The Perfect Pantry®

Recipe for bok choy stir-fry with ginger and garlic

When I'm lucky enough to get to an Asian market (the closest is nearly 20 miles away), I steer my cart right to the produce aisles to stock up on things the grocery store in my village doesn't carry: choy sum, lemongrass, fresh bean sprouts, and my favorite baby bok choy, a miniature Chinese cabbage. You can make this stir-fry with grown-up bok choy, by trimming the head through the root into smaller wedges, but if you can find the babies, you'll love the sweeter flavor and more delicate texture. Choose heads with either white or a pale green stalks; the taste is the same, so buy whichever color coordinates with the rest of your dinner. This recipe utilizes one of my lazy-girl techniques for wok cooking: pan steaming, the same method used to make potstickers. Rather than blanching the bok choy in a separate pot, I stir-fry in the wok, then toss in a small amount of water and slap a lid on to catch the steam. The tender baby bok choy heads cook quickly this way, while absorbing the flavors of the sauce -- and I only have to wash one pan.

Recipe for oven-roasted carrots

True confession: I don't love cooked carrots. I like them raw, crunchy, dipped into something like hummus or ranch dressing. Cooked carrots don't float my boat. Post-Thanksgiving I discovered an unopened two-pound bag wedged in the back of my refrigerator. I thought about sending those carrots straight to the compost pile, but instead I decided to try cooking them the way I cook potatoes: tossed in a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted until their natural sweetness came to the surface and formed a little bit of a crust. Know what? It worked! Call them carrot home fries, if that makes sense: soft on the inside, crusty on the outside, with just enough salt. These oven-roasted carrots are truly the best cooked carrots I've ever tasted.

Winter squash panzanella recipe

Panzanella, a rustic Italian salad, transforms stale bread into the most desirable mate for ripe tomatoes (and their juices), onions, olives and basil. My garden gave up on tomatoes and basil a couple of months ago, but I always seem to have some leftover bread on hand. In this winter squash panzanella, I paired sweet roasted acorn squash with sautéed red onions, pecans, and a bit of feta. A bright sherry vinaigrette brings it all together, and the roasted squash seeds complete the dish. Remember that this salad begins with leftovers, so substitute freely with any roasted vegetables you have on hand. And if you don't have any stale bread, cut what you do have into cubes and dry it in the oven for 15 minutes before adding to the salad.

Recipe for red quinoa, beet and pecan salad with pomegranate-orange vinaigrette

Honestly, I had my holiday menu all figured out until two things happened to change the plan. I learned that one of our guests is a vegan, and I found both red rice and red quinoa at a gourmet shop a few weeks ago. Red! Vegan! Slight adjustment to a couple of recipes. Not a problem, as the menu already accommodates vegetarians and diabetics, along with a few picky eaters among the ten-and-under set. I can't wait to serve this bright red -- beet red -- quinoa, beet and pecan salad as part of my Thanksgiving buffet, to inject a shot of color and bright flavor into a meal that's so often overwhelmingly brown. While this dish isn't at all hard to put together, it's a zillion times easier if you use those lovely pre-cooked (not canned) beets in the produce section of your supermarket or Trader Joe's.