The Well-Stocked Pantry, Chapter One

You can read a lot about what you should keep on hand to have a well-stocked pantry. I won't bore you with telling you to keep canned mushroom soup and dry bouillon. If you like to cook you probably keep the things around with which you like to cook. In my case, that does not include canned mushroom soup. There are a few canned/processed convenience foods I keep around, but for the most part I stock my pantry with things you can use to make stuff. It's not exciting: flour, pasta, sugar, rice, etc. But what kinds of things might you find in my kitchen that are not in yours, you ask?

Well, how about ten different kinds of vinegar? Yes, I have at least ten different kinds. Maybe more. I stock the ordinary white, which mostly gets used for cleaning things rather than cooking with, but I also keep apple cider, red wine, white wine, champagne, two kinds of balsamic (one cheap, one expensive, sherry, cassis, rice, and Chinese black. Vinegar is of course a necessity in salad, but it also adds depth of flavor to soups, sauces, and fricasees. It is the base for beurre blanc, an enhancer in bordelaise, there are so many ways to use it I'm sure there must be a book about it. I just haven't read it.

Last night I added a tablespoon of cider vinegar to a saute of Italian sausage and apples. It just livened up the apples. Rice vinegar makes a nice dressing for sliced cucumbers when you add a sprinkling of sugar. Chinese black vinegar is fabulous as a dip for pan-fried dumplings and champagne vinegar is the base for the aforementioned beurre blanc. Add some sliced basil, diced tomato and cucumber and it is divine over baked or pan-seared salmon. I use a moderately expensive balsamic to dress the ubiquitous caprese salad, which no matter how ubiquitious is still one of my favorites. The cheap balsamic is reduced to make balsamic glaze, a trick I just learned from my mother. Why use pay $7.00 for a little bottle when you can make your own? I like the cassis vinegar on a salad with anything sweet in it: pears, blue cheese, walnuts. I usually use it very sparingly and in combination with red wine vinegar, just to add a hint of sweetness, in place of adding sugar to the dressing.

Which vinegar is my favorite? At the moment I would have to say that the 7-year old Spanish Sherry vinegar is tops. It makes a lovely, exceedingly smooth dressing with no harsh bite.

Sherry Vinaigrette
2 T minced shallot
2 T aged Sherry vinegar
salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 C Extra virgin olive oil.

Soak the minced shallot in the vinegar for 5-10 minutes. Whisk in the oil, slowly, until emulsified, season to taste. Toss field greens with just enough vinaigrette so that they glisten. Do not overdress your salad. Generally, people drown their salad in about twice as much dressing as needed. Let the sharpness of the dressing enhance the delicate nature of the lettuce, not completely mask it. Take my advice. I'm always right, aren't I?

Fall

Fall is here and no, I do not want to hear your complaining about how long it has been since I have posted. The Mendon Foodie was very busy this summer planning and executing the Gates Foodette's wedding. (That would be my daughter.) Here is a picture. We didn't cater the wedding, but we did do the cold hors d'oeuvres, with considerable helper from Grandma Foodie. We served: Carpaccio of Beef with fried capers and parsley oil, shrimp cocktail shooters, endive stuffed with salmon spread, crudites with homemade Green Goddess dressing, salumi with assorted olives, some damn fine but very expensive cheese, and a cascade of fruit. You'd have to see it to believe it. It was truly amazing. If you're nice to me I might invite you to wedding hors d' oeuvres reenactment day, which we are planning on having for the Marine foodie, who missed the wedding and is returning home this week from Iraq. Oooh Rah. Leave a comment and I'll consider inviting you. If you promise not to bring any food.

Now that I have made your mouth water with food that nearly impossible for mere mortals to prepare, I will deign to grant you a fabulous recipe that anyone (almost anyone, I have a friend or two who shall remain nameless, L, who would still probably find a way to mess it up.) It is pretty simple and straightforward, yet sophisticated enough to impress all of your guests. It uses the ingredient that I cannot get enough of this time of year: pears.

