I admit I’ve been a reluctant cook during these days of social distancing. I usually don’t have a problem cooking for one since I love having leftovers to stick in the freezer. But these days, with eating being one of the highlights of the day, it’s a little less exciting to eat four days of the same meal in a row or to grab another serving of something out of the freezer. Still, I really hate food waste, and I’ve been pretty good at avoiding public places including grocery stores, so practicality has won out. Fortunately(?), I’ve often found that I can eat a lot more roasted vegetables than I planned.
So much for leftovers.
These are the recipes I’ve made so far:
Baking:
Buckwheat bread
Tapioca/gluten-free bread
Banana Bread (mostly banana, a little bread)
Recipe testing for an article for Alive Magazine in September:
Eggplant-Tofu lasagna
Jackfruit tacos with serrano guacamole, salsa fresca and blue corn tortillas
Mango paletas
Almond amaretti
Sweet potato fries with Tamarind dipping sauce
Chicken and Turkey:
(Almond) Milk-braised turkey neck (a variation on a Jamie Oliver recipe)
Whole roast chicken marinated with chilli oil, homemade chilli paste and gluten-free beer
Vietnamese pho ga chicken noodle soup from scratch (from my Quarantine Cooking e-book)
Porcini rice with panko chicken thighs and home-canned plum dipping sauce
Conveyer belt chicken thighs from Salt, Fat Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
Ferments:
Pressure-steamed tepary beans (tough texture)
Tepary bean natto (disaster)
Chickpea tempeh
Soybean tempeh
Soybean natto (one batch disaster, the other great; I tried to mash the disaster ones before fermenting, which was not a good plan)
Water kefir (fail – I think I killed the grains)
P.S. All my cultures and natto spores came from Cultures for Health, which ships to Canada. I bought organic soybeans specifically for natto and tempeh from Signature Soy in the US months ago. It unfortunately does not ship to Canada, but you can get a lot of ingredients locally in Montreal at Mycoboutique. It’s taking online and phone orders. My go-to book for all these ferments is Miso, Tempeh, Natto & Other Tasty Ferments by Kirsten K. Shockey and Christopher Shockey. It’s brilliant. Here’s my full review.
Soups:
Asparagus soup
Broccoli soup
Soupy rice with pepper paste and chilli powder
Chili, Lentils and Beans:
Puy lentil chili
Black chickpeas (kala chana – under-pressure-steamed)
Red lentil dal
Sides and Roasted Things:
Roasted whole sweet potatoes
Roasted carrots and zucchini
Lots of brown and parboiled rice
Miso eggplant
Miso kale
Miso spinach (I have a lot of my homemade miso, even though half the batch went moldy, hence why I’m cooking with the other half instead of eating it raw…)
Snacks:
Oatcakes (with quinoa flakes)
Popcorn with chilli powder paste and lime salt
Canned salsa diluted with chilli powder and water to make it less salty
From my pantry cupboard of homemade pickles and preserves, I’m down to one 500 mL jar of tomatillo salsa, one 1 L jar of pickled carrots, five 1L jars of dill pickles (I’ve been treating a jar of dill pickles as a vegetable with dinner…), five 500mL jars of arrabbiata pasta sauce and four 250mL jars of plum sauce. I have about a cup of homemade sauerkraut left (it’s fantastic), I’m out of kimchi (so sad) and I’m working my way through my various sauces and spreads, from miso-sesame-chilli pastes to jars of my homemade miso and some aged sake that tastes a bit like soy sauce mixed with mushrooms.
I also have the most resilient garlic chives in my self-watering containers, soon to be joined by basil, parsley, peas, black chickpeas and cilantro leaves.
In terms of meat, I have 2 lbs of frozen ground turkey and am not craving paste sauce or meatballs or kefta. I have some frozen sustainable shrimp and a two lamb merguez sausages. I have some smoked salmon. And I have purple coloured turkey broth (purple from the carrot peels I used), flavoured with sage and lemon zest from that Jamie Oliver chicken recipe (I made it from that wonderfully knobby turkey neck).
What should my next culinary adventure be? Without a plan, without something delicious to eat, I’ll lose track of the days, I’m afraid.
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