The Perfect Pantry

Lavender, and a purple haze (Recipe: pork tenderloin with lavender grilled peaches)

Please welcome Marcia, who with this post joins The Perfect Pantry as guest blogger. She lives up the road from me, in a lovely old house with several vegetable and flower gardens, surrounded by acres of woodland. Professionally, she's been a teacher, children's librarian, naturalist and goat farmer. An avid cook and baker, Marcia will share stories and recipes once a month or so.

Guest post and photos by Marcia in Rhode Island

Lavender is a frivolous yet ever-present staple in my pantry. Occasionally my garden yields a few tablespoons, just enough for lavender madeleines when I’m feeling peckish and reminiscent, but most of the time, I buy buds and flowers embalmed in plastic packets.   

Until today.
   
“Pick your own lavender and distill the color of our garden into your kitchen,” promised the ad that ran in our local paper a couple of weeks ago.

And I’d been waiting. Because I am sure you don’t pick lavender on just any day.

Assorted frozen fruit (Recipe: strawberry fruit whiz)

Updated from the archives, with new photo and links, and a favorite summer recipe.

In the beginning (1973), Carl Sontheimer, an engineer who loved to cook, created the Cuisinart food processor.

Not long after that -- well, okay, fifteen years later -- I created frozen fruit whiz.

White vinegar and volcanoes (Recipe: pineapple-cucumber salad)

Once upon a time -- okay, it was just a few weeks ago -- I found five (five) bottles of distilled white vinegar in my pantry.

I'm not a pickle fanatic.

I'm not a brine fanatic.

I'm most definitely not a window-cleaning fanatic.

I used to be able to keep inventory in my head of everything that I had in the pantry. For a few months, I kept forgetting that I have vinegar, and every time I passed it in the supermarket aisle, I'd buy more. And more. And more.

If you are not old, you might not recognize this for what it is: a cautionary tale, a heads-up, a peek into your future. When you are old like me, you will, I promise, develop a mental block against some item in your pantry, and you will buy it even when it is not on your grocery list. And each time, you'll place it on the shelf, next to the one you bought the week before. You'll mutter to yourself, oh phoo, I already have this.

Maple syrup (Recipe: poached pears)

Apologies to the good people of Punxutawney, Pennsylvania, and their famous groundhog, but there's no better harbinger of Spring than the appearance of sap buckets dangling from the sugar maples in our town cemetery.

All over New England, soon after the trees are tapped in February and March, the sugaring houses begin the alchemy of turning the sap into maple syrup. The season when the most flavorful sap "runs" from the trees is short, only 4-6 weeks, and sap tapped at different points during that season will result in different depths of flavor.

Cider vinegar (Recipe: tomato-nectarine chutney)

In a pantry filled with olive oils from Italy, Spain, California and Trader Joe's, there's bound to be a vinegar or two. Or more. Welcome to the end of Vinegar Week, Day 3.

Pickles, shmickles.

I was going to rave about cider vinegar's culinary assets, how it's wonderful for making pickles and chutneys and cole slaw and salad dressing and marinades.

I was going to tell you about the cider vinegar diet, and that cider vinegar supposedly possesses magical curative powers over everything from arthritis to the common cold.

I was going to explain that cider vinegar is made from the fermented juice of apples, diluted with water to a uniform strength of 5% (50 grains) acidity, and that consistent minimum acidity is necessary for the safe canning and pickling of food.

I was going to add that that same acidity means that cider vinegar has a long shelf life (almost unlimited if unopened, and six months or more after you've opened it).

I was going to point out that pure (i.e., unflavored) cider vinegar is kosher and gluten-free.

I was going to mention that, while the color is mild and mellow, the taste is not.

I was going to confess that I've tried expensive, small-producer artisan vinegars, and see little difference between those and the one I find most easily in my local supermarket (other than price and the fact that the supermarket brands are filtered to remove any sediment).

All of that pales next to this one fact, this life-altering nugget of information that I discovered while reading up on vinegar this morning. And even if it seems that this has nothing to do with food, with cooking, or with The Perfect Pantry, it has changed my world forever.

Tamarind (Recipe: pineapple shrimp curry)

What fruit can ward off night demons (stick the pod in your ear, as the British did in Victorian India), polish copper and silver, cure a sore throat, enhance a woman's sexuality, and make amazing curries and vindaloos, chutneys, soups, sorbet and drinks?

And had an Omar Sharif/Julie Christie romantic thriller named after it?

You're right — it's tamarind.

The first time I brought home a block of tamarind, I had no idea what to do with it. It was heavy and squishy, the consistency of moist modeling clay, and the only word in English on the label was ... tamarind. No clues there, but it turns out that tamarind is easy to use, and the sweet-sour taste and aroma add authenticity to Thai and Indian dishes.

Balsamic vinegar (Recipe: strawberries in balsamic)

Act II, Scene 2.

The balcony scene.

Montagues. Capulets. What's in a name?

O Rubio, Rubio,
Wherefore art thou, Rubio?

Wait a second...Rubio???

Juliet may have been talking to her beloved Romeo from that Verona balcony, but I'm talking about my beloved, my absolute favorite balsamic vinegar.

Cloves (Recipe: Grandma's applesauce)

Liz Claiborne, Hugo Boss, Pierre Cardin and Perry Ellis all make men's colognes with a hint of cloves.

What do they know that I don't know?

When I think of cloves, I don't think of men. I don't think of breath fresheners, antiseptics, aphrodisiacs, or cures for toothaches, either, though all are traditional uses for cloves.

Instead, I conjure up the aromas of applesauce, pumpkin pie, and the screaming-hot lamb vindaloo at the Jackson Diner in New York City.