We live less than three miles from the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in Washington. Responses of locals range from que sera, sera to full-tilt freakout. I’m trying to hew to a middle path. My primary concession to the outbreak is to drive to work rather than take the bus on days when I don’t swim. This was after I sat next to a virus vector last week who was doing everything in her power to infect other passengers.
Large events are being postponed, and schools are closed. The annual Comic Con, where Millennials dress up as their favorite cartoon characters, was postponed at the last minute. My congregation will not have Sunday services until April. There was no coffee at coffee hour today. My workplace has canceled all non-essential in-person meetings. Access to the hospital is limited. Only one visitor per patient.
Businesses are suffering from lack of customers. Asian restaurants are in real danger. Folks think that any Chinese or Korean person must automatically be infected or just traveled from an affected region. We’ve been to two Chinese restaurants in the last two weeks. Yesterday we went to one in our old neighborhood, and we were the only customers there for most of our stay.
In the event of stay at home orders, we’re in reasonably good shape. We’ve stocked up on frozen vegetables, pasta, and other staples. With luck, the crisis won’t escalate to the point where we have to be confined to quarters; however, this outbreak is surprising everyone with its pervasiveness.
When one has nearly 600 cookbooks, you can go for a while without cracking the spine of a few. Others are used regularly. Then there are the ones that I refer to by the author’s first name. Some of them depend on the context. Here are a few cookbooks to which I refer that way:
Irma. Obviously the Joy of Cooking. For the newest edition, Julian referred to it as “Irma’s descendent.”
Mai. This is Mai Pham, author of Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table.
Anya. Anya Von Bremzen has published several cookbooks. Our go-to Singapore chili crab recipe comes from her cookbook, Terrific Pacific.
Steven. Steven Raichlen, author of The Barbecue Bible.
Las Vegas has a variety of Italian restaurants on the Strip, mostly of the yupscale, celebrity chef genre where a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs will set you back at least $50. (Friends, real Italian meatballs are NOT made from ground Wagyu beef.) One of my classmates who spends winters outside the city organized a dinner after our Alumni Leadership Conference at an old-school Italian restaurant called Battista’s Hole in the Wall, a block from our hotel.
Walking into this joint is like going into your Nonna’s attic – if Nonna operated an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Chianti bottles and other tchotchkes festoon the walls and hang from the ceiling, including a few taxidermied animal heads. My seat faced a stuffed boar head wearing a necktie. Autographed photos of (mostly departed) celebrities line walls above the booths. Battista’s even has a strolling accordionist. The menu is also posted on the walls. Unlike Vegas Strip “trattorias” where everything is à la carte, Battista’s meals include minestrone or salad, garlic bread, carafes of wine (red and white), and cappuccino.
I ordered fettuccine with mussels. Others had eggplant parmigiana and other (mostly red sauce) offerings. I got about eight good-sized mussels surrounding a pile of red-sauced pasta that had a spicy edge to it. The portions were ample. The wine was served in small stemless glasses, as if you were dining at Nonna’s house.
The conversations were lively. Our end of the table (four proudly opinionated women) discussed politics at length. Someone at the other end of the table made a disparaging comment about New Jersey, at which one of the native New Jerseyans took umbrage. The one toast of the evening was to the Garden State.
The tab for the evening was quite reasonable by Las Vegas standards. I’d go back there if I ever found myself back in town.
I’m attending the Cornell Alumni Leadership Conference this weekend. For a change, the meeting is west of the other Washington (DC): Las Vegas. Granted, Vegas is not my favorite city, but I feel the need to see my classmates and other friends. And if Cornell’s going to have the meeting that’s more accessible from Seattle, I’m there.
This weekend may be more surreal than usual in this town. First, the Nevada Caucus is Saturday. Second, the current occupant of the White House, in attempt to divert attention, is holding a rally in town tonight. Alas, I have a prior engagement. (And if I didn’t, I’d make one up.)
The meeting itself may be subdued, given that Cornell’s former president died three weeks ago. Frank Rhodes was installed my senior year, and served through and beyond my tenure in grad school. Even after he retired, he was a regular at Alumni Reunions and this conference.
Most kugels will stick to your ribs and thighs in perpetuity. The noodles or potatoes are bound together with mass quantities of cheese and eggs, then baked. There may be some raisins or other fruit in the recipe, but the net effect is high fat with a little starch thrown in.
