I went on creating liqueurs, sherbets, sauces for lamb chops, and so on.

Fast forward 25 years. Marcinha and I are on a shopping trip to Margarida'™s Mercadinho in Diamantina, both to introduce ourselves as the new owners of the Pousada do Capão and to pick up several mamões (Formosa papayas) and pineapples for the breakfast table. In a pinch, Margarida, who is an adorable, feisty, and very wise Brazilian of Japanese descent, will pack up and send fruit on the daily bus to São Gonçalo. If she knows you and likes you, that is.

She offered me a welcoming gift of a jar of what she called ume jam, because of its similarity in flavor to that Japanese plum, but what in reality is hibiscus (or vinagreira) jam. Deliciously tart, subtle and smoky, it's made from hibiscus sabdariffa, which is actually a close relative of okra and perhaps a distant cousin of the houseplant variety (houseplant to me, since I am a New Englander), or even Rose of Sharon. An ancient plant, hibiscus sabdariffa grows all over São Gonçalo.

When fresh, they are crisp and sour and refreshing, maybe the closest I will get to cranberries or rhubarb here in Brazil. After the blossoms have gone by, the calyxes can be dried and stored in the pantry for later use.

And so I begin imagining substitutions: hibiscus martinis, strawberry hibiscus pie, hibiscus relish with frango caipira (free range chicken)...

Last year, I was timid and only bought one kilo of pods from Cí­ntia. I made Apple Tea and Hibiscus Ginger liqueurs with recipes either adapted from Cocconi or concocted on the fly. Cachaça replaced the Everclear. Both were huge successes with the guests at our inn.

This year, with my three kilos, I made liqueurs again but cooked and puréed the rest to stash in my freezer pantry. The purée is an outrageous color -- a sort of raspberry, red currant, Burma ruby, American Beauty red -- I'll bet we could dye the curtains with it! The creamy but somewhat gelatinous texture will be perfect for hibiscus Bavarian cream, or hibiscus and Brazil nut linzer torte, or as the base for some new sauce for roast duck.

Now I'm thinking I should have sprung for six kilos.

APPLE-TEA LIQUEUR
A wonderful liqueur using dried hibiscus, adapted from Emilio Cocconi. Buy dried hibiscus flowers here or here. It's fun to experiment with the subtleties of different teas and apple varieties. And though five months seems like forever, this liqueur is worth the wait. Makes one quart.

16 oz water
1 tsp tea leaves (your choice)
1 tsp dried chamomile blossoms
12 oz sugar
1 tsp dried hibiscus
1 whole apple, quartered
1/2 lemon, quartered
14 oz 100-proof vodka

Boil the water. Steep the tea, chamomile, and hibiscus in half of the water, covered, until cool. Dissolve the sugar in the other half and let cool. Combine the tea infusion, sugar syrup, fruit, and vodka in an airtight glass jar. Let macerate for 15 days, shaking the jar from time to time. Filter through several thicknesses of cheesecloth into a dark glass bottle. Cork and seal with wax and leave to mature in a cool, dark place for at least 5 months before serving.

Also in The Perfect Pantry:
Thai iced tea with star anise

Cardamom pods (Recipe: masalawali chai — Indian spiced tea)

Did you know that more than eighty percent of the world's export production of cardamom pods finds its way into cups of coffee?

Not into Starbucks mocha cappuccino.

Not into Peet's cafe au lait.

Not into the Dunkin' Donuts Great One my husband drinks almost every morning.

In Arab cultures, cardamom -- the world's third most expensive spice, after saffron and vanilla -- is added to coffee, as a sign of hospitality. Before guests are served, they are shown the green cardamom pods that will be used. The appearance of the pods is important; the more plump and perfect the pods, the more respect for the guest.

Native to the Cardamom Hills region of Kerala, cardamom is the fruit of an herbaceous plant in the ginger family. The best cardamom still comes from India, but it's also cultivated in Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea and Guatemala. Fruits are harvested by hand just before they are fully ripe; after drying in the sun for a few days, the pods are ready. Each pod contains 15-20 small black seeds.

As with most spices, ground cardamom degrades rapidly, so whenever possible, buy whole pods and grind as you go. To remove the seeds, which are slightly sticky, toast the pods in a dry pan for one minute. Place in a mortar and bruise the pods slightly with a pestle. Remove the outer pods and pound the seeds into a powder.

When you shop, look for plump and evenly-colored pods. Store in the freezer, or in a jar in a cool, dark area of your pantry. The flavor will hold for a year or more, though the color will fade a bit.

Considered one of the "warm" spices, cardamom lends a strong, fruity, somewhat smoky and almost bittersweet flavor to both sweet and savory dishes, and it's an essential component of every cook's garam masala. Used whole, the pods add subtle seasoning to rice, dal, chutney, pumpkin wontons, rack of lamb, chickpea or chicken curry, The ground seeds might find their way into fragrant baked goods like pulla, winter white cheesecake, cardamom yogurt pudding or chocolate soufflé.

While the majority of the world's export goes to Arab cultures, ten percent lands in Scandinavia, where cardamom is a popular addition to spiced cakes, cookies and breads -- and, of course, Swedish meatballs.

INDIAN SPICED TEA (Masalewali chai)
When our local farm stand opened a little café two summers ago at the intersection of nowhere and nowhere, and posted a sign outside announcing WE HAVE CHAI, I knew this wonderful drink had "arrived." This recipe, which is really a method for making many variations of chai, comes from Feast of India: A Legacy of Recipes and Fables, by Rani (Mahendri Arundale). Serves 6.

7 cups cold water
1 cup milk
1 cinnamon stock
6 green cardamom pods
6 whole cloves
1-1/4 inch piece fresh ginger root, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup light brown sugar, honey or agave nectar
2 Tbsp Darjeeling, Assam or Nilgiris tea

In a pot, bring the water and milk to a boil over medium heat. Stir in the spices and brown sugar. Boil for 5 minutes, and turn off the heat. Cover the pot and let the spices steep for 10 minutes, then add the tea leaves and bring the mixture to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 5 minutes. Strain the tea and serve immediately.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Grilled fruit with cardamom yogurt
Prawn fried rice
Aromatic rice pudding