Dinner Already in the House: Ten November Suppers from the Quiet Shelf
Photo: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
There is a shelf in every kitchen that never gets photographed. It is not the shelf with the nice jars on it, and it is not the fridge. It is the one with the tins stacked two deep, the half bag of lentils, the pasta, the rice, the anchovies nobody remembers buying. It is, quietly, the shelf that saves dinner several times a week between November and March.
I have a small theory about this. The shelf works because it asks nothing of you. There is no guilt about a wilting bunch of something in the bottom drawer, no trip to the shop in the rain, no decision to make beyond which tin to open. On a wet Tuesday, that is worth more than any recipe.
What follows are ten suppers that come out of that shelf. Each one is a formula rather than a fixed recipe; quantities are yours to judge, and most of them will feed two generously or one person twice. Every one has a larder lever — the small extra thing that lifts it from fuel to comfort.
The ten
1. White beans, garlic and rosemary on toast. Soften a sliced onion and plenty of garlic in olive oil, tip in two tins of butter beans with a little of their liquid, add rosemary and cook for fifteen minutes until the beans begin to collapse. Spoon onto thick toast rubbed with garlic. Larder lever: a parmesan rind in the pan while it simmers, or a strip of lemon zest at the end.
2. Anchovy, chilli and breadcrumb pasta. Melt four or five anchovies in olive oil with sliced garlic and a pinch of chilli, toss through cooked pasta with a ladle of the water, and finish with breadcrumbs toasted until they rattle. Larder lever: fry the crumbs in the anchovy oil with a little lemon zest rather than in clean oil.
3. Lentil and tomato soup with a splash of vinegar. Onion, carrot, a mug of red lentils, a tin of tomatoes, stock, twenty-five minutes, then blitz or not as you please. Larder lever: a teaspoon of marmalade or a good slug of red wine vinegar stirred in at the end — it makes the whole pan taste as though it cooked for hours.
4. Baked rice with leeks. Rice, sliced leeks, hot stock, a knob of butter and a lid, forty minutes in a moderate oven. Larder lever: grated cheese across the top for the final ten minutes, and a grating of nutmeg underneath it.
5. Savoury oats with a runny egg. Cook porridge oats in stock instead of milk with a handful of grated cheese, plenty of pepper, and a poached or fried egg on top. Larder lever: a teaspoon of mustard in the pan, or sage leaves fried in butter drizzled over.
6. Chickpeas and spinach with cumin. Fry onion, garlic, cumin and smoked paprika, add a tin of chickpeas and a tin of tomatoes, simmer twenty minutes, then wilt in spinach — frozen is perfectly good. Larder lever: thick yogurt beaten with garlic and salt, spooned over at the table.
7. Sardines on toast, done properly. Warm a tin of sardines gently in a pan with olive oil, chilli and lemon, break them up roughly, and pile onto toast with parsley if there is any. Larder lever: mash a little butter into the fish as it warms; it turns the oil into something sauce-like.
8. Pea and potato soup from the cold store. Onion, a couple of potatoes, frozen peas, stock, twenty minutes, then blitz. Larder lever: a spoon of crème fraîche and a few mint leaves, or a scatter of crispy bacon if the freezer has some.
9. A pan of eggs in tomato and cumin. A tin of tomatoes, cumin, paprika, a pinch of sugar, simmered until thick, then eggs cracked in, lid on, four minutes. Larder lever: crumbled feta or a few coriander stalks laid in the sauce while it cooks.
10. Pasta with tuna and sweetcorn, unapologetically. Tinned tuna, a small tin of sweetcorn, a spoon of cream cheese loosened with pasta water, plenty of black pepper. Larder lever: lemon zest, and a little of the pasta water whisked in hard so the sauce turns glossy.
A word on keeping it stocked
None of this works if the shelf is bare. The trick is not a big shop but a habit: whenever a tin is opened, another goes on the list. Two tins of beans, two of tomatoes, one of chickpeas, anchovies, lentils, rice, pasta, oats, a jar of mustard, a bottle of decent olive oil. Add a parmesan rind to the freezer when a wedge runs out, and keep a bag of breadcrumbs from the end of the loaf.
Do that for a month and the six o'clock panic starts to fade. The rain can do what it likes.