When faced with what to bring to the memorial dinner for the matriarch of our Friday night group, Julian suggested a kugel. “Maybe Joan has a recipe.” Joan is Joan Nathan, author of several Jewish cookbooks. I selected the San Antonio Kugel recipe from her Jewish Cooking in America. The recipe contained only two eggs for a pound of noodles. The main thickening agent was pectin from grated pears and apples. The best part: With the exception of those who were allergic to gluten or eggs, the majority of people there could eat it.
I never had a slow cooker. So getting a sous vide took some getting used to. Julian found a recipe on the Chef Steps website for braised short ribs that required 24 hours of cooking. Because zipper freezer bags aren’t made for high heat, I double-bagged the ingredients. I had to cover the pot with aluminum foil to keep the water from evaporating over time.
The results were certainly tender, as they should have been for the cooking time. The seasonings were standard. Next time I might try adapting the recipe for Asian seasoning.
For a change, we hosted the New Year’s Eve celebration. It was low-key and broke up well before midnight. (Blame my farm girl genes and my 5:30 am swim for that.) The menu was paella with chicken and Spanish chorizo, sous vide parsnips, salad, crusty bread, and chocolate cake. As an appetizer, I made bacon jam and brie phyllo cups. These were well received.
The next day we had leftovers that needed to be repurposed. The chicken thighs had all been consumed from the paella, so Julian suggested fried paella for lunch. This is similar to Chinese fried rice, with eggs scrambled in at the end. This was successful. For dinner I made a red lentil soup and threw in the crunchy sous vide parsnips. These softened up nicely with additional cooking. The soup also served as my lunch at work for the rest of the week. Gemisch is good.
Julian got me a sous vide stick and cookbook for Christmas. This particular device is made by Chef Steps, a Seattle-based company that was recently acquired by Breville.
The Chef Steps Joule.
The principle of sous vide is to cook food at a lower temperature for a longer period of time in a water bath. The temperature is high enough to kill bacteria. The food is sealed in a bag (sous vide is French for under vacuum) and submerged in the water bath. The temperature and time of cooking is controlled by cell phone for this model. As with many apps, the basic function and some recipes are free. If you want the “full experience”, you pay extra. And you get daily spam.
Our experiments thus far have been mixed. First, we “poached” two eggs in the shell for an hour. The results were too drippy for Julian to eat. (This is how a friend of ours pasteurized eggs for his aged eggnog.) The second experiment was cooking mushrooms. I had a mixture of creminis and fresh shiitakes that I needed to use up. Even with two clean glass votive candle holders inside, the bag still floated. Julian solved this problem by wedging a cereal bowl on top of the bag. The mushrooms were okay, but cooking in a pan would be much faster. I also cooked parsnips on New Year’s Eve. The results were a little too crunchy for Julian.
The most successful experiment was with a rib-eye steak. Julian cooked it via sous vide for an hour, then seared it in a pan. The steak was done perfectly and was quite tender. Because the temperatures are so low, most meat recipes call for searing or broiling following sous vide.
We still have more experiments ahead of us, but sous vide may be a good option for meats. Vegetables, not so much.
I am a mere mortal tea drinker. The obsessive-compulsive machinations Julian goes through to make his drug of choice are beyond my comprehension. So when the espresso machine he bought when we moved to Seattle (after the movers trashed his old one) was on its last pump, this set off a cascade of purchases.
First: A new espresso machine. He researched numerous options on the internet. The machine he had his eye on was not sold in Seattle. It was, however, sold at Clive Coffee in Portland. “Wanna go on a road trip?” he asked. “I can make it worth your while. Lunch at Pok Pok and a visit to Powell’s Books.” So we drove down I-5 to Portland the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The sales reps at Clive Coffee are as geeky as Julian is. He sampled one or two shots from different machines, although the coffee varieties used were too acidic for his taste. He got his new machine (with a couple of accessories, including a scale to measure out the exact quantity of ground coffee) and we went off to my parts of the trip.
Second: A new coffee grinder. His early experiments with the new machine convinced him that his old grinder was not up to the task. While I was back east, he bought a new grinder from a store hereabouts. He also got a new water purification pitcher that uses ion-exchange to substitute magnesium for calcium. We don’t have very hard water, so I’m not sure this confers any advantage. (As a matter of fact, his regular descaling of the old machine may have hastened its demise because our water is so soft.)
Third: A shelf to hold his expanding collection of coffee accessories. He drove down to Ikea and found a shelf that matched the trim on my bookcases. That’s freed up some space on the bar.
Fourth: A replacement scale. The one he got at Clive was malfunctioning, so he ordered a replacement. It finally came earlier this week. I suppose he’ll let me use it for small quantities of spices and the like if I’m really nice.
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