It’s been a minute — many minutes — since I last wrote an installment of Cooking in Quarantine. Hope you’re hanging in there.

I’d like to start, today, by revisiting one of my favorite headlines in the history of this newsletter:

“Caroline Calloway is eating caviar to celebrate raising $30,000 for first responders.”

The whole lede was, honestly, a banger. This was April, 2020; COVID and tinned fish were the hot new things; Caroline had just published her response to an essay in The Cut accusing her of all kinds of Bad Stuff; and I had asked her how she was celebrating the fact that she had sold enough copies to donate $30,000 to first responders.

“I’m worried that by telling you this, I’ll be cancelled a third time,” she said, before revealing that, a few hours after her essay dropped, she walked to the grocery store and brought back blinis, crème fraîche, and two tins of sturgeon caviar.

“I don’t know anything about caviar, but it was the most expensive,” she explained, “so I chose it.”

She also bought a large stick of truffle salami. “If it makes it any better,” she clarified, “I stocked up on other essentials like coffee.”

I wrote:

“Even Nero, who played the fiddle while Rome burned, would bow at the altar of Caroline’s ability to remain bougie in the face of tragedy. And Marie Antoinette would have no choice but to respect Caroline's hustle.

“Let them eat cake” is so 18th century. We live in the world of “Let them eat caviar” now. And while Marie couldn’t survive one guillotine, Caroline has been cancelled twice—and she’s still standing.

If you want to cancel her a third time, be my guest. But ask yourself: If you raised $30,000 for charity in a week, are you sure you wouldn't be eating caviar, too?

This is all to say: I’ve been fascinated by Caroline for a long time — because she is impossible to put into a box. Who else in our culture became known as a scammer and then wrote a memoir widely regarded as a masterpiece? You can say many things about Caroline but you can’t say she’s not an original.

So when I was thinking about how to justify starting a Hunterbrook podcast — in a world calling for podcast parsimoniousness — I decided to do it with Caroline. Because her presence guarantees this won’t be exactly like anything else you’ve heard.

As most of you know, I am no longer Cooking in Quarantine. After the pandemic, I helped start Mayday Health, the reproductive rights non-profit known for telling people how they can access abortion pills, regardless of where they live. I wrote a book with Attorney General Eric Holder on voting rights. I met my soon-to-be wife, the heroic Cecily Burge. And then I started Hunterbrook, the crazy new media company that tells truth, makes money, and creates change. (If you want to go down the rabbit hole: Politico profile on Hunterbrook from when we launched; FT article on some of what has happened since; our biased About Us page and unbiased Wikipedia page; skeptical New Yorker profile that, to its credit, acknowledged my “large blue eyes.”)

Anyway, these days, my job is to work with the most insanely talented truth-seekers on the planet — journalists; and intel analysts; and data scientists, whose north star every day is figuring out, amid all the noise, what the fuck is going on in the world.

In particular, they’re focused on figuring out the delta between what people understand to be reality and actual, verifiable reality, exposing liars, fraudsters, and old school scammers in the process.

The thing is, because our business model does not rely on clicks or subscribers, we measure our success by how much change we effectuate rather than how many people we reach. And it’s been working: Our stories have been followed by state and federal investigations; RICO lawsuits; stock price accountability.

But, honestly, the shit we find out — it’s also really fucking entertaining. We just haven’t prioritized distribution. That is starting to change. And it’s the reason I’ve started a podcast with Caroline called The Hunt.

The premise: Hunterbrook Media’s investigative reporters and intel analysts explain the biggest scams in the golden age of grift and graft… to Caroline Calloway, who knows scams VERY well.

In certain ways, it is inspired by my friend Pablo Torre’s astonishingly brilliant podcast, which I was on this week, talking about Harvard, brain computer interfaces, and, naturally, carbonara:

Like Pablo, we hope to report on serious, meaningful stories — the kind we break at Hunterbrook all the time — in a way that is accessible and breaks through the noise. Our first episode dropped on Thursday; and it’s focused on a simple question with a very complicated answer: Why did the Super Bowl ad starring Nick Jonas disappear from the YouTube channel of the $30 billion blood glucose monitor company that produced it?

Honestly, this episode is mid, but even in this larval state, I am convinced The Hunt will become something special. And I’m excited to share it with the Cooking in Quarantine family.

So please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts — for me, that’s Spotify:

And let me know what scams we should be digging into next — especially if they have to do with cooking. (Don’t even get me started on Big Air Fryer…)

It’s me, Sam, and no, I’m not writing you about ramp season — although, well, I made a ramp pesto, cooked some eggs sunny side up on top of it, and it was mind blowing. (I didn’t have pine nuts, so I used cashews, which was kind of vegan coded and, unfortunately, landed the pesto on the green goddess dressing spectrum, but I also used Parmesan, because I haven’t changed that much.)

Anyway, I’m writing because I signed you up for the newsletter of a crazy company I started called Hunterbrook Media. The idea behind it is simple: Great reporting doesn’t have to be a bad business. You can read the New Yorker profile about it, published earlier this week, here. Their subtitle: The hybrid media-finance company wants to monetize investigative journalism in the public interest. Is it a visionary game changer or a cynical ploy?

The TLDR: Hunterbrook Media investigates under-scrutinized sectors and breaks news with reporters on the ground in under-covered regions. We publish without ads and paywalls. We pay for it, in part, by sharing certain stories with our affiliate Hunterbrook Capital, which may take financial positions based on our research. (Read more about how this works here.)

This is an experiment — and smarter people have tried and failed to find a sustainable model for funding investigative reporting. But our hypothesis is that if you recruit world-class reporters and OSINT analysts, pay people properly to analyze the universe of publicly available information, and monetize the facts they find instead of the eyeballs they reach, then you can tell truth, make money, and create change.