Caramelized Pear Salad

3 Bartlett pears
3 T sugar
1/4 c butter
4 oz prosciutto
olive oil
butter lettuce
Balsamic glaze (you can buy or make. To make, boil balsamic vinegar until it is thick and syrupy.)
crumbled blue cheese (if you use anything other than Maytag or Point Reyes blue or a similar quality you are a heathen and shouldn't be allowed to cook.)

Peel, core, and cut pears into medium thick slices. Toss them with the sugar. (If you want to slice them ahead of time, drop them into a bowl of water with some lemon juice in it.) Heat a saute pan and melt the butter. Add the pears and cook on one side until they have nicely caramelized. Turn them over and cook the other side, adding more butter if necessary to prevent the sugar from burning. Remove the pears to a plate and let cool slightly. Wrap each slice with prosciutto. Toss lettuce with olive oil to coat and arrange lettuce on individual serving plates. Arrange 4-5 pear slices on top of the lettuce and sprinkle with blue cheese. Drizzle with balsamic glaze and start drooling, cause it is REALLY good.

Pickles!

What are you doing this summer? Are you relaxing by the pool? Going to the beach? No? It's too rainy? You don't have enough money for a vacation? Too bad. Me neither. What am I doing? I am basking in the bounty of the summer harvest. Summer in upstate New York is a marvelous time. The produce is so fresh, so yummy, and so overwhelming! My friend Priscilla recently decided to make jam with all the fruit she had around. Blackberries and strawberries, gooseberries, tood been haunting her in her freezer since last summer. I love her strategy: she grows berries, but as they ripen only about a cup at a time, she freezes them until she has enough to make a pie or jam. Well, she procrastinated enough that she had fruit enough to make forty-eight jars of jam! yes, that is forty-eight. It took her ten hours. I helped for two of those hours and she gave me twelve jars. What a great friend. I think I have enough jam to last three years. Too bad you're supposed to use it within a year. I guess we'll have to have lots of trifle, and those homemade english muffins I published the recipe for a while ago.

I can't wait for the fresh, local, vine-ripened tomatos. I love summer tomatos so much that I don't really eat them much the rest of the year. They just don't taste right. The ones in the grocery in January don't make me swoon. A nice, ripe, August tomato had the power to send me practically to the moon with enjoyment.

And corn. There really isn't anything more to say about corn. Don't EVER buy corn at the grocery store if you can help it. Here in God's country we have corn stands every couple of miles. Farmers sometimes set a cart of corn and a coffee can for money at the end of their driveways. If you are lucky enough to have such a place, buy the corn the day you need it. Try making corn chowder. It is fantastic.

There is so much wonderful stuff this time of year, I couldn't possibly talk about all of it. I'll leave you with this recipe, from my mother's best friend. It makes use of the small, gherkin cucumbers that you can grow so easily or buy in huge baskets at the farmer's markets right now. This recipe makes a gallon of pickles, but I have done half a recipe. You could probably also do a quarter recipe. They will keep for a year in the fridge. I don't like to can these, they lose their crunch.

48 hour pickles
3 C vinegar
3 C sugar
1/2 C uniodized (pickling) salt
1 large onion, sliced
1 T mustard seed
1 T celery
1 tsp tumeric
cukes

Layer onion and cukes in a gallon jar, mix rest of ingredients and pour over. See if you can make yourself wait the whole forty-eight hours before eating them. I can't.

How Time Flies

Has it been a month already since I last posted? I can't believe it. It is really hard to keep this up, the pressure from my loyal fans is almost too much. What if I have nothing to say? Okay, that's not really the problem. What if I have nothing I can say without deeply offending someone? Okay, that's not the problem, either. And it's not procrastination, either. I can't really figure it out. But enough of my introspection.

The party at Deb's was wonderful last month. It was very fun, and touching, and the food was really good. Even the food that I didn't make. Which was most of it.

Deb made a deceptively simple appetizer that is sure to please almost everyone: sausage stuffed mini-sweet peppers. You know, the ones that are about 2-3 inches in length and come in a variety of colors? She sut off the tops and stuffed them with spicy italian sausage and them grilled them. Fantastic and yummy. My other favorite thing was garlic scape pesto. She left out the parmesan because her hubby doesn't like it, but it was still really good. She even gave me a big container to bring home. I smeared it on some bruchetta toasts, topped with goat cheese and stuck them under the broiler. Really, really good. The garlic scape pesto has a tang that hits your palate right up front and almost knocks it out. But then it gets more complex as the intial jolt of flavor mellows into a multi-layered perfume. If you can still get garlic scapes this late in the season, make it.

