Pantry Collective

A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to decide what food item to bring to a friend’s baby shower. I almost always bring a savory item to parties because there is usually a lack of good savory appetizers and an overabundance of sweet ones. You know, tortilla chips and salsa, and maybe a withering veggie tray, vs. cupcakes, brownies, cookies, etc. Everyone is always happy to find some little hot savory bite in the midst of all that sugar. I typically make “fauxmosas” (easy samosas using refrigerated pie crust or crescent dough). Gotta remember to take picture next time, and post that recipe - they always get scarfed down moments after they come out of the oven!

Anyway, I asked the host what was on the menu so far and there seemed to be enough savory items. I guess I was also in the mood for something sweet and decadent. As usual I was browsing through some of my favorite food blogs and got very excited when I came across a cannoli recipe over at Eggs on Sunday.

I wound up ordering the cannoli shells from Caputo’s Market - if I’m not going to make them myself I should at least get really excellent ones from people who know what they’re doing! I did make the filling myself, using the recipe from Eggs on Sunday with a couple of tweaks. They are scrumptious. And beautiful. And decadent. And, since it’s a baby shower, they’re “mini”, although they’re bigger than I thought they’d be when I ordered mini shells. I ordered 40, which is way too many, I think. Oh well, who wouldn’t want an extra cannoli?

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This isn’t the most glamorous meal, I’ll admit. But what to do when you have half a head of broccoli, a few almost-gone carrots, and some leftover roasted chicken? I wanted to use up the veggies before they went bad, and the chicken needed to be eaten, too. I could have just heated up the chicken, steamed the veg, and made some rice, I suppose… but I had a few other ingredients on hand in the pantry that could make the meal a little more exciting than just leftovers. I’m calling this refrigerator pasta because it’s made with stuff I had hanging around in (you guessed it) the fridge. Obviously there could be many different “refrigerator pastas”; this is just one quick and easy version.

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I make this chicken regularly enough that we should have a photo of it by now. I guess it is a testament to just how AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS it is that we don’t, huh? We just can’t bother to take a photo when there’s a beautifully browned bird before us.

I imagine most people have their own favorite roasted chicken recipe. My favorite is this one by Thomas Keller. It’s a simple, flavorful recipe that never fails to deliver a delicious chicken. I’ve also read every one of the 322 (at time of this posting) reviews. Most of them are rave reviews, a few are not. The main thing I took away from them was to use sliced potatoes under the chicken to soak up the fat (so it doesn’t splatter all over your oven as much, especially important when you don’t have a self-cleaning oven, like me). Otherwise, I usually follow the recipe pretty closely. There are so few steps that there’s not much to change!

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I made this delicious curry last year, and I’m glad I came across the recipe again (and the photo we took at the time)! I need to make it again soon. It’s been a while though, and unfortunately I didn’t find any notes accompanying the recipe, so I’m going to assume I followed it pretty closely. I’ve reposted Elise’s original recipe from Simply Recipes below. The thing I remember most is that mangoes are slippery little things. I’d never worked with mangoes before making this dish, so I really had no idea how to dice it up. Thank god for YouTube. (Hint: don’t peel the mango first, or you might just find it flying out of your hands!)

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