Chernila - The homemade pantry: 101 foods you can stop buying & start making

Copyright 2012 by Alana Chernila
Photographs copyright 2012 by Jennifer May

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is
a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chernila, Alana.
The homemade pantry / Alana Chernila.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Quick and easy cooking. 2. Convenience foods. I. Title.
TX833.5.C44 2012
641.5dc23 2011023000

eISBN: 978-0-307-95326-1

Cover design by Stephanie Huntwork
Cover photography by Jennifer May
Food styling by Jessica Bard
Prop styling by Kari Chapin

v3.1_r1

For Joey,
Sadie,
and Rosie

We cannot go back in time. Instead, we must
reinvent life for ourselves.
LAURIE COLWIN

THIS IS MY KITCHEN. Come on in, but be preparedit might not be quite what you expect.

There is flour on the counter, oats that overflowed onto the floor, chocolate-encrusted spoons in the sink. There is Joey, the husband, exhausted by the preschoolers who were hanging on him all day, and he is stuffing granola into his mouth to ease his five oclock starvation. There are two little girls trying to show me cartwheels in that minuscule space between the refrigerator and the counter where I really need to be. Sadies seven, and she is asking about the menu and ordering her sister to take over her job of setting the table. Rosie is five, and has already decided that she doesnt want whats for dinner. All I can do is throw up my hands in the midst of it all, and I can almost feel the anxiety of all families trying to get food on the table. Whatever time it is, it is the unfortunate hour that comes over many households right before dinner and links so many of us.

On this night, were having lasagne, and there are large floppy noodles hanging on the laundry drying rack in the corner. For the filling, there is ricotta in the fridge from a morning cheese-making demonstration that I gave, and I still have milk left for the best partquick mozzarella. Rosie changes into her tutu every day as soon as she drops her schoolbag, and I zip up her costume with one hand as I massage the hot cheese curds into stretchy mozzarella with the other. I cant help but curse as I realize that I have submerged my hand into nearly boiling whey. Mommy said shit! Sadie announces with a triumphant little dance, and I say it again when I realize that the sauce that I have thrown together from my tomatoes that I roasted and then froze has boiled over.

I could have avoided this whole chaotic event. Any number of companies would have been happy to offer me a frozen lasagne, perfectly boxed into an aluminum pan with easy-to-read instructions. For extra nutrition and crunch, I could have picked up a salad in a bag and a bottle of dressing, and we would have been set. The kitchen would have been clean, dinner would have been ready at a decent hour without the rush, I would have finally had a chance to answer some e-mails, and this day would have been a bit simpler.

So why is there no perfectly boxed lasagne in my oven? At this moment, I must admit that I am asking myself the very same question.

Fortunately, the answer eventually comes to me. When the lasagne mess reaches its pinnacle, something shifts. The smell of the bubbling sauce takes over the kitchen, and Rosie realizes that mozzarella is in the works. She stops mid-cartwheel, puts an apron over her tutu, pulls her stool to the counter, and stands ready to roll the hot cheese into little balls. Shell eat her weight in homemade cheese before the lasagne even goes into the oven. Sadie sets napkins and forks on the table as Joey emerges from his hunger stupor; he is finally aware of the goings-on in the kitchen. Lasagne? he asks with hope. With a nod of my head, his whole mood changes, and he spoons my sauce into the glass baking pan so that it can be ready for the first layer of noodles.

In 2003, Joey and I threw ourselves a wedding in the dead of winter. We were both twenty-three, just a few months away from the birth of our first child, and we had three hundred dollars to feed sixty-five hungry and excited people who had traveled the country through snow and ice to witness our nuptials. In a late burst of inspiration, we asked several friends to make what they thought was the perfect lasagne. So on that snowy day, although we didnt even have tables to eat it on, we had the most lovely assortment of pasta and cheese and sauce that I could have dreamed of. With that meal in our laps on folding chairs in my grand fathers house, lasagne became the food of love, support, and warmth for our family.

I thought lasagne couldnt get any better than that, and in many ways, it never can. But then I learned how to make fresh noodles and I made sauce from my own oddly shaped tomatoes and herbs, and I thought it couldnt get any better than that. And then I learned how to turn milk into the silkiest ricotta with a squeeze of lemon and a bit of patience at the stove. Then there was the homemade mozzarella.

AS THE LIST OF THE STAPLES that I make at home has grown, my excitement has moved me to draw friends into my kitchen to create them with me. Of course, we talk about food as we make it, and so often the conversation moves from enthusiasm into another realm, a place filled with guilt and the idea of what we should be making in our kitchens. Then there is some version of the same sentiment, punctuated by a heavy sigh.

I wish I were the kind of person who makes butter.

Tell me, who really is the kind of person who makes butter?

One hundred years ago, many people made their butter every week, patiently churning the yellow gold distilled from the cream of their cow in the backyard. I am a mother of two young children, piecing together work and family the best I can. I have very little time to patiently churn anything. I do, however, make some pretty good butter.

After the birth of our second daughter, driven by a lack of grocery money and some fervent curiosity, I went about trying to learn how to make food from scratch. Joey bought me a yogurt maker for Christmas, and I was so eager to see those cultures in action that I was already heating the milk as the kids opened the rest of their gifts. And like that, I became someone who makes yogurt.