Welcome.
I am writing a cooking blog now.
Four years ago, I wrote down a recipe for an easy, standard chilli. I was evidently pretty pleased with it at the time, because I’d been tinkering with the proportions for several years by then, remembering and promptly forgetting the optimal number of coriander seeds and the like.
This recipe popped up in that horrible facebook memories thingo, so I read through it and thought huh, yep, I stand by this. Which is comforting, because in the last four years I’ve barely cooked chilli – why mess with something you’ve perfected?
It also occurred to me in this time of toilet paper hoarding that the recipe does freeze very well. And although it’s not personally my flavour of insanity, I do sort of intuitively get the instinct to bed down, revert to basics, limit your social circle to people you actually like, and maybe investigate the possibility of buying a gun? In my more irritable moments I threaten to chuck in the whole civilisational project and retreat into the woods with my cats and a handful of tomato seeds. And a gun.
Unfortunately, I go completely insane when I a) don’t talk to other humans for any longer than about 10 hours, and b) can’t easily walk into a wine bar, order a mid-weight red with a bit of spice and a tiny $24 dish that involves burrata.
I’ve thought long and hard about which of those scenarios is actually worse, avoiding humans or being unable to access burrata, and it’s definitely lack of burrata.
So, with everyone going completely fucking bananas about coronavirus, and facing the prospect of widespread burrata outages, I am sharing with you, my friends and loose acquaintances, my best tips for how to eat well in a pandemic.
At this point, I could give you a list of pantry staples, but I don’t know, I reckon if you had any idea how essential I consider truffled polenta to any quarantine situation you might shut this email, curl your lip and say something along the lines of jesus christ Sabine you are some bourgeois FUCK.
… Ok, you already know that. But I can’t in good conscience write something that results in you going out and buying ten kilos of freekeh and five of quinoa. I need that. I need that for when you lot have denuded every shelf of its pasta. I know how to use the esoteric grains. Leave them alone.
But like I said, I’m an empathetic individual. If you have bought a lot of staples because it became a rational action in the face of others’ irrationality, this newsletter is still for you. I don’t care what you’ve done, only what you will do. I’m an ocean of zen, because I have a month’s worth of anti-depressants on hand and you don’t live near me; I just don’t want to see your Big Bag of Rice sadly forgotten in a corner until you wonder where the hell all those moths are coming from.
I’ll give you the chilli recipe. It’s good with your rice.
Here’s what I’m cooking this week – do your shop on Sunday, freeze any fresh meat you’re not using until later in the week and you’ll only have to leave the house once! I’m not giving you a shopping list because I assume you can read and make notes!
Sunday: Actually honestly, I’m cooking nothing, I’m going to the pub like a normal person. You should go to the butcher or kill a backyard chicken if you’re already on lockdown or whatever and make Yotam Ottolenghi’s Chicken with Caramelised Onion and Cardamom Rice.
If you own the incomparable Jerusalem – the book that has had the single greatest influence on my cooking other than Patience Gray’s Honey from a Weed – this is in there on p 184. If you don’t own it, shell out $7 a month for an nytcooking sub and get it at the link above.
I strongly recommend you buy a whole chook to make this instead of disparate chook bits. The linked recipe says quarter the chook but personally I feel that results in pieces that are too big. Go for eighths – two drumsticks, two thighs, and cut both breasts in two.
Since you’re already cooking, and you’ll have chicken offcuts, now is a good time to make stock like you’ve always said you would. Put the offcuts, i.e. the chook’s backbone and wings, in a big pot of water with a peeled carrot, a couple of sticks of celery, a few garlic cloves and an onion – all roughly chopped – as well as some parsley and thyme sprigs and a few whole peppercorns. Let that simmer away while you’re cooking the chicken and rice, and while you’re eating it, and doing the dishes. When you can’t face the prospect of being awake any longer, drain the stock into jars or regular old plastic containers and chuck it in the freezer for longer term storage. Don’t buy stock. Do this instead.
Monday: I loooove Meatless Monday. Actually, I just love alliteration. It’s still harvest season, there’s loads of capsicum about, and presumably you waited for that chook to lay its last eggs before you killed it yesterday. Make shakshuka.
Tuesday: But Sabine, I’m sick of Ottolenghi! I know honey, his recipes seem approachable and then you’re like, what the fuck are nigella seeds anyway. No one knows. They’re purely decorative.
My husband suggested ‘stocking up at the butcher’ this weekend and I said hey that’s a great idea, because if you buy a nice whole piece of beef and freeze it, you can either defrost and cook the whole thing in a pot roast, or slice it really thin for carpaccio. OR, you could make:
Something Sort of Like Bibimbap:
First up, this is prep bowl intensive. Full disclosure. Cut some nice thin slices of beef, set aside with a spoonful of miso paste, soy sauce and gochujang (bowl 1). Blanch some spinach, or if you bought frozen in your mad dash through woolies, defrost it I guess. Set this aside (bowl 2). Get a mandolin and julienne a large carrot (bowl 3) and a couple of zucchini (the ones I planted are still going, wild, bowl 4). Chop up four large cloves of garlic with some salt, divide your garlic into four equal portions and dump it in each bowl. IN THIS ORDER, and bearing in mind you want to everything to retain some texture: stir fry your carrot in sesame oil, set aside; stir fry your zucchini in sesame oil, set aside; stir fry your beef and set aside; chuck your spinach into the remaining saucey bits and stir.
Assemble all ingredients in attractive little piles on a bed of cooked rice. It is also nice to add some kimchi, sliced spring onion, ssamjang, and a raw egg yolk. Sprinkle some sesame seeds over the whole lot for the insta story.
Wednesday: My cleaner comes on Thursday (I hope) so I never want to make a huge mess. It’s tray bake time. Did you know Goop has some quite good recipes? I know, right? It’s not all jade eggs. These Harissa Roasted Vegetables and Chickpeas with Tahini Yoghurt will absolutely make use of some staples (… harissa, chickpeas, tahini, yoghurt) and in my case, that cauliflower I bought last week and haven’t used. You can serve this with a grilled meat or fish but they’re good on their own.
Thursday: I’ll probably go out. But if you’ve got loads of tinned tomatoes or jars of sugo, and I’m assuming you’ve got capers and currants and pine nuts sequestered in a back pantry corner (hot tip store all of this in the fridge for increased longevity), why not get some eggplant and make caponata? You’ll want bread. Get that too, unless you’re even better than me, like, morally, and you’re already in possession of a sourdough starter.
Friday: I’m definitely going out. Eat wine and salami and cheese and little pickled onions. I don’t care.
Saturday: I can’t think this far ahead. Make the goddamn chilli. If you don’t have mince or you don’t eat meat it’s good with just, more beans or tofu or whatever. Make double and freeze the excess.
