PIMP YOUR PANTRY

Have some fun with kitchen tools, ingredients, and specialty items~what I'm drinking~a holiday fruitcake

Copper a gogo from E. Dehillerin in Paris.

Tools

Copper Pots & Pans

Perhaps it was in the 1980s when my wife and I made our first trip to the gargantuan kitchen supply store E. Dehillerin in Paris, to check out their unparalleled copper. We went. We bought. And we kept buying over the years. I don’t recall just what we picked up that first trip but it was repeated a couple times and supplemented with air mail orders until we had our very own collection of small sauce pans to melt butter to big pots for cooking up Sassy’s Tomato Sauce. What a shop! We eventually purchased a metal stand to display our trophies.

Our stand

If Paris shopping is a touch too much for y’all, check out the U.S. shop Elise Green Collections, which has oodles of coolio copper. BTW, you’ll want to know how to clean your copper, too.

This stamped handmade pot from Elise Green was found in a flea market in Lyon, France. It once was used in a patisserie and is made of tin-lined copper

Cooking Equipment

I once bought a microwave, but not in 1975 when they first hit the market for $10,500 in today’s dollars. And I’ve bought several since. However, I just returned an air fryer. I never bought a crockpot. I never bought the June oven that coaxes us “to put some swagger in your countertop” and buy this appliance that does the work of 12 other workhorses. I have no fancy coffee maker. No green egg. No pizza oven. No sous vide machine. But—truth be told—I am a sucker for the Vitamix blender and a Breville food processor (not their food & drink smoker!) that sit stately in my kitchen as sentinels, reminding me sculptures in the home are worthy and also to cook at home more! The Vitamix was used this past summer for making smoothies. The food processor, hardly ever used, but it sure is handsome. So, only the current microwave and the Vitamix have sorta paid off.

My Vitamix and Breville food processor

Lazy Susan

Growing up, my family ate at a kitchen table that featured a Lazy Susan. It was fun for me. I’d put a plastic gallon of milk on it and spin that Susan so that the bottle would fly off and into the lap of one of my two younger sisters! Can’t remember if the bottle had a cap or not or if that’s the only thing I propelled into their laps, but the memory of spinning Susan sure has stuck with me. My Dad woodburned a couple sayings onto ours, one of which is: “Thou Shall Not Live by Bread Alone.” Here’s a sampling of Susans for your kitchen table.

I grew up with this Lazy Susan

A Susan is also a perfect organizer in kitchen pantries to store cans and spices, in a bathroom to store beauty supplies, or anywhere else you could use a little help getting organized. Basically, it's the ultimate versatile storage accessory and clutter containment device. Susans work wonders on high shelves with hard-to-reach places.

If you thought Susan turntables were a relic of the ’70s, think again. Instead of having your essential spices scattered in the cupboard, set them on a Susan. Be sure to have the labels facing out. If a single layer won’t suffice, create a two-tiered Susan by placing an empty can in the center and setting a second Susan on top. Use hot glue to adhere the can in place. Put those baking spices on one tier and cooking spices on another, so searching is a snap.

Ingredients

Herbs

Herbs are so essential to many dishes that I find myself buying different ones numerous times a year. Ah, but that’s often after I grab dried herbs in containers that should have been tossed out every January to replace with fresh ones, says many a food folk. In summer, I think cut chives make a good egg salad great. Bunches of chives at the supermarket will set you back $1 to $3 each bunch. A chive plant might be $5 to $6. Problem is, when I just buy a bunch, I only use a fraction of it, tossing the rest. Come spring, I’m gonna buy a plant and clip just what I need, enjoying the remaining live chives just by looking at them. As a bonus, chives grow pom-pom-like flowers that can be scattered over salads and vegetable dishes. With bright purple thin petals, chives flowers make a dynamic accent.

Growing rosemary is as easy as pie. As an aside, rosemary grows in London all over the place. Standing next to a bus stop, you might also be standing to a mature rosemary bush several feet tall and several feet wide. Doing just that may have cemented my relationship with rosemary forever. Since, I’ve always grown rosemary. I like its looks nearly as much as its taste. I use it liberally in pork, lamb, and veal dishes on the grill or in the oven. Its perfect companion is mustard from Grey Poupon in Dijon, France, which has been around since 1870. I also use it liberally in making homemade seasoned vinegar, recipe following.

Olive Oil

When it comes to olive oil, I just shop my go-to grocery and specialty stores to buy any new appealing offering they’re pushing. But I’ve come across something new: Giadzy. It’s an online site by Giada De Laurentiis, the TV personality. “While there’s a lot more fantastic Italian food here in the U.S.,” says Giada, “so many of these regional gems remain inaccessible to anyone outside Italia . . . that’s why I’ve launched Giadzy Pantry.” She offers dozens of oils, some single variety oils, which is to say different olives make different oils, a la wine. This is about to become a new food frontier for me to explore.