The other thing she made that was really good was strawberry shortcake. No pre-made awful sponge cake for her. No, she took the Mendon Foodie's advice and baked a simple shortcake biscuit. My mom even makes the recipe from the side of the Bisquick box and even it is FAR better than the horrible little yellow disks they set out next to the strawberries at the grocery store. Just make a biscuit and add a little sugar. Pretty simple. Deb served the local fresh picked strawberries with some homemade almond ice cream. WOW! A truly great combination.

I pronounce Deb a soundly good cook. (But I'm sure I'll find SOMETHING about her cooking to make fun of. It is only a matter of time, you know.)

Smoked Salmon Endive Appetizers

I wish I could take credit for inventing these. They are really good, impressive looking, and really easy. Alas, my friend Priscilla came up with them in between psycho solo whitewater canoe excursions. There is no accounting for taste when it comes to outdoor activities, but she sure hit the mark with these!

Separate one head of Belgian Endive into individual leaves. Place a piece of smoked salmon into the endive. Top with dill sauce and a sprig of dill and serve.

Dill Sauce

1/4 C sour cream
1/4 C mayo
1 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp minced fresh dill
1 tsp lemon juice

Mix it all up. Also good on unsmoked salmon.

Garlic-Lemon Chicken

I told you I was trying to get back to it. Here I am, a mere two days later, posting yet another fabulous recipe. Of course, it is all because of my friend Deb, who is giving a party in my honor. How could I not help her? I suggested this marinade for chicken. It is wonderful and I have made it for parties for years.

For 3 1/2 lbs of chicken you will need:

1/2 c lemon juice
4 tsp grated lemon peel
2 1/2 tsp pepper
2 tsp dijon mustard
3 cloves of crushed garlic
1 C olive oil

And it is really not more complicated than whirring it all together in the food processor, doing the oil last in a slow, steady stream.
Marinate the chicken for a day or so, then grill. This chicken is great with grilled bell peppers and chili hollandaise, but totally fine on its own, as well.

Okay, Okay.

Alright, so I haven't posted in six months. Do you think it's easy being the arbiter of all things worthy of consumption? I got overwhelmed. The job, the son going to Iraq, the daughter getting married, my camera broke. Just overwhelmed. But here I am. Maybe.

A friend is giving a party in my honor and is justifiably terrified of what I will think. So far, everything I have had of hers is good, so she shouldn't be too worried. Last night I witnessed her make smashed potatoes with real butter and real heavy cream, so right there it shows that she is most likely at least a competent cook. Who knows what I would have said if she had pulled out margarine and skim milk. A vein might have burst in my head right then and there.

So, she show me her menu and it looks good. She has a variety of appetizers, (people who don't serve appetizer annoy me) she took my suggestions as far as main course goes, it's all looking good. I just have one suggestion for her: ditch the mediocre macaroni salad and serve this awesome Asian cabbage slaw instead. It is easy and people will swoon.

Crunchy Napa Cabbage Slaw

3/4 C slivered almonds
8 C shredded napa cabbage
2 oz thinly sliced snow peas
1 1/3 C thinly sliced radishes
1 1/3 C thinly sliced green onions
1 13 C lightly packed cilantro

Creamy soy dressing
3 T white wine vinegar
3 T sugar
1 T soy sauce
1 clove minced garlic
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 C mayonnaise

For dressing combine wine vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, ginger, and cayenne in a small bowl stirring until sugar dissolves. Gradually whisk in mayonnaise

Toast almonds 6-9 minutes in a 350 degree oven until golden. Combine cabbage, snow peas, radishes, green onion, and cilantro. Add dressing and almonds , mix gently to coat. Pour into a serving bowl.

I have substituted peanuts for the almonds and liked it just as much if not more. This is a great summer salad.