Buying for Your Pantry...

[andiesenji]

I have discovered that many of the odd and unusual condiments, fruit-based chutneys and similar items, taste quite nice when bedded on a base of couscous, rice or mixed grains.

Of course some of these items may come from opposite sides of the world and I am sure purists will feel faint at some of the combinations, but it is one way to use the various things and I like them.

When I mentioned something about pairing a SE Asian condiment with couscous on another thread, there were a couple of less than enthusiastic responses. Oh well.........

[rooftop1000]

Oh, man. You've nailed me. Thoughts:

Every time the guilt comes on, (or we just run out of space), we vow to buy produce only for two full weeks and just cook out of the pantry.  The original rule had a "no eating out" clause in it, but that tends not to work very well with schedules.  Plus, by the end of the second week, if you only have a jar of cinnamon honey and some sambhar powder..... 

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For those of us who benefit from externally imposed arbitrary structure, this is sheer genius! I plan to dive in this weekend. Does anyone have a recipe using mudfish paste, pine nut honey, five pounds of tarbais beans, Pickapeppa sauce, and smoked pigs' feet?

And are there any others willing to take the plunge?

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This is no challenge...send me half the beans, cook the other half with the pigs feet and hot sauce and make a nice salad with the fish paste and honey in the dressing

tracey

[nakji]

I've really had to reduce the amount of food I keep on hand in the past few years. When I was living outside of Seoul, I had a big kitchen, and often kept ingredients for three or four different cuisines on hand at any given time - basmati rice for when we felt like Indian, Korean rice for Korean dinners; various and assorted European and Asian spices, etc. - I'm sure you all know what I mean.

When I moved to Hanoi, the options for dried goods shrank incredibly - although I could go to the wet market and pick up any number of fresh and exotic fruits and vegetables, simple things like fresh meat (that I trusted) was a lot harder to find. My solution? Stop cooking, eat on the street like everyone else. If you looked in my fridge in Hanoi, it held Halida beer, limes for G&Ts, and condensed milk for coffee - and it was only in there to keep it away from the ants.

Then I moved to Tokyo. Dinner out is $30 a head, unless you're eating fast food, which I try to avoid when at all possible. So it's back to the stove. But - I have two tiny burners and two shelves for storage. My fridge would be a bar fridge in Canada. It required a complete change of thinking. The first week I was here, I was listening to a podcast on the train about housing designers and the emergence of a trend for high square footage living in the US and Canada. One of the designers said something that has stuck with me: "Small fridges make for good neighborhoods". In my case, this is very true. On my way home from the train station every night, I pass three green grocers, a fish shop/take-away sushi, a mini-supermarket, and a bakery. I have switched to planning my meals on Saturday morning, and then picking up the meat and staples I'll need for the week at the supermarket. Then, every night as I come home, I pick up whatever fruit or veg I need to complete the meal. My pantry holds a bottle of mirin, a bottle of soy sauce, a bottle of veg oil, a bottle of olive oil, and a bottle of rice vinegar. I have a small bag of salt, sugar, and flour. I have another small pouch of Korean red pepper flakes, some tubes of tomato paste, instant dashi, and a bottle of good Marsala. I have resisted buying traditional western spices, because without an oven, I'm not baking or roasting. It's been a real learning experience for me, but it's interesting how many great and delicious meals you can make from a few ingredients. It helps if you stick mainly to one cuisine, though, and right now I'm using the opportunity to learn more about Japanese home cooking.

That being said, when I'm back in Canada for the holidays, I'll be reveling in my parents' spacious fridge (Look! Three kinds of juice cooling at once!) and baking up a storm. But I guess my point is, you can prepare wonderful meals from a small range of ingredients with a little thought and care.

[Fugu]

I like collecting ingredients and try them in my cooking but some of them I find inedible so it stays in the pantry for a long time. Some expired stuff I have are:

1. Black moss, dried, so I don't know if they do expire?

2. Kinugasa Mushrooms, smells like vinegar when rehydrated.

3. White fungus, still enjoying how it looks.

4. Dried banana blossoms, might be good with adobo.

Anyone used any of these before? Maybe you can shed some light on their proper usage or at least something edible to come out.

[andiesenji]

Fugu, those items are all new to me. However, they do sound interesting and I would like to know how they might be used.

[Peter the eater]

I worry about this trend.

If everything useless and expiring was put up for consumption and disposal on a regular basis.....

