The Perfect Pantry®

Recipe for slow cooker Thai green curry chicken with broccoli and mushrooms

When I was a little girl, I smeared everything I didn't like (liver, turkey, broccoli) with ketchup to cover up the taste. In my grown-up kitchen Thai curry paste often replaces the ketchup, not for its masking qualities but because I love almost anything cooked with it. Yes, I'll even lap up broccoli when it's cooked in a curry and coconut milk sauce. This Thai green curry chicken adapts to any vegetables you have on hand: asparagus, cauliflower, butternut squash, sweet potato. I'm partial to the Maesri and Mae Ploy brands of store-bought green curry paste, because they don't contain cilantro; both are widely available in Asian markets (they come in identical 14-ounce green tubs). Fresh basil is essential in this dish. Out-of-season Genovese basil from the supermarket tastes fine here, and Thai basil from your summer garden -- or from your local Asian grocery -- would be even better.

Slow cooker recipe for lemon-garlic chicken and white bean stew

While it's true that Rival invented the Crock-Pot®, back in 1971, the company didn't invent slow cooking. Clay pots, tagines and Dutch ovens all predate the electric slow cooker. This chicken and white bean stew springs from the French farmhouse tradition of slow cooking in a pot set into the fireplace. Today, thanks to an inexpensive piece of kitchen equipment (the slow cooker I used for this recipe cost less than $20), I can make stew without hauling in wood, building a fire, raking the embers, and lugging a heavy cast-iron Dutch oven from the kitchen to set into the hearth. Lemon and garlic create the flavor base for this healthy, naturally gluten-free stew, which, like most stews, tastes even better the second day.

Brown rice and almond pilaf recipe

Some people make fluffy, puffy, splendiferously perfect rice. I don't seem to have the gene for it. Whenever I attempt stove-top rice, I underboil, overflow the pot, or just, somehow, end up with very blah rice. My life changed forever when I bought my first rice cooker, a $19 model I found at an Asian grocery store. Since then, I've upgraded several times; my current cooker, a three-cup Microcom, makes the best rice (brown, white, jasmine, basmati, whatever you feed it), and it sings a little song when the rice is cooked. I've branched out a bit, too, and used the rice cooker to make quinoa, barley and oatmeal. This recipe for brown rice and almond pilaf, made in the rice cooker, combines typically bland brown rice with sweet caramelized onions, garlic, and toasted almonds. The rice on the bottom of the cooker develops a bit of a brown crust which, when mixed back into the rice, gives the texture of a paella. If you have a richly-flavored vegetable broth in the pantry, swap that for chicken broth to make this a vegan side dish.

Recipe for vegan butternut squash and chickpea stew

When the aroma of cinnamon fills the house, I follow my nose to the kitchen, expecting to discover muffins or baked apples in the oven. Sometimes, the intoxicating smell of cinnamon comes from something even better: a savory, Moroccan-inspired vegan butternut squash and chickpea stew in a tomato sauce infused with cinnamon and coriander. A hint of smoky-hot harissa, the assertive North African pepper paste, balances the sweetness of the squash, and seems absolutely necessary here. (Kathy, my spicy-food-averse cooking assistant, loved the gentle heat, so you know it's not too spicy.) Make this stew up to three days ahead, or freeze it; like most stews, it's even better on the second day. Serve over couscous or rice, as the centerpiece of a vegan meal, or as a side dish with grilled lamb or fish.