The Perfect Pantry

Chili powder (Recipe: "turkey taco" salad)

Updated from the archives, a summer favorite, with new photo, links and recipe.

Some like it hot.

I like it really hot.

I like it hot enough to make my scalp tingle, my sinuses drip, and my eyes water. (Do I need to mention that I'm talking about food now, not the weather?) I wasn't always like this, but a trip to New Orleans years ago started me down the pepper path, and there was no turning back.

Sometimes, though, unadulterated heat isn't the goal. When I want a more complex depth of flavor in Mexican and Southwestern dishes, I often reach for chili powder.

Are you confused by the whole chili/chile thing? Many people are, and product packaging doesn't really help, with the willy-nilly and often interchangeable use of chile, chili, chillie and chilli.

Chili-with-an-I powder is made from chile-with-an-E peppers, blended with a variety of other spices including cumin, cayenne pepper, oregano, garlic, and paprika.

Each vendor (or should I say blender?) combines these basic spices in different proportions. Penzeys uses ancho chile as the base; ancho is a dried poblano pepper, not very hot, flavorful and smoky when dried. Cumin adds additional "smoke", cayenne adds a bit of heat, and oregano keeps the blend in balance. Alton Brown makes his chili powder extra-smoky by using smoked paprika.

It's easy enough to make your own chili powder, and you can adjust the heat to my taste by upping the cayenne. Chili powder will keep in an airtight container on the spice rack for three months, or in the freezer for a year without an unacceptable loss of pungency.

Once you've got chili powder in your pantry, it's a hop, skip and jump to your own barbecue sauce, enchiladas, and tacos. And remember, chili-with-an-I powder is an essential ingredient in chili-with-an-I meat and bean stew, too.

Whew!

"TURKEY TACO" SALAD
Quick and oh-so-easy, this recipe originated as the filling for tacos and burritos. You can crisp some tortillas on a dry griddle, and slice them to make a crunchy topping for the salad, too. Serves 4; can be doubled or tripled.

2 tsp olive oil
1 lb ground turkey breast
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 dried habañero chile pepper (handle with care!)
2-3 tsp chili powder (mild or hot, to taste)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 cup canned chopped tomatoes (I use Pomi brand)
1 cup chicken stock (optional)
4 cups shredded iceberg lettuce
2 large tomatoes, diced
1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar or jack cheese

In a high-sided frying pan or sauce pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the turkey, and stir to break up. Cook until turkey is no longer pink. Add onion, and cook 3-4 minutes, until onion is translucent.

While the onion is cooking, place the habañero inside a ziploc bag. Close the bag, and smash the pepper with a rolling pin or empty wine bottle. Pour the chile pepper into the pot (try not to touch the pepper), and add the chili powder, cumin and oregano. Stir to combine, and cook for 2 minutes. Add tomatoes and 1 cup of water or chicken stock. Stir, reduce heat to simmer, and cook for 20 minutes or until most of the liquid has been absorbed. Add more water if necessary, a few Tbsp at a time, to keep the sauce from getting too thick before the turkey is cooked through.

To assemble the salad, fill a bowl with shredded lettuce. Top with turkey filling, tomatoes and cheese. If you wish, add sliced fried tortilla strips.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Clean-the-freezer chili
Black bean soup
South End Deep Root Chili
White chili
Roasted halibut tacos with mango salsa
Ethiopian chicken in red pepper sauce (doro wat)

Assorted frozen fruit (Recipe: strawberry fruit whiz)

Updated from the archives, with new photo and links, and a favorite summer recipe.

In the beginning (1973), Carl Sontheimer, an engineer who loved to cook, created the Cuisinart food processor.

Not long after that -- well, okay, fifteen years later -- I created frozen fruit whiz.