At the least, we’re going to report meaningful stories — and already, we’ve exposed what we believe is the biggest mortgage scandal since the financial crisis; a company we believe to be aiding the murderous junta in Myanmar; an effort to restart the pipeline that led to one of the largest oil spills in California history; and a copper smelter in Namibia that has allegedly brought environmental and health damage to the surrounding community.

I promise there will also be investigations related to cooking — like, maybe, why is there such a delta between the street cred of risotto and orzo?

But I also know this might not be for you. So feel free to unsubscribe the next time Hunterbrook Media emails you. But I’d love to have you. And I hope you’re having a very merry ramp season <3

My mom says the first year after a loved one dies is the hardest—not just because the wound is freshest, but because, as you experience landmark days for the first time without them, you remember where you were and what you did the year before when they were alive, when you could celebrate a birthday, a holiday, even an earlier than expected spring day together. 

For the families of more than half a million Americans, that is what 2021 has felt like because of a pandemic our government let run roughshod over our country. I am lucky not to count myself among them. But, for all of us, I think, or at least for me, on some days, this feels like a year of mourning, and I’ve been finding myself doing that thing my mom describes, being catapulted back 12 months by Proustian triggers of nostalgia. 

Which brings me to the subject of this newsletter: Ramp Season, otherwise known as Warm Ramp Spring™️, the month when all of your favorite chefs put their favorite allium on everything, dolloping them over focaccia, stuffing them inside ravioli, pickling them on top of raw beef, blending them into butter. Ramps, you see, like humans, contain multitudes. 

But as soon as ramps started showing up on my feed again, I was instantly reminded of what I was like last ramp season, and all I could think — as though I were looking back on photos I posted to Facebook during high school — was: Who the fuck was that guy? 

Because, for some reason I cannot recall, this time last year, I had a vendetta against ramps. Seriously. I couldn’t stop tweeting mean things about them. I was like an anti-allium Glenn Greenwald. 

But, here’s the thing, ramps are delicious, and for those of you who are wondering what they taste like, imagine a world where scallions and garlic could bang and only pass down each of their best qualities to their progeny—those kids would be ramps. And yet, last year, eating them left me feeling nothing but vitriol, a stupefying fact I’ve been reflecting on in recent days. 

And what I’ve come to believe is that 2020 made even the best things bad—the inverse of Momofuku Chili Crunch, which makes even the worst things decent.1 And, in this way, 2021 is a year of mourning, yes, but it’s also a year of rebirth—a time when we can be reminded of the color in everything that felt gray last year. And I hope you’re able to do that with cooking. 

I know, after months and months and months of preparing meal after meal after meal, cooking began to feel like a chore. Helen Rosner wrote a gorgeous essay about this in the New Yorker. But as life begins to return to normal, as vaccines enter arms and smiles return to faces and feet return to streets, I hope you learn to love something you grew to hate again. Because so much is still so fucked in so many ways, but it’s spring in America. Ramps are back in season. And life, well, life is fleeting. So I’ll be damned if I don’t try to enjoy every bite. 

***

Hey everyone! It’s me. So sorry I haven’t written. You see, the the concept of this, “Cooking in Quarantine,” is antiquated, because we have a president who built a nationwide testing program; deployed the DPA to produce PPE; provided states with the resources they needed to track and trace cases; and responsibly worked with the FDA to produce a safe and effective vaccine. 

Sorry. 

That’s not true. 

That’s what the next president will do. 

For now, we’re stuck with a guy who, more than 153 days and 213,000 deaths after I sent out the first one of these newsletters, still doesn’t have a plan. 

Which brings me to the reason I’m reaching out: For all 153 days of this crisis, undocumented immigrants have been hung out to dry. No $1200 check. No unemployment benefits. No support at all whatsoever from our federal government. 

It’s a fucking disgrace. 

But 4-CT, an organization that has raised more than $20 million since the start of this crisis, has been a lifeline for thousands of families. 

They send out cards, with cash on them, to undocumented immigrants in Connecticut. And then, recipients can decide for themselves what to do with the cash, which means it ends up going to what they actually need, rather than just what donors think they need. (So far, top spends are food, bills, rent, and clothing.)

If you support 4-CT, you won’t only allow them to be there for thousands of families. You will be a part of a movement setting an example for the rest of the nation on why we need to be providing direct cash transfers to our undocumented neighbors during this time.

Look, I know you’re receiving a lot of emails these days. (Seriously, Mark Kelly, I love you, man, but you need to let me leave you on read every once in a while.) I’m sure many of you have emptied your pockets for causes you believe in already. And if you’re unemployed, and running out of savings—or if you’re just worried you will—reply to this email and I’ll find a way for you to be a part of this.

But if you do have money to spare, and you want to spend a night making pasta and hanging with Hallie and me, I hope you’ll sign up. She’s a remarkable chef. A wonderful person. And with cuffing season on the horizon, it can’t hurt to nail a few pasta dishes to keep the magical alive when you finally bring things indoors. (Or, if you’re married... well... I’ve heard worse ideas than spicing things up by infusing your olive oil with guanciale fat.)

Stay safe, everyone. I miss you all. And when this election is over, I’ll start writing to you again—though I hope we will have a president who really does make this newsletter obsolete. 

With love,

SK

Not only have more than 84,000 human beings been killed by a virus that didn’t exist six months ago, but they’ve died without funerals, without vigils, without goodbyes. In some cases, they’ve even had to be put on waiting lists for burial spots and body bags. Experts say more Americans have lost their lives to the novel coronavirus than even those numbers indicate—not to mention all of the carnage we’ll see in the years to come from missed mammograms, cancelled colonoscopies, and delayed cancer screenings, especially among the millions who have lost their jobs, and their health insurance, during this crisis.

