Foods that Feel Like Hugs: The Quest for Quarantine Cuisine to Soothe You
Roasted crispy chicken thigh and Pasta Florentine with Mushrooms. Quick, easy, and comforting.
As we enter week six of San Francisco’s shelter in place order, tensions are running high at home. Domestic abuse and disputes are surging globally, regimented home school schedules are in disarray, and we’re bartering for toilet paper and yeast on social media. Personally, I would say that while the availability of pantry staples trends downward, toddler tantrums and domestic squabbles are on the rise. Now more than ever we all need to take comfort in our food even as we make do with less.
I appreciate how Kat Kinsman, one of my favorite food writers, is always open about her mental health and actively seeks to help others with her Chefs with Issues site.
A Shift in Shopping Strategy
I used to frequent many different stores and farmers’ markets per week to satisfy cravings and make recipes work. These days, one stop every three weeks is more than enough and I have become a master of ingredient substitution.
At my local farmer’s market when you could still touch the produce.
My grocery lists are multi-phased documents. They start out as post-it scribbles on the kitchen wall as we run out of things, then get re-written in grocery store and priority order before marching into the store for a surgical strike.
Like a lot of people, I initially thought that beans were the most important ingredient to get me through this pandemic. I’ve since realized that even in times of crisis, there is a limit to the number of beans you can force upon your family.
So, what are my quarantine cuisine must-haves? Foods that feel like hugs. Yes, comfort foods. To me, that’s super flavorful dishes made from immune-boosting superfoods. Bonus points for being ooey, gooey, or melty.
Foods I Can’t Quit During Quarantine
Green Thing #1: Spinach
Quarantine cooking has taught me that besides garlic my favorite ingredient just might be spinach. It can be folded into eggs, stirred into pasta dishes, blended into smoothies, and added to curries to immediately elevate the texture, taste and nutritional value. Unlike lettuce or kale, It feels pillowy on the palate and doesn’t need to be massaged or even de-stemmed.
I’m also a fan of cooking with fresh herbs whenever possible, but I forgot to buy Alison Roman’s favorite ingredient, during my last supermarket sweep and had to make do with the dry stuff. I tossed a handful of frozen spinach in with a couple of tablespoons of dry parsley and found that it more than made up for the texture without sacrificing taste for a white-wine and butter-based pasta sauce like this.
Chilies to Make You Feel
If the pandemic has you feeling dead inside, you need to spice things up a bit. Crushed red pepper will do in a pinch (or a pinch will do), but nothing tops the slow-burn excitement of fresh chili peppers. They are great for garnishing cocktails, making marinades, brightening curries, and punching up pasta.
My favorites are jalapeños and their slightly spicier sisters, serranos. They can almost be used interchangeably, but I prefer my guacamole to be made with serranos and my turkey chili to be topped with jalapeños.
All. The. Milks.
When you’re tired of cooking, a bowl of cereal is a comforting reprieve that brings you back to childhood, slurping up the slightly sweet milk at the end. If you’re like me and only going to the store every three weeks, milk becomes precious. It’s good to have a couple of shelf-stable options in your pantry, especially if you can’t caffeinate without it.
In addition to organic 1% low-fat milk (also good for dunking homemade cookies), I like to have Oatly Barista Oat Milk and coconut milk on hand. If you have oats in the house, you can also make your own oat milk. A little coconut milk can go a long way to make all those beans in your pantry palatable; I’ve been enjoying this chickpea curry. I also like to use it to make immune-boosting, super soothing golden milk, which is the only thing I’ve found that makes oatmeal edible, and is delicious in tea or sipped on its own.
Bread-Like Objects
Before the pandemic, yeast was never even on my shopping list. But now all I want to do is make pizza dough from scratch, and I aspire to become Josey Baker. If you live in San Francisco during these strange times, Josey’s bread emporium, The Mill, has a front-door takeout window serving up bread, flour, coffee, and sourdough starter between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. every day.
