Are You Bored To Death With Your Own Pandemic Cooking? Six Ideas To Help.

By Erica and Karen

Are you cooking for several people these days--a partner, a couple of adult children, maybe others? Each of whom has strong views about what they want to eat?

Or are you instead cooking only for yourself, in which case you have different issues—loneliness for one.

Either way you might need ideas.

What food must you have in the house? If you are alone, it’s easy. If not, it’s not. Maybe you have not had chocolate milk in the refrigerator for a really long time. Now, you need it. And you need impossible meat. And tofu. And steak. You may or may not yourself eat or drink any of these things, but never mind.

What do you cook—for carnivores who think green things can kill you, pescatarians who think most fish is off limits, and almost-omnivores who eschew carbs? And even if your main customer is you, how do you keep yourself entertained after months and months of your own cooking?

First, you need resources to stimulate the mind. We use the New York Times Cooking app, and recently discovered ckbk, an app containing many of the best cookbooks ever. If, for example, like us you remember fondly the Silver Palate cookbook, one of the seminal influences of our early cooking lives, but the cookbook didn’t survive the last move, and you really want to make the lobster and tarragon pasta you last made for a fancy dinner party thirty years ago, and you can’t quite remember the recipe--ckbk has it. And lots more.

Then you need a plan. For family meals, we have learned to make recipes that are progressive. That is--no one will object too much to the initial stage, and additions can be made to satisfy individual requirements--so you don't have to cook several separate meals every day.

Everyone is happy with pizza—even the carb grumblers succumb. We don’t have pizza ovens, so we make pan pizza--sort of Chicago style. We use the King Arthur recipe and it comes out pretty well. The basic pizza--tomato sauce and mozzarella--is acceptable to all. Then, we add pepperoni to one side for the carnivores and something else--caramelized onion, thin sliced potatoes, broccoli rabe--to the other, for the vegetarians—i.e. the pescatarians that object to eating fish.

We make lasagna the same way--half and half—and use the same approach for pasta. Make the basic red sauce, then add meatballs as needed. 

On hot summer days we like large salads, even for dinner. We start with greens from the farmer’s market, then pile on whatever we have that looks fun. Tomatoes, celery, hard boiled egg slices, diced cooked potatoes, olives, chives or scallions, cold vegetables, grated carrots, beans, cold rice, colorful peppers, shrimp, nuts. (The carnivores object unless there is something like cold steak to go with it. Then they pick out of the salad bits of whatever color they find acceptable.) 

The key, of course, is the dressing. Our basic: a few chopped garlic cloves, juice of two lemons, salt and a cup of olive oil. Sometimes we just mix walnut oil and sherry vinegar. And if we are feeling in the mood to splurge, calorically speaking, sour cream dressing is the best.

After a few salad nights, we might make the carnivores a roast filet mignon. Maybe artichokes for the vegetarians, and some wild rice. Or beans. We learned a lot about beans at the beginning of lockdown. Cooked beans are endlessly versatile, and freeze well. Our main source for beans—and recipes--is Rancho Gordo.

Roast chicken is a mainstay you can use with whatever you offer the vegetarians. We have written before about a favorite--Green Chicken, especially good in summer because the ingredients of the green sauce are available in profusion. As an alternative, we might rub the chicken with something hot snd spicy before we roast it. One of us lived in Ethiopia for a while, and loves berbere. We do not make our own, as we are lazy, but get it from Kalustyan’s--the world’s best smelling store. And we are intrigued by an offering from another source—the Quarantine Spice Bundle.

Baked potatoes are the start of another good progressive dinner. Everyone gets a potato, adds butter or sour cream, salt and pepper, maybe some berbere, then whatever she or he wants--smoked salmon, chopped onion, canned tuna, grated cheese, sour cream, capers.

And of course whatever you serve, all is forgiven if there is a decent dessert. We love this recipe for small apple pies, and we use it to make berry pies all summer. We also love cool cheesecake--plain with berries, or chocolate with a crust made from leftover chocolate chip cookies. Not that there are many leftovers when we make these. And we have recently revived icebox cake. (If anyone has a good source for chocolate wafers, please share.)

So keep up the good work and remember—you’ll be eating out again soon!