Raiding the Pantry

Okra bubbles away happily with tomatoes, fennel seeds and pomegranate juice.

Greek-style Mac-n-Cheese straight from a taverna but assembled in haste with limited ingredients.

Every cook should be adept at constructing the 5-minute basic white sauce. Our version includes dried herbs and olive oil for a Mediterranean taste.

Some nights it's simply too cold to run out for ingredients. Or maybe the office was so mentally exhausting that day you can't bear to even assemble a shopping list. On these sad but inevitable (and hopefully rare) occasions it's best to whip up dinner from what you've got in the house. We hit The Wall recently on a frigid February night and in desperation built a meal from the most banal of food staples. Greek baked Mac-n-Cheese was assembled from a box of whole wheat ziti, the easiest of white sauces and remnants of cheddar and feta cheeses. Fading yogurt and the last egg acted as binding ingredients, while flavoring was left to dry rosemary and thyme. A package of frozen okra, simmered with tomato sauce, onions, fennel seeds and pomegranate juice filled out veggie quotient. And before you begin to feel sorry for Cafe Drake, the dinner was delicious accompanied by a toothsome but inexpensive Cotes du Rhone and a Tivo line-up of Top Design, Supernatural and Road Rules. Closer to bedtime and nestled down with a copy of The Selfish Gene we topped the evening with a bakery-bought eclair and demitasse of espresso.