The Beauty of a Stocked Pantry

Yesterday, after taking a gander in my refrigerator, I noticed that I had a few veggies that were going south. It happens to the best of us. Actually, it happens a lot to me since I can get a bit overzealous at the grocery store when I get on a veggie binge. I've gotten pretty good at whipping up meals that need to use up leftovers or spoiling veggies. So the mushrooms had to be cooked. I was thinking about writing up the recipe I made but realized that it may never be replicated due to these:

Burgundy Wine and Olive Oil Tomatoes

I found these at Big Lots!, a great store that tends to have the most random assortment of things. I go in there from time to time, it's hit or miss. These were a hit. So that brings me to the topic at hand - having a few staples in your pantry/freezer would make a dinner like this possible.

Italian Style Pantry Pasta

The minute details of what veggies or meat goes into this dish are irrelevant. What matters is the technique in which to make this. Also I took frozen ground turkey and made this in less than an hour, and most of that was simmering time so the sauce would come together.

Basic Pasta Sauce

1. Start with ground meat of your choice, a pound or so would do. Brown. Add some chopped onion. I happened to have red onion around but any onion will do, 1/2 to 1 whole onion. Add chopped garlic (I have a jar of the chopped stuff in my fridge always). Always add garlic when there is something else in the pan or it will burn. Salt, pepper and dried herbs go here - I'm a fan of Italian Seasoning, I put it in everything.
2. This is the point you would add veggies. I added a package of mushrooms, chopped and most of a bag of shredded carrots I had for salads.
3. Next add in a couple of squirts of tomato paste and cook it a little until you can smell the tomato. Yes, I said squirts. I like the tubes of tomato paste. You keep them in the fridge and you don't have to use the whole can of something - they also make tubes of pesto, hot pepper, anchovy and sun dried tomato.
4. Now add your tomato product of choice. 2 - 14 oz cans or 1 - 28 oz can will do. Whole peeled tomatoes tend to be the least processed, diced tomatoes are treated with something and they don't break down well after being cooked for a while, stewed tomatoes are cooked (I tend not to be a fan of these for some reason). I usually have diced and whole tomatoes on hand always. Some diced tomatoes are a bigger dice than others (they even sell a petite dice). The tomatoes I used in this dish tended to be on the large side, so I made the executive decision to throw an entire can in my Magic Bullet and puree them, great idea. Also, if you were going to add wine to your sauce (a great idea, I didn't add it because there was wine in my tomatoes) you would add it before you add in the tomatoes and after you add the tomato paste.
5. Now bring the whole thing to a simmer and reduce the sauce. This depends on how watery the sauce was to begin with but 20 minutes or so to start will be good. Taste for seasoning. If it needs salt, add it or pepper or more herbs. If the sauce is missing "something" try a little sugar. I've recently become a convert to this idea. My mother, the ever good German cook, adds sugar to anything that has tomato in it. I spent 6 months in Italy and tend to like the unopposed acid of tomato, but these slow-ish cooked sauces just need something. They taste good but it's just not whole in some way. A few teaspoons of sugar seems to do it, the sauce shouldn't taste sweet, it just rounds it out. Try it next time you make sauce.
6. While the sauce simmers, boil water and cook pasta of your choice. Before you drain the pasta, take a cup of the starchy cooking water out.  Drain pasta and mix with sauce. Mix with some cheese, if the mixture looks a bit dry, add the starchy water.
7. Dinner's on!

 

Here's a tip from Rachel Ray (I seem to be referencing her a lot): Use a potato masher to break up ground meat. Works great!!

So here's what I keep in my pantry: tomatoes (whole and diced), beans (black, kidney, great northern, refried), tuna packets, chopped green chile, enchilada sauce, oils/vinegar, Asian condiments (soy, sesame oil, ponzu, hoisin, sriracha), pasta, chicken bouillon, crackers. In the freezer: ground beef/turkey, potstickers, frozen veggies, brown rice, frozen fruit, green ice cubes, bananas, dried fruit, leftovers. This is by no means a comprehensive list but these are the most versatile items (and what I can think of at the moment). Something to get you started at least!!

Also, the best part of this meal was that I didn't have to leave the house to get a forgotten crucial ingredient!!