Simple if you have a well stocked pantry
"There's something particularly satisfying about making a meal out of what you already have around."
Yotam Ottolenghi
The 'p' in Simple stands for pantry. The picture on the left is my pantry. And I know there are things lurking here and there that should probably be thrown out. When my new kitchen was constructed I threw out a whole lot of stuff, but there is probably more now. Fortunately stuff in tins tends to keep for a long time - not that I have a lot of them. I wonder if celebrity chefs have things like that in their pantries - and if they do what would they be?
Your products in your pantry are not necessarily there for the kind of cooking we generally think of as simple. The bulk of the items there are, after all, the things you use all the time that don't go off or get used on a regular basis. (Except the things lurking in the back.) Your pasta, flour, rice, sugar, salt, cereals, tinned tomatoes, oil, vinegar, etc. And you can do all sorts of complicated things with anything in your pantry, especially with those lesser used ingredients - so in a sense 'pantry' simply might just save you on shopping.
"What people have in their cupboard depends, obviously, on what they like to cook and eat. The fact that my cupboard shelves are always home to a tub of tahini, some green tea and dark chocolate does not, I know, mean that anyone else's are going to be." Yotam Ottolenghi
How very true, for he goes on to tell you what he would recommend you having in your pantry and fridge - olive oil, unsalted butter, plain flour, large eggs, garlic, onions, lemons, Greek-style yoghurt, Parmesan (or pecorino), herbs, dried pasta, rice, tins of pulses, tins of tuna and anchovies, salt and pepper. And I suppose I do have those things. In fact a few years back I wrote a cookbook for my children called 7 ingredients I can't do without - and they were - olive oil, lemons, tomatoes, garlic, onions, parsley and cream. I then did a second volume which was about wine, eggs, mustard, carrots, yoghurt, cheese, bacon and ham (which were counted as one thing).
An interesting thing to note is that over time the 'essentials' have changed. I doubt if my mother would have had either olive oil or garlic in her pantry. Nor pasta, tins of tuna or anchovies. She may not even have known what anchovies were. Or even wine, and I actually vaguely remember that cream was just not available - due to the war in some way - in my childhood. I guess my choice of ingredients to write about wasn't entirely honest, because there were things that I didn't include such as flour, rice, salt and pepper and butter which are obviously basic. I chose things that were pretty essential, things I always have to hand and about which you could write a bit I suppose. Maybe if you had asked me on a different day I would have chosen different things.
In his book Great Dishes of the World (1963) Robert Carrier had a section at the start of the book called The Emergency Shelf. He meant emergency in the sense of having to suddenly prepare a meal for unexpected guests, which it sounds as if he did often.
"No household should be without its emergency shelf, well stocked with tinned and packaged 'convenience' foods, ready for unexpected guests or an impromptu dinner party." Robert Carrier
And he is just as 'not of the real world' as Ottolenghi, but it is fascinating to note the differences between his 'emergency' supplies and Ottolenghi's. They show the huge advances that have been made in what is available to buy in your local supermarket. Carrier's 'basic' list is not so different, although there is more of an emphasis on 'fresh' than dry goods - eggs, milk, cream, Parmesan cheese and a small supply of Spanish onions, garlic, carrots, tomatoes and lettuce. No mention of olive oil although I'm sure he used it a lot. But when it comes to what he keeps for 'emergency entertaining' we are in a different world. I won't give the full list - and some of it is not a surprise - in fact here are the olive oil and the anchovies, the tinned tomatoes and the olives, but - tinned ham, tinned turtle soup, tinned cream of mushroom soup, tinned chicken - in fact what is tinned chicken - and lots of tinned fruits and vegetables such as tinned mushrooms and white onions! The equivalent items from Ottolenghi are sumac, za'atar, urfa chilli flakes, ground cardamom, pomegranate molasses, rose harissa, tahini, barberries, black garlic and preserved lemon. How has the world changed? Ottolenghi's list is a bit extreme, but probably lots of us now have sumac, tahini and cardamom in our pantries - and only a few of those things are hard to find.