Meanwhile, our Department of Justice, which has sent thousands of people of color to prison for lying to the FBI, has declared that you really are above the law if you’re boys with the president, a decision which, get this, has been defended by the same news sources that have justified lynching a black man for going on a jog.

Humans, especially white humans, especially male humans, especially humans with money, tell ourselves we’re better off ignoring these tragedies—because Marisa and Ryan on The OC do a lot more for our dopamine receptors than reading the news. And I’m as good as anyone at ignoring what actually matters, even in normal times, when I’ll spend $80 on Flirtibirds at Angel Share while one billion human beings do not have access to clean water. One billion.

But, over the past week, even I haven’t been able to tune out the tragedies taking place all around us. Which is why I’ve had a hard time motivating to write my newsletter about cooking—because why should anyone give a fuck about how to make gravlax when thousands of cars are lined up at food banks across our country; when meat-processing plants are killing their employees because we refuse to eat more vegetables; and when there is no end in sight, since Republicans in Washington won’t invest in testing and tracing as long as the people dying from this disease are more likely to be poor, black, and live in blue states?  

The answer is you probably shouldn’t give a fuck about how to make gravlax. And I probably shouldn’t have cared the other night when my friend posted a picture of his Carbonara to Instagram, even though the eggs in it were scrambled. In fact, I tried to ignore it. But, eventually, I decided that, for everything we’ve lost, we must not give up the practice of being mad at the trivial tragedies taking place all around us, the irrational grievances that make our blood boil and remind us that we are human, particularly when it comes to food. 

Because if you’re going to lean on the supply chain at a moment like this—and force a farmer to abuse a chicken to bring you an egg for your bougie Roman pasta dish during a global pandemic and a great depression—you’d better not scramble that goddamn egg.

So here’s my instructions for how to make Carbonara the correct way. And I hope you do. Because if you’re healthy and happy enough to spend time cooking a special meal—and if you have the ingredients to make one of the world’s most magical plates of pasta—you have a duty do it right. Which is why, hand to God, if I see you call a bowl of scrambled egg noodles “Carbonara” on your Instagram grid, in the words of Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Welcome to the age of American Carnage.

RECIPE: HOW TO MAKE CARBONARA WITHOUT SCRAMBLING YOUR EGG

Shout out to Hallie Meyer. This Carbonara is inspired by her two-pot method and Instagram Lives.

This is hers:

This is mine:

Here’s how you make it:

1. Grate more pecorino than you think you will need. Put it aside. If you don’t have pec, parm is fine. 

2. Crack some eggs. Separate the whites from the yolks. Ditch the former. Put the latter in a bowl. Whisk them. Add enough pepper so that you can see a layer of it on the surface of the bowl. I’d say, like, five egg yolks per box of pasta should work. Put this mixture aside—AND DEFINITELY DO NOT TOUCH IT UNTIL I TELL YOU TO, LEST YOU SCRAMBLE YOUR FUCKING EGG.

3. Find a salty, porky meat—ideally guanciale, but pancetta and bacon are good, too. Cut it up into bite size pieces. Cook it in a *bit* of oil over medium-low heat.

4. Wait 10 minutes. Fill a pot with water. Salt the shit out of it. Then, wait for it to boil. Add pasta.

5. When the pasta is halfway done, take your meat out of its pot, leaving behind most of the oil and fat at the bottom. Add a few ladles of pasta water and stir until the mixture begins to resemble a sauce.

6. Take another ladle of the pasta water and add it to the egg bowl, whisking it all together. THIS MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO COOK THE EGG WITHOUT SCRAMBLING IT.

7. As soon as the pasta is done—defined as chewy but harder than you’d want it in its end state—add it to the pot of what should be a close-to-boiling mixture of pasta water, oil, and pork fat. Mix feverishly so each noodle is coated with sauce. Add back in the pork.

8. At this point, take the pot OFF THE HEAT, and then, AND ONLY THEN, add the egg mixture. Mix feverishly one more time until the pasta takes on a beautiful sheen and the pork is eggy. (NOTE: If the noodles aren’t glossy enough, there needs to be more oil or fat. If they’re too sticky, you need more water.)

9. Dump in your grated cheese and mix again until everything comes together as a single, cohesive sauce. This will take longer than you’re used to because the pasta isn’t being heated, but THAT’S THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE SURE THE EGG DOESN’T FUCKING SCRAMBLE SO IT’S THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT.

10. Put the pasta in a serving bowl. Sprinkle some extra pork over it if you left any behind. Devour it. Put on The O.C. And, before going to bed, donate money to a food bank. If your life is good enough to make a perfect carbonara during these times, then you can afford to send a few bucks to those who need it most.

Go to FeedingAmerica.org. Send me your receipt. I’ll match another $200 in donations today.

When Ben Krauss, a colleague of mine and a legendary purveyor of hot takes*** about food, texted me this picture of homemade cured salmon, I told him I was impressed—but I didn’t think this dish was something I could make, because, as we’ve established in this newsletter, I can’t even peel a carrot without the scene turning as bloody as a yard party in Parasite.

Turns out, I was half right in my pessimism: The first time I tried to make gravlax, I misread Ben’s texts, cut the fish before refrigerating it, and ended up making a jerky even Sasquatch wouldn’t dare try to masticate. But then, I made the dish again, this time following Ben’s instructions, and I can confirm this is one of the easiest things in the world to whip up.

***A few sample food takes from Ben: 1) You always need to ask for an extra slice of American cheese on a Big Mac, because the ratio of one slice of cheese to three buns is madness, get it together McDonalds; 2) “Pick your protein” is the culinary world’s worst phrase—restaurants used to be rewarded for thoughtfully designing dishes before the Fast Casual Industrial Complex invaded our lives; 3) The most popular fruit in America is the orange, and the most popular dessert in America is pie—so why is orange pie completely unheard of?

