The Perfect Pantry

How to preserve the harvest, even if it comes from the grocery store (Recipe: pear chutney)

Every year in May, Candy and Dave drive down from Boston to help me prepare and plant the herb garden.

Every Monday morning in summer, before sunrise and before my first cup of coffee, I toddle out into the garden in my pajamas and cut handfuls of herbs. After I wrap the cuttings in damp paper towels, Ted delivers them to Boston in what we've come to call our very own "herb CSA."

Every September, Candy and Dave return to harvest, cook, dry and freeze the fruits (and herbs) of our summer garden into pantry items we use all winter.

This year, on harvest day, we put up two types of pesto, mint jalapeño syrup -- and the hottest chutney this side of anywhere.

Garlic (Recipe: pear and parsnip soup)

Here in Rhode Island, people don't always know what to do with the letter R.

It pops up where it shouldn't: Coventry becomes "Carventry," Lydia becomes "Lydier."

And it's missing from at least one fundamental pantry ingredient: garlic, which the locals call gah-lick.

Fortunately, it's only the R that's missing, and not the garlic itself. Rhode Island is justly famous for Italian-American cuisine, with no skimping on the garlic. Two farms within a few miles of my house offer unusual and heirloom varieties, including both softneck (the most common type) and hardneck. In the supermarket, garlic is garlic, anonymous and uniform, but at the farm stands, garlic answers to many names: Rocambole, Spanish Roja, Chesnok Red, Mexican Red Silver.

Well known as one of the world's healthiest foods, garlic is also one of the world's oldest cultivated vegetables, native to central Asia where it has been grown for more than 5,000 years. Migrating populations and explorers brought garlic to countries all around the globe, including Singapore, India, Mexico, France, Tunisia, Malaysia, Australia, and the United States, which is now one of the world's largest producers.

A member of the lily family, garlic (Allium sativum) grows underground in a bulb, called a "head", made up of individual cloves. The cloves, and the whole head, are encased in a papery skin that is not edible.

With a nod to David Letterman, here are a few things to know about garlic.

Three ways to peel the cloves:

1. Drop individual cloves into a pot of boiling water. Remove after 30 seconds and place in a bowl of ice water. When the cloves are cool enough to handle, slip the peel off.
2. Place one clove on a cutting board. Position a large chef's knife over the clove, and smash it with the heel of your hand. The peel will pop right off the clove.
3. Use one of these rubber tubes. I know, it's a one-task gizmo, but it's an inexpensive and efficient gizmo.

Two ways to get the smell of garlic off your hands after you've peeled the cloves:

1. Wash your hands with soap and water, then rub them on a chrome faucet.
2. Wash your hands in cold water, rub them all over with table salt, then wash again in soap and warm water.

One way to get the smell of garlic off your breath after you've eaten the peeled garlic cloves: chew some fresh parsley. Think about persillade and chimichurri; each of these classic sauces brings together garlic and its antidote. Clever, aren't they?

PEAR-PARSNIP SOUP
Just in time for Thanksgiving menu planning. Also great for lunch, with a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. Make this vegetarian by substituting vegetable stock or water for the chicken stock. Serves 6.

2 lbs parsnips, ends trimmed, peeled
1 medium red or sweet onion, peeled and quartered
2 cloves garlic, whole but not peeled
Sea salt & black pepper
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large pear (or 2 medium), any variety, peeled and cubed
2 cups homemade chicken stock, or low-sodium store-bought (I use Swanson 99% Fat Free)
1-2 Tbsp minced fresh thyme (or parsley, marjoram, chives, or a mixture), to taste
1/4 cup heavy cream (optional)

Preheat oven to 375°F. Place parsnips, onion and garlic on a rimmed baking sheet; season with salt, pepper and olive oil, and toss to coat. Roast for 30-40 minutes, or until vegetables are lightly browned. Remove pan from oven, and set aside for 10 minutes. Cut parsnips into chunks and put in a soup pot on the stove with onion, peeled garlic, pear, and chicken stock, plus water to almost cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer and cook, uncovered, until the pear is tender (15 minutes). Add herbs; cook 5 minutes more. Use an immersion blender to purée the soup in the pot (or purée in batches in a blender). Add cream if you wish. Season with sea salt and lots of freshly-ground black pepper, to taste. Serve hot, garnished with snips of fresh herbs.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Tuna Nicoise-ish
Braised fish Tunisian style
Everything-from-the-pantry bean soup
Garlic eggplant
Stir-fried garlic lettuce
Pasta puttanesca

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It's a simple idea: Bake some cookies. Invite friends and family to help decorate the cookies. Donate the cookies to an emergency shelter, food pantry, lunch program or senior center.

To learn more about Drop In & Decorate Cookies for Donation, and see lots of wonderful photos, visit www.ninecooks.com. And, throughout this week, please visit some of my favorite bloggers who are so generously helping to spread the Drop In & Decorate idea, on their own sites or elsewhere in cyberland: Nikas Culinaria, Homesick Texan, Baking and Books, Food Blogga, The Inadvertent Gardener, Jaden's Steamy Kitchen,  La Mia Cucina, One Hot Stove, 37 Days, The Cooking Adventures of Chef Paz, French Kitchen in America, Veronica's Test Kitchen, Kelly the Culinarian, shawnkenney.com, Thyme for Cooking: The Blog, Chew on That, Culinary Types, Nook & Pantry, Cookthink, Tea & Cookies, Mele Cotte, A Veggie Venture and startcooking.com.

