The Living Pantry Part 1

Keeping your pantry stocked seems to be part of Cooking 101. I hear it all over the place. What should be included in your pantry, however, varies drastically. Here's a list of what my basic pantry would have. I've broken them into several sections: "Dry", Fresh, Frozen and Sauces/Spirits. This post will focus on the "Dry" ingredients. I say "Dry" because not all these are actually dried, but they all can be found in your cabinet, as opposed to the refrigerator.

The Living Pantry: Dry

Pasta

Rice

Dry Beans

Canned Beans

Dry Lentils

Nuts

Dried Fruit

Spices

Canned Tomatoes

Oil

Canned Tuna

Canned Corn

Salsa

Braggs Amino Acids

Apple Cider Vinegar

Almond Extract

Vanilla Extract

Flour

Baking Soda

Baking Powder

Oatmeal

Sugar

Honey

Maple Syrup

Now within these categories, I break down some into more detail. For example, Dried Fruit. I think raisins and cranberries are pretty basic for the pantry and can be used in various ways.

Oil: I tend to have olive, sesame and chili oil as my basics. I also have some more exotic oils, but those I would label "special".

Sugar: I'm not a fan of processed sugar, but having some white and brown on hand is good if you're baking.

Spices: My basic spices include kosher/sea salt, peppercorns, a good all-purpose seasoning, basil, sage, rosemary, cloves, cumin, bay leaves, paprika, turmeric, and cinnamon. I'm big on spices, if you couldn't tell. :)

Canned Tomatoes: I usually keep both crushed and stewed. The crushed are great for making your own pasta sauce.

Am I missing anything? Next time, it's on to the fresh foods!

Recession Meals Part 2

The Quick and Easy Soup

Soups are a supreme comfort food, especially this time of year. I'm a firm believer in soups that are quick and simple, but taste like they've been simmering all day. This season I will attempt to post many receipes and ideas for soups I've dreamt up. With the addition of a rice cooker I recently bought, my exploration into the realm of easy made soups has increased. Now there are soups made on the stovetop, in the slow cooker and in the rice cooker! Like this one, for example:

This is a vegetable soup I whipped up with miscelaneous stuff in my fridge. I'm a firm believer in working with what you've got. This time it was tofu, carrots, sweet peas, potatos and onions. I used a chicken stock and water with the salt-free all purpose seasoning I bought from Costco. Just 40 mts or so in the rice cooker and it's ready!

Soups always get better the longer they sit, but these receipes are meant for immediate consumption! They're also great if you freeze them for good eating later on.

All in all, it's good recession food!

Bizzare Yet Delicious Part 1

In the dark lab of my kitchen, I'm concocting several dishes that might be considered fringe. Some succeed, some fail. Here's a success.

Pasta and Sausage Trio

Linguine
1 1/2 tbl butter
olive oil
1 small onion, sliced
polish kielbasa, sliced
kale, 3 cups chopped
Braggs Amino Acid
Garlic Powder
1 lemon, halved

Boil a pot of water and cook linguine 10-11 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Melt butter in oil over medium heat in skillet. Add onion and saute until translucent. Add sausage and cook 3 minutes. Add Braggs and garlic powder and mix. Add kale and cover for 3 minutes. Uncover and squeeze lemon juice over dish. Re-cover and cook another 3-5 minutes. Toss pasta over sausage and kale, plate and serve.

This dish came to me as an alternative to eating red meat. I'm anemic and need to get iron, but don't particularly care for red meat. Kale is one of my favorite veggies, but it's difficult to absorb the iron unless citrus is involved. I originally thought of putting this over rice, but why not pasta? The next time I make this, I might do some editing, such as using real garlic and lightening up on the butter.

A note on Braggs. It's a lifesaver. So many different uses! It has a salty and slightly sweet taste, which can be used in Asian dishes, Italian, whatever. I use it as a substitute to salt and soy sauce mostly, as it's naturally salty without being high in sodium. An all-around amazing product you can find in any health food store.

Recession Meals

So I guess the question is, can one make gourmet meals with recession pricing? I don't know, but I think I'm getting the hang of cooking from the pantry...