What would happen to me?

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PG you are the opposite of useless - I am on tenter hooks in anticipation of your next family outing . . .

[eldereno]

I am lucky (???) to have a very large pantry, almost room sized. Granted, much of it is used to store platters, extra tableware, glassware, vases, cookware, bakeware, candlesticks.....just tons of stuff....but there is lots of space for pantry items. I remember when building the house and designing the pantry always wanting a HUGE space just for this. I had this strange fantasy that I could stock it and ALWAYS have ingredients on hand to to whip up a fabulous meal at any given moment. Now I do have some exotic ingredients in there that you have all mentioned, but.........what do you have to say about the quantity of normal things I keep in there, like 10 28oz cans of San Marzano peeled tomatoes, 8 boxes of the chicken stock I don't find objectionable, seafood stock, beef stock, vegetable stock, the many cans of tuna in olive oil, artichoke hearts, the cans of butter beans, cannellini beans, chick peas, black beans (all..just in case), pounds on pounds of all the prior mentioned items in dry form like tarbais beans, split peas, northern beans, garbanzo beans, etc., rice in all forms, pasta in all forms, marinated mushrooms, and on and on.

Just a year ago I did a purge/cleaning of the space and found some things I have had for over 10 years, the use by date long gone. I have tried to be more aware of what is in there since then but still find that when I am out shopping and think about whether I have some of what I think are staples...I am unsure ...and buy more. You wouldn't want to see my spice cabinet or cheese drawer!!!!

SOOO...is this an addiction? Do I need therapy?

There are hoarders of many different varieties. Mine and some of you others may be hoarders BUT of the food variety rather than that of other STUFF.

This may be my first step towards recovery.....admitting I may (NO......DO) have a problem!

edited for the unsure modicon

Edited December 2, 2007 by eldereno (log)

[Fugu]

Fugu, those items are all new to me.  However, they do sound interesting and I would like to know how they might be used.

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I don't really know how to use these ingredients properly but this is how I utilized them. IMO, most of these ingredients, not all, only serve as an added textural and visual component to a dish.

The moss, for lack of a better discription, looks like.......Anyway, it looks like a black steelwool. No presoaking needed, easily breaks apart in mousses or even cream soups or fried rice, adds a curious appearance. No discernable flavour.

Kinugasa mushrooms are hollow, finger like, almost like fine mesh. The closest I could find in comparison to texture is lufa. I soaked the mushroom until it was soft but I did not smell it first, otherwise I would have washed it again to remove the vinegary smell. I stuffed it with a seafood mousse and served with a light sauce, like a chicken veloute with soya sauce. One of those neutral palates that need you own touch to make it sing.

The white fungus looks like a crumpled tissue paper, hard to describe. It is white with a crunchy texture, even after it is cooked. Similar to black woodear mushrooms but not as good. I mixed it in with mapo tofu after rehydrating but it only added texture to the dish. I was told that this is used in desserts?

Dried banana blossoms are similar to dried day lily blossoms. I tie 2 blossoms in an overhand knot(presentation)and pre-soak them. They slightly crunchy in texture, good in sitr frys with a sauce.

Banana hearts(blossoms are inside) is usally used in a Pilipino peanut stew called Kare-Kare, served with garlicky shrimp paste. Similar to artichokes. first few out leaves need to be removed as they are not as tender.

One of my Chinese friends invited me for a Mongolian hot pot and introduced me to a papaya dessert in syrup with frogs eggs. I was not told what it was until I ate it...Supposed to be an energy booster/aphrosdisiac?

Edited December 2, 2007 by Fugu (log)

[Domestic Goddess]

Fugu - banana heart blossoms are great for the sweet-savory stew called humba. It is usually made with pig trotters and is usually eaten with dried fish called tuyo (the saltiness of the dried fish is a great foil against the sweetness of the meat). Lemme know if you want the recipe.

[Fugu]

Fugu - banana heart blossoms are great for the sweet-savory stew called humba. It is usually made with pig trotters and is usually eaten with dried fish called tuyo (the saltiness of the dried fish is a great foil against the sweetness of the meat). Lemme know if you want the recipe.

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Domestic Goddess, I /we could always use another recipe. TIA I have a recipe that I thought was humba or at least I call it by that name. It would be interresting to compare recipes.

