The Perfect Pantry

Harissa (Recipe: Moroccan carrot salad)

An updated post from 2006, with a new recipe, photos and links.

The chile peppers on the can gave it away.

Before I even knew what harissa was, I knew it was hot.

Head-sweating, hair-tingling, tongue-numbing, nose-dripping hot.

And I love hot.

Cashews (Recipe: Muhammara, a pomegranate, pepper and nut spread)

Sometimes you feel like a nut.

Sometimes you don't.

Sometimes you feel like a peanut, walnut, pine nut, or even an almond, but sometimes you feel like a cashew, and nothing else will do.

Even though it's not a nut.

Recipes for a food-filled holiday weekend

Cousin Ben celebrates his birthday this weekend -- and Brazil celebrates its own independence-from-Portugal day on September 7 -- so we're planning a festive birthday dinner for Ben and for Brazil at the Pousada do Capão.

If we were at home in Rhode Island this weekend, we'd be cooking up a festive meal, too. Unofficially, Labor Day weekend marks the end of "the season", and it's an all-out, traditional American feast.

Out come the Barbecue Bibles, the smokers, the chimney lighters. Hundreds of thousands of hamburgers sizzle on grills everywhere. Chickens cook under bricks, alongside hot dogs and brats, ears of corn and onion rings, and racks of ribs basted with sweet, smoky sauce.

Cole slaw and potato salad, macaroni and pasta salad, are de rigeur, and in New England, there are beans. Always beans.

If you're still working on your holiday menu, try some of these favorite recipes from The Perfect Pantry, each updated with a one-page, printer-friendly version.

White vinegar (Recipe: half-sour dill pickles)

If rice vinegar comes from rice, and red wine vinegar comes from red wine, and cider vinegar comes from apples, where does white vinegar come from?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Fish sauce (Recipe: Thai beef salad)

You watched it, didn't you? The finale of The Next Food Network Star?

Somewhat predictably, the judges selected the mother-of-four whose show could have broad appeal in these challenging economic times. But I was pulling for the other guy, the one who didn't win, the one Alton Brown dubbed The Ingredient Smuggler.

The one most likely to do an entire episode about salty, smelly, absolutely indispensable fish sauce.

Orzo, and other small pasta (Recipe: cold curried orzo)

Poor orzo.

Compared to the other small, stubby pastas, with lyrical names like ditalini (little thimbles), annelini (little rings), acini de pepe (little beads), tubettini (little tubes), tripolini (little bows) and stelline (little stars), orzo sounds so... well, so pedestrian.

It definitely needs another syllable or two to fit in with the other pastas, but in taste, texture, and versatility, orzo (which means "barley" in Italian) leads the pack.

Frozen chicken breasts (Recipe: chicken with mango barbecue sauce)

Adapted, in part, from an archived post, with new recipe, photos and links.

Today I'm planning to bare my breasts.

Fear not, my breasts are absolutely G-rated, and they are an essential part of my culinary arsenal. More than any other food product, boneless, skinless frozen chicken breasts are the save-my-bacon ingredient I turn to week in and week out, whether I need to create a meal in a hurry or I'm cooking for a crowd.

Preserved lemons (Recipe: Couscous salad with herbs)

In the deep recesses of my pantry, large wire racks hold the cookware I don't use every day: three stacks of dim-sum size bamboo steamers, two orange mini coquettes, a plastic box of sushi-making gear, a handful of Bundt pans, three paella pans, one red cast iron karahi, and six conical-topped tagines.

Before the day I bought, on super-dooper sale, my first tagine in a tiny store that was going out of business, I knew nothing about Moroccan cooking. The shop owner included one of her favorite recipes for a traditional chicken and olive stew.

One of the ingredients listed was preserved lemons. I had no idea what they were and asked whether I could substitute fresh lemons instead.

No, no! she replied. The preserved lemons are absolutely essential.

One taste, and I knew just what she meant.

Raisins (Recipe: spinach, golden raisin and parmesan tart)

 

Guest post and photos by Peter in Brazil, chef and co-owner of Pousada do Capão

Raisins were an integral ingredient in my New England culinary upbringing. The California Sun Maid was a pantry icon, on a par with the original 1950’s versions of Vermont Maid, Betty Crocker, the Campbell's twins, Uncle Ben, and Aunt Jemima before their numerous plastic surgeries.

The brown bread that accompanied our favorite hot dogs and beans on Saturday night (i.e., bath night) had to have raisins. My father always threw a handful into the breakfast cream of wheat. Hermits weren’t hermits unless studded with those plump, sweet beauties. And nothing was better than snacking right from the box.

In my innocence, though, I knew nothing of the exotic pleasures of golden raisins.

Cannellini beans (Recipe: cannellini vinaigrette)

In 1988, the City of Boston, Massachusetts, unveiled Scheme Z, a series of bridges designed to cross the Charles River as part of a major highway relocation through the center of the city.

Whoever decided to call the bridge Scheme Z -- scheme anything -- was no marketing genius. Scheme Z became the rallying point for every community group that opposed the construction project. Nobody liked the implication that somehow the government was scheming to push through this design.

Today, the beautiful and architecturally distinctive Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, carrying the new roadway across the river, defines the Boston skyline.

What's in a name?

White bean doesn't really get me going.

Cannellini bean sounds exotic, interesting, and... well, romantic.