Angel Hair Pasta with Summer veggies in butter sauce
Chicken Stew, Italian-style
Salmon soup with rice
Stir-fried cabbage and carrots


Now that my pantry's dwindling down, I think I might actually have to run to the grocery store, but my shopping must be done with purpose! No more $200.00 shopping raids at Pathmark! I've started writing all the things I need on my dry erase board in the hallway, so that I can keep it all together. What's important, what's indulgent...sometimes these things can all blur together and become indiscernible.


One of the cool things about cooking from the pantry is that all my veggies get used up and I don't end up having to throw away wilted or moldy food just because I forgot I had bought it. When I opened my fridge this morning, I thought "I haven't seen it this empty in a long long time". Somehow I always got the feeling that if I bought in bulk, or in raids, I would save money. But I think I'll try buying meal-to-meal and see how that goes. Just make sure that the pantry is stocked!

Summer Inspired Dishes

So I'm working on some summer fare, since, well, it's hot and all. This past month I've been doing quite a bit of cooking surprisingly, even though it's a fair 86 degrees in my apartment daily. I'll just put up a few of the more successful works here.

Roasted Chicken with Stewed Okra

This was a fairly simply recipe, combining herb-roasted quartered chicken leg with my summer veggie staple: stewed okra with corn and tomatoes. The dish is served over rice, basmati in this instance. All my rice dishes are served with basmati rice, due mainly to the fact that I bought my rice at Costco...enough said.

Cookout Leftovers: Grilled Skirt Steak with Salad

I had a huge cookout with some friends for the 4th of July. There was a lot of food left over, so I had a nice lunch the next day. The basil on the mozeralla is wilted due to the fact that we had been out all of the previous day. I should have replaced it with fresh, if only for the picture! The steak was marinated with fajita sauce.

Consequentially, I also made some some killer roasted veggies that day. I marinated them in a combination of honey mustard dressing and fajita sauce. Very yummy!

Cookout Leftovers: Deconstructed Fajita Salad

So this was my fantasy for the cookout: grilled steak with veggies served over a bed of spinach and drizzled with some banging bbq sauce. Unfortunately the ppl I went out with have a fear of things green, so my salad was not to be. But! I made it once I got home, just for myself. :)

Again, I wish I had photographed this one a bit better. I really like my steak on the rare side, so apologies for the "ketchup" red coloring.

Curry Fish Salad

Once again I'm featuring my summer veggie staple. This time I've put it atop curried milkfish curtosey of my local asian grocery store.

Indian Salmon with Rice

...And today's creation. I cut up salmon fillet and seared it with ginger oil and curry paste, then tossed it with chinese eggplant, peas, grape tomatoes and onions. Mixed with basmati rice and curry sauce and topped with a bit of chili oil, this was a tantalizing feast that sat so lightly on my stomach! Proof that Indian doesn't need to be greasy and heavy.

A Publishing Idea

I found this great site for a self-publishing store in Brooklyn, NY: http://www.voxpopnet.net/micropublish.html. It’s aptly called Publish Yourself and it’s got me thinking about making a small cookbook, with simple ideas on how to be creative and experiment with different dishes. I think it would be fun to work on a set number of dishes and really work on them until they meet my expectations. I’ve given a number of my recipes out to friends and family, including easy to make soups, stews and carrot cake. It might be a fun project, and who knows, maybe it’ll lead somewhere.

in the land of too much pasta

In an attempt to save money, I'm refusing to buy food and just working with what I have in the pantry. Which isn't much, I'm afraid. It seems that I have a very weird way of shopping: I take the list of ingredients for several dishes and metaphorically rip it in half. I have boxes and boxes of pasta, but no pasta sauce, no tomatos and no fresh basil to even make pesto. And no sausage or cheese either!

To answer this dilemma, I tried to get really imaginative. I decided to make Tuna Pasta in Garlic Butter Sauce. Another recipe that's going to need some tweaking. Basic ingredients: canned tuna, angel hair pasta, butter, garlic, peas, basil and seasonings. Not bad for a desperate attempt, but I always believe that fresh is better (who doesn't believe that?). I don't believe in real butter sauces because they're too fatty, so I cut down the butter with olive oil. I reheated it the next day and served it with salmon (I know, double the fish) and served it to my dad, who was fairly impressed. All in all, it's a good dish in a pinch. Not too intensive and ready to make with pantry items!