My aunt has a habit of hiding her recipes or renaming them when someone asks. It has heart of coconut tree(ubod) and fermented black bean and whole peppercorns. The pork is braised, like adobo.

Edited to add: Our native cuisine varies so much. Bicol's recipes and Kapampangan's recipes, inspite of sharing the same name have widely different ingredients. We have unspoken competitions from various regions on who makes the best this or that. Additional ingredients are added to better the next, losing the original recipe in the process. And to add to the confusion, we have over 180 languages and dialects.

Edited December 2, 2007 by Fugu (log)

[birder53]

My parents are guilty of keeping expired food in the fridge and pantry. They should be granted some leniency here since they are both over 85 and have trouble bending to get to the lower reaches of the fridge. I also wonder about their eyesight and sense of smell. We've discarded what used to be fruit and vegetables that had turned into smelly, black, jelly like masses. You have to check to expiration dates on everything in the cupboard. Mom complains that we are "too fussy" and would probably retrieve it all from the trash if it weren't too physically difficult for her. Since they've managed to live this long eating like that it can't be that serious.

We are guilty of buying things "just in case" for the pantry and never using them. The freezer is another place where we loose things to freezer burn. Since moving this past summer, we purged the pantry and fridge. We had to give away or use the perishables. The pantry had a lot of expired stuff that we tossed. When you pay by the pound to move your things, it just doesn't make sense to pay to move things you never use.

Thanks to our local Trader Joes, we are slowly filling up the pantry again.

[pennylane]

We should start a thread for people who need help using up the items languishing in their pantries. (Or is this that thread?) I also have a tendency to collect exotic ingredients either to use in a specific recipe, or because I think I may need them someday, or just because I'm afraid I will never see them again. In fact I actually seek them out, searching for new and undiscovered exotic food stores all over town. And it never occurred to me that many of these items would actually pass their expiration dates before I got around to using them. So now I've made a list of all the forgotten denizens of my kitchen cupboards :

1) couscous (just got sick of it)

2) tvp (they say it tastes like cardboard... they're right)

3) steel-cut oats (sad but true, it seems I prefer regular oats)

4) chestnut flour (hard to understand, when I love this stuff so much)

5) chickpea flour (have started adding this to everything - not a good idea)

6) soba (love buckwheat, love noodles, strangely didn't love soba)

7) quinoa crisps (these were good in my homemade protein bars, not so much on their own)

8) masa harina (once again, love this stuff, but was forced to buy a massive amount)

9) manioc flour (bought for pao de queijo, which was good but how often can I make it?)

10) whole urd dal (love this stuff, but takes too long to cook)

11) black soy beans (from before I knew how impractical it is to ferment them at home)

12) adzuki beans (canned red bean paste is just so much easier)

13) marmite (not bad in vegetarian gravy)

14) malt syrup (really need to bake more bread)

15) red palm oil (this is the killer - almost a whole huge bottle left!!)

Ideally, I'd like to use all this stuff up before I embark on any new cooking projects, but it's going to take a while...

[Anna N]

We should start a thread for people who need help using up the items languishing in their pantries.  (Or is this that thread?) 

. . .

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I was kinda hoping this topic would segue into a way to help us use up these ingredients! But at least it pushed me to look up recipes to use up the Laksa paste I bought!

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

9) manioc flour (bought for pao de queijo, which was good but how often can I make it?)

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FYI, you can use manioc flour as a 1:1 subtitution for corn starch or potato starch. Manioc flour = tapioca starch/flour. Fairly popular alternative flour for gluten free baking.

edited to add... my canned good cabinets aren't too bad (I go through them every 3 months), but my spice cabinet is nuts.

Edited December 3, 2007 by MomOfLittleFoodies (log)

[pennylane]

FYI, you can use manioc flour as a 1:1 subtitution for corn starch or potato starch. Manioc flour = tapioca starch/flour. Fairly popular alternative flour for gluten free baking.

Thank you for your advice. I'm not sure it will work for me, though, as I think I have what's known as "sour" tapioca flour, as opposed to the "sweet" variety which can be used in place of cornstarch. Mine has a rather distinctive smell which I fear would come through in the finished product - it might not, but I'm afraid to try it!

If anyone has any advice on the red palm oil, I'd love to hear it. Also, does anyone know how to check whether it's still good? It looks a little funny, but it doesn't smell rancid. Thing is, it's been sitting in my kitchen cupboards for so long, I'm almost afraid to taste it now...