And it's not just in the exotic range that pantry products have changed. Think of all the frozen foods, the delicatessen stuff, the prepared meals and shortcut bottled and packaged spice mixes and sauces - the convenience foods. Back in 2008 Delia Smith wrote a book called How to Cheat at Cooking which caused an absolute uproar because it was entirely based on products that were designed to make cooking easier. And she named them. She was accused of making people lazy, of kowtowing to the convenience foods industries and of not promoting healthy eating. The fact that she named the products was especially galling, because the 'Delia effect' would mean massive changes in what needed to be stocked and which products received a boost.
I confess I haven't really made anything from the book - many of the products she names are just not available here - and I do deplore a couple of the short-cut products. The recipe that raised the most ire was for a shepherd's pie made with tinned mince and frozen mashed potato. And I sort of agree on that one - it really isn't hard to make mashed potato, (though you do have to peel them), or break up some mince. But then if you want to make it tastier you need to add things, which need preparation, and maybe the tinned mince is already flavoured. Anyway, disregarding that one, some of the recipes actually don't use ingredients you wouldn't be buying from the supermarket anyway - like a recipe for Vietnamese spring rolls. Who makes their own spring roll wrappers, soy and fish sauce? I imagine that prawns are mostly bought cooked, and the chilli from the jar that she mentions has to be chopped, so why not get a fresh one? Or a chicken tonnato that uses tinned tuna and anchovies? (See Ottolenghi's recipe for a potato tonnato below.)
Besides her aim with this book was not to produce Michelin star meals but to get people who normally resorted to fast food, to actually get into the kitchen. She has always been a bit of a missionary on teaching people to cook. She deplores the fact that children are not taught to cook at school anymore - well it's creeping back in thanks to people like Delia and jamie and Stephanie Alexander, but not everywhere. She deplores the fact that there is a huge amount of food snobbery and lauding of complicated food such as that shown on Master Chef. She wrote a wonderful three volume How to Cook book and currently is well into her cooking school project on her website. Here cheating book was an attempt to make cooking incredibly easy for those who didn't cook in the hope that it would make them more confident and therefore a bit more adventurous.
"What's on offer here is a way forward - first for those who are afraid to cook, and secondly, for those who are short of time. Cooking does not belong exclusively to professions chefs (TV or otherwise). Home cooking always has been, and always will be, something different, and if you are willing to explore alternatives by adding the cheating element, you can discover a better and easier way of coping when there's not much available time." Delia Smith
And she also stresses that just about everyone, at some point just does not want to spend ages cooking. Hence the reliance on the pantry. Which these days can produce something wonderful in just seconds - like this simplest of meals shown at left - an illustration in her book. It's simply a matter of shopping thoughtfully.
I'm not sure that Ottolenghi is totally au fait with the possibilities of the pantry in respect to simple. And it is to be noted that he includes the fridge in the definition of pantry - which is fair enough. It's certainly the store cupboard that gets the most use in my kitchen. Another reason I don't think he is completely into the pantry thing is that, in his book, there is not one single recipe that is defined as being a purely pantry dish. The 'p' is always in conjunction with one of his other 'simple' definitions. But here are a few of those that include the 'p' for pantry.
In some ways this is the recipe that could really be described as a pantry thing. Everything is from the pantry and it uses up stuff too.
"This is called a chocolate fridge cake but it should be seen as a bit of a larder cake as well, using what you have to hand - which is why this is a Pantry recipe. All sorts of different-flavoured chocolate (ginger chocolate, chilli chocolate and so forth), biscuits, nuts, dried fruit or alcohol can be used, instead of what's listed here." Yotam Ottolenghi
The only other 'simple' type for this one is '10 ingredients' - and they are all ones that can be found in your fridge or pantry - including the pantry staples of tinned tuna, anchovies and capers. It's fairly simple to make too.
Unlikely that you would have the aubergines as a staple in your pantry, but you might have bought some at the market or on a supermarket special. I think the only claim to this being a 'pantry' dish is the anchovies and the vinegar. Bit of a cheat this one.
So really 'pantry' is, I think, more about shopping than about being a simple cook. I guess it's just not 'fresh' - although some pantry, meaning fridge, staples are - lettuce, parsley and other herbs, tomatoes, lemons, milk, butter, cream and eggs. These are pantry staples for everyday. The other side of 'pantry' is the extra taste boosters, and the things that make everything easier - the cheats.
