As long as I can remember,
I have always lived in a house. I have joked about it, but people who grew up
in apartments don’t always get it.
I cannot live without a dining room.
Admit it: you just called me bougie under your breath...
I need a dining room! Not a nook off a sunroom or
a breakfast table in the kitchen, and certainly not half a kitchen island
outfitted with barstools and…I don’t even know what to call that. I need a
formal dining room—with a dining table and adult chairs (nothing plastic or previously used by The Rock as a defensive weapon in Wrestlemania).
But even with a dining
room, space in any home is limited. In a perfect world, we could all afford
enormous homes with kitchens so big you could hold parties in there! And the
kitchen would extend to an outdoor patio, but I regress.
I’ve always had enough
cabinet space to accommodate house staples, current culinary whims as well as our developing
palate. What would be ideal is if we could have one more room--perhaps the size
of our hallway closet--for a walk-in pantry.
Alas, we can’t just have
everything we want. What kind of world would it be if we were all waltzing about
happy?!
Most of us have a
bare-necessity pantry with the ingredients and condiments we use more often.
The bakers have a more extensive pantry. And then, there’s the daring whose
palate goes beyond pub food—not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Even if you can’t afford to
maintain a full pantry of all the flavors you’d like, if you want to experiment
with styles, you need to understand the palate necessary and the elements that
will get you there. Perhaps you too have limited space, so pick what you love,
master it, treat it lovingly and create deliciousness.
Greatist
has a great article to help you create flavor profiles for your favorite
cuisines. Certainly we have all tried our hand at creating an Italian seasoning
mix (whether to top pizza, flavor a sauce, or roasted chicken). This article also
offers spice combinations for Chinese, Indian, Mediterranean, Mexican, and Thai cuisines.
This infographic from Women’s Health includes spice blends that can aid in weight loss:
By cuisine (not meant to be a complete list), try these
links: African (not
sorted by country or region), Caribbean, Chinese, Cuban, Greek,
Italian/Tuscan,
Indian,
Indonesian,
Japanese, Jewish/Sephardic,
Kenyan,
Korean, Latin
American (general), Mediterranean,
Mexican,
Middle
Eastern/Persian, Moroccan,
Peruvian,
Spanish,
Syrian,
Thai,
Vietnamese...