As a rule, I'd never opt for frozen fruit over in-season ripe fresh fruit, but individually quick frozen (IQF) fruits, prepared commercially or in your own kitchen, frozen at the peak of ripeness, retain almost all of their nutrient value. IQF fruit is 100% natural, with no added sugar or preservatives. It's trimmed and washed, and economical to use. Take what you need, and leave the rest in the freezer. To IQF at home, wash and trim fresh fruit and spread out on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Freeze completely, then transfer to zip-loc bags.

I love to mix frozen fruit into fresh fruit salad. The juices from the frozen melt over the fresh (try this with frozen strawberries and fresh honeydew), creating a beautiful sauce. Add a squeeze of lime and some fresh mint leaves.

Keep several different frozen fruits on hand, to make a mango frozen dessert, cranberry soup, berry banana smoothie, mango lassi, or strawberry fruit pops.

Or, why not set up a batida bar for summer parties? To make this Brazilian "smoothie", combine in a blender 2 oz cachaça, rum, or tequila; 1/2 cup fresh or frozen strawberries (or any frozen fruit you have on hand); 2 oz sweetened condensed milk; 1-2 tsp sugar; and 1 cup of ice. Latin markets are a good source of frozen tropical fruits like guava and passion fruit.

 
STRAWBERRY FRUIT WHIZ
Bananas give this dessert the consistency of ice cream; you'll never miss the fat. It's sugar-free healthy as can be, and as colorful as you want to make it. Serves 6.

2 large ripe bananas
juice of one lemon
2/3 cup unsweetened frozen strawberries, UNTHAWED
1/2 cup unsweetened apple juice, chilled

Slice bananas and toss with the lemon juice. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet, and freeze until firm (30 minutes or more). In a food processor fitted with metal blade, add frozen bananas, strawberries and cold juice and process until smooth, scraping sides of processor bowl as necessary. Serve immediately, or spoon into serving dishes, or wine or parfait glasses, and freeze up to 1 hour.

Variations:

1. Layer with, or top with, fresh seasonal berries, cut peaches or nectarines, or crumbled ginger cookies.

2. Substitute for apple juice: cranberry juice cocktail or unsweetened grape juice.

3. Substitute for frozen strawberries: frozen raspberries, mixed berries, mango, melon or pineapple.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Coconut avocado ice cream
Ice cream chocolate chip cookies
Chocolate-orange sorbet
Mango lassi
Lemons stuffed with sherbet

Peter's traveling pantry (Recipe: green shrimp or fish curry)

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

All this talk about the perfect pantry and peeking in other people's pantries makes me wish I had taken a few photos of the mobile pantry I put together while working as a personal chef in Rhode Island, before I moved to Brazil.

My traveling pantry was a work of art.

I really didn’t want to mix business with pleasure in my new personal chef venture, so I decided to buy everything new for my traveling pantry, except for exotic or expensive or rarely-used herbs and spices that I already had on hand in my kitchen. The same philosophy applied to utensils and tools; I did buy new pots and pans for preparing clients' meals onsite in their kitchens, but I used my own blender and Cuisinart.

I found a sturdy cardboard flip-top shoe box perfect for my condiment kit -- deep enough so the standard size Penzeys bottles and supermarket tins would be able to stand upright.

Then, I exhumed an old purple plastic milk crate that had once held my LPs (okay, not just old... antique!) for the staples. And everything else I packed into assortment of plastic restaurant bus tubs (the kind used for carrying dirty dishes from the table to the kitchen), Rubbermaid storage bins, and thermal bags, carefully selected to fit in the back of my Subaru.

In building my traveling pantry, I planned to start with just the basics, and then add as new client menus called for additional items. I cleaned out my kitchen cupboards to see whether I already had any duplicates in the far recesses. I found doubles of thyme leaves, sea salt, oregano, cinnamon, whole cloves, and a grinder with a four-pepper blend.

