The Ski-House Pantry
Filed under Denver and Local Colorado
A cabin pantry has three problems a city pantry never faces at once. It sits empty for weeks at a time in a building that is cold, dry and unheated between visits, so anything perishable is gone and anything that dries out has dried out. It has to feed a crowd, six or eight people, an hour after the last run, when everyone is starving and nobody wants to drive twenty minutes to a mountain grocery that closed at six. And it cooks at 8,000 to 10,000 feet, where water boils around 195°F, beans refuse to soften, pasta takes half again as long, and a cake collapses. The starter pantry is the right list at 5,280 feet in Denver; it needs editing for the mountains. This is that edit: thirty things that keep, the altitude failures and their swaps, and three dinners for the hour after the lifts close.
The three rules of a cabin pantry
It keeps for months, unattended. Nothing that needs a refrigerator until it is opened, nothing that goes stale in a month, nothing with a best-by inside a year. Tins, dried goods, oil in a tin, honey, hard candy, chocolate in a sealed container. The storage guide is the reference, and a dry mountain cabin is the best storage environment in the state for everything except an open bottle of oil.
It feeds a crowd fast, or slow without attention. Either dinner is on the table thirty minutes after the door opens, or it cooked itself all afternoon in a pot on the stove while you were on the hill. Nothing in between.
It works at altitude. Beans, pasta and rice cook in water that is fifteen degrees cooler than at sea level and take longer; leavened baking is unreliable; sauces reduce fast; everything dries out. The altitude guide covers Denver; add another third to every water-based cooking time for a cabin three to five thousand feet higher.
The thirty
Tins that are dinner (8). Sardines in olive oil, two tins per weekend. Tuna or ventresca in olive oil. Mussels in escabeche. Mackerel in olive oil. Whole peeled tomatoes, four tins. Cooked chickpeas in jars, two. Cooked white beans in jars, two, because dried beans at 9,000 feet take four hours and a pressure cooker, and jarred beans take ten minutes. A jar of matbucha for shakshuka.
Dry goods that cook (6). A long pasta and a short one, two pounds each. Polenta, which is the best altitude starch there is: thirty minutes of stirring, no leavening, feeds eight. Farro or a quick-cooking grain. Rolled oats. Instant couscous, the one thing that cooks with boiling water alone and is indifferent to altitude.
Flavor that keeps (9). Extra virgin olive oil in a one-liter tin. Sherry vinegar. Fine salt and a flaky salt. Whole black pepper and a grinder. Chile flakes. Smoked paprika. Dijon mustard. A jar of anchovies in oil, for depth in everything. Mushroom garum or soy sauce.
Sweet and warm (4). Honey. Dark maple syrup. A tin of drinking chocolate or two 70 percent bars, for the cup the drinking chocolate piece describes. Loose-leaf black tea or the coffee of the house.
The morale shelf (3). A bag of seasoned nuts. A box of good crackers in a tin. A jar of hard candy or licorice, which survives anything and ends the day.
What fails at altitude, and the swap
| At sea level | At 9,000 feet | Swap or fix |
|---|---|---|
| Dried beans, ninety minutes | Four hours or never; old beans never | Jarred cooked beans, or a pressure cooker and this year's crop |
| Dried pasta, box time | Box time plus a third; thick shapes stay chalky | Thinner shapes, lots of water, lid on to recover the boil, taste constantly |
| Rice, absorption method | Water gone before the rice is done | More water, lower heat, lid on; or polenta and couscous instead |
| A cake or quick bread | Rises fast, collapses, dry | Do not bake at a cabin without an altitude recipe; the no-bake desserts exist for this |
| Eggs, soft-boiled six minutes | Undercooked | Eight to nine minutes |
| A sauce reduced by half in twenty minutes | Reduced by half in twelve; scorches | Lower heat, watch it, add liquid |
| Drinking chocolate, milk brought to a simmer | Scorches; boils over at a lower temperature | Heat gently, stir, never leave it |
| Bread left out overnight | A rock by morning | Crackers in a tin; bread in a bag |
| An open bottle of olive oil on the counter | Faded in weeks: dry air, strong light, wide swings in temperature | A tin, in a cupboard, and buy small |
Three dinners for the hour after the lifts close
Polenta with everything on it. Six cups of water, salted, a cup and a half of polenta whisked in, stirred over low heat for thirty to forty minutes while people shower. Into bowls, and on top: a tin of sardines or mackerel warmed in its oil with chile flakes, or a jar of beans warmed with garum and a spoon of sherry vinegar, or simply olive oil, flaky salt and pepper. Feeds six, costs almost nothing, and nobody has ever complained about it at 9,000 feet.
Chickpeas, tomatoes and harissa, with couscous. The stew from five dinners from ten jars: onion, harissa or smoked paprika bloomed in oil, two tins of tomatoes, two jars of chickpeas, twenty-five minutes at a simmer, eggs cracked in if there are any. Instant couscous made with boiling water in a covered bowl, which is altitude-proof. Thirty minutes, feeds eight.
Pasta with anchovy, garlic and chile, per the pasta method with the cabin correction: a huge pot of water, lid on, salt at one percent, spaghetti rather than rigatoni, box time plus a third, taste from the box time on, and save extra cooking water because more evaporates. The sauce is four tablespoons of oil, four anchovies, four cloves of garlic and chile flakes in a wide pan; the mussels in escabeche go on a plate with crackers while it cooks. Twenty-five minutes, feeds six.
The cup at the end
The cabin drinking chocolate: milk heated gently, never simmered, a 70 percent bar chopped and stirred in off the heat, a pinch of salt, a spoon of dark maple, and, for the adults, a measure of whatever is in the cupboard. The Mexican version with cinnamon and a whisk is the better one for a crowd, per the three ways, and the tin of drinking chocolate on the list is for the morning when nobody wants to chop a bar.
Restocking, and the box
A cabin pantry is restocked twice a year, before the ski season and before summer, and the list above is built to last a season of weekends with the tins replaced as they go. The thirty are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, on the way to I-70, and ship across the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com, which for a cabin means to a mountain address before you arrive. Buy the beans in jars, the oil in a tin, and the polenta by the double bag; the mountain forgives nothing else.