Now to look at the rotini and rigatoni...

Working the kinks out

Sorry for the great lapse in posts: life has been a bit hectic and high levels of stress have made thinking about food and eating in general rather difficult. Hopefully May is the month to get things back on track, however. So, let’s talk about food.

The other day I was still particularly stressed. My mother asked me if I could have dinner ready for her when she got back from a birthday party. I was rather upset that she would guilt me into cooking in her unclean kitchen when I was already stressed out. Suffice to say, I was not inspired at all. She had taken out salmon and pork chops. I put the pork chops back – lately I’ve been bombing with pork, I don’t know why – and focused on the fish. It was a struggle. For a kitchen that is packed with food, it’s always sort of an adventure trying to find ingredients to make a decent meal. Personally I prefer kitchens where you don’t have to play the “is this still edible” game.

So there I was, unenthused and uninspired, staring at a fillet of salmon and wishing I had decided to go home and clean that day. After a few quick glances in the cupboards and the fridge, I decided to throw the salmon in a skillet with stewed tomatoes and corn and call it a day. I seasoned it quickly, put it to sauté with butter, covered it and walked away. When my mom came home I told her that the fish was on the stove and there were plenty of leftovers in the fridge to compliment it. And I warned her that it might not be that great.

Well, she said it wasn’t bad. And when I tried it, it actually reminded me of a dish I loved to order at a Vietnamese restaurant in Brooklyn Heights (that no longer exists). They made an amazing fish stew there, and, though my version was nothing near having a Vietnamese flavor, its soul was very similar. I’d love to tweak this impromptu recipe and make it sing. I think keeping with an Italian theme is good; I think I want it a bit soupier, maybe with kale (I have a thing for kale in stews) and bolder seasonings. This was a salt-free dish, as per my mother’s nutritional needs, but it defiantly needed salt.

Salmon gives off such a deep, rich flavor when added to a stew, especially when it’s mated with tomato. This weekend I think I’ll try this dish again, and this time, instead of canned tomatoes I’m going to stew my own, to better control the flavors that are in the dish. Add some onions and lots of garlic, and I can see this being a really good dish. I can also see this dish going in a jambalaya direction, with okra and other seafood and having that Cajun flavor. It’s funny that, in a state of apathy I fell upon a fairly solid foundation for a number of different kind of dishes.

Sticky Rice Recap

So the sticky rice dish turned out to be a success! Infusing the rice with butternut squash gave it a smoother flavor and added some pizzaz. The avocado and tomato was wonderfully comforting to my sick tummy, too. I just added a dash of salt and basil on top and it was perfect! I recreated it a few days later to bring for my lunch at work and got compliments on it. Here's the recipe for future reference:

Butternut Squash-Infused Sticky Rice

1 cup starchy or glutonous rice

1 cup Butternut Squash Soup (organic is best!)

1 cup water

1 avocado

1 tomato

salt and pepper to taste

basil, dried or fresh

Add rice, soup and water to a 2 quart saucepan and cook according to rice directions. Slice avocado and tomato and serve on top of rice. Add seasonings as desired. Makes 3-4 servings.

Stomachs, Flus and Soup Season

It's rather ironic that the exact time I begin blogging about food coincides with possibly the worst stomach flu I've ever had. After not even being able to think about food - let alone eat it - for about a week, I now am faced with re-introducing solid food back into my diet. I've always wondered what can be eaten when one is sick without it looking like gruel. Yesterday I tried a corn soup: simple, really, just turkey broth, corn kernels and rice noodles. To spice it up just a bit I added some ginger oil, salt and pepper. It was considerably plainer than what I'm used to, but much better than farina or drinking the broth on its own. Of course, the corn was a little intense, but I was happy just to have one of my favorite foods.

Tonight, I'm trying a rice dish. Butternut squash infused sticky rice with avocado and tomato. I'll let you know how that turns out...