I began by shopping for the basics: bay leaves, basil, savory, marjoram, crushed red pepper, sweet paprika. Herbs and spices would be color-coded for ease of access. I bought round stickers –- neon green for herbs, hot pink for spices, bright yellow for anything else -- wrote the names of the items on the stickers, and stuck the proper color sticker on top of each jar or tin. Then the staples were organized in the purple milk crate: olive oil, vegetable oil, red wine vinegar, balsamic, Dijon mustard, honey, white sugar, flour, cornstarch, tomato paste, bread crumbs, garlic.

It was amazing how fast my traveling pantry grew as the jobs came.

My first personal chef gig was a 12-meal plan, four servings each of: Venetian scallops with a jardinière; Greek chicken pie with spinach in onion cups; and slow-roasted pork loin with lime mojo and oven-roasted root vegetables. So I added nutmeg, dill seed, chili powder, ground cumin to the shoe box, and sherry vinegar to the milk crate.

The second menu offered green shrimp curry over rice with tamatar bhurta, pastizzada (Venetian pot roast with polenta), and turkey meatloaf with twice-baked sweet potatoes. Turmeric, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, cinnamon stick went into the shoe box and coconut milk, ginger root, lemon, beef bouillon, white wine, cornmeal, corn flour, and San Marzano tomatoes went into the milk crate.

Before I knew it, the number of ingredients was outgrowing the confines of my traveling pantry. But did I cut back? No!

Instead, I opted for a swing pantry –- a bus tub in the closet where I kept traveling pantry items that didn’t need to travel to a client today, but might be swapped in tomorrow. I could also stockpile sale items that I knew I would eventually use. This worked like a charm; before a new job I would simply move the things I wouldn’t be using from shoe box and milk crate to bus tub, and move things I would need from bus tub to shoe box and milk crate.

Imagine my friends’ and family’s delight when I had to give away the contents of both my kitchen and traveling pantries as part of my big move to Brazil. Doubles of almost everything made everybody happy!

GREEN SHRIMP (OR FISH) CURRY
Adapted from The Complete Oriental Cookbook (Marshall Cavendish Ltd., London, 1978), this recipe pays tribute to Lydia’s recent ginger, turmeric, and lemon posts and to the early days of my traveling pantry. Serves 4.

1-1/2 inch piece ginger root, peeled and chopped
3  cloves garlic
4  green chiles, seeded
6  Tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
1  Tbsp coriander seeds
Juice of 1 lemon
2  cups unsweetened coconut milk
1/3  cup vegetable oil
1-2/3  pounds shrimp (or firm white fish, cut into portions or 2” pieces)
2  medium onions, chopped
1  tsp turmeric
1  tsp mustard seeds
1  tsp salt

Put ginger, garlic, chiles, coriander leaves and seeds into a blender with the lemon juice and enough coconut milk (4 oz) to blend to a smooth paste. Heat 1/4 cup of the oil in a large skillet. When hot, add the shrimp (or fish) and fry, turning occasionally, for 5 minutes; shrimp should be just pink, fish should be just opaque. Set aside. Skim off a bit of excess oil from the pan juices.

Add the remaining oil to the pan and fry the onions until golden. Stir in turmeric, mustard seeds and salt and fry for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add the spice paste and fry for 5 minutes,
stirring constantly. Return the shrimp (or fish) and juices to the pan and coat thoroughly in the paste. Pour in the remaining coconut milk and bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally and very gently. Serve over basmati rice.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Pineapple shrimp curry
Green chicken curry with eggplant
Egg curry
Curried squash, apple and pear soup
Avocado coconut milk ice cream
Vietnamese rice stick noodle salad with caramelized shrimp

And the winner of the great burger giveaway is...

Congratulations, Helen in Ohio! You are the lucky winner of the Roseda Beef Summer Cookout Kit, which will be on its way to you this week.

And a big thank you and happy birthday to Aiden, our grandson and "random generator", who turns 7 this week.

Other People's Pantries #29

From Amanda (My Daily Diner), in Gold River, California:

What do flours, beans, grains, herbs, spices, oils, and vinegars have in common? They are pretty much the only items I keep stocked in my cupboards.

