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.

Ginger root (Recipe: steamed fish in packets)

One horribly hot and humid day last summer, I visited my friend Julia's tiny urban garden.

I didn't go for the copious quantities of iced coffee that we both love, nor for her especially good egg salad, nor even for the effortless conversation we always enjoy.

No, what I really wanted was to dig ginger.

Julia, a chef and restaurant consultant, stores her ginger in the garden during the summer months. She digs it up when she needs a bit for cooking, breaks off a piece, then plants it back in the garden, where it continues to grow.

In the photo above, that's Julia's hand holding a "hand" of ginger, which has sent out new roots. In the front are three "fingers" of new ginger growth, brighter white than the old part, and with new green shoots coming out the top.

Onions (Recipe: salsa and shrimp stuffed avocado)

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

When I cook, I hear voices.

I hear Jacques Pepin, Diana Kennedy, Ina Garten and Martin Yan, all urging me to try, experiment, enjoy. I hear Julia Child, or Dan Aykroyd channeling Julia, encouraging me to keep going, even if what I'm creating looks like a googly mess.

When I cook Cajun, I hear Justin Wilson. A humorist, storyteller, and talented home cook who spent the first part of his career as a safety engineer inspecting warehouses in South Louisiana, he hosted a cooking show on public television thirty years ago, long before the rest of the country had heard of etoufeé and andouille.

From Justin Wilson I learned about the Cajun trinity, the basic flavorings that start every soup and stew: celery, bell pepper, and onion. What he actually said was SEL-ray, bell PEP-pah, and un-NYUANH, way up in the nasal back of his throat, and whenever I make anything that begins with the trinity, I hear his voice.

Pickling spice (Recipe: countertop dill pickles)

In New York City, where I was born, half-sour pickles and pickled green tomatoes grace every table at every delicatessen for every meal, including breakfast. My grandmother made the world's best pickled lox. A friend's grandmother made pickled eggs, and pickled beets.

I never felt the urge to pickle anything until, back in the 1990s, I acquired a used copy of The Victory Garden Cookbook. The book is organized by vegetable — clever! — so I began to flip through: asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, celery. And then I arrived at cucumbers, with the most beautiful photograph of perfect little Kirbys floating in an antique glass Planters Peanuts jar, enveloped by fresh dill weed, cloves of garlic, and pickling spice.