Blossom to Stem

It is so easy to get into a rut. In college and shortly thereafter, you could open my pantry and expect to find pasta and jarred sauce and olive oil and a green can of the powdery dry parmesan-esque stuff and probably a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of salad dressing, and that was about it. Although I wanted to cook interesting things, it was difficult because whenever I looked at a new recipe, I had to go out and buy just about every ingredient on the list. Buying new spices and a bottle of vinegar and a new kind of rice in addition to whatever fresh ingredients were called for made the grocery shopping trip expensive and time consuming, and it was all too easy to retreat to the pasta-and-sauce habit or trot over to the frozen pizza section and call it a day.

Now, I hardly ever do that. (Though I’ll admit that Amy’s frozen pizzas do come in handy every now and then…)

But that’s because if I’ve built a pantry that enables me to cook, and I enjoy what I eat so much more as a result.

Over at the New York Times, Mark Bittman has a story, currently at the top of the most emailed list, about new pantry essentials. I mostly agree with his list, and I wanted to use it as a jumping off point for offering my own advice on how to stock a kitchen to be ready to prepare all sorts of meal with the purchase of only a couple of fresh ingredients.

Of course, every cook has his or her own idiosyncratic preferences that evolve over time. But this is should get you well on your way.

•  Oils. Always, always keep extra virgin olive oil on hand. If budget permits, have an everyday olive oil for cooking with and a special one for drizzling on salads or dipping bread in. You should also have a neutral oil with a relatively high smoke point, such as grapeseed oil or canola oil or a plain, untoasted sesame oil. In the more optional category, I like to keep organic peanut oil around for meals with Asian flavor profiles. I also like to keep toasted sesame oil around to use as a seasoning but not as a cooking oil. It’s probably a good idea for our health and for the environment to look for organic, expeller pressed oils whenever possible. Store most oils in a cool dark place–light and heat can make them go rancid. Most nut oils are highly perishable and should be stored in the refrigerator.
• Butter. Unsalted butter is typically used for baking, salted butter for spreading on toast. I mainly stock the unsalted variety and add my own salt to taste. Store butter in the freezer if you plan to keep it around for any length of time. The stick you are working on should probably stay in the refrigerator to preserve freshness, but if you want it spreadable and are going to go through it quickly, room temperature is fine.
• Flour. If you are an occasional baker and a regular cook, you probably only need good old reliable all-purpose flour, but you could also make a case for white whole wheat flour. White whole wheat is made from a variety of wheat that is lighter and milder than the more common red variety. It’s the most versatile whole grain flour I use, and in most cases it can be substituted for all-purpose. Even if you seldom bake, you should keep some flour around for thickening sauces and for breading things. In the more optional category, I’d recommend having cornmeal around (white or yellow or even the rarer blue or red varieties are fine).  It’s indispensable for cornbread and it’s nice for sprinkling under breads or adding interest to pancakes or yeasted breads or cakes or other baked goods. Whole wheat pastry flour is nice for softer baked goods, though if you don’t bake much I’d go for the white whole wheat first. Bread flour is good for, well, bread and pizza dough and choux pastry, and if you make those things frequently it’s worth having around, but you should keep in mind that you can make all of those things with all-purpose flour too. Store whole grain flours in an airtight container in the freezer. Refined flours should be kept in airtight containers at room temperature.
• Salt. If you keep just one salt around, it should be kosher salt. Maybe I’m putting us all at risk for goiter, but I think the highly processed iodized stuff tastes a little chemically and isn’t the best way to expend my sodium allotment. If you keep two salts around, add something flaky and flavorful, such as Maldon or any fleur de sel. If I were wealthier, I’d definitely splurge on other high end salts.
• Pepper. Keep whole peppercorns on hand at all times and grind it when you need it. There is no reason to buy the preground stuff, which retains only a shadow of its former flavor.
• Vinegars. This is largely a matter of personal preference. I like to keep red wine, champagne, and rice vinegar around. I also like sherry vinegar for French things, and balsamic for Italian (that’s another area to splurge if you have money to burn).
• Lemons. Freshly squeezed lemon juice and freshly grated zest add such a zing to things. Limes are good to have for Latin or Asian flavor profiles. Also for a nice gin and tonic…
• Sauces and condiments. I like to keep soy sauce around. I like San-J’s organic tamari. If you get into Chinese or Thai or Japanese or Indonesian cooking, you’ll find there’s a whole world of them, from thick soy sauce to dark soy sauce to thin soy sauce. But if you don’t know your kecap manis from your shoyu, you probably just want a thin, naturally brewed soy sauce. Fish sauce is good to have around if you want to do any Thai cooking. Oyster sauce or thick mushroom sauce (sometimes sold as vegetarian oyster sauce) is also nice. Sriracha is great for adding a kick to things. A dijon mustard is good for salad dressings. Peanut butter for well, sandwiches, but also peanut sauce or peanut butter cookies. Some kind of hot sauce such as Tobasco or Cholula, and maybe a jar of your favorite salsa (mine is Deser Pepper’s Corn and Black Bean Salsa) for Mexican dishes or just for chips.
