The Perfect Pantry

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.

Ro*Tel (Recipe: Tex-Mex turkey lasagne)

Nothing takes the chill off rainy days in April better than food inspired by the flavors of Mexico. Welcome to Olé Olé Week, Day One.

Back in November 2008, just after the election, I wrote about the heartbreak of living in a country still divided -- not by politics, but by Ro*Tel®.

Yes, I wrote, I live in a blue state.

Blue, as in singing the blues. As in woe-is-us, no Ro*Tel blues.

In my local supermarket, I found a substitute, diced tomatoes with green chiles, made by an Italian foods manufacturer. Not Ro*Tel, but close enough. I bought a couple of cans for the pantry and resigned myself to a life of deprivation.

The following week, as I cruised the aisles in my local grocery store, I spied a pile of cans on the top shelf in the canned vegetable section -- yellow cans jumping out from the sea of red-tomato-colored labels.

Chickpeas (Recipe: Chickpeas with sausage and peppers)

What the heck is a chickpea?

Does it have anything to do with chickens? Is it even a pea?

Were chickpeas (cicer arietum in Latin) named after a rather unattractive wart on Roman philosopher Cicero's nose, or was Cicero, born with a less-than-perfect nose, named after the chickpea?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Kamut (Recipe: warm salad of kamut, cranberries and feta)

Thanks to a recent pantry-shopping challenge from fellow food blogger TW Barritt of Culinary Types, I've fallen in love with Kamut®.

Here are ten things I know about this grain (you'll be glad to know them, too):

Pine nuts (Recipe: penne with roasted red pepper pesto)

When I look out the window in front of my desk, I see pine trees.

And out the kitchen window? Pine trees.

And from the windows in the living room, bedroom, porch? Pines, pines, pines.

Pine trees everywhere, but not a single pine nut to eat.

How is that possible?

Quinoa (Recipe: quinoa salad with tomato, feta and parsley)

People often ask me what's coming up in the pantry: what's hot, what's not, what's going to be the new must-have ingredient.

What do I tell these seekers of wisdom, these trendsetters who think I am one of them? I run to my pantry and pull out my crystal ball.

Okay, it's not really a crystal ball; it's a Magic 8 ball.

My Magic 8 ball is old, so the little words are fading, but it is still wise. When I asked, "Will quinoa be the next big ingredient?" my Magic 8 ball responded, "Signs point to yes."

Saffron (Recipe: pie-ella, improved)

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

Ground beef, and a summer cookout giveaway (Recipe: burgers)

If there's really a hamburger heaven, please save a seat for me.

I'm an unapologetic burger lover.

I love them all: the fat ones and the flat ones, sit-down or drive-through, blue cheese or Swiss cheese, buns with seeds or no buns at all. Slather on some ketchup -- that's all I ask.

Ground beef always has a home in The Perfect Pantry, not just for burgers, but for stuffed zucchini with brown rice, beef enchiladas, horseradish meatloaf, puffy tacos, Persian meat patties, Argentinean empanadas, Beijing sauce noodles, Thai meatballs and Greek meatballs and spaghetti and meatballs.

Did you know that there's a difference between ground beef and hamburger? According to the US Department of Agriculture, beef fat may be added to hamburger, but not to ground beef, whether the meat is ground and packaged at a USDA-inspected plant or in your local market (as is often the case). A maximum of 30 percent fat by weight is allowed in either hamburger or ground beef. Both can have seasonings, but no added water, phosphates, extenders, or binders.

For most cooking, like stews and stuffings, I buy the leanest ground beef I can find, as lean as 93/7 (which has 7 percent fat). For burgers, a fattier mix like 80/20 will produce a juicier burger. Follow your heart, or your cardiologist's dictates, to decide how much fat is fine for you.

-----------------

Roseda Farm in Monkton, Maryland, wants to send some all-natural burger love into the universe, and they have a wonderful Summer Cookout Kit giveaway for one lucky reader of The Perfect Pantry:

• 20 six-ounce steakburgers, and delicious potato buns.
• A nifty grill spatula.
• A Meat 101 kit, with information, cooking tips, and a handy meat grilling timetable.

Roseda raises Black Angus cattle on a diet of corn, hay, soybean meal, vitamins, minerals and fresh water. No growth hormones, no artificial coloring, no fillers. The beef is dry-aged for up to 21 days, and then flash-frozen.

When the Roseda folks kindly sent a few steakburger patties for us to test, Ted and I wondered -- would our grandsons love these burgers? Would we? Oh yes, we did. And so did our friends Bob and Charlotte. In fact, we're looking forward to trying several of the more than 25 cuts of beef, steaks and roasts, that Roseda sells on their web site.

