The Perfect Pantry

Gifts for food lovers: From travels near and far (Recipe: Suspiro de Limena)

Part Three of an eight-part series.

A strip of edible seeds of the Andes, from a market in Peru.

When I was growing up, my parents loved to take me to the theater.

Not the movie theater.

Broadway shows, and off-Broadway, and incredibly-far-off-Broadway, in unfamiliar neighborhoods and alternative spaces like the room behind the room behind a restaurant, or an empty warehouse with some folding chairs, or an elementary school auditorium or church basement. Going to the theater was an adventure.

In the years before there were half-price ticket booths, there were twofers. Two, for the price of one.

Scoring those twofer tickets required cunning and good luck, and when my parents found a twofer, we looked on it as a gift from the theater gods.

For the food lover in your life, a gift from your travels -- near or far or armchair -- can be a twofer, too.

Pineapple (Recipe: Love in pieces)

Guest post and photos by Peter in Brazil, chef and co-owner of Pousada do Capão

Back in Rhode Island, whenever I could afford it (when Dole ran a Maui Gold supermarket special), I would stand in the produce aisle and carefully smell, pull the leaves from, and gently press my thumbs into dozens of fresh pineapples, until I found the perfect one.

I would nurse that perfect pineapple to full ripeness over the next week or so. Then, my daughters and I, in a rare and special ritual, would sit around a bowl of freshly cut pineapple chunks and savor each golden morsel, each juicy bite.

Like many Northerners, I had been brainwashed to associate pineapple with Hawaii, colonial New England hospitality, Cantonese cocktails, and the archway on Federal Hill in Providence (I know it’s a pine cone on that arch over Atwells Avenue, but it’s amazing how many people think it’s a pineapple.).

Forgive me, Carmen Miranda.

And the winner of the paella pan giveaway is...

The winner of the 17-inch paella pan (just like the one in the photo) and Penelope Casas cookbook from La Tienda is...

Other People's Pantries #42

From Cora (Cora Cooks), in Southern Illinois:

When I was growing up, there was really no such thing as a pantry in our house. My mother went to the grocery store every day and kept little food on hand. You see, I had five younger brothers -– no sisters -- and no matter how much food my mother brought in from the grocery store every afternoon, it would all be gone by the next day. 

My dad would always say something like, “Why don’t you buy things by the case, so you don’t have to go to the store every day?” She knew that even if she went to the store to stock up for a week, those boys would have just eaten all the food in one day anyway. And she might have gone berserk -– the grocery store was her refuge.

When I got my own home -– along with a husband who frequently left an annoying bite or two of food on his plate, claiming to be too full to finish it -– I was in a quandary. I only knew how to shop and cook for a family of eight! Food began to stack up in my apartment-size cupboards.

Years of living wherever the Air Force sent us also introduced me to many wonderful local and regional food  specialties, to which I became quite attached. I began to collect these new ingredients to take with me when a move was imminent. And anywhere I traveled, I would make it a point to go to a grocery store to see what was peculiar to that area.

Now that we have moved back to my hometown and I have the kitchen of my dreams, I have more than enough space for storing pantry items, especially for just the two of us, and we live about five minutes from some really great markets. But, as you can see, I still like to keep my pantry well-stocked.

On Saturdays, we peek into Other People's Pantries.

Come on -- show us your pantry.

Here's how.

Brown sugar (Recipe: mulled cider)

If you've been reading The Perfect Pantry for a while, you know a lot about me.

You know that I live in Rhode Island, in a log house in the woods, with a nice kitchen and an herb garden and a fire pit outside.

You know that I love Asian noodles and coffee and that stuff that isn't really mayonnaise.

You know that I am old... old enough to think of this whenever someone says brown sugar...