• Beans/legumes. You can go with dried or canned. I like to keep a can of black beans around for nights when I need something quick, but I’ve mostly switched over to dried beans for the other varieties. Dried beans have better texture and they are significantly lower in sodium. They are also cheaper and involve less packaging. I’ve discovered that soaking them overnight and cooking them for a couple of hours is far less arduous than I’d imagined it would be. You can freeze whatever you aren’t going to use. I typically stock chickpeas, black beans, and some kind of white beans like cannellini or great northern. I also like to have red lentils for Indian dals and firm French green lentils for soups and salads. Frozen edamame are also convenient for an easy lunch with nothing but salt to accompany them.
• Dried pasta. I like to keep an assortment of dried pasta around. Usually something long like spaghetti, something medium-sized like penne or rotini or farfalle, and something little for soup like ditalini or orzo. I also like to keep whole wheat couscous around. It cooks in about five minutes, which is tough to beat.
• Grains. I’ve continued to move toward whole grains, even though I tend to keep a few refined grains around. I usually have brown jasmine, brown basmati, and short grained brown rice around. I like to have Arborio around for risotto or rice pudding. I’ve learned that I really like quinoa, which isn’t technically a grain but looks like one (and it’s a complete protein and it’s gluten-free), and I try to have it around for main dish salads. I always have old fashioned rolled oats and steel cut oats around too. In the more optional category, I like to keep barley and farro and bulgar around. Store whole grains in the freezer and refined grains in airtight containers at room temperature.
• Leaveners. There are only a couple of these, but you should probably have at least baking soda and baking powder. I seek out aluminum free varieties of baking powder, such as Rumford. Yeast is important for bread baking. I mainly use instant or bread machine yeast, which can be used in all recipes that call for active dry yeast, and it doesn’t need to be proofed in water. Store yeast in the refrigerator or freezer and use within six months of opening the container. The packets are fine if you don’t bake bread or pizza much.
• Herbs and spices. The beginning of the year is a good time to inventory spices and toss the ones that have lost their oomph. This is going to be a matter of personal preference, but the dried herbs and spices I use most frequently are cinnamon (both ground and sticks), nutmeg (whole is best), cumin (both ground and seeds), oregano, coriander seed, fennel seed, whole dried rosemary, whole bay leaves, thyme leaves, cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, smoked paprika, chili powder (ancho or chipotle, or gaujillo are all good chili peppers), cardamom (whole), cloves (whole), fenugreek, allspice, brown mustard seeds, ground ginger, and turmeric. I also keep a curry powder blend and a garam masala blend around. I also keep a few kaffir lime leaves in the freezer. I tend to look for fresh flat leaf parsley, fresh basil, and fresh cilantro rather than using the dried versions of those spices. I always have a bottle of pure vanilla extract around too.
• Garlic. I always keep a few bulbs of garlic around. I’m not crazy about the jars of pre-minced stuff, and I only use garlic powder when I’m nostalgic for that sharp flavor. I find it’s easy to mince a clove or two when you need them.
• Onions. I keep yellow onions around all the time, and I usually have a red onion too. Shallots are nice to have around too. All dry onions keep well in cool dark place for weeks.
• Parmigiano reggiano. Accept no substitutions, and don’t bother with the pregrated stuff.
• Sugar. I’ve discovered that I now have about six kinds of sugar around at any given time, but if I were not such an avid baker, I’d only keep granulated white sugar and light brown sugar around. Look for brands that specify they are pure cane sugar. If you’re going for a third one, I’d opt for a raw turbinado or demerara. Honey is good to have unless you often cook for vegans, and real maple syrup makes pancakes so much better (I opt for the darker grade B variety). If you get more adventurous with sweeteners, you can look for agave nectar, molasses, piloncillo, palm sugar, muscovado, dark brown sugar, vanilla infused sugars and so on.
• Dried fruits. I like to keep raisins around. Add them to oatmeal, or saute them with garlic and pine nuts and spinach for a lovely Spanish side. I tend to keep some kind of dried cherries or cranberries around, and maybe apricots. They keep for a long time.
• Nuts. More and more, I’m convinced that nuts are underutilized in most American kitchens. Pine nuts give a richness to pesto. Almonds or hazelnuts to romesco. Walnuts and pecans can give salads a pleasing crunch. And that’s before you even get to baked goods like pecan sandies or frangipane tarts. I’m also convinced that many people think they don’t like certain nuts because they had one that was rancid and bitter because it seems we’ve only just realized that they should be stored in the freezer. So please, store your nuts in the freezer, and toast them before you use them to bring out their flavor.