Special thanks to Slashfood and BlogHer and Chow; please stop by and read their wonderful posts.

"Drop In & Decorate captures what I value about the holiday season: fun, togetherness, not consumer oriented, not about spending lots of money, giving to others, creating something unique and homemade." Lucia, five-year cookie decorator and icing color mixer

Parsley (Recipe: tzatziki)

Simon and Garfunkel would feel right at home in my herb garden.

I have it all: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

Can you see them in this photo?

I have lemon thyme and lemongrass, Thai basil and purple basil, chives and garlic chives too, but for some reason, I've never been able to grow dill.

Fresh herbs are an important part of The Perfect Pantry, even though they are only available from the garden for five months of the year. Of the four herbs of song, parsley will be first to go, as night temperatures begin their descent into winter. (Most of the tender basil has bid farewell for the year, though there is a fresh batch of pesto in the freezer.) It's a shame, too, because this year my parsley field produced the most glorious plants, rich in color and flavor, and, for the first time, I began to use my flat-leaf parsley not only as a garnish, but also as a valued ingredient in my cooking.

Fundamental to most cuisines of Europe and the Mediterranean area, parsley comes in two main varieties: curly, which we all know from its rampant overuse as a garnish; and flat-leaf, also called Italian or French parsley, which has the best flavor.

Rich in Vitamins A and C, and iron, parsley is a biennial herb related to celery; in fact, the word "parsley" derives from a Greek word meaning "rock celery." Native to the eastern Mediterranean region, it's cultivated in many parts of the world.  Parsley is essential to several basic sauces and garnishes, including chimichurri, gremolata, salsa verde, chermoula and persillade -- and, of course, to tabbouleh.

To store parsley, wash it and dry almost completely. Wrap the damp parsley in a paper towel, and put the bundle inside a ziploc bag. Stored that way, it will keep in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Parsley is one of those herbs I used to take for granted, but this year, when the last of the parsley succumbs to a hard frost, I will miss it.

TZATZIKI
This all-purpose yogurt sauce, adapted from a recipe our friend Greg taught to the #1 Cooking Group last night, is the perfect accompaniment to grilled lamb, chicken or salmon. It's the last hurrah for my herb garden, and a big hurrah for the two-year anniversary of one of the blog world's most enduring and endearing features, Weekend Herb Blogging, the brainchild of Kalyn's Kitchen. As the dill in my garden bolted ages ago, parsley, along with cucumbers, are the star of this show, with a bit of store-bought dill. Makes 2-1/2 cups.

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt
1 small seedless (English) cucumber, unpeeled, or 1 regular cucumber, seeded
1 Tbsp plus 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lemon
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced or grated
1 tsp minced fresh parsley
1/2 tsp minced fresh dill (or use more parsley, if there's no dill in your garden)
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Do ahead: Place yogurt in a cheesecloth-lined sieve and set it over a bowl. Grate the cucumber and toss with 1/2 teaspoon of salt; place in another sieve and set it over another bowl. Place both bowls in the refrigerator for 3 – 4 hours so the yogurt and cucumber can drain.

Transfer thickened yogurt to a large bowl. Squeeze as much liquid from the cucumber as you can, and add to the yogurt. Mix in remaining ingredients, and adjust seasonings to taste.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Frittata with broccoli and garden herbs
Vegetable paella with spicy garlic sauce
Pasta puttanesca
Tyropita (cheese-filled phyllo triangles)
French potato salad with basic vinaigrette

Fresh herbs, three bricks, one cookbook (Recipe: brick-grilled chicken thighs)

When Sunday morning starts with the ring of the telephone, you know someone, somewhere, is calling to tell you something you don't want to hear.

"I'm sick," my friend Cindy sniffled into the phone.

A summer cold, the kind that works its way through your entire body and makes you feel like jello, had taken hold, so we had to let go of our plan to spend last Sunday evening cooking together.

A few weeks ago, when Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice and Cath of A Blithe Palate invited me to join other bloggers and cook from Faith Heller Willinger's new book, Adventures of an Italian Food Lover: with recipes from 254 of my very best friends, I knew instantly which Italian food lover I'd invite to dinner. I called Cindy, not because she is my most Italian friend (she is), or because she is a professional food stylist (she is), or because she is a certified executive pastry chef (she is). And not because we have gone on several food adventures together, to an Asian supermarket in Boston and to farm stands closer to home (we have), and not even because she runs highly entertaining "insider" walking tours of Providence's Federal Hill, the most Italian neighborhood in Rhode Island (she does).

I wanted to cook for Cindy, and her husband Ken, because she makes friends wherever she goes. She knows the man who sells her pasta and proscuitto, the woman who grows giant zucchini blossoms, the ladies who bake the best pastries, and the neighbor who grows grapes in his backyard vineyard and makes wine in the garage. Food shopping, to her, is a person-to-person experience, and that is the premise of Ms. Willinger's book, too.