I am a busy wife and mother of two boys. I meal plan and shop once a week at various stores/markets. We eat sustainably (or at least we try about 90% of the time) which for us, means we only buy what we need. We eat a lot of beans and grains mixed with fresh, seasonal produce and naturally raised meat. Living in California, we have several year round farmers markets which makes eating seasonally fairly easy. I like to think I cook similarly to my great grandmother, realizing she didn't have a Whole Foods to pop into (too bad for her, I think she would have liked it!). 

As for the cheetos, boxed cereals, and fruit by the foot, not found in this pantry. I try to make everything from scratch. My most recent debacle was trying to "pop" rice. I figured if rice krispies could do it, so could I....WRONG! But the kids and I had fun trying.   

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

Come on -- show us your pantry.

Here's how.

Miracle Whip (Recipe: panko-crusted baked chicken)

Don't forget our Summer Cookout Kit giveaway, featuring all-natural steakburgers from Roseda Beef. Leave a comment on any post before 11:00 p.m. eastern US time on Friday, August 15 to be eligible.

Each year in August, I confess my sins -- well, the worst of my culinary sins -- and ask your forgiveness.

I love Miracle Whip.

There. I've said it.

First-time readers of The Perfect Pantry might attribute my love for this guiltiest of guilty pleasures to temporary insanity or summer heat stroke.

Not true.

I've been a four-seasons Miracle Whip lover, all year round, year after year, since long before my friends and I gave each other Miracle Whip facials in junior high school.

Miracle Whip Dressing -- by law it can't be called mayonnaise, because it contains vinegar and sugar -- was invented by Salem, Illinois, restaurant owner Max Crossett, who sold the formula to Kraft Foods in 1931 for a whopping $300. At Kraft, the salad dressing was mixed in a new type of emulsifying machine, nicknamed "Miracle Whip", which ensured that the ingredients would become thoroughly whipped and blended. Kraft introduced its new product at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, where it was an instant success. And thanks to its long shelf-life and low price, Miracle Whip salad dressing remained a success throughout the Depression years.

While Miracle Whip is no all-natural product, the list of ingredients contains nothing I can't identify: water, soybean oil, vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, sugar, salt, enzyme modified egg yolks, mustard flour, artificial color, potassium sorbate as a preservative, paprika, spice, natural flavor, dried garlic, beta carotene (color). The order of ingredients (which indicates the percentage of total content) has changed a bit since last year, giving me hope that one day soon Kraft will eliminate the HFCS.

Once opened, Miracle Whip must be stored in the refrigerator, where it will keep almost indefinitely. The taste is both sweeter and brighter than homemade mayonnaise. Miracle Whip comes in "light" and "fat-free" versions as well, but I never use them; I much prefer the taste of the real thing, even if that thing isn't real mayo.

A bit of Miracle Whip smoothes the taste of pesto and guacamole. You can substitute MW in many recipes, like deviled eggs, that call for mayonnaise, or try these recipes for parmesan chicken, spinach and bacon quiche, broccoli raisin salad, ham and cheese tortellini, tomato soup vegetable salad, and cocoa cupcakes.

See you next August, when once again I promise to confess my (culinary) sins.

Now, what's your guilty pleasure?

PANKO-CRUSTED BAKED CHICKEN
Great for picnics, or chopped up in a crunchy summer salad. Serves 6.

1-1/4 cup panko
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
2 Tbsp Miracle Whip
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
Few drops of hot sauce, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, tenderloin removed, all fat trimmed

Preheat oven to 450°F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner. Place panko in a pie plate or other flat-bottom bowl. In a mixing bowl, combine Miracle Whip, cheese, mustard, hot sauce and black pepper, and stir. Dip the chicken breasts into the mixture, and then roll them in the panko, pressing lightly to make sure the crumbs adhere. Place on the prepared sheet, and bake for approximately 20 minutes, turning once, or until the chicken is cooked through and the panko is browned. Serve hot, room temperature or cold.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Deviled eggs
Vegetarian Cuban canapes
Grilled chicken salad
Jennifer's Criminal Crab Cakes
Curried orzo chicken salad

Fresh herbs (Recipe: basil pesto)

Don't forget our Summer Cookout Kit giveaway, featuring all-natural steakburgers from Roseda Beef. Leave a comment on any post before 11:00 p.m. eastern US time on Friday, August 15 to be eligible.

