The Perfect Pantry

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.

The Perfect Pantry's spice rack: 58 essential ingredients (and we turn three today)

Three spices added to my pantry in the past year.

I believe in karma.

I really do.

I believe in parking karma. My husband Ted has it, an uncanny ability to find a space for his car, even in the most crowded city on the most crowded day. Me? Can't snag a parking space in an empty lot.

I believe in shopping karma. When you find what you're looking for on your first stop of the day, your day's errands will be successful.

I believe that when three readers, three days in a row, ask for a list of the spices in my pantry, the universe is trying to tell me something. Call it blog karma.

Today is the three-year anniversary of The Perfect Pantry, and I'm celebrating with three posts this week about everything in my pantry. It's the first time I've ever published a list of all of the items that have permanent resident status in my spice rack, cupboards, fridge and freezer.

Sea salt (Recipe: Schlottz's knots)

A week of ingredients featured in kid-friendly recipes from the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook by Georgeanne Brennan. Welcome to Dr. Seuss Week, Day One.

Here's the kind of question Dr. Seuss would have loved:

If the sea is blue, why is sea salt white, or grey, or pink?

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?

Syrian spice, a Pantry Special (Recipe: chicken shish kabob)

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. 

Syrian spice, Syrian allspice, Arabic spice, baharat: what's in a name? The basic ingredients in the Syrian version of this popular North African spice blend -- black peppercorns, allspice berries, cinnamon and nutmeg -- can be enhanced with a bit of sumac, cumin, cardamom, cassia or cinnamon, paprika, cloves, rose petals, dried lime, saffron or mint. A rich and peppery (spicy, not hot) mix, Syrian spice makes a delicious rub for grilled chicken, or the base of a flavorful dip for roasted vegetables. My local Middle Eastern market blends its own, letting the pungent, complex flavor of allspice take center stage. I love it.

Ground black pepper, and a cookbook giveaway (Recipe: chocolate double ginger cupcakes)

On my list of 23 pantry items you absolutely, positively, have to have, black pepper sits at #3.

Now that I think about it, pepper should be #1. Tied with salt.

Because salt and pepper are an item.

Whoever first paired salt and pepper was a genius, like the person who cast Ginger Rogers with Fred Astaire, or Doris Day with Rock Hudson. Or the person who discovered that chocolate always tastes better with a tiny bit of vanilla.

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.

Fennel seed (Recipe: potato and swordfish tortino)

If you grew up in Rhode Island, or spend your summers on the beaches here, you know certain things about food.

You know about stuffies and doughboys, jonnycakes and dynamites. You know a coffee cabinet from a kitchen cabinet. You know that an Awful Awful® isn't awful at all.

And you know pizza sausage, the kind of Italian sausage crumbled onto pizzas everywhere around here, the kind of sausage that gets its traditional flavor from fennel seed.

You might not know, though it is true, that Italian-sausage manufacturers are the major end users for most of the world supply of fennel seed.

Thank goodness they save some for the rest of us.

Cayenne pepper (Recipe: Bob's smoky beef ribs)

Twenty-five years ago, the City of Boston planted a tree in a hole in the brick sidewalk in front of our house.

Every dog in the neighborhood loved, and I do mean loved, that little sapling.

To discourage the gifts those dogs left us (in the days before pooper-scooping was mandatory), we sprinkled cayenne pepper on the ground at the base of the tree. Every so often we'd hear a little sneeze... and we'd watch a very surprised puppy move along, to find a kinder and gentler tree hole.

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.