What are you supposed to do with canned mackerel?

Canned goods of all stripes dominated the first edition of Pantry Hotline.

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Need help with a can (tin?) of mackerel that a (very recent immigrant to America) gave me as a Christmas present.
-Andy

Canned mackerel sounds pretty bad, I’m going to be very honest with you. Any canned meat really, but canned fish doesn’t really excite the imagination. Food customs vary greatly around the world, and I’m sure it’s possible to turn this into a tasty meal, but this does not look appetizing.

I would treat it like you would crab and make mackerel cakes. I’m not sure they would be any good, but I think “mash it up and mix it with things that taste good” is your best plan of attack for canned fish. Godspeed.

We've got 2 packs of crescent rolls in the fridge that we have about until end of March to use and for some reason don't want actual crescent rolls. Need some inspiration!
-Laura

I mean, if it were me, I would just make the crescent rolls as is. The cheap tube of crescent rolls have long been a guilty pleasure of mine, going all the way back to when I was in high school and would just eat an entire batch of them while watching TV. I vividly remember watching Game 6 of the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals between the Kings and Lakers — the one that was 100% fixed, by the way — while enjoying a big plate of crescent rolls. A pretty standard way to mark all momentous historical occasions.

If you don’t want to make plain rolls, I would use them as a top crust for a chicken pot pie, or really lean into your artistic side and make a Buffalo chicken twist ring.

How about these dates that have been sitting in the pantry for who knows how long
-Chaz

Bacon wrapped dates are a tasty classic, but consider using them as a pizza topping. Pizza with a sweet ingredient can be really divine. I will periodically drizzle some honey on pizza, because that little sweetness plays so well with the acid and spice of the other ingredients. Some figs should do the same thing. 

My friend Scott, the proprietor of the excellent Action Cookbook newsletter, made a pie featuring sliced figs a couple months ago and it looked delightful. Please report back with your findings if you decide to pursue this.

Frozen venison filet. It was a gift, now it torments me from cryosleep.
-Blanx

I don’t have any experience cooking venison, but I’ve eaten it enough to have a sense for it. If you want to, you can just treat it like beef, taking care to not overlook it due to its propensity to dry out. That’s no fun though, so what I would do is grind it up with some fatty bacon and make a venison bolognese. The extra fat combined with the liquid from the sauce will prevent it from tasting dried out. Also, a good bolognese is maybe the best pasta dish for my money. If you’re looking for a recommendation, this Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for harissa bolognese was a stunner.

We have two cans of bamboo shoots. Halp!
-Amanda

I can’t say that I’ve ever had bamboo shoots before, but it seems like throwing them in a stir fry would be an easy way to use them up. If you, like me, are curious about what they taste like, they sound pretty good!

Bamboo shoots are crisp and tender, comparable to asparagus, with a flavor similar to corn.

We have a bag of decent acorn squash soup in the freezer, made from garden squash last summer. It's perfectly average. Would love a dish to use it as a sauce for or similar punch-up.
-Simon

If you really don’t want to use it as is, I would use it as a sauce for some pork. The sweet, autumnal flavor of the squash will pair perfectly with pork. I would roast a tenderloin with garlic and herb crust and give the soup a try as a sauce. Depending on the consistency of the soup, you may want to thin it out with a little chicken stock, but I would also add some fresh sage or rosemary.

Finally, this newsletter gets a little sexy! It's about ti- oh, wait pantry, I misread that.

In that case, a use for a decent amount of pine nuts that isn't pesto would be nice. I have a lot left from, well, the last time I made pesto.
-Brandon

Excuse me sir, behave yourself.

It’s always tough to think outside the box when an ingredient is so synonymous with a particular dish, and pine nuts are definitely synonymous with pesto. They have such a rich flavor that they can stand up on their own in a dish, though. I would make sure to toast them before doing anything else, but I think they’d go great mixed in with pasta, or even chopped and used as a garnish over a protein.

Pick your poison:

-Frozen salmon filet, about 12 oz
-Can of chickpeas I keep forgetting is there
-Jar of artichokes in the back of the fridge
-Rob

I’m going to kill two birds with one stone here, and say you should have the salmon in a spicy tomato sauce with the artichokes. Salmon is not my favorite fish in the world, especially frozen, but you can coax a pretty good meal out of it if you’re willing to do more than just eat it on its own. The artichokes go great with both the fish and tomato. I know I just said I didn’t like salmon earlier but this sounds pretty good.

Chickpeas go in basically anything, they’re an absolute powerhouse. Curry, pasta, bean salad, your only limit is your imagination. Last year I wrote about how chana masala changed my life, and one of the biggest things I took from the dish was how chickpeas can serve as a tremendously satisfying centerpiece for a meatless dish.

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It can be wildly stressful sharing pictures of food you’ve made. I know this sounds crazy considering how many people post bad pictures of questionable meals, but I get tense when I really want to share something and I’m not 100% sure how it will be received.

A few weeks ago, someone shared a picture of something that looked like a bowl of dogfood and called it “gumbo”, and the internet didn’t stop talking about it for days. I was determined not to make the same mistake, and I’m happy to confirm that after multiple attempts, I finally got it right.

The problem I’ve always had with gumbo was the roux. I’m usually too hesitant to whisk it on anything above medium-low heat, and then I get tired after an hour and it’s barely gotten any darker. A proper gumbo roux is a dark, chocolately brown, and I got there by taking a risk and whisking it like a madman over medium-high heat for 20 minutes.

Life’s a risk. Sometimes you have to whisk your roux over uncomfortably high heat, metaphorically speaking.