The Perfect Pantry

Nutella®, a Pantry Special (recipe: banana or strawberry quesadillas)

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.

When I suggested to my pastry chef friend Cindy that we make Nutella® quesadillas for dessert last week, she asked, "Italian Nutella or Canadian Nutella?" I had no idea what she meant, but a bit of research turned up the answer. Though the Ferrero corporation owns the trademark, the actual chocolate-hazelnut-skim-milk spread made in Italy since the 1940s is not the same product made in Canada and imported to America for the past twenty years. Canadian Nutella contains more chocolate and more sugar, and less hazelnut, than the Italian original. You'll find Nutella on the supermarket shelf with peanut butter, which makes sense; it tastes enough like chocolate peanut butter that I'm sure Elvis would have loved to spread it on his signature sandwich. Stored at room temperature (never in the refrigerator), Nutella keeps for months, though it seldom lasts that long in my house.

Greek yogurt (Recipe: lemon walnut yogurt dessert)

 

Nine things I know, and one thing I don't know, about Greek yogurt (you'll be glad to know them, too):

Phyllo dough (Recipe: phyllo nests topped with sorbet)

Baked Desserts Week, Day Three. 

Phyllophobia.

Fee low PHO bee yah.

Do you have it, the fear of phyllo dough, the fear of poking your finger through the paper-thin pastry and making a hole that cannot be repaired, the fear of letting the flaky dough dry out and crack, the fear of shredding the dough with a paintbrush as you add melted butter to each layer?

You are not alone. I used to be phyllophobic, too.

It's irrational, of course, like my fear of heights, or of mice, or of ham. But, unlike those fears, I've overcome my fear of phyllo.

And I'm so glad I did.

Refrigerated pie crust, and a cookbook giveaway (Recipe: rum raisin pear pie)

Dear readers, you know that I'm a bake-o-phobe, and I know how much you love desserts. I'm really trying, all this week, just for you. Welcome to The Perfect Pantry's first-ever Baked Desserts Week, Day One.

When I turned 40, which was oh-so-many years ago, I made my first two-crust pie.

Well, honestly, it was my first any-crust pie.

And it wasn't even my crust. It was refrigerated pie crust, from the supermarket.

I couldn't have been more proud if I'd made the crust from scratch.

Which I never, for a single minute, considered doing.

Walnuts (Recipe: walnut squares)

When I was growing up, my parents hosted lots of bridge parties. 

In the 1950s and '60s, card-playing evenings were all the rage. My parents invited one couple, or sometimes three couples, for bridge, cocktails and snacks. As these parties never started before 8:00, my brother and I were allowed -- no, commanded -- to appear in our pajamas to greet the guests ("Hi, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So. Yes, it's fun to stay up late. Yes, I'm being good in school.") before we toddled off to bed.

On a tray table, within easy reach of the players, my mother set out bowls of Chex mix that she'd made herself. And whole walnuts, too, with a heavy nutcracker and a dish for the shells.

In the morning, my brother and I descended upon the leftover nuts. We didn't eat them; we looked for wrinkly faces in the wrinkly shells. Sometimes we'd find one that looked like my grandfather, or one of our teachers, or Richard Nixon.

Eggs, or no eggs (Recipes: Wacky Cake and Poor Man's Cake)

Please welcome Sarah, who with this post joins The Perfect Pantry as guest blogger. A working artist, sculptor, and consultant on public art projects, Sarah's work has won numerous awards and fellowships, and has been featured in exhibits across the country. She is a dedicated urban gardener and coordinates a large multi-cultural community garden in Boston's South End.

Guest post and photos by Sarah in Boston

When I was a kid, my mom created a special scrapbook cookbook especially for my dad.

He was plagued with terrible headaches and swelling in his hands and feet, and assumed that he had food allergies. Through trial-and-error cooking, they concluded he must be allergic to eggs. 

As a traveling salesman, my dad had to eat most of his meals on the road, so when he came home they tried to calm his system with all his favorite comfort foods.

It wasn’t until he was in his late sixties that he was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease, hereditary angioedema -- not food allergies -- and, after treatment, to his great joy he could eat anything. But two of those egg-free desserts, made with ingredients from my mother's pantry, remained his particular favorites: Wacky Cake (in the top photo), which my mother made for family birthdays, and Poor Man’s Cake.

Tapioca (Recipe: white-on-red tapioca pudding)

Guest post and photos by Peter in Brazil, chef and co-owner of Pousada do Capão

On New Year's Eve, I needed to come up with one more dessert for my inn full of guests, to accompany the profiteroles with bittersweet chocolate sauce and the strawberry-hibiscus crostata on the buffet table.

There just wasn’t time to make another shopping trip to Diamantina, an hour away, so I turned to my perfect pantry for inspiration.

The first thing that caught my eye were the three bags of tapioca –- large pearl, small pearl, and small grains.

Dark chocolate, and a sweet giveaway (Recipe: chocolate-mango-kiwi wontons)

Ted and I agree on many things, but not on everything.

He likes books about King Arthur, a certain Montreal hockey team, watching Spanish-language broadcasts of soccer matches even though he doesn't speak Spanish, white-out snowstorms, and opera.

I don't.

He also likes cilantro, cauliflower, tropical fruits, ham-and-cheese sandwiches, sweetened condensed milk, rutabaga, and fish served with the head on.

I don't.

In fact, until it was too late, until I was years into our marriage, I didn't realize that we differ in another important way:

I am a milk chocolate girl married to a dark chocolate guy.

Butter (Recipe: green grapefruit curd)

Ten things I know about butter (you'll be glad to know them, too):

Pomegranate molasses (Recipe: pomegranate snow swirls)

My Cousin Martin travels the world to search out all sorts of foods and kitchen tools for The Perfect Pantry.

Well, maybe that's not his only reason for traveling, but he does bring me wonderful things. Wooden spoons from everywhere, and ravioli cutters and gnocchi paddles. Iranian saffron. Tahitian vanilla beans and Mexican vanilla extract. Cookbooks from Costa Rica and Mongolia. Silicone baking sheets from France, years before Silpats were common here.

I've grown accustomed to these treats from far-off lands. So, when Cousin Martin unveiled his latest gift, I looked at the bottle and said oh, ho hum, more Tahitian vanilla.

But no, this was better. Much better.

The little bottle that once held precious vanilla extract from Tahiti now contained something infinitely more interesting: homemade pomegranate molasses, from his own kitchen.