Ben’s gravlax recipe takes 10 minutes of active time and you don’t even have to cook anything, so you have to be *uniquely* incompetent to fuck it up. When you’re done, you’ll have a dish that looks like a $30 plate of sashimi but, in fact, costs around $2 to make. And it’s really, really good. 

More on gravlax from Ben:

If you’ve never heard of gravlax, here’s what it is: Imagine if smoked salmon... wasn’t. Instead, it’s cured. That’s what Scandinavians have done forever. In fact, the root of the word is “grave” because it was originally buried underground to preserve the daily catch. Thing is, you don’t need a grim beachside Norwegian funeral pyre to make it, just some basic shit. About 10 bucks worth of salmon makes 4-5 servings of the size you see in the picture above. It’s relatively idiot-proof. And it’s amazing. 

Also, don’t listen to Sammy. Use dill. 

Gravlax is a good way to make avocado toast a real meal and not a deeply depressing snack. It’s also excellent on bagels and cream cheese, obviously.

The title of Sturgeon King is taken. Shout out Barney Greengrass. But the gravlax belt is as yet unclaimed. This is your chance to make it yours. 

If you whip up the below recipe, send me pictures, and I’ll feature you in an upcoming edition of Cooking in Quarantine. 

Here are the simple instructions for how to make Ben’s gravlax. I didn’t write this like a recipe. I wrote it like something normal, non-chef humans could understand:

1. Buy the biggest piece of salmon you can find. 

2. Cut off its skin. Save it. (This is the Chekhov’s gun of the recipe.)

3. Rinse the skinless salmon with gin (or, in a pinch, vodka). 

4. Cover it all over with a mixture of sugar, salt, lemon peel, and whatever spices you fuck with most—white pepper, black pepper, allspice, star anise, Sichuan peppercorn, you name it. I don’t care what you use, just use a lot of it. Traditionally, you are also supposed to cover the whole thing in chopped dill. (My opinion is that dill, like celery, has coasted into an undeserved place in the Canon of Crops.) 

5. Put it in a sealed glass dish or your biggest thing of Tupperware; throw it in the fridge. 

6. Check on it, like, 12 hours later. You’ll see the moisture has escaped the salmon and transformed into a sauce-type-thing that lives in the bottom of your dish. Baste the salmon with that shit. Put it back in the fridge. 

7. Go to sleep; why have you been up this long? 

8. When you wake up, check on it again. In all likelihood, it’s ready. (But you can also leave it for up to 48 hours, depending on your preference.)

9. Before cutting the salmon, make a sauce: A few tablespoons of dijon or whole-grain mustard, and then a tablespoon each of sugar, lemon juice (or, if you have it, yuzu juice), a small glug of neutral oil, and, to class it up, instant espresso powder. I also added soy sauce, because I put soy sauce in everything.

10. Toast your bread; cut off the crust for extra sexiness. Butter it!

11. Take the salmon out of the fridge, slice off a few pieces of it. 

12. Plate it as though you’re serving it on a date. As Eric Adjepong told me, the best way to make a meal feel special at home is to do something out of the ordinary. 

13. Make a perfect bite: Salmon, sauce, toast, perhaps a squeeze of a lemon. Eat it. 

14. Do the dishes. 

15. Eat this meal as many times as you want until you’ve finished all the salmon. It should last a week or two. 

16. Pro-Tip: Somewhere between these steps, take the salmon skin you cut off, salt it, and fry it in a pan with oil. You can eat it plain. You can eat it with lemon or soy sauce. Or you could quickly boil some mirin, and sugar, and soy sauce, simmer that mixture for a couple minutes, and use that makeshift kabayaki sauce as a dip for the salmon skin. (Folks, what you just witnessed was Chekhov’s gun being fired in the third act.)

Official Allium Rankings

I tweeted out mine last night and it caused an UPROAR.

Here’s a sample of some of the *kinder* responses:

Tell me why I’m wrong @sammykoppelman.

Text Eric Bolyard for Cooking Tips on Sunday

Equal Parts, the first brand from Pattern, is teaming up with Eric Bolyard, Head Chef of Compagnie and founder of Black & Bolyard, to give you on-demand cooking advice this Sunday from 4PM-10PM. Sign up here for free to text him about any and all meal prep and wine pairing questions you have. I promise: If you’re getting anything from my cooking tips, you’ll learn much more from him. 

(This isn’t sponsored content; I just think it’s cool.)

I’M MATCHING $200 IN DONATIONS TO FEED AMERICA TODAY

I don’t think any of us who have the privilege of debating what to eat have even the slightest understanding of how many people are contemplating how to eat without paychecks. The lines at food banks are getting longer, not shorter, even as more and more people are afraid to volunteer. This has created a crisis; and every dollar really does count. 

So if you can, find your local food bank at Feeding America, send me a confirmation of your donation, and I’ll send you a receipt matching it. 

DAVID CHANG...

...at long last subscribed to the newsletter due to public shaming. Incidentally, I made his boiled chicken and chicken soup recipes this week. They were so fucking delicious. Will be writing about it soon. 

Until next time...

When I started this newsletter, NBA games were being played, Bill de Blasio was promising to keep schools open, and it was hard to distinguish between the CDC’s recommendations and the chorus of Future’s biggest song of 2017, both of which went something like: “Mask off / Fuck it / Mask off.”

