What's In My Pantry Part 1 - "Quick Reach" Liquids

I thought it might be fun to do an occasional post of what I've got stashed away in different parts of the kitchen.

This first batch are the items I keep right on the counter, for sauteeing, deglazing, making quick sauces, and adding little hits of flavor. I put the Frantoia in the middle because that is my favorite high end extra-virgin olive oil. I reach for it for most raw uses, like vinaigrettes or to drizzle on pasta. The Whole Foods house brand is less expensive and I use it for cooking, along with canola oil that I keep in the fridge. (On Molto Mario, he uses Frantoia even to deep fry. Which is nice if you have deep pockets!)

Pride of place also goes to the little bottle of balsamico tradizionale - real balsamic vinegar, syrupy, sweet and incredibly complex, only for drizzling a few precious drops at a time. A recent purchase is the mosto cotto (a.k.a. saba, left of the Whole Food olive oil), which is the cooked grape must that would become balsamic if it was aged, but this stuff is immediately bottled. It is sweet and somewhat thick, but much less intense than the balsamico.

Behind the balsamico you will see a bottle of Banyuls vinegar, which makes beautiful vinaigrettes, and to the right in those tall bottles, artisanal apple and sour cherry vinegars from Acetoria. Rounding out the American / Euro ingredients, we've got apple cider vinegar, a half drunk bottle of red wine, and dry vermouth that I use when I want just a little white wine.

For Asian ingredients I've got quite a few kinds of soy sauce - light, dark, mushroom flavored, sweet (kecap manis), tamari. Cheap mirin I'll never buy again (pretty much just corn syrup, don't waste my time). Rice wine vinegar. Ume plum vinegar. Sake.

I can see this is going to be quite a project! This is just the stuff ready for a quick grab. I hate to think how many cabinets, shelves and drawers full of stuff there are. Sometimes I fantasize about not shopping for anything except vegetables and dairy for awhile and just using up every single staple I have. I wonder how many meals that would be?

Please add a comment below and let me know what stuff you keep close to the stove for last minute cooking. I'm curious to hear what everyone else thinks is essential.

Introduction to an Imaginary Cookbook, Part 1

[A few years ago, I planned to write a cookbook. I put that project on hold, but I thought I'd share the introduction with y'all because the motivation for writing this blog is basically the same.]

Like most of us, my first culinary memories are inextricably linked with my Mom. This may seem an odd place to start in a vegetarian cookbook, but I'll never forget her veal. It was lightly breaded with flour and egg, and pan fried. I couldn't get enough, and I would wolf down my first piece to make sure that I was first in line for seconds. She would fry the veal in Pompeiian brand olive oil, which was a pretty radical experiment for Louisville in the early 80's, and I'll never forget the acrid but fascinating smell of the oil burning in her pan.

 

When Mom's cancer took a turn for the worse, during my junior year in high school, she went on a macrobiotic diet that called for her to eat mostly vegetarian. Suddenly our house was colonized by a host of unimagined flavors – brown rice, umeboshi plums, adzuki beans. As she grew sicker, I tried to help by taking over a lot of the cooking, and my experiments met with mixed reviews. The rice with scallops and cubes of cheese was surprisingly good. The chewy, undercooked wheat berries with peas and plums … not so much.

My girlfriend at the time (and still one of my dear friends) was a vegetarian. I have to admit that my motivations for cutting out meat entirely included impressing Nicole as well as supporting my Mom and saving the planet! Nicole was a good, adventurous cook and she showed me the basics of making pasta with homemade tomato sauce, enchiladas, etc, and wrote down a few recipes for me on small sheets of graph paper that I still keep tucked into my copy of Moosewood.

 

One of my first encounters with flavors taken to another level was at a small (and long departed) French restaurant named La Boulangerie, on Third Street in Louisville. The restaurant had a café next door where they served wonderful bread. But what really made an impression on me was the salad. Made with perfect, tender leaves and a dressing of walnut oil, wine vinegar, and fresh garlic, it was a far cry from the iceberg and Hidden Valley Ranch that I knew. I'd eat there as often as I could afford, and I knew then that food could be much more than sustenance.

[... to be continued]

Is Molto Mario (Batali) Still The Best Cooking Show On TV?

You want to learn something valuable about cooking while vegging out in front of the tube? Got thirty minutes?  (Or twenty-two if you have TiVO.) In my opinion, the very best thing you can watch is reruns of Molto Mario on Food Network.

Now you might think: "dude, you are a vegetarian! Why would you watch that?" Ok, let's take a parenthesis here. If you are a vegetarian and think you should only buy vegetarian cookbooks and watch shows that don't involve meat or fish, you are an ... well, let's not be insulting. You are missing out on most of the knowledge that the food world has to offer, because let's face it - we are in the minority here, people. Most of the great chefs in the world cook animals. Sucks for me (and the animals). I still buy their books and watch their shows. You can always skip past the parts where our critter friends get dismembered, and probably cringe.

For example, I recently watched an episode called Vuccinia Market. Mario made three dishes: eggplant cutlets, pasta with sardines, and a sweet-and-sour chicken, all in the style of a particular town in Sicily. The eggplant dish was already vegetarian, and garnished with caciocavallo cheese, pepperoncini, fennel fronds, and orange wedges. Yum! The pasta dish might be good with cauliflower and capers. I probably wouldn't directly substitute in the chicken dish, but the flavor profile could be adapted to, say, artichokes.

So why my love for Mario? Three reasons:

• he's a phenomenal cook
• he's tremendously knowledgeable and passionate about the regional cuisines of Italy
• he doesn't waste my time

In the Vuccinia episode, as is his custom, he makes all 3 dishes almost from scratch during the episode, including most of the chopping. He only does "Betty Crocker moments" for things that have to cook longer than TV allows. And he does all of it while conversing with three guests, and educating the viewer.

There is virtually no fluff. You get to watch a master work his knives and pans while he talks you through his thought process, period. For example, in the Vuccinia episode he stops to explain that you can tell female fennel bulbs (round) from male ones (flat), and that the female ones taste much better. Who the heck knew?

You should particularly listen up whenever he says "the main understanding is..." or "the main event is..." For example, in this episode he tells you that the "main event" in caramelizing a vegetable (like fennel) is to put it in the pan and don't move them for awhile. Let it just sit in the hot oil, and those surfaces will brown and develop lots of flavor. Simple, but how often do you mindlessly keep tossing the veggies, trying to cook them evenly?

So there you have it. If you haven't caught Molto Mario lately, please do and let me know what you think. Or if you think there is a better show out there, please comment and tell me what it is!