All you need to do to be eligible to win the free Summer Cookout Kit is leave a comment on any post on this site between now and 11:00 p.m. Eastern US Time on Friday, August 15. 

Next Saturday, one of the young "random generators" pictured above will pull one comment out of a hat, or maybe a bowl, or a pillowcase. The kit will be shipped to you (or as a gift to anyone you designate) directly from Roseda Beef, by overnight mail, absolutely free. Note: they can only ship meat to addresses within the US.

So, go ahead, leave a comment -- why not share your favorite way to dress your burgers?

I'll save a seat for you, right next to me, in hamburger heaven.

 

HOW TO COOK A BURGER, THE ROSEDA WAY
I was too embarrassed to write a recipe for how to cook a burger. Really, you know how, don't you? Then I decided to follow the instructions that came with my Roseda Steakburgers. I was skeptical; I'd never grilled burgers straight from the freezer before. I'd never gone flip, flip, flip before. But the burgers we made were so delicious that I had to share the instructions with you (notes in parentheses indicate where we deviated a bit, as you knew we would).

Take the burgers straight from your freezer to the grill. (Note: the burgers were a generous half-inch thick.)

Preheat your grill (gas or charcoal) on a medium heat for 5-10 minutes.

3,3,3,2,2,1: Cook your burger for three minutes, flip, and cook for another three minutes, and then flip and cook for another three. Flip two more times, cooking for two minutes on each side. And then finish it off by cooking for one more minute. This should give you a medium-well to well-done burger. (After following those directions on the first batch, and coming up with a very well-done burger, we tried 3,3,3,2, and achieved medium-rare to medium. If you're making a cheeseburger, add your cheese in the last 30-45 seconds.)

Hold the ketchup: There's no reason to add anything but salt and pepper. (I wouldn't think of holding the ketchup, or the cheese. We didn't salt and pepper the burgers, either; they were quite flavorful as is, and we're not really big on salting our food. And there's salt in the ketchup.)

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Rotini with spicy meat sauce
Lydia's own meat sauce
Chipotle meatloaf
Beef stir fry with bitter melon
Peruvian spicy string beans
Tex-Mex penne

Balsamic vinegar (Recipe: mango-mint gazpacho)

You're not going to believe me when I tell you there is no balsamic vinegar in The Perfect Pantry.

Of course there is, you will say.

You write about balsamic vinegar all the time, you'll point out. And look at the label on the bottle. It says balsamic vinegar. Of Modena. It-a-ly.

You won't be wrong, exactly, but you won't be absolutely correct, either.

Every year, only 3,000 or so bottles of true balsamic vinegar are designated aceto balsamico tradizionale and given the Denominazione di Origine Protetta (D.O.P.), the seal of authenticity from the consortia of Modena and Reggio Emilia.

Each of those 3,000 bottles has aged for a minimum of 12 years, many for 25 up to 100 years.

True balsamico is made not from wine, but from unfermented Trebbiano grape pressings, boiled down to a dark syrup. The syrup is placed into oak kegs, along with a "mother" or starter, usually a bit of previously aged balsamico. As it ages, the vinegar is decanted to smaller and smaller kegs made of a variety of woods -- chestnut, cherry, ash, mulberry, and juniper -- each of which adds character and flavor to the vinegar. Over time, moisture evaporates from the kegs, thickening the vinegar and concentrating the taste.

The resulting vinegar, the true tradizionale, proudly carries the D.O.P. mark on the label. And it doesn't sell for $6.99. (If you want to taste the real thing, without mortgaging your home to buy a bottle, try this lovely little sampler from Zingerman's. Or mortgage the house for this.)

What we outside Italy call balsamic vinegar is often really balsamic condiment, a blend of grape must and red wine vinegar. (See the label? No D.O.P. No tradizionale.) In Italy, this would be called condimento. The quality varies from maker to maker, depending on the quality and blend of grape must and wine vinegar used.

This is the balsamic to use for cooking, and, if it's a very good condimento like my favorite Rubio, to use on salad, with strawberries, on bruschetta, on beets, or drizzled on chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

MANGO-MINT GAZPACHO
A fruity twist on the classic summer soup. Serves 8-10.

