ISLAND PANTRY
The joy of making and sharing your everyday meals

By Kaui Philpotts

For most of us, January is a month for reflection, regrouping and looking ahead. It is the time of year when we try to edit out all the things that no longer work for us and move on.

After Sept. 11, more than ever, it is the friends and family we love that we want to spend time with and nurture. My favorite thing to do is have friends over for small, impromptu dinners. Not the sort of dinner where you spend the entire two previous days working to make it spectacular. But the kind where you have made too much of something and it seems a waste not to share it with someone.

Dinners like this don't need to be on a Friday or Saturday night. In fact, they work best after work, or early on a Sunday evening after a restful weekend. That way you keep it simple and no one stays too late or drinks too much. If your friends or family have children, all the better. They can play games, watch videos or do homework while you visit.

Use your everyday dishes and napkins to set a table in the kitchen or on a lanai. If you have flowers, great. If not, just pile up vegetables in a basket for color. If you need to make a supermarket run, pick up Gerber daisies or those bad-looking potted mums. Cut the mums off at the stem and stick them in water glasses. This works for the daisies, too; you can run then in a line down the table, or group them in a cluster. If you want atmosphere, pull out some small, white votives you probably still have in the closet from the holidays.

If you only cook on weekends, try a slow-cooking dish of braised short ribs lightened with baby bok choy and carrots. Serve it with white or brown rice and a fresh salad. The short ribs can be cooked ahead of time and reheated if you are going to have someone over during the week.

The recipe calls for beef short ribs, but when I went to the market there were only the kind for kalbi (which didn't have much meat on them). Instead, I picked up some boneless short ribs and they worked just as well. However, my theory is that anything with a bone is more 'ono.

There are a lot of nice red and yellow tomatoes in the markets. Assemble a salad of mixed tomatoes spiked up a notch with fresh mint, avocado, stuffed green olives and feta cheese. Use your imagination and see what's in the cupboard. Just about anything works when you drizzle vinaigrette over it. Too lazy for a multi-ingredient vinaigrette? Whisk together some good olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar with salt and pepper.

For dessert make a clafouti, the warm, easy soufle-like dish from the Limousin region of France. Pears are plentiful, and the clafouti can be made at the last minute if you get them cooked ahead of time. If this all seems like too much, just pick up a store-bought apple pie and heat it up in a 350-degree oven for 10 minutes or so. Serve it with vanilla ice cream.

These short rib and salad recipes have been adapted from "The Best of Taste," (Williams-Sonoma).

Braised Short Ribs with Bok Choy

• 8 beef short ribs (about 4 pounds)
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 1/4 cup shoyu
• 3 tablespoons ketchup
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 2 carrots, peeled and cut into thick slices
• 4 heads baby bok choy, quartered

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Place the ribs in a Dutch oven and sprinkle with sea salt. Top with the onion slices. Cover and bake for 30 minutes.

In a bowl, mix the garlic, ginger, shoyu, ketchup, rice vinegar, black pepper, red pepper flakes and sesame seeds. Add the water to the ingredients and mix.

Remove the pot from the oven and pour the sauce over the ribs. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Cover the pot and return to the oven. Cook for about 2 more hours. Add the carrots and baby bok choy. Cover and cook, turning the vegetables until they are tender, about 10 or 15 minutes.

Serve with hot rice. Serves four.

Tomato and Avocado Salad

• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• Sea salt to taste
• 1 1/2 pounds mixed tomatoes, chopped in chunks
• 1 avocado, peeled and diced
• 1/2 Maui onion, finely chopped
• 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
• 8 green pimento-stuffed olives, sliced
• 2 cups lettuce (small romaine or red leaf)
• 1/3 cup feta, crumbled

In a bowl, combine the mint, basil, olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt. In a large salad bowl, combine the tomatoes, avocado, onion, cucumber and olives. Add the lettuce and toss gently with the dressing. Divide among plates and sprinkle with feta. Serves 4.

Pear Clafouti

• 1 1/2 to 2 pounds Bosc or Anjou pears, peeled, cored and cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/3 cup sweet white wine
• 3 tablespoons candied ginger, minced (optional)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
• 1 1/2 cups half-and-half
• Zest of 1 lemon or 1/2 orange
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt
• Powdered sugar to sprinkle

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, mix the pears, wine and ginger. Cook gently, stirring occasionally, until pears are tender, about 10 minutes.

Grease a 10-inch pie pan or shallow baking dish with the butter. Scatter the pears on the bottom of the pan with their juices.

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, sugar, cinnamon, half-and-half, zest, vanilla and salt. You can also do this in a blender. Mix well. Let the batter rest for about 5 minutes. Pour the batter over the pears. Bake about 35 to 40 minutes, until puffed and set. Remove and sift a light dusting of powdered sugar over the top. Serves six.