The Perfect Pantry

Panko (Recipe: panko and mustard crusted fish)

Before our first visit to Japan, in 1986, Ted and I tried to memorize one hundred words we thought we'd need -- please and thank you, taxi, toilet, bank, subway, where, how much.

Shrimp (ebi) and train station (eki), both on our list of necessary words, were so similar that it was inevitable we'd confuse the two.

When it happened, when we were sitting in a cafe near the mountain town of Nikko, when we ordered soup noodles with a train station on top, it was funny. More so because, as I recall, the cafe actually was in a train station.

The bowl of soup noodles arrived, topped with a shrimp (yes, victory!) coated with panko, and the first bite of the light, crispy crustacean wiped away all of our embarrassment at asking for a train station in our soup.

Chickpea flour (Recipe: salmon tikka)

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

Linguine, spaghetti (Recipe: pasta with clams and vegetable sauce)

A favorite post from the archives, updated with a new recipe, photos and links. 

One noodle, two noodles, red noodles, blue noodles.

Red sun-dried tomato ravioli. Blue curacao linguine from Giacomo Rizzo, our favorite pasta shop in Venice. Pasta shaped like sombreros, ear lobes, wagon wheels, stars, and corkscrews.

And the "long and stringies": linguine, capellini, fedelini, vermicelli, bucatini, spaghetti, spaghettini, spaghettoni.

Roll the names around on your tongue. You can almost taste the pasta.

Ritz crackers, a Pantry Special (Recipe: baked stuffed shrimp)

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.

In America, it's hard to imagine a place where you can't find Ritz crackers in every supermarket and corner store, yet I seldom keep them in my pantry. Since 1935, a year after they were test-marketed in Baltimore and Philadelphia, the round, scallop-edged crackers, salted on the top side and flaky on the inside, have been sold nationwide. Topped with peanut butter, they're a favorite afterschool snack for kids, but when crushed or ground, Ritz crackers work much like Cheddar cheese-y, buttery bread crumbs, in stuffings or as a coating.

Sake (Recipe: roasted salmon teriyaki)

A delicious variation on a classic teriyaki sauce, in a favorite post updated with new photos and links. Add this cucumber salad to complete your bento box. Bento Week, Day Three.

Accidents happen.

Blue cheese, vinegar, wine, yogurt, fish sauce, yeast breads, sake.

If modern government-regulated food storage requirements of today had been in place hundreds of years ago, we'd have none of these products, because all are the result of storage mishaps.

Thank goodness for accidents, for food left out of refrigeration too long, left in a barrel for too many months, left out in the sun or in a dark cellar, or carried through the desert in hot saddle bags on a camel's back.

Dumpling wrappers (Recipe: shrimp potstickers)

Everything tastes better when it's served in a Japanese bento box. Fill each compartment with a different taste and texture, then put the lid on and pack for a picnic, indoors or outside. Welcome to Bento Week, Day One.

I have never, ever, walked out of an Asian market empty-handed.

Even when I manage to convince myself that there's no room in my pantry for more dried rice noodles or jugs of soy sauce, or even for my favorite chili paste with garlic, the cookware aisle draws me in.

And so it is that I am the proud owner of three small wooden rolling pins made specifically for rolling out dumpling wrappers.

Which, by the way, I have never, ever done.

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.

Ginger root (Recipe: steamed fish in packets)

One horribly hot and humid day last summer, I visited my friend Julia's tiny urban garden.

I didn't go for the copious quantities of iced coffee that we both love, nor for her especially good egg salad, nor even for the effortless conversation we always enjoy.

No, what I really wanted was to dig ginger.

Julia, a chef and restaurant consultant, stores her ginger in the garden during the summer months. She digs it up when she needs a bit for cooking, breaks off a piece, then plants it back in the garden, where it continues to grow.

In the photo above, that's Julia's hand holding a "hand" of ginger, which has sent out new roots. In the front are three "fingers" of new ginger growth, brighter white than the old part, and with new green shoots coming out the top.

Feta cheese, and a cookbook giveaway (Recipe: baked shrimp with tomatoes and feta)

When I was younger, I learned a lot of what I knew about boys in summer camp, from my girlfriends who had older siblings or whose mothers had had "the talk" before mine ever worked up the courage to give it a try.

Similarly, I learned a lot of what I knew about food from my friends who had grandparents and parents from Italy and Puerto Rico and the American South. Pasta and parmesan, enchiladas and chicken fried steak -- all were new to me.

I didn't know any kids from Greek families, though, so it took years before I learned about feta cheese.

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.