Pantry Cooking

"Pantry cooking" refers to cooking with what you have on hand, rather than running to the grocery store to buy fresh ingredients. I ran across the term about a year ago in an essay in "Food and Wine" magazine. The author described how he and his wife were appalled at how much food they were throwing out because they had never gotten around to using it, and so decided to try an experiment. They agreed not to buy any new food, except milk, until they had used everything in their fridge and cupboards. The experiment forced them to be extremely creative, since their resources were limited. By the end, they were down to nothing but some nearly stale bread, an onion, and some Parmesan cheese. They soaked the bread in water, diced the onion and mixed it into the bread, sprinkled the cheese on top, and baked the whole thing. The author wrote that it was "so good it was almost scary."

I'm often forced to do "pantry cooking" between Peapod deliveries. My favorite pantry dish is pasta garnished with garlic and olive oil. It's ridiculously simple but very tasty. I also did some pantry cooking for lunch today as I was waiting for my Peapod order to be delivered. I had some arborio rice, chicken broth, Parmesan cheese, and frozen shrimp left over from my party 2 weeks ago. I made risotto with the rice, mixed in the shrimp and cheese, and topped it off with some truffle oil that I had forgotten was stashed in the door of the fridge. It was so good, it was definitely scary. After that, the omelet I made for dinner was a big let-down.