The Perfect Pantry®

Mexican red corn bread recipe

When we wrote Rhode Island Recipes: Creative, healthy cooking with iconic local foods, Jennifer of Savor the Thyme and I didn't fully appreciate one of the perks: the opportunity to meet all of the food producers in the book, and to learn about new products, sometimes before they hit the market. Kenyon's Grist Mill isn't new -- they've been grinding grains on their Rhode Island site since 1696 -- but their red corn meal is new to me. I adapted a recipe from the Kenyon's site for this Mexican red corn bread. It's a rustic pan bread, lumpy and bumpy with chopped green chile peppers and whole corn kernels (I used frozen, fire-roasted corn). If you like your corn bread on the sweet side, add an additional tablespoon of sugar, as the original recipe suggests. You can substitute yellow, blue or white finely ground corn meal, or purchase Kenyon's red corn meal online or at their mill shop here in Rhode Island.

Kosher salt (Recipe: Moroccan eggplant salad)

First published in May 2007, this updated ingredient post features new photos, link, and tweaks to the recipe. The eggplant salad, taught to me by a neighbor who grew up in Morocco and owned our local dry cleaning shop, is perfect for summer, when both eggplant and tomatoes come straight from the garden.

Is kosher salt, the darling of chefs and cookbook authors, 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.

Zucchini ribbon salad recipe, and a brand new e-book

What have you been up to for the past couple of months? I've been putting together an e-book to help you survive the annual zucchini invasion.

23 ZUCCHINI: FAST, FUN, EASY RECIPES FROM THE PERFECT PANTRY® KITCHEN includes, yes, 23 recipes (17 of them brand new, the rest updated favorites) for how to cook zucchini with some of the great pantry ingredients I know you have in your cupboards and spice rack.

Recipe for spinach salad with bell pepper, olives, feta, and pine nuts

Remember when spinach salad meant warm bacon dressing and chopped hard-cooked eggs, and we all loved it and felt oh-so-sophisticated when we ordered it at a café? Did you know (I didn't) that spinach salad, an adaptation of a German dish of dandelion greens with a bacon-vinegar dressing, probably originated in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and not in the kitchen of a French chef? These days, when it comes to spinach salad, there are no rules, as this version with bell pepper, olives, feta cheese and pine nuts proves. There are a few secrets to making great salads that draw on ingredients in your pantry, and they all come down to this: be fearless! Combine unlikely ingredients, using whatever's in season. Take a sauce you'd made for pasta, or a chutney, and thin it with some water to make a salad dressing. Don't be afraid of color. If you don't have baby spinach for this salad, pluck a few lettuce leaves from your garden. And if you don't have good feta, try ricotta salata or another salty cheese.