Pantry Basics

Posted by tamaradler on Friday, September 30, 2011

I’ve always found pantry basics lists misleading. First, they tacitly suggest that the right combination of ingredients aligned in your kitchen can be counted on to organize itself into a meal; second, they imply that if you find yourself without balsamic vinegar, coconut milk, canned tomatoes, frozen English peas, couscous, and won-ton wrappers, you need to run to the store.

There’s nothing you must have. There are, though, some things so useful that they’re good to have (and tons of others that have good uses.) Here’s my version. You don’t need them all, but having one or two on hand makes it easy to have a good meal all the time.

It seems worth it to have a good piece of cured meat in the house. I find that a little square of the Italian bacon called pancetta makes a bitter greens, like dandelion or escarole with scrambled eggs on top seem very substantial. It’s good thinly sliced, then sauteed over medium heat until it’s crispy, then eggs cooked in that, then some of the leftover fat drizzled into a bowl of a little mustard and vinegar, for a bacon-y dressing. It’s also got great powers of suggestion: seeing a piece of pancetta in the refrigerator reminds me how good plain pasta with butter is with a almost crisp, fatty meat and lots of freshly ground black pepper. And the very end goes into a pot of soup. “Good olive oil” is one of the bugbears of food writing. I keep a big bottle around of something I like the taste of. There’s good sense to having two kinds—one for cooking vegetables and starting soups and sauce, and one for drizzling. I never do. I buy a very big bottle of one I really like. It seems expensive, but everything else can be simple, that I save money I’d spend on more ingredients, and time I’d spend making them. Potatoes, good, dark green broccoli, asparagus, little turnips, sweet carrots, all just get boiled and drizzled with good olive oil. Grilled bread just needs to be rubbed with garlic, get a liberal drizzle, and is a perfect first course. A piece of Parmesan cheese on the rind is good. It’s all it takes to improve canned beans, or or make a bowl of pasta into a version of the Roman classic caccio i pepe–as long as you have black pepper. It stays good forever, so even if you remember to use it once a month, it’ll stay where it is. And its rind makes good soups great. Kosher salt is inexpensive and comes in big boxes. It’s what I use. It’s good if you keep salt in a bowl, as I do, because its grains aren’t as quick to get wet and packed when you get them anywhere near liquid as fine sea salt’s are. Red wine vinegar is useful for everything. One bottle is fine. There’s a lot of pretty good vinegar, and a little really amazing vinegar, and I think the first category is all you need. There’s a a whole chapter in An Everlasting Meal about olives, capers, anchovies, and pickles. I feel strongly that if olive oil, salt, and vinegar are a lot of the backbone of a kitchen, those four things are vertebrae.

Equipment “must haves,” seem to me more stress than comfort. I find it reassuring, when it comes to buying knives and pots and pans to take the suppositional understanding of “must.” I say like Buddha “I must have what I do have.” Then, I only buy anything new for the kitchen when I’ve so outgrown whatever equipment I’ve got that I feel the poor fit of tool-to-task every time I cook.

You can be less ascetic, but regardless, your mindset is the basis for any good cooking decision, and it’s yours alone, and free, and it’s what matters most.



