The Pantry

My next few posts will address the Pantry. Everyone should have a well stocked pantry. I'm showing you mine. One thing I learned from listening to Melinda Lee's Food News is that you have to realize that food is always in a state of decay, no matter how well preserved it is. That made me realize that I need to not just stock a good pantry, but actively use the ingredients in it. Don't buy a sauce because it's "cute" or "whimsical' - because chances are, you will probably never use it.

I made a goal to start using the ingredients in my pantry and then re-stock as needed. So this weekend, I opened a jar of capers that I had with my smoked salmon for breakfast this morning. I made a homemade tomato sauce for a meatball panini, and I made a chicken curry using one of the 6 jars of curry paste that I've had stored! I found I have a yellow Thai curry paste, 2 green Thai curry sauces, a red Thai curry paste, a curry simmer sauce and a Tandori paste. I setteled on the Tandori paste for today's curry.

I will address that curry in a later post.

I spent the last 6 hours cooking. Something I love to do. I made homemade pesto using basil and some baby spinach with toasted pine nuts and some stored roasted garlic and a very good olive oil that I don't know why I was saving it. With the pesto, I made some parmesan pesto toasts (mostly gone by now!). I made a couple of poached eggs and put on top of a wilted spinach salad (and I was too tired to eat it, so that's lunch for tomorrow!). The chicken curry with the tandori paste served with Texmati (a Texan Basmati long grain rice) and a homemade Thai salsa with fresh ginger. Tomorrow's leftover curry and rice can be used in wontons with the salsa. It's all about using everything and searching for flavor!

And finally, I think the best dish I made today was grilled artichokes with lemon mayonnaise. It was absolutely divine! I cooked the artichokes in water with lemon until fork tender then drizzled them with some olive oil and grilled them on my panini. They look very impressive and then I drizzled them again with more olive oil, fresh lemon juice and made a mayonnaise with lemon and lemon zest.

I hope this post encourages you to store food in a creative way and then to USE the stored food!

Happy Cooking!