The non-recipe

Of late, when I've bothered to write about food at all, it has been in a more passive way -- reflecting on others' recipes, deconstructing food, salivating over produce and pasties. It's not that I haven't been cooking myself, but that what I've been cooking hasn't really merited a full-on writeup.

We're leaving to visit the in-laws in Kentucky on Thursday, so I've been loath to stock up the fridge too much, lest it all go bad while we're gone. So lately I've mainly been cooking from the pantry. For example, last night I thawed some boneless skinless, pulled out the remainders of the pot of pasta sauce I made last week, doctored same with some tapenade and fresh sage, top with fresh grated parmigiano, and voilà -- some sort of chicken cacciatore. But again, not really a recipe in and of itself.

DPaul and I are the masters of leftovers, and will extend elements of a meal through several subsequent meals. Last week I roasted up a pork tenderloin and made a quick mushroom-cream sauce for some friends. The next day, I cubed up the remaining tenderloin, extended the sauce with more porcini broth and cream, and tossed with pasta. Pasta is my friend.

I refer to cooking from the pantry; thankfully, connected as we are to Italy, our pantry always includes copious amounts of dried porcini and ginormous hunks of parmigiano. We always have about six to eight types of pasta on hand, too, as well as rice, cous cous and quinoa. I also tend to keep curry paste at the handy. Makes quick meals kind of a no-brainer.

But this is the kind of cooking I do in a knee-jerk way. I'm not thinking about a recipe, not paying attention to measurements or proportions. It's more, as Alton Brown says, refrigerator velcro -- taking whatever's at your disposal and throwing it together to see what sticks. In the end, however, these homey meals typically (and perhaps unsurprisingly) work out to be the greatest successes.