For six months of every year, my pantry spills out the kitchen door, down the front steps, and into the herb garden.

Ted and I share the garden with rabbits, deer, bees, beetles, and the turtles who come uphill from the wetlands two houses away, every year in late May, to lay their eggs next to the chives and tarragon.

Fresh herbs -- really fresh, harvested in the minutes before I cook with them -- have spoiled me for life.

First came basil, because we live in Rhode Island, the most Italian of all states, where a garden without basil would be unthinkable.

Then parsley, sage, and the rest of the song.

This year, we added a few harder-to-find annuals and perennials: lime basil, lemon thyme, lemongrass, horseradish.

We're spoiled. No doubt about it.

An unlimited supply of perky flat-leaf parsley, fragrant and crispy Genovese basil, and flavorful English thyme (my favorite herb of all) has changed the way I cook and the way I shop for produce at both grocery stores and farmers' markets. Though in some dishes dried herbs can take the place of fresh, I wouldn't think of making cilantro slaw, herb muffins, pasta with herbs and lemon, eggs baked in herb crepes, or rice salad with tuna, olives and herbs without fresh herbs.

You can store herbs in the refrigerator for a couple of days, if you don't have an herb garden. I dry and freeze my herbs during the summer to use during the winter months, when the offerings in the supermarket (even the upscale ones) are limp, flavorless and trucked in from someplace else. Ted made a drying screen from an old window frame and two sheets of screening material that sandwich the herbs and allow air to flow around them, so the herbs dry without getting moldy.

Now I shake my head and wonder... why didn't I grow herbs on my windowsill when I lived in an apartment for all those years?

PESTO SAUCE
Here in Rhode Island, everyone makes pasta with pesto, but I like to add a dollop to vegetable soups, to bump up the flavor. Quick and easy, this recipe makes enough to sauce 1-1/2 lbs of pasta.

2 cups fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup fresh pine nuts
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp mayonnaise
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Place basil, nuts, garlic, salt and pepper in a food processor and pulse until chopped. With the machine running, add olive oil in a stream until desired consistency is achieved. Stir in the mayonnaise and *cheese. Serve right away, or cover in an airtight container, and refrigerate for up to three days.

To freeze, *omit the cheese. Portion the pesto into an ice cube tray. Freeze the tray, then pop out the cubes of pesto and store in a ziploc bag. When you're ready to use it, take as many cubes as you need. Let it defrost, and stir in some fresh grated parmesan cheese to taste.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Green herb risotto
Tzatziki
Brick-grilled chicken
Frittata with broccoli and garden herbs
Honey-roasted beets with orange and thyme

Ground beef, and a summer cookout giveaway (Recipe: burgers)

If there's really a hamburger heaven, please save a seat for me.

I'm an unapologetic burger lover.

I love them all: the fat ones and the flat ones, sit-down or drive-through, blue cheese or Swiss cheese, buns with seeds or no buns at all. Slather on some ketchup -- that's all I ask.

Ground beef always has a home in The Perfect Pantry, not just for burgers, but for stuffed zucchini with brown rice, beef enchiladas, horseradish meatloaf, puffy tacos, Persian meat patties, Argentinean empanadas, Beijing sauce noodles, Thai meatballs and Greek meatballs and spaghetti and meatballs.

Did you know that there's a difference between ground beef and hamburger? According to the US Department of Agriculture, beef fat may be added to hamburger, but not to ground beef, whether the meat is ground and packaged at a USDA-inspected plant or in your local market (as is often the case). A maximum of 30 percent fat by weight is allowed in either hamburger or ground beef. Both can have seasonings, but no added water, phosphates, extenders, or binders.

