Last week,temple of eroticism I was making dinner for my fiancée and me. I had thawed two pieces of chicken. That much was decided.
From there, the dish was a mystery. I looked around the kitchen and shrugged. Soon enough, I'd have to venture back out into the world to gather more supplies, but for now, we were stuck with what we had.
I saw a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Another can of pickled jalapeños. Half a can of diced tomatoes in Tupperware in the fridge. A little garlic. And, like lots of other Americans, we had copious amounts of rice. I'd have to make it work.
I love to cook. I'm relatively skilled at it, compared to your average home cook. And, in the weirdest way possible, cooking during the coronavirus pandemic has been a fun way to put those skills to the test. (Minus the pandemic part, of course.)
So, I seasoned and roasted the thawed chicken. I chopped the peppers finely, then threw them in a pan with some oil, adobo sauce, the tomatoes, minced garlic, and some pickled jalapeño juice. As that reduced, I tasted the sauce. It was a little harsh and acidic. I added a small clump of butter (a scientific portioning) and seasoned it with garlic salt, but it still wasn't quite right. It needed a tiny bit of sweetness to offset the smokiness of the chipotle. I'm not really proud of this, but I squirted in some ketchup, because it's what I had.
But you know what? Once I tossed the chopped chicken into that sauce and put it over rice, we got five (legitimately) delicious meals, counting leftovers, out of it. The sweet, tomatoey ketchup brought the whole thing together.
It felt a lot like the classic Food Network show Chopped — a program I've watched more hours of than I care to admit —during which contestants attempt to combine random, disparate ingredients into tasty dishes. Sure, I'm not tasked with transforming fish heads, but cooking while sheltering in place requires that same sort of resourcefulness.
Looking around online, I see I'm not alone. Lots of folks are talking about how we're eating and cooking these days. Longtime Food Network host Alton Brown is posting videos on how to transform pantry staples. Writer Sam Koppelman started a whole newsletter in which he talks with accomplished chefs and cooks about cooking under quarantine. The New Yorker's Helen Rosner has a new advice column, dishing out wisdom on quarantine food.
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If you watched Chopped, you've learned a few lessons: Don't forget the required ingredients; discern what each ingredient brings before adding it (Can it add sweetness to the dish? Freshness? Acidity?); don't overcomplicate what could be easy and delicious.
Social distancing has brought about a strange brew of anxiety and boredom, as I oscillate between freaking out about the pandemic and passing the time. But embracing the challenge of cooking with limited options has proven an engaging distraction. And the Chopped rules 100-percent apply — don't forget the ingredients you have on hand, and use those limited options to make well-rounded, tasty meals.
And so, leftover meat (a precious resource) gets folded into fried rice with a half-bag of frozen corn; a tiny bit of cooked kale is tossed into a leftover hash; a fried egg makes everything better. Don't have fresh lemon? Lime juice from a bottle will do. No red wine vinegar? Ehhh, let's fudge it with balsamic and that same bottled lime juice. Old bread? Toast it for croutons.
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As a person who, pre-virus, already made their own chicken stock from scraps and spent weekends crafting homemade pizza, it's not entirely surprising that quarantine cooking has been one small source of fun in an awful, stressful time.
If you embrace it, cooking in the time of coronavirus really does feel like a scary, messed-up version of Chopped. You take the situation at hand, and then you make the best of it. That's about all we can do.