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.

Kecap manis (Recipe: nasi goreng/Indonesian fried rice)

An updated post from the archives, with a simpler version of the original recipe, plus new photos and links.

What does ABC mean to you?

Something fundamental, yes? A starting point. A building block.

In the world of food, ABC reminds me of two things.

First, an ABC I don't keep in the pantry: When Ted and Cousin Martin and I traveled through Malaysia, we tasted a dessert called ABC, air batu campur -- literally, "water stone mix" --  a mound of shave ice topped, improbably, with red beans, sweet corn, grass jelly and a drizzle of evaporated milk. Also called ais kacang, it looked like a kind of psychedelic sno-cone.

Second, an ABC I always have in my pantry: kecap manis, a wonderful, sweet soy sauce sold under the ABC brand and, in our house, known as "that ABC stuff in the cupboard."

The not-yet-perfect pantry: What's missing? (Recipe: white bean garlic dip)

My friend Bob sent me an email last week:

So...... what's going to be the 250th ingredient in your pantry?

I know what you're thinking.

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.

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):

Pilaf noodles (Recipe: lentil noodle soup)

Oodles of Noodles Week, Day Three. 

For years, I didn't know the proper name for pilaf noodles.

I lived down the block from a wonderful Middle Eastern market, where the owner knew me from my days as a food writer for the local newspaper. Whenever I would ask for those noodles, he knew just what I meant.

And when Ted would go to the store, I'd write pilaf noodles on his shopping list.

It wasn't until many years later that the owner of another market taught me the Arabic name: chayreyé.

Lovely, I know, but I'm kind of sweet on the name pilaf noodles, and I guess I always will be.

Barley, and a kitchen scale giveaway (Recipe: Curried mushroom, bean and barley soup)

You did.

You know you did.

You know you made the same New Year's resolutions I made: to try to learn Portuguese, and adopt a homeless cat, and give cauliflower and opera another chance, and read The New Yorker when it arrives every week instead of letting it pile up for months on the coffee table alongside cooking magazines you've been saving for a year or more but don't remember why, and eat more barley.

Why barley?

Cornmeal (Recipe: Polenta, squash and cheese loaf)

Do what I say, not what I do.

When I say store your stone-ground, super-nutritious, little-flecks-of-goodness cornmeal in the refrigerator, please do it.

If you don't, then please don't make polenta when one of the finest chefs in town is coming to your house for dinner, because you will have to throw out the whole beautiful loaf when you taste it (thank goodness you taste!) and discover that the cornmeal went a bit off as it sat in your cupboard, instead of in the fridge where it belonged.

Buckwheat groats (Recipe: vegetarian kasha varnishkes)

Two things readers ask most often about The Perfect Pantry:

Is there a list of everything in your pantry? And, why haven't you written about... (black-eyed peas, fennel pollen, porcupine noses...)?

Yes, there is a list. I don't publish it, but I've written about each ingredient in my pantry, at least once.

To be included in The Perfect Pantry, an ingredient must be something I use to make other things, which rules out Fresca, which I always have in my refrigerator, and also porcupine noses, which I can't imagine anyone would like, as well as many more palatable things that simply don't appeal to me, like black-eyed peas and fennel pollen.

Also, the ingredient must be something I use in more than one way, or that I use in one way, but over and over again.

Buckwheat groats fall into that second category. My pantry, and my childhood, would be incomplete without it.