my favorite corner (and it's not the one on the right)

my favorite corner (and it's not the one on the right)
Originally uploaded by run lily.

I just included the view of the dining room to make this photo pretty for Jes. It's actually all about the pantry. This is the pantry I mentioned a few days ago, made last year by our lovely painter-carpenter Tom, when I was 8 months pregnant and we had just moved into the house. The kitchen, for all its vanilla icecream glory, has no room for food. It has room for a bread machine, loaf pans and cookie sheets, pots and frying pans, a bread basket and a lettuce dryer (try it and you'll be converted), cereal boxes, tea and coffee (I'm going around the kitchen from shelf to shelf in my mind -- bear with me), a Moroccan tajine, olive and vegetable oils and salt and a salad dressing cruet, breast pump accessories, dishes for 12 and cutlery for fewer than that (a problem, I know), potatoes, cling wrap, aluminum foil, freezer bags, spices, various gadgets and a rolling pin, a cooking scale, Pyrex measuring cups in 1, 2, and 4 cup sizes, kitchen linens, a thermos, and a Tupperware bin full of round plastic food storage containers (different volumes but all the same diameter). No room for food. The kitchen does have a short hallway leading to the dining room, though, and at the end of this hallway, there was a broom closet the wideth of the hallway and the depth of a vacuum cleaner. We fitted it with shelves salvaged from a bookcase that was removed from another room, and it is now a pantry. Top shelf for alcohol and pickles, then savory canned things (beans, canned tomatoes, fish, pastas and legumes), then baking supplies and sweet things (can you see my pride and joy, vanilla sweetened pureed chestnuts?), then bags of flour, rice, and oatmeal. No pretty shelf liner, no gingham edging, and there's always some flour on the bottom shelf, but it's just the right size.

A thing I love today: vanilla sweetened chestnuts. I may love these even more than the pantry. Gratuitous recipe for chestnut mousse that will get you invited to parties. Don't tell anyone that it takes half an hour to make and is easier than Rice Krispie squares. Whip 500 ml of cream, fold in entire can of sweetened chestnut puree, pipe into Oreo crumb tart bases done in about 45 small muffin liners (1 cup of Oreo crumbs + 1/4 cup of melted butter, mix well). I place the liners on a tray and press the crumb base into them, no muffin tin needed. About a tablespoon per tart will do, pressed into a flat disk with a low side. Let them cool if you can before piping in the mousse, and then let the completed tarts sit somewhere cool for about an hour. I don't have this much room in the fridge, so I've put trays in the freezer and in the back porch (December). The recipe is a variation on something I half-remember from a French cookbook I had 18 years ago; in the original recipe, the mousse was served in champagne cups and garnished with chocolate curls. I do that sometimes, but honestly, I don't have that many (ok, any) champagne glasses. It's Thursday. See what everyone else loves today.