Newspapers were still publishing reviews of restaurants. Magazines were still running recipes that required mountains of All Purpose Flour fit for Tony Montana’s desk. And sourdough starter hadn’t yet become a status symbol. I was worried millions of Americans wouldn’t have anywhere to go to figure out what to buy and what to cook if they were suddenly quarantined, let alone where to donate if they wanted to feed those who needed food most. So I started Cooking in Quarantine.

Well, if you’ve been on the internet over the past few weeks, you know all of that has changed. Now, you can find pantry lists in basically every food publication. You can find guides on where to donate. And if you want advice from the world’s best chefs, you don’t need to read this newsletter. Instead, you can go directly to the Instagram pages of my heroes, like David Chang, who are posting video tutorials almost every single day.

Where, reader, does that leave us? To be honest, I’m not sure. I know I will keep writing Cooking in Quarantine, but I also know I won’t be including interviews with famous chefs in every issue; needless to say, they have more important shit to do than talk to me right now. (Though later in this issue, you CAN find my interview with Eric Adjepong, who is awesome.)

I’m also going to be writing more about what I’ve been up to in my kitchen—yes, in part, because millennials are narcissists, but also because, even with all the cooking content out there, I think there’s not enough written by shitty home cooks for shitty home cooks. And I want to do my part to help those of you who have been known to overcook rice, undercook chicken, and bungle poached eggs avoid making the mistakes I’ve made.

I’m really proud of Cooking in Quarantine’s first month and a half. We’ve been read by hundreds of thousands across more than 70 countries. We’ve featured everyone from Bobby Flay to Beto O’Rourke, Christina Tosi to Caroline Calloway, Melissa Clark to Kwame Onwuachi. And all of you have donated so much money to the organizations doing the most good.

Thank you to everyone who’s been here since day one and to the thousands of you who have joined since. The letters you’ve written me, and the messages you’ve sent me on Twitter, are the reason this newsletter is what it is. So I hope you stick around.

I can’t tell you what’s next, but I can tell you there’s no one I’d rather be writing it for than all of you. Well, maybe except for David Chang. Subscribe already, man.

On that note, here’s Eric Adjepong.

On Thursday night, you could have seen Eric Adjepong roaming through a fully stocked Whole Foods, cooking in a bustling kitchen, and serving a meal to diners—all without gloves. No, Eric wasn’t violating quarantine. Like the stars of Too Hot To Handle, he has transcended the space-time continuum by living in the world of reality television, which, for once, feels more normal than our everyday existence, because episodes airing today were filmed Before Corona (BC).  

Of course, while Eric is still alive in this season of Top Chef, he isn’t actually spending his days cooking meals for Tom Colicchio on Bravo. Like all of us, he’s stuck at home right now, trying his best to make every breakfast, lunch, and dinner as joyous as it can be with the ingredients he has on hand. And while he’s been supporting local restaurants when he can, he’s been preparing close to every meal at home. “It’s the most cost-effective thing to do,” he explained.  

That’s where the similarities between Eric and most home chefs end. The dishes he’s been cooking with for his wife and baby are fit for a James Beard Award winning restaurant. But, he insists, you, too, can make them at home. In our interview, he explains how.

What Eric has been cooking

Eric: I’m changing it up day-to-day, so we’re not necessarily getting too bored in the house. I’ve done a pork belly dish with a fried rice, and I’m gonna do that again tonight. I made some pasta with fra diavolo sauce, some seafood. Steak and salad is a really nice, simple go-to, and it’s really cheap as well. We also made burgers in-house.

Read: Eric’s recipe for grilled steak.

Eric’s go-to home-cooking ingredients

Eric: When it comes to pastas and things like that, I love anchovy paste. I think it goes a long way. It adds a really nice umami flavor profile to a lot of dishes.

Classically, though, ginger and garlic—either blended up or small-diced—that’s perfect, man. If it’s small-diced, you can throw that into a bunch of sautés, but if it’s blended up, it goes perfect with different stews and sauces that I try to make. An equal mix of ginger, garlic, and olive oil, you blend it up, and that’s a great base, honestly, for a lot of the cooking that I do.

What pitfalls home cooks should avoid—and what rules they should follow

Eric: I remember when I was younger, I would always put everything on the hottest temperature, just because I thought it’d get done faster. I think that’s one thing a lot of home cooks probably do as well. But when you want a certain protein—I’m thinking more specifically when it comes to, like, cooking eggs—you don’t want to put it on high. You want to have a medium-low or medium-high heat. The same goes if you’re doing crispy chicken thighs or making pork belly—you really want that skin to render out slowly.

Salt is probably the second if not the most important thing when it comes to cooking. Just using a good amount of salt in everything that you’re cooking and working with.

And take your time. This is definitely the time to experiment. If there are any dishes that you’ve had at one of your favorite restaurants, or something that you love ordering, I think this is a great time to try mimicking that dish as much as possible, so you can try to find ways to save a little bit of money, but also make yourself more self-sufficient.

You don’t necessarily need to start cooking right around dinner time. If you can, maybe start a little bit earlier, since you’re gonna be home, to kind of break the whole prep list up in pieces. And it just makes everything a little bit easier once it’s time to eat dinner.

In more practical terms, in the kitchen, utilizing the entire piece of the product as much as possible. So if you’re going out and buying a whole chicken, using the bones for stock, and using that stock later on to make a noodle soup, or using that as a base for something really tasty, I think, is really smart and a great way to stretch the product as possible.

Dishes of Eric’s anyone could cook at home

Eric: There’s a really nice dish that I’m actually going to be offering in my restaurant once it opens up. It’s a coconut-curry shrimp dish, and I use a little bit of that ginger-garlic mixture. It’s fairly simple: you start off with that purée, add a little bit of tomato paste, and then you start building layers by sautéing some onions and bell peppers, and then throw in some coconut milk and a little bit of chicken stock.