While I’ve made plenty of banana bread (no yeast required!), I’ve yet to actually make homemade bread or pizza dough because I can’t find yeast. Instead, I typically buy pre-made pizza dough from the refrigerated section of my grocery store or through the takeout window of my local pizzeria. And for bread, I grab La Brea Bakery Whole Grain Loaf for making BLTs, grilled cheese, or hosting an ever-evolving selection of tinned fish. I might even resort to a tube of refrigerated biscuits, which pair well with chili. Because what else are you going to do with all those beans? But I’m inching ever closer to joining the rest of the internet in making my own sourdough. And if I ever get my hands on some yeast, Samin Nosrat’s Ligurian Focaccia is inevitable.
Sometimes I swap in the occasional nori wrap—an excellent vehicle for a comforting shallot-mushroom-egg scramble—or tortilla—with lots of melty cheese—in lieu of bread.
Cheese that Melts
My store’s basic cheese selection has been picked over, but if I wanted to make a cheese plate (which I don’t!), there’s plenty of options to choose from. I love a good oozy, stinky cheese, but these days my criteria for buying cheese is: What’s the most affordable thing I can buy that will melt?
Shredded cheeses are consistently sold out (and filled with preservatives) so I gravitate toward the biggest chunks of mozzarella, Parmesan, Cheddar, and Gruyere I can find for pizza, pasta, and slightly elevated grilled cheese sandwiches. I toss American cheese in my cart for making queso (melt three slices with a can of Herdez Hot Salsa Casera), topping burgers, and making classic grilled cheese sandwiches.
Tinned Fish
I stock up on sustainable canned fishes, including tuna, sardines, and anchovies for
for making:
Salads like the ones your grandma used to make (canned albacore, mayonnaise, sweet relish, celery, hardboiled eggs, and a dash of Dijon);
Open-faced sandwiches (toasted bread, Dijon, sardines, sliced tomatoes);
I’m also a fan of smoked oysters, which make a great lunch paired with crackers and sliced veggies. And canned clams for making linguini with clam sauce. I added some frozen shrimp to my last batch and used it to broker a peace deal on the home front.
Dark Times Call for Dark Meat
Food that packs a powerful punch of flavor is all I’m craving these days. White meat need not apply. Instead, I load up on:
Chicken wings, which can be drizzled with olive oil; sprinkled with salt, garlic powder, cayenne, and paprika; then, baked and baptized in a Frank’s Red Hot Sauce-butter bath to rival the ones found at your favorite sport’s bar;
Chicken thighs—both with skin/bones for roasting (perhaps slathered in some miso, butter, rice wine vinegar, and red pepper flakes) and without for poaching;
Chicken legs, which I like to marinate with chopped chilies, lime juice and zest, garlic, salt, and olive oil before roasting.
Not only do these parts of the bird taste better, but they also cost less.
I’ve also been purchasing stew meat, which is great for making stir-fries like Mongolian beef. I live in a neighborhood with some of the best Asian restaurants in the city, and I miss them terribly. This helps.
Bye, Potato
Don’t tell Darth, but I’m usually someone who could take or leave potatoes. I’ve even been known to make mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes on Thanksgiving. Blasphemy, I know. But this pandemic has me reaching for 5-pound bags of Russet potatoes, which I roll around in some olive oil, salt, and pepper before baking. These get stuffed with butter, cheese, broccoli, spinach, and sometimes leftover chicken for a satisfying and not-so-complicated meal.
According to University Health News, white potatoes are lower in fat and sugar and contain more protein and fiber, while sweet potatoes have fewer carbs and calories but more vitamin A and vitamin C. Extra vitamins during a pandemic can’t hurt, but I have to admit I’m still working on the bag of sweet potatoes I purchased six weeks ago. I think there’s going to be a big batch of sweet potato curry in my future.
The toddler in my life sometimes says, “bye, potato” when talking to her dad. It could be because of our increased potato consumption, the dance parties we have after dinner where “John the Rabbit” is heavily featured, or just because it’s fun to say. Whatever the reason, it gives us all a warm fuzzy feeling. The same warm fuzzy feeling I hope some of my favorite quarantine foods give to you.