For most cooking, like stews and stuffings, I buy the leanest ground beef I can find, as lean as 93/7 (which has 7 percent fat). For burgers, a fattier mix like 80/20 will produce a juicier burger. Follow your heart, or your cardiologist's dictates, to decide how much fat is fine for you.

-----------------

Roseda Farm in Monkton, Maryland, wants to send some all-natural burger love into the universe, and they have a wonderful Summer Cookout Kit giveaway for one lucky reader of The Perfect Pantry:

• 20 six-ounce steakburgers, and delicious potato buns.
• A nifty grill spatula.
• A Meat 101 kit, with information, cooking tips, and a handy meat grilling timetable.

Roseda raises Black Angus cattle on a diet of corn, hay, soybean meal, vitamins, minerals and fresh water. No growth hormones, no artificial coloring, no fillers. The beef is dry-aged for up to 21 days, and then flash-frozen.

When the Roseda folks kindly sent a few steakburger patties for us to test, Ted and I wondered -- would our grandsons love these burgers? Would we? Oh yes, we did. And so did our friends Bob and Charlotte. In fact, we're looking forward to trying several of the more than 25 cuts of beef, steaks and roasts, that Roseda sells on their web site.

All you need to do to be eligible to win the free Summer Cookout Kit is leave a comment on any post on this site between now and 11:00 p.m. Eastern US Time on Friday, August 15. 

Next Saturday, one of the young "random generators" pictured above will pull one comment out of a hat, or maybe a bowl, or a pillowcase. The kit will be shipped to you (or as a gift to anyone you designate) directly from Roseda Beef, by overnight mail, absolutely free. Note: they can only ship meat to addresses within the US.

So, go ahead, leave a comment -- why not share your favorite way to dress your burgers?

I'll save a seat for you, right next to me, in hamburger heaven.

 

HOW TO COOK A BURGER, THE ROSEDA WAY
I was too embarrassed to write a recipe for how to cook a burger. Really, you know how, don't you? Then I decided to follow the instructions that came with my Roseda Steakburgers. I was skeptical; I'd never grilled burgers straight from the freezer before. I'd never gone flip, flip, flip before. But the burgers we made were so delicious that I had to share the instructions with you (notes in parentheses indicate where we deviated a bit, as you knew we would).

Take the burgers straight from your freezer to the grill. (Note: the burgers were a generous half-inch thick.)

Preheat your grill (gas or charcoal) on a medium heat for 5-10 minutes.

3,3,3,2,2,1: Cook your burger for three minutes, flip, and cook for another three minutes, and then flip and cook for another three. Flip two more times, cooking for two minutes on each side. And then finish it off by cooking for one more minute. This should give you a medium-well to well-done burger. (After following those directions on the first batch, and coming up with a very well-done burger, we tried 3,3,3,2, and achieved medium-rare to medium. If you're making a cheeseburger, add your cheese in the last 30-45 seconds.)

Hold the ketchup: There's no reason to add anything but salt and pepper. (I wouldn't think of holding the ketchup, or the cheese. We didn't salt and pepper the burgers, either; they were quite flavorful as is, and we're not really big on salting our food. And there's salt in the ketchup.)

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Rotini with spicy meat sauce
Lydia's own meat sauce
Chipotle meatloaf
Beef stir fry with bitter melon
Peruvian spicy string beans
Tex-Mex penne

Other People's Pantries #28

From Sue, in Lakeville, Massachusetts:

Vern’s Mini-Mart (what we call our pantry) was so named because of my husband’s obsession with stocking it as if a hurricane were imminent. There isn’t just one back-up bottle of olive oil, there are 3 or 4. Need some hominy? Which do you prefer, yellow or white? How many cans do you need? 

Baby hearts of palm? Got it. Sliced bamboo shoots? We currently have two, plus two cans of water chestnuts. And grapeseed oil and clam juice and umpteen cartons of chicken and beef broth. And tuna! Oh my gosh, do we have tuna!

