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The bar under the name is the map. Swipe it sideways if a destination sits off-screen. On Tonight, the button pinned to the bottom cooks the lead dish.

  1. Tonight — What you can cook first, plus drinks that fit the same shelf.

  2. This week — Five dinners from the shelf, urgent things cooked first.

  3. Shelf — Edit what you actually own.

  4. Written methods — Every dish and drink with a method somebody wrote out.

  5. The pantry — Start from one ingredient: what it does, and everything built on it.

  6. Out of it — What to use instead, judged by the job the missing thing was doing.

  7. Photo review — Review a demo shelf photo and confirm every item before adding it.

  8. Flavor Lab — Pairings with a track record: classic matches and the mixology behind them.

  9. Wild cards — Combinations with no tradition behind them, only shared aroma notes.

  10. Send to Occasion OS — Prepare confirmed shelf availability for Occasion OS.

  11. The field — The gap this layer owns.

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After that it opens as Kitchen & Bar, not a browser tab. Inventory stays on this device.

Dinner · 15 min · 2 bowls

Herb pesto pasta

Uses the basil before it blackens. Garlic, cheese, oil. Pasta water loosens it. Don't cook the pesto.

The sheet · 2 bowls · 15 min

easy

Why tonight. Uses the basil before it blackens. Garlic, cheese, oil. Pasta water loosens it. Don't cook the pesto.

What it needs

Nothing confirmed on your shelf yet — this list is the whole ask.

  • pasta
  • basil
  • garlic
  • parmesan
  • olive oil

Good if you have them, fine if you do not: lemon.

Method

  1. Pound or blitz the basil with garlic, parmesan and oil. If you are using a machine, pulse it — a running blade heats the basil and turns it dark.
  2. Never cook the pesto. It goes in off the heat, every time, and heat is what makes a bright green sauce turn khaki.
  3. Drain the pasta wet and toss with a ladle of its water so the sauce loosens into a coat rather than a paste.
  4. Lemon if the basil is tired, and salt last — parmesan is salty and how salty varies enormously with its age.

An educational plan from a curated corpus. Not a nutrition, allergen, or doneness guarantee.

Cook or pour it, then edit the shelf if you emptied a bottle or used the last of something.

Why each of these is on the list

What the ingredients are actually doing

pasta
The sauce finishes on the pasta, not the other way around.
basil
Perfume rather than flavor, and heat destroys it.
garlic
Burns in seconds and turns the whole dish bitter, so it almost never goes in first.
parmesan
Salt, fat and savory depth in a form that keeps for months.
olive oil
Two ingredients sharing a name.

Missing one of them? The substitutions are written against those jobs rather than against a chart, so they say what each replacement costs this dish in particular.

Cooks from the same box

If you bought for this, you can already make these

Next

Cook it, then tell the shelf what you used.

The ranking is only as honest as the shelf behind it. Empty the cream, and everything that leaned on cream should stop being offered.

Update the shelfWhy pasta and basil workBack to the ranking