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.

Canola oil (Recipe: potatoes with aioli dressing)

In the kitchen where I grew up, oil was oil.

Not flax seed, safflower, truffle or rice bran.

Not virgin, and certainly not extra virgin.

Oil was vegetable oil, a healthier alternative to the traditional chicken fat, and a pareve (neither milk nor meat) staple, in my grandmother's kosher kitchen.

And canola oil?

Hadn't even been invented yet.

Kosher salt (Recipe: roasted asparagus with manchego cheese)

Updated from the archives, with new photos, links and recipe.

 

Is kosher salt just another flaky food fashion?

Is it saltier than table salt, better for health or baking or taste?

Is all kosher salt the same?

Is it even kosher?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Dry bread crumbs, and a cookbook giveaway (Recipe: baked cherry tomatoes)

Since the age of seven or so, I've worn eyeglasses.

As a little kid, I hated them, and when I reached high school, I couldn't wait to get contact lenses. But in college, the combination of my night job and early-morning classes made it difficult to pry my eyes open and put the contacts in every morning.

So, reluctantly, I went back to glasses. I had one pair, which began to bore me after a week or so, and I shoved them on my nose every day and never gave them a second thought.

One day, my mother said to me, Glasses are just a fashion accessory. You have more than one jacket, why not more than one pair of glasses?

Aha!

Accessories -- like a colorful scarf or red Birkenstocks, Lego cufflinks or a bug bra -- dress up whatever they're with, and in cooking, that's exactly what dry bread crumbs do.

Oregano (Recipe: "poor little eggplants")

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

In the 1960s, I was in high school, and I was cool.

I had long hair, bell-bottom pants, love beads. I listened to Phil Ochs, played guitar, marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. I edited the school newspaper, where I published Lawrence Ferlinghetti poems and artsy photos of trees.

On Saturdays, I worked at a "real" job on the city's big-time newspaper, where I learned to write obituaries and a consumer help column ("My clothes dryer exploded and the store where I bought it won't take it back. Can you help?").

And I smoked oregano. Once.

A friend gave it to me as a joke, and we decided to try it. (I admit that I tried the other stuff, too, and yes, I inhaled.)

If I'd been a cook, instead of a trying-to-be-hip high school kid, I would have put that oregano to much better use.

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.

Urfa pepper, a Pantry Special (Recipe: roasted vegetables with yogurt and fresh tomato sauce)

Pantry Specials are great ingredients that find their way into my pantry from time to time, but not all the time. In this occasional series of short posts, you'll find information and recipes for foods that might not be on your local supermarket's shelves, but are available online.

An interesting and limited-production pepper from Turkey, urfa pepper (also known as urfa biber) is similar to, but a bit hotter than, Aleppo pepper. Cultivated in the town of Urfa, near the Syrian border, the peppers are picked, dried in the sun by day, then wrapped and sweated at night for more than a week. This sweating process gives the chile (which is actually a bit more purple-brown than it appears in my photo) a rich, earthy taste and smoky aroma, and a flavor that hints of raisins. Urfa peppers have a moderate heat level; the heat develops more slowly than what we in Rhode Island call pizza pepper, but a little faster and with more sharpness than Aleppo pepper.

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."

Curry powder, and a spice rack giveaway (Recipe: curried green tomatoes)

On my very first spice rack, in my very first apartment, the most exotic tin, rectangular and red and gold all over, held Madras curry powder.

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

You probably have a tin just like it on your spice rack.

Though I'm 25 or 30 tins down the road from my first spice rack, the tin in my pantry today is exactly the same as the first one: Sun Brand Madras Curry Powder, imprinted with seals of approval so tiny you can't possibly read them, from organizations (or expositions, or governments) you need a microscope to identify. A silver medal from St. Louis 1904 must be from the World's Fair, but whoever bestowed a gold medal from London 1905, the most recent prize listed on the tin, remains a mystery.

However, what's not a mystery is why this particular spice blend is sold in supermarkets everywhere.

Curry powder is the ultimate convenience food.