2 slices of day-old Italian bread, crusts removed
3-4 large tomatoes, very ripe, cut into chunks
1-2 Kirby (pickling) cucumbers, seeded, cut into chunks
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 green bell pepper, seeded, cut into chunks
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded, cut into chunks
1 red bell pepper, seeded, cut into chunks
1 ripe mango, peeled, cut into chunks
2 tsp mint leaves, chopped (or more to taste)
1/4 cup basil leaves, chopped
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 cup V-8 juice
Black pepper, to taste
2-3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, optional

Tear bread into chunks and soak in cold water for 1 minute. Remove, and squeeze out the water. Add bread to a large stainless steel bowl, along with next 10 ingredients. Using an immersion blender (or in batches in a regular blender), puree the mixture until it is a pleasing soup-like consistency, but still with distinct bits of vegetables. Add balsamic, V-8 juice and black pepper, to taste. Stir in the olive oil. Cover and chill for at least 1 hour, or overnight, to allow flavors to mingle. Serve cold.

Also in The Perfect Pantry:
Gazpacho
Chilled asparagus soup
Slow-roasted tomato bruschetta
Smoky spicy salad dressing
No-cook summer antipasto

Spike seasoning (Recipe: grilled chicken salad)

Helmut Eugen Benjamin Gellert Hauser must have had the world's most perfect pantry.

How else could he have concocted the latest addition to my own pantry -- his famous Spike seasoning -- which combines 39 ingredients (Really. 39. Can you count them in the photograph?):

Salt and sea salt crystals, special high potency non-active nutritional yeast grown on beet molasses, hydrolyzed vegetable protein (the box says NO ADDED MSG, but we'll come back to this), mellow toasted onion, onion powder, orange powder, soy flour, celery leaf powder, celery root powder, garlic powder, dill, kelp, Indian curry, horseradish, ripe white pepper, orange and lemon peel, summer savory, mustard flower, sweet green and red peppers, parsley flakes, tarragon, rosehips, saffron, mushroom powder, parsley powder, spinach powder, tomato powder, sweet Hungarian paprika, celery powder, cayenne pepper, Greek oregano, French sweet basil, French marjoram, French rosemary, and Spanish thyme.

Gayelord Hauser, as he was known, was a German-born naturopath, nutritionist to the stars, and, it's rumored, more-than-a-friend of Greta Garbo.

As a teenager, he moved to the United States, and shortly afterwards contracted tuberculosis. Sent to Sweden to be treated by a monk who used herbal and dietary cures, Hauser made a full recovery, and upon his return to the US, embarked on the study of "food science." He's best known as the author of Look Younger; Live Longer, published in 1950 way ahead of the eat-to-live curve. Though he died in 1984, Hauser's seasonings have been manufactured in Wisconsin by Modern Products Inc. for more than 50 years.

Available in supermarkets and online (the 7-ounce box sells for $4.99), Spike comes in salt-free and flavored blends -- garlic, lemon pepper, hot and spicy -- and adds awesome flavor and instant umami to cottage cheese and egg breakfast muffins, turkey meatloaf, poutine, garlic shrimp stir fry and spicy chickpeas, beef and cilantro.

Though the package says NO ADDED MSG, Spike does contain hydrolyzed vegetable protein, which is a form of glutamic acid, or monosodium glutamate. (To learn more, read this article and this one and this one.)

I am one of those people who turns beet red in Chinese restaurants that cook with MSG, but I love Spike, and I haven't had an MSG reaction when I've used it. Doesn't mean the MSG isn't there, just that the amount of it used at any one time is miniscule and doesn't seem to affect me.

What does affect me is flavor, and the flavor is great. I'll be using this all-purpose seasoning on grilled foods, eggs, veggies, and in salad dressings all summer. Thanks, Kalyn, for introducing Spike to my pantry.

GRILLED CHICKEN SALAD
When friends drop in unexpectedly, toss this chicken salad with some Dreamfields rotini and grilled asparagus to make a complete meal. Serves 4.

1-1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 Tbsp Spike seasoning
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
2 tsp olive oil
1/4 cup mayonnaise or Miracle Whip
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp fresh thyme leaf
1/4 cup chopped celery

Trim the fat from the chicken breasts, and place on a platter. Sprinkle on both sides with Spike and ground pepper. Drizzle on the olive oil, and turn to coat. Set aside.

Heat a grill to high heat. Cook the chicken breasts for 4 minutes per side, or until cooked through. Remove from grill and set aside.

While the chicken is cooling, combine mayonnaise, mustard and thyme leaf in a large mixing bowl. Add the chopped celery. Chop the chicken breasts, and add to the bowl. Toss to combine. Serve warm or chilled, in a sandwich or salad, with or without pasta.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Curried orzo chicken salad
Brick-grilled chicken breasts
Curried shrimp and pasta salad
Roasted pepper chicken