The Perfect Pantry

Artificial sweetener (Recipe: asparagus, nectarine and tomato salad)

Some pantry ingredients make life worth living.

Others make life livable.

In the first group: chocolate, balsamic vinegar, parmigiano-reggiano.

In the second group: Fresca, fat-free yogurt, artificial sweetener.

A gourmet ingredient it is not, but in a household of dieters and diabetics, artificial sweetener is our reality.

Sherry vinegar (Recipe: bread salad with roasted tomato vinaigrette)

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

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.

Sriracha sauce (Recipe: Asian broccoli slaw)

When I open the refrigerator, I need to see certain things in the shelves in the door, in order to know that the universe is in order.

I need to see Dijon mustard and yellow ball-park mustard, and several types of soy sauce, and oyster sauce, and chili paste with garlic. I also need to see orange marmalade, tubes of tomato paste and harissa, and capers.

I absolutely need to see that non-mayonnaise sandwich spread I love, and ketchup from the nice people from Pennsylvania. And Fresca. Of course.

And there must be Sriracha sauce.

Tea (Recipe: "smoked" egg salad)

Please welcome Kim, who with this post joins The Perfect Pantry as guest blogger. Kim lives in Pasadena, California; she is the business manager for a local farmers market, and also the Friday cook for a nonprofit organization that gathers donated food from various locations, and makes and serves meals to the homeless. This is her first-ever blog post.

Guest post and photos by Kim in Pasadena, California

Many years ago, one of the rites of passage into womanhood was "going to tea" with my friends.

Back then, the really haute-couture department stores had their own tearooms for ladies to rest after a day's shopping. My mother would sometimes take me to tea so I would learn the proper way for a lady to act and dress.

Just about the time I came of age for tea parties, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and (for me) Jethro Tull swept me off to wilder places that were unencumbered by rules and roles. I couldn't really see going to tea in bell-bottoms and a tube top!

Anchovy paste (Recipe: Caesar salad with shrimp)

Updated from the archives, with new photos, links, and a quick version of a classic recipe.

When a recipe calls for anchovies, do you wrinkle your nose, give a little shudder, and quickly skip to the next page in the cookbook?

Or, do you love anchovies, but always end up with half a can hiding in the back of the fridge, turning into another life form altogether by the time you remember it's there?

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to anchovy paste in a tube.

Anise seed (Recipe: beet and fennel salad)

When I first moved to Rhode Island, and was still learning the ropes, I asked a teenager working in the produce department in our town's grocery store if he had any fennel.

"What's that?" he replied, with the blankest of blank stares.

"Fennel," I tried again. "It's a vegetable, looks kind of like bok choy, with green stalks on top..."

Another customer came to my aid. "Oh," she explained to the grocery kid, "she means anise."

Anise. That's the way it is, here. Fennel is anise.

So I wondered: if fennel is anise, is fennel seed the same as anise seed?

Mayonnaise (Recipes: homemade mayonnaise and egg salad)

Guest post by Julia in Cambridge. Photos by David.

Every Saturday lunch when I was growing up, my mother made chicken sandwiches with the leftover roast chicken and challah from our Friday night Shabbat dinner. She slathered the bread with mayonnaise mixed with mustard.

On Tuesday nights, she served steamed artichokes or asparagus. And to entice my sister and me into eating our vegetables, she put out little dishes of mayonnaise mixed with ketchup. If the adage were true, that “you are what you eat,” I’d have been a bulbous, blue-lidded jar of Hellmann’s. 

Of course, I didn’t realize mayonnaise came in any other form than from a jar. Until I went to cooking school. There, I learned to make mayo by hand, from scratch: starting with 12 egg yolks and a spoonful of mustard in a bowl.

Extra virgin olive oil (Recipe: tangerine and feta salad)

When I think back to how I lost my extra virginity, I have to laugh.

Confronted with so many choices of extra virgin olive oil at my favorite Italian market in Boston, I panicked, grabbed one bottle off the shelf, and fled with my ignorance.

Thirty years later, drafting a program of cooking classes to host in my Rhode Island kitchen, I added "Olive Oil Tasting" to my list. Why not, I thought, sample oils from Spain, Greece, Australia and the United States, as well as from Italy? Why not, I thought, compare color, aroma and viscosity?

Why not, indeed.

Why didn't I think of that years ago?

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):