Some parts of cooking require experience and skill–being able to dice an onion in fifteen seconds, knowing that the bread dough needs another dribble of water, recognizing that the butter has been worked into the pie crust just enough, seeing that if you turn off the burner now the cast iron pan will cook those potatoes to crispy perfection without burning them or wasting energy. The way to get better at these things is to practice.

But while practice requires much time and energy, there are few things that can make cooking easier that only require forethought. It’s all too easy to skimp on that, which can make preparing a simple meal stressful and chaotic.

I feel like these are simple, but they really are the ways that I started moving beyond being a competent cook to being a rather more confident cook. Sure, you can do what I used to do: glance at an ingredient list and dive in, and it’ll work most of the time, but really, like 10 minutes of reading and prep work can save you headaches later on.

Here are my favorite bits of advice (when I follow them, cooking is easier).

• If you are working from a recipe, READ THE WHOLE THING FIRST. Really, before you go shopping for ingredients, before you preheat the oven or put a pan on the stove, figure out what you’re getting yourself into. This will give you a good mental snapshot of what you need to have on hand. It will let you know what equipment you need, like, say a 9-inch cake pan or a 6-quart stock pot or a candy thermometer. It might even prevent you from having to send your boyfriend out for a large slotted spoon while your water is boiling and your bagels are sitting there over-rising because you didn’t really think about how you were going to get them out of the pot. It will let you know that this whole process takes two days or three hours and if you were planning on eating before midnight, you might want to save this for Saturday. It will let you know that you need to divide the butter into three different parts even though the ingredient list doesn’t mention that, and it could save you from adding all of it to the batter leaving you none for the filling. It will let you know that you need to have the mushrooms chopped and ready to go instead of leaving you digging in the back of the refrigerator for them while the garlic is burning. It will tell you that you need the sauce ready before you cook the pasta. Recipes contain all sorts of great information like that.

• Prep all the ingredients before you start cooking. In the culinary world this is known as mise en place. You know how on cooking shows they have all those little bowls with the ingredients pre-measured and diced or chopped and ready to go so they can just add it when they need it? That isn’t just for TV, chefs really do that. You don’t need matching little bowls, but if you dice your onions and peel and chop your carrots ahead of time and maybe leave them in little piles on the cutting board wherever you can reach them, your life will be easier. If you’ve read your recipe, you’ll know what needs to be done. It isn’t just chopping. It can be melting butter or separating eggs or putting the wine within reach for easy deglazing. The idea is get everything organized so that you can find it when you need it. You can do this to a greater or lesser degree. If you want to measure out a half-teaspoon of salt and put it in a little bowl to have ready you can do that, or you can just keep the salt handy so that you can add a pinch and taste everything and adjust.

• If you have a little extra time, read up on technique or food science or on classic flavor combinations. My favorite cookbooks tend to offer more than just good recipes. Those pages in the front and in the back that it’s so easy to skip past? They can be the best part. They might give you advice on the author’s favorite tools (a microplane for zesting, a bobby pin stuck into a wine cork for pitting cherries). They might give you a basic vinaigrette that you can use on anything. They might tell you how to fix a broken emulsion or which brand of canned tomatoes they reach for in the grocery store (Muir Glen). They might tell you how to pick a good melon (look for the ones with the most netting and the best fragrance). They might have a few ideas about how to handle a wet bread dough without having the whole thing stick to your hands (either coat your hands in flour or wet them before touching the dough). These are the sort of things that help to prepare you for future cooking projects, that help you shop more effectively, that give you ideas about how to improvise successfully.