You can toss in your shrimp from there. And honestly, that works really well with baked potatoes—and rice is perfect for it as well—so you can just kind of diversify that whole thing.

I also have a Jollof rice recipe that’s pretty straightforward, once you have the basics to it.

And I have a peri-peri grilled shrimp, or broiled shrimp, which is nice. That’s super easy to assemble, and it’s really flavorful as well.

Read: Eric’s recipe for grilled shrimp with spicy jollof rice—and his recipe for shrimp with peri-peri sauce.

Why so many people are trying to improve their cooking during quarantine

Eric: I think it’s primitive. It’s primal. We come from hunters and gatherers. We make our own food, especially in times of need and uncertainty—when you want to be more self-sufficient, and you want to be able to think about the long run. Because no one really knows when all of this is going to be over—so really settling down and honing in on cooking is a life necessity.

So I think it’s really cool that a lot of people are really interested in either learning something new, or brushing back up on some old skills. That’s awesome. It’s the Year of the Yeast, everybody’s baking bread, which is awesome as well.

It really is going back to bare necessities, and wanting to save money, being self-sufficient and wanting to be able to feed your family and yourself.

What organizations Eric hopes you support

Eric: James Beard has been doing an amazing job with galvanizing a bunch of chefs and restaurateurs, and everybody in the industry, honestly, to bring some awareness and support to chefs in need, and different chefs that are trying to make things happen in such a crazy time.

World Central Kitchen is a really awesome initiative that’s been helpful. One of my good friends started a company during the Puerto Rican crisis. It’s called Chefs de Borinquen. He’s helping people out in Puerto Rico, but it’s actually switched gears to helping out folks in his local community. His name is Chef Samuel Diaz. There’s definitely a lot of people who are putting themselves on the front lines to make sure that their brothers and sisters are being taken care of, and no one’s really going a night without a meal to have.

Also—simply—if you can’t find something like that, just supporting somewhere local. If you do have some money to spend during the week, if you’re not cooking, buying from a local restaurant or your favorite restaurant. Even if they’re closed, buying some sort of merchandise that they may have on their website is really helpful as well.

What you can do to make your meals at home feel special

Eric: One thing about food: It’s really all-encompassing. It doesn’t necessarily need to be what you’re doing in front of the stove that can make it feel special. It can be who you’re serving it to, and who you’re eating it with. Putting on a nice shirt, instead of the sweatpants you’ve probably been wearing. Sitting down with a loved one and really trying to make the meal as formal as possible, really trying to make a moment out of it, as if you were going to a restaurant or something like that. I think that’s a really nice way to add a little bit of novelty to this entire situation.

It's all-encompassing, man. I think there’s different ways to really look at it, but trying to keep that communal aspect around the food, which I think next to nourishment is the second-biggest attraction to why we eat. We’re social creatures, so humans just want to be around each other. And food is just a great avenue for that.

Editor’s Note: Since my call with Eric, I’ve shared some dinner with friends over Zoom. I was skeptical, but those meals really did feel special. Thanks, Eric.

GOOD READS

If you haven’t read Gabrielle Hamilton’s essay in New York Times Magazine, you’ve messed up. Fix that.

Also: Remember the issue I did on Taste of Persia’s Saeed Pourkay? Great news: He’s serving food again, delivering across New York City. Read about what he’s up to in The New Yorker and order from him on Instagram.  

GOOD THINGS I’VE COOKED

Second straight issue with a Lucas Sin tip, but these eggs are legitimately awe inspiring.  

I’ve made them every day since he posted this. I’ve found that leaving them in for 14 minutes has worked better than doing it for 12. But if they’re undercooked, don’t worry; as Lucas says, you can just scramble them.

I tried this onsen egg recipe, too, from Just One Cookbook, per Tom Kretchmar, and it also produced great eggs.

I also made Helen Rosner’s roast chicken over cabbage, via Smitten Kitchen’s recipe, and it was a 10/10. The recipe was so basic, even I couldn’t find a way to mess it up.

I then turned the bones into chicken stock, using Samin Nosrat’s recipe.  

The next day, I used the chicken stock, instead of water, to cook my rice, a la David Chang.  

Guess what I put on top of the rice?

That’s right: A Lucas Sin onsen egg.

P.S. I also cooked steak using Beto’s interpretation of Mark Bittman’s marinade and it was fantastic. As Beto would say, no me importa if you’re a good chef or a bad chef, you should try to make this.

MISTAKES I’VE MADE IN THE KITCHEN

Tried making Melissa Clark’s mayo, but I used olive oil, which messed it all up. Lesson: If you’re making homemade mayo, use neutral oil.

I also made Alison Roman’s cauliflower pasta but over-salted the pasta water, and then put even more salt in at the end, which made it inedible. I texted Pasta God Hallie Meyer and even she didn’t have a strategy for fixing it. Lesson: Taste your food every step of the way.  

This morning, as I’m writing this, I’m fucking up scallion pancake dough. Lesson: Don’t replace All Purpose Flour with Pastry Flour in a recipe. Bonus Lesson: Cooking isn’t as easy as it looks in Bon Appetit’s Instagram stories.

Until next time, friends…

...Me

The secret of this newsletter is that I’m not a great cook. If you don’t believe me, you should know I recently cut my finger peeling a carrot, thereby dripping blood into the soup I was making, and the metallic piquancy of my plasma wasn’t even the worst note in the flavor profile of the dish. But when I follow Melissa Clark’s recipes, I become a master chef, with the elegance of Julia, the precision of Jiro, and the warmth of José.