Balsamic Vinegar

In 2008, when on a trip to Italy, my wife and I visited a vinegar producer that made balsamic. While researching that trip, I came to find that balsamic is so age worthy it can be passed on from generation to generation, as it was hundreds of years ago. While many balsamic vinegars are actually affordable, those fit for kings can be more than 50 years old and fetch $1,000 for a small bottle. The story of balsamic vinegar is an engaging one. The process of making it is too. It is produced from crushed grapes which are cooked and aged in a series of barrels of different kinds of wood. Those barrels come in decreasing sizes in oak, chestnut, ash, sherry, mulberry, and juniper. Such a concentration brings bittersweet flavors and a dark brown appearance to this rich, glossy colour, plus a smooth density of flowing syrupiness.

Balsamic can be served "on a spoon" as an unusual aperitif or with fish, cooked meat, raw or cooked vegetables, cheese, sliced meats, various fruits, and even ice cream.

Make Your Own Vinegar

I find the simple process of purchasing champagne vinegar, pouring it into an artfully made glass bottle, dropping in rosemary, thyme, garlic, peppercorns, and just about any other fresh herb I have around, results, over months, even years, in a gratifying infusion like no other.

Specialty Items

Cured Pork

I love the idea of guanciale, lardo, pork jowl, and pancetta because they all come from a pig. While I’m motivated to buy them all, pancetta is the only one I buy and use regularly. Maybe because it’s the most readily available. I haven’t really figured that out yet. Anyway, I use pancetta in pasta dishes, mainly, when I want an unsmoked bacon flavor. When I buy it, I often freeze it since I don’t want it to go south before I figure out what I want to do with it.

Soy Sauce

Here’s a Chinese premium specialty small-batch handcrafted light soy sauce I’m going to add to my larder. And maybe one of Japan’s.

Rice

I’ve also come across something else new from Giadzy. Often called the "king of Italian rice," Carnaroli from Riso Buono is the risotto variety of choice for certain cooks. With a higher starch content and firmer texture than the arborio, this rice makes an ultra-creamy risotto. It is aged for a year after harvest before it’s processed and sold. I sure like the sound of that

Miso

Just what is miso? Miso is a fermented paste that adds a salty umami flavor to many Japanese dishes. Most miso is made in Japan, where the ingredient has been used since the 8th Century or so. Miso is a key ingredient in Japanese cooking and forms the base of the staple dish, miso soup. The paste, similar in texture to peanut butter, is typically a cultured mixture of soybeans, rice or barley, salt, and koji, a mold. Depending on the variety, miso can be smooth or chunky and is fermented anywhere from a few weeks to several years. I’ve purchased it a couple times and have yet to conquer it. Maybe sometime soon.

Fish

Canned fish is a pantry ingredient you may want to add to your holdings. As are anchovies, which come in many iterations. Then there’s bottarga, sometimes referred to as the prosciutto of the sea. Its salt-cured flavor is similar to prosciutto and can be as hard as a hard cheese. Bottarga has a salty, briny, umami flavor, reminiscent of the sea without being yukky fishy. It's best to think of bottarga as a condiment. A small amount, grated on a microplane grater, is often enough to do the job. Bottarga is a form of dried, cured fish roe sacs, usually mullet roe or eggs, sometimes tuna. It’s covered in sea salt and left to cure for several weeks, pressed, which squeezes out additional liquid, and then dried for several months. Italian bottarga, much of which is produced on the island of Sardinia, is quite dry and is usually grated and served over vegetables such as asparagus or artichokes, or thinly shaved and served on crostini, in salads, on sandwiches or even to transform a dish of pasta, rice, pizza, or eggs.

What I’m Drinking

Brandy is an enchanting distilled spirit produced from grapes, most commonly, but sometimes from apples, apricots, and peaches. Brandy can be made anywhere in the world, and there are regional dapper drinks such as cognac, Armagnac, grappa, and pisco. Often enjoyed straight, brandy is the foundation of several classic cocktails. Here’s one guide to top brandy. And here’s the MasterClass guide to the same.

A Holiday Fruitcake

The Lovely Crumb is a woman-owned baking business based in Knoxville, Tenn., and the proud home of Jane's Famous Fruitcake—a wheat-free fruitcake made from an old family recipe that’s handcrafted in small batches. I got one for an old dear friend this holiday from a woman who is also an old friend and the spirit behind this business.

Want to make someone’s day? Share this post! Or give someone a free gift subscription!