Choosing a menu was easy.

For four or five months each year, my garden supplies fresh herbs to The Perfect Pantry. You might not think of the garden as an extension of your pantry, but fresh herbs, like onions and garlic and salt and pepper, are essential to good cooking, and truly robust herbs, when you can find them in the grocery store, are hideously expensive. If you're lucky enough to have a little space outdoors -- a few square feet of soil, or a balcony or window box -- there is nothing more satisfying than gathering ingredients for a recipe by grabbing your nippers and heading out to harvest. And nothing does more to lift everyday food to extraordinary heights than an infusion of fresh herbs.

It's prime time in my herb garden this month, so as the centerpiece of our meal I chose Brick-Grilled Chicken Breasts or Thighs (page 123), a recipe from Lorenzo Guidi, chef at Nanamuta in Florence.

Then, Cindy and I pored through the book, and selected Ricotta-stuffed Zucchini Flowers (page 96) and Ginger Apricot Biscotti (page 64) to complete the menu.

The chicken needed to marinate overnight, so on Saturday afternoon I harvested basil, mint, rosemary, thyme, lemon thyme and sage. I chopped the herbs with lemon zest, mixed in some lemon-rosemary seasoned sea salt, and rubbed both chicken breasts and thighs with the herb mixture.

The recipe included cherry tomatoes with basil, so Ted and I decided to skip the zucchini blossoms -- too much food for two, with Cindy and Ken unable to join us -- and to cook our chicken on the grill instead of stovetop. Ted washed three bricks and wrapped them in aluminum foil. (When you live in the country, bricks, like rocks and wood and pine cones, are easy to come by.)

I worried that the marinade for the chicken did not include any oil, or any liquid at all. Would the chicken be moist? Would the herbs burn off? No cause for concern; the chicken was absolutely delicious, tender and still tasting of fresh herbs, fully cooked after less than eight minutes on the grill.

For the biscotti, Ted and I followed the recipe (oh, how I hate to measure!) and produced lovely shortcake-like cookies. Unlike traditional biscotti, these are baked just once, making them easy to throw together in just a few minutes.

I packed up some of the chicken, tomatoes and biscotti, along with the book itself (which I'd received from the nice folks at Clarkson Potter), into a little get-well-soon package for Cindy -- a small gift in exchange for the wonderful gift of her friendship.

BRICK-GRILLED CHICKEN BREASTS OR THIGHS
One of the very best chicken dishes I've made in years, this recipe, from Faith Heller Willinger's Adventures of an Italian Food Lover, takes full advantage of the abundance of fresh herbs in my garden. Of course I made a couple of changes here and there (indicated in parentheses), and added two items that I think really bumped up the lemon flavor: lemon thyme, and lemon-rosemary sea salt. Serves 4.

1 tsp fresh rosemary leaves (I used 2 tsp of all of the herbs)
1 tsp fresh sage leaves
1 tsp fresh mint leaves
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves (or half lemon thyme)
1 Tbsp fresh basil leaves (I used 2 Tbsp)
1 strip lemon zest (I used 2)
1-2 chili peppers (I used jalapeno, with the seeds and ribs removed)
1-2 garlic cloves
Fine sea salt (try this one)
4 boned chicken breasts or 6-8 boned chicken thighs (I used 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts and 5 boneless, skinless chicken thighs)
1-1/2 to 2 cups cherry tomatoes
3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil (I used 1 Tbsp)
Bricks (we needed 3 to cover all of the chicken)

Mince the rosemary, sage, mint, thyme, 1 tsp of basil, the lemon zest, as much chili pepper as desired, garlic, and 1 tsp sea salt together (you can do this by hand or in a small food processor). Sprinkle the herb mixture over the chicken, coating both sides. Put the chicken and any leftover herbs in a plastic bag or bowl to marinate in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half or quarters. Chop the remaining basil and add to the tomatoes. Season with sea salt and 1 Tbsp extra virgin oil, and set aside.

Rinse the bricks and cover with aluminum foil. Or prepare two plates, each large enough to cover a couple of pieces of chicken, and two heavy weights (cast-iron pan, pot of water, bags of beans, boxes of rice, etc. -- creativity helps). Lightly oil a ridged grill pan or a cast-iron pan large enough to hold the chicken. Place over high heat. When the pan is smoking, put the chicken in one layer and cover with the bricks or weighted plates. Turn the heat down to medium and cook the chicken for 2-4 minutes. Remove the bricks, turn the chicken over, replace the bricks, and finishing cooking for another 2-4 minutes.

(What we did: Heat a gas grill to high heat; place the chicken on the grill with the bricks on top. Close the lid. Immediately turn the grill heat to medium. Cook 4 minutes; then, turn the chicken, cover with the bricks again, put the lid down, and cook 4 minutes more, until done.)

Let the chicken rest for 3 minutes, then cut diagonally into 1/2-inch slices. Drizzle with the remaining oil (our chicken didn't need this), and serve with the tomatoes.