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The Pantry
Jun. 20th, 2008 05:09 pmI've been trying to write a pantry post for awhile. It's been a bust, at least partially because there are two concepts behind the idea of pantry to me. So this is the theory post and, maybe, there will be a practical post later.
Pantries exist for two reasons:
Having food on hand in case of shortages -- this is the Mormon keep a year's worth of canned goods in your basement argument.
Having accents on hand to enhance mundane foods.
The one doesn't preclude the other. A pantry should, ideally, be both wide and deep.
Depth of pantry for me is illustrated by tinned tomatoes. I have lots of tinned tomatoes. Some are whole tomatoes, some are crushed, some are chopped, and a few have spices already in them. I have them in multiple sizes, too. I use canned tomatoes as the basis of many of my meals whether it's the "Greek" potatoes I did in earlier posts or a basic pasta sauce.
Breadth of pantry means I always have coconut milk and crystallized ginger on hand. I may not use them often, but when I need them nothing else will do. More practically breadth of pantry means several types of pasta, not just spaghetti, arborio rice as well as standard brown rice, quinoa and couscous -- all these things give me choices so that my fairly standard meals have variety.
This is my time to pitch the dollar aisle of your local supermarket at you. Every supermarket has one. The items on it change from week to week. Sometimes they have boxes of orzo at ten for $10.00. (I love orzo. It's fast.) Sometimes it's little tins of shrimp or clams. On a night when you have nothing else in the house, the ability to throw together a linguine in clam sauce in twenty minutes may save your sanity.
Go down the ethnic aisles of your supermarket. Pick-up something on sale that looks interesting. Some night it will fill a craving you didn't know you had.
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eanja picked things up at Building 19 in Boston. Capers were cheaper there. They had orange curd -- which I love beyond all reason now that I've tried it. One gloomy winter night, I looked at her freezer and pantry and made a stir-fry that used canned pineapple and coconut milk bringing a little summer warmth.
Pantries exist for two reasons:
Having food on hand in case of shortages -- this is the Mormon keep a year's worth of canned goods in your basement argument.
Having accents on hand to enhance mundane foods.
The one doesn't preclude the other. A pantry should, ideally, be both wide and deep.
Depth of pantry for me is illustrated by tinned tomatoes. I have lots of tinned tomatoes. Some are whole tomatoes, some are crushed, some are chopped, and a few have spices already in them. I have them in multiple sizes, too. I use canned tomatoes as the basis of many of my meals whether it's the "Greek" potatoes I did in earlier posts or a basic pasta sauce.
Breadth of pantry means I always have coconut milk and crystallized ginger on hand. I may not use them often, but when I need them nothing else will do. More practically breadth of pantry means several types of pasta, not just spaghetti, arborio rice as well as standard brown rice, quinoa and couscous -- all these things give me choices so that my fairly standard meals have variety.
This is my time to pitch the dollar aisle of your local supermarket at you. Every supermarket has one. The items on it change from week to week. Sometimes they have boxes of orzo at ten for $10.00. (I love orzo. It's fast.) Sometimes it's little tins of shrimp or clams. On a night when you have nothing else in the house, the ability to throw together a linguine in clam sauce in twenty minutes may save your sanity.
Go down the ethnic aisles of your supermarket. Pick-up something on sale that looks interesting. Some night it will fill a craving you didn't know you had.
eanja picked things up at Building 19 in Boston. Capers were cheaper there. They had orange curd -- which I love beyond all reason now that I've tried it. One gloomy winter night, I looked at her freezer and pantry and made a stir-fry that used canned pineapple and coconut milk bringing a little summer warmth.