Melissa’s directions are so clear, her ingredients are so accessible, her pedagogy is so flawless that even I have a hard time managing to mess up her recipes. The best part? SHE HAS SO MANY RECIPES. This year alone, she dropped a new cookbook, Dinner in French, which transforms your kitchen into a café off the Seine, only it’s even better, because you don’t have to put up with Parisians. And at the paper of record, she’s been publishing my favorite quarantine recipes on the internet, most of which you can make with whatever’s in your pantry. (Speaking of pantries, she also wrote one of the best articles on what you should have in yours.)

If you haven’t been reading her corona cooking column, go do that now. You’ll find everything from Korean kimchi soups to Middle Eastern lentils to bacon egg and cheese carbonara. I made her riff on sesame noodles last night, and it was wonderful.

Because Melissa has dropped so many recipes in recent weeks, I didn’t want to focus our interview on her advice for home cooks, since you can find that elsewhere. Instead, I wanted to know what she cooks for her family when the cameras are off and her computer is shut—and I wanted to ask her why she thinks so many of us are turning to cooking for comfort during this defining moment in our lives. But, of course, since she’s Melissa Clark and this is Cooking in Quarantine, we ended up dishing on recipes, too.

Melissa answered every question with wisdom, as she always does. Though, sadly, I forgot to ask her how to safely peel a carrot…

Why so many of us are finding comfort in cooking

Melissa: Oh my god, that’s all we have, right? What else is there? Obviously, it’s nourishing for your body, and it’s emotionally nourishing. And that snacky feeling—that feeling of needing something, needing diversion, needing entertainment in a physical way. Right now, most of our entertainment takes place on a screen, for the most part, or maybe we’re reading a book, but it’s still not physical; it’s intellectual. And food is a physical entertainment and diversion, and it’s one of the few that we have open to us.

And, of course, it delights us. When you’re at work, and you go and pick up lunch and eat it at your desk, it’s not necessarily delightful. It’s like, “Alright, I’m hungry. I gotta eat.” But when you turn it over to yourself, you have three chances every day to make yourself something—to fulfill an opportunity, right?

You have the opportunity to make something delicious, and really give yourself a treat. God, we need treats more than anything, I think. That’s really the reason: We need treats. There are not that many treats. Food is a treat.

What Melissa cooks when she doesn’t have to write about it

Melissa: Anchovy toast and sardine toast. That is our go-to if we’re exhausted, we want something really, really delicious, and we don’t want to cook.

I am lucky in that my husband makes sourdough bread, and he’s been doing it for a while, so at this point it’s good. All those newbies out there doing sourdough: Just hang in there, you’ll get it! It just takes a while.

So we have good bread, we have tons of canned fish, and just throwing that together has been the thing. I could eat it all the time.

We vary it up, but for the most part, the standard recipe is: Toast, and you rub it with a cut garlic clove. You take a raw garlic clove and you halve it. If you have toast, the toast is kind of abrasive, and next to the garlic it almost acts like a grater. So you’re basically grating the garlic into the bread.

And then you put a big glob of butter on there—like a big glob, you really want it to saturate with the butter, that’s extremely important. And then we put the fish on there. Sometimes, if I have a tomato, I’ll rub the tomato on it, but not usually with butter. I’ll just do the butter and put in some sliced onion or scallion, lemon juice, black pepper.

Tips for home cooks who used to have takeout-only diets

Melissa: First of all, keep it simple. Don’t try to do too much; you’re probably not going to recreate those takeout meals. So I would say to start slow.

Another thing is what I do with my kid. I always tell her, “What are your three favorite foods? Learn how to cook them.” And then, at least you have your touchstones.

My daughter loves salad; she can make a salad. She’s got her chocolate chip cookies down. You learn how to make the things you know you can come back to, and then you’ll venture a little bit out there. Like, “Alright, I’ve got the grilled cheese thing down; let me try the mac and cheese. Now, maybe I’m going to make the beans.”

WATCH: Melissa Clark make grilled cheese IN A WAFFLE IRON—and READ her recipe for four-cheese mac & cheese. Then, check out her strategy for whipping up a Big Pot of Beans.

How to create a French vibe in the kitchen

Melissa: I think the spirit of it is putting yourself in that mind. Putting on some Serge Gainsbourg and kind of getting in the mood.

What else should you do? Learning how to make mayo will take you very far, and it is one of those amazing skills to have, and just so easy. If you have a blender, it’s so easy.

Use a little extra mayo, and use more butter in your cooking, and that’ll definitely help you feel French.

READ: Melissa Clark’s mayo recipe which takes five (5!) minutes to make. If you make mayo yourself, I think you’re legally allowed to call it aioli.

I would say French pastries are a perfect thing to make as well. This might be your chance to try making homemade marzipan, which is incredibly easy, and you don’t even need to bake it. It’s just a rich, delicious little treat. If you have almonds—and people have been stocking up on nuts, so they probably do—and you have sugar, that’s really all you need.

WATCH: This one minute video which shows you how to make marzipan with three ingredients:

An easy, simple cake you can bake in one bowl

Melissa: One of my favorite recipes from the book that people have been making a lot is a Campari Cake. And what’s great about it is, it’s a beautiful cake, but you make it in a bowl. You don’t need a mixer, it’s olive oil-based, with a ton of different citrus. I use a lot of Campari in it, but you could pretty much use any booze you have in the house. People have been doing it with Cointreau, they’ve been doing it with Aperol, they’ve been doing it with pretty much anything you could think of. What’s so great is, I think one-bowl cakes are really popular right now. People want the comfort of cake, but they don’t want to get their mixer out.

Read: Melissa Clark’s recipe for Campari Olive Oil Cake

What to cook if you want a spend a day in the kitchen

Melissa: Now is a great time to make a big beef daube, which is a beef stew. People are doing cozy project cooking, and there’s a lot of that in French cuisine. You have the big, homey stews, which are great to make—they take all day, they make your house smell amazing, which you kind of need—and then you can put some of them in the freezer.

