Your Magical Pantry

There are 400 million results on the internet for ‘How to stock your pantry’ – none of which can cater to what you like and how to eat.

There are just too many variables:

·         Which foods and cuisines you like and love;

·         Which tastes you prefer – sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami;

·         Which flavours you adore – fruity, floral, savoury, spicy, earthy; citrusy;

·         How you identify with food – omnivore (meat), vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free;

·         Seasonal dishes – requiring different herbs, spices, oils and vinegars.

Beyond these are practical considerations: how much you want to spend week to week; how many people there are in your household for whom you cook; and how much space you have in your kitchen.

Down the ages, society expected women (a few men aside) to master the art of stocking a pantry and, to this day, creating a well-stocked pantry remains something of a badge of honour. From medieval pantries through Colonial American ones and Victorian ones, the pantry contained bread and other staple foods. When canned and tinned vegetables and fruits emerged, the pantry had to expand. Further expansion took place as global trade brought more exotic ingredients from all corners of the world. No wonder then, that there was huge appetite for ‘How to’ articles in cookery magazines on pantry stocking. Today, the internet is flooded with ‘Perfect Pantry Essentials’ tips and techniques.

But given no two cooks are the same, it follows that no two cooks’ pantries will be the same. Pantries are personal - and my personal preference is to align the ingredients I buy with my favourite foods and cuisines. I have a strong alignment with Southern European/Mediterranean dishes; also Indian/Asian dishes; savoury and umami flavour-based foods (garlic, mushrooms, lamb, prawns); sweet and tart fruits (strawberries, raspberries, citruses, stone fruit). What that means for my pantry, I need a range of sweet herbs, olive oils and wine-based vinegars and pastas for the Med dishes; a smaller range of arborio and paella rices; plenty of flours and sweeteners, cream and bitter-tasted chocolate; and Asian rices, sauces and pastes. What I don’t need in my pantry are pickles, preserves and mustards; nor tacos or tortillas; pulses and dried legumes.

While my preferences may seem particular - even limiting. But that’s the point. And why no internet pantry essential kit will be right for you. So now, aremed with these ideas, let’s just check which ingredients and produce go into (and not into) today’s pantries.

Not going into your pantry are:

· Meat, Fish, Fruit, Vegetable, Nuts and Dairy. These are Go-To Foods– ingredients that are edible as they are (raw, uncooked), or made edible through cooking.

Possibly going into your pantry - but could be stocked in a separate cupboard:

· Grains. These are staple foods – foods that billions of people eat routinely, in large quantities, to meet their energy needs, e.g. cereals, root vegetables starch tubers, pulses and dried legumes.

Definitely going into your pantry are foodstuffs:

·  Such as pastas-noodles-tacos-wrappers, herbs and spices, condiments (oils, vinegars, sauces, pastes, mustards), and sweeteners (sugar, honey). These are GO WITH FOODS – produce that is not worth eating on their own, many of which are the beating hearts of regional cuisines.