And that’s just in the Mini-Mart. There are also cabinets and drawers stuffed full in the kitchen. Got the picture?

When we moved into this house eight years ago, there were four packing boxes full of pasta of all shapes and sizes. Yes, four -- I unpacked them myself.

At one point, I tried to manage the purchasing with a shopping list that I devised on the computer. I made cute little check boxes next to all the staples that we might need. The idea was to take the list and scan the pantry shelves, and check the boxes for the things we need to buy at the market. Vern looked at it as a Wish List.

One day the postman delivered a large package; in it was a sign made by my son, Kyle, who owns a woodworking business. It is the sign you see in the photo.

And that's how the legend of the Mini-Mart was born.

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

Come on -- show us your pantry.

Here's how.

Aji amarillo peppers, a Pantry Special (Recipe: potatoes a la huancaina)

Pantry Specials are great ingredients that find their way into my pantry from time to time, but not all the time. In this new occasional series of short posts, you'll find information and recipes for foods that might not be on your local supermarket's shelves, but are available online (I'll tell you where to buy them, too). Have fun, experiment, and please share your own recipes in the comments or by email.

I never find aji amarillo (also called Peruvian yellow hot pepper) in my local grocery store, so when I get to one of the large Latino markets in Boston or Providence, I always buy a can of whole peppers or a jar of yellow pepper paste. Native to Peru and fundamental to Peruvian cooking, aji amarillo is hot, in the range of 40,000-50,000 Scoville units (a jalapeño is 2,500 Scoville units). It's easiest to find in paste form, but also available fresh, dried, canned or ground (I don't recommend this; as with all ground spices, the quality degrades quickly). I love to chop the whole peppers and add them to peach, mango or tomato salsa.

Is this Pantry Special new to you?

More information:
Make your own aji amarillo paste

Where to buy online:
Whole canned peppers (Amigo Foods, Kalustyan's)
Whole dried peppers (Chelsea Market Basket, Amazon.com)
Aji amarillo paste (La Tienda, Amigo Foods, My Latin Food, Kalustyan's)

How to use aji amarillo:
Zucchini and sausage frittata with aji amarillo sauce
Aji de gallina (chicken in yellow pepper sauce)
Tree tomato hot sauce
Octopus ceviche, Nobu style
Shrimp enchiladas with aji cream sauce
Hanger steak and hot sauce
Salsa criolla

POTATOES A LA HUANCAINA
I learned the recipe for this famous Peruvian dish from Rose, who ran a food pantry at a large Boston hospital many years ago. It's served on a platter and often decorated to look like a face -- a big hit with children. The sauce also would be delicious on egg noodles. Serves 4.

3 giant potatoes (or 5-6 small), any type
2 ears corn, cut into 2-inch pieces
1/2 lb feta cheese, cut into cubes
6 oz evaporated milk (or more, if needed)
1-2 aji amarillo peppers
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt
White pepper, to taste
3 hard-boiled eggs
6 Spanish olives (stuffed with pimiento)
1/4 fresh red bell pepper, julienned (cut into long, thin strips)
1 Tbsp minced flat-leaf parsley

Bring 2 quarts of water to boil in a large pot, and boil the potatoes (in their skins) until almost tender. Add the corn to the pot, and cook for 4 minutes. Remove corn and potatoes, and set aside to cool while you make the sauce. 

In a blender, combine the feta, evaporated milk, aji amarillo, oil, lemon juice, salt and white pepper, and blend until a smooth sauce; if necessary, thin with a tiny bit more evaporated milk. Peel and slice the potatoes, and arrange on a large platter. Top with the sauce. Decorate (in the shape of a face, or not) with the corn, eggs, olives, bell pepper and parsley.

More recipes in The Perfect Pantry:
Shrimp etoufee
Roasted halibut tacos with mango salsa
Mock guacamole