READ: Melissa’s beef bourguignon recipe

You could also make a cassoulet. Cassoulet is one of the most French things you could make. It’s primarily beans, so you probably have those, because you probably bought some beans. And then it takes all weekend, because you have to simmer the beans, and then you need to simmer the sausage, and you need to braise the meat separately.

In my book, I have a lamb shank cassoulet. I like the lamb, because lamb and beans together is a slightly unusual combination, and it’s extremely savory. But you could use any kind of meat. I always say, give yourself up to the rhythm of braising and stewing and simmering, and any other thing that makes your house smell amazing.

Read: Melissa Clark’s recipe for cassoulet.

How you can support the hungry right now

Melissa: Please support your local food pantries. People are out of work, people are hungrier than ever, and it’s up to us to support our communities. So I would say, find pantries that you know are doing a good job in serving their community. There are a lot of ways you can connect to different neighborhood organizations. Any doubt, go to your local government official—your local congressperson—and just ask who the people in your neighborhood are who are helping people in need.

It’s so easy in New York, there are so many big organizations—there’s City Harvest, there’s the Food Bank. We have some local ones—there’s one in Brooklyn called CHipS, a soup kitchen that does a great job. Just stay in touch with the people around you.

Editor’s Note: You can find your local food bank at this link from Feeding America.

THE BEST FRIED RICE DISH I HAVE EVER MADE

Junzi’s Lucas Sin has increased his Instagram follower count by, like, 1000% in the last week. Perhaps that’s because he did a takeover of Bon Appetit’s Instagram and was featured in The New Yorker. Or maybe it’s because people are pouring through the backlogs of Cooking in Quarantine. Who’s to say?

Either way, I want to shout out the golden fried rice recipe Lucas cooked for BonApp. I made it for breakfast yesterday and I will never make fried rice any other way. Basically, you cover each grain of rice in egg yolk—and scramble the whites separately. Sounds hard. In fact, it’s super easy. Even I could do it.

I also added ketchup, because that’s what Lucas recommended in the interview on this newsletter, and I refuse to accept anything else as canon.

Until next time...

Photo: Melanie Dunea

Charlotte Druckman wrote the book about quarantine cooking by accident. When she first conceived of “Kitchen Remix: 75 Recipes For Making The Most Of Your Ingredients,” corona was known as lime’s better half and if you were talking about something going viral, it was more likely a tweet than a microbe. But if there’s a more useful guide to what to cook when you’re stuck at home for weeks on end—including! this! very! newsletter!—I haven’t found it.

Each chapter of “Kitchen Remix” is named after three ingredients you might have at home (say, “Arborio Rice + Onions + Parmesan” or “Bread + Chocolate + Olive Oil” or “Carrots + Cashews + Coconut”) and details how you can transform those building blocks into a series of delicious dishes. Unlike many of the quarantine cooking guides you might come across, which claim to be full of easy, simple recipes—you know, as long as you have duck in your freezer, 24 giant shallots in your pantry, and a sous vide in your bath—this book is valuable no matter what ingredients you have on hand.  

So you should really buy “Kitchen Remix,” but if you’re not yet convinced, I think you will be by the end of this newsletter. Because when we spoke, Charlotte dropped 🔥 recipe after 🔥 recipe—for everything from skillet cake to sardine spaghetti.

Check it out:

Pantry Staples, Or: Why to Leave the Beans to the Bean-Lovers

Charlotte: We’ve seen all these articles from the food media about, like, “Beans! Everyone’s buying beans, get your beans!” And I'm sitting here thinking, what if you don't like beans? I think you have to start from a place of, what do I like to eat? Because if you go and get all these pantry ingredients that you were told to get, and you're sitting there staring at it in the middle of a time that's already trying—and you paid for this stuff—mealtimes are just going to become a burden to you more than they already are.

You have to think more big picture: You want to have grains, and you want to have legumes, and you want to have things that really last, like frozen vegetables, or even things in jars and cans.

Like, maybe you want a salty product that can add fat and flavor. Yes, I love bacon, but I really love Chinese sausage. It's so easy to get; it lasts forever. So to me, before I go and get bacon, I always have Chinese sausage in my refrigerator.

Editor’s Note: Confirmed, there has been a run on yeast, but Chinese sausage is *abundant* and you can buy it here. (Trying to show some love to the word “abundant” because its conjugation “abundance,” as in “abundance of caution,” has been receiving a lot of attention this month.)

I also really love Indian cooking, and I'm finding it particularly quarantine-friendly because it's so spice-driven. They don't take up any room, really. They last forever. And spices are the thing that you have that contain the flavor profile of a dish, so you could think you're eating the same thing three times in a row, but it could really taste completely different each time if you change up the spices.

Editor’s Note: For more on spices, check out the last newsletter featuring the co-founders of Burlap and Barrel, my favorite alliterative spice company.

I love doing things like getting a whole bunch of different kinds of lentils and split peas and stuff, and doing different variations on dal. I could eat dal all the time. So I would be more inclined, maybe, not to stock up on as many beans, and let the bean lovers get all the beans. And I might be going for things like lentils.

Charlotte’s Go-To Dal

Charlotte: Madhur Jaffrey’s. She’s done a bunch, but she has one that I think she calls her “everyday dal.” I think that’s a good place to start. And also Meera Sodha, who is based in the U.K. She’s done three cookbooks, all of which I think are amazing. Those are very quarantine friendly. She also has a few really great dal recipes.

READ: Meera Sodha’s Daily Dal and Madhur Jaffrey’s Pressure Cooker Dal

So I like to start with that. And I will mess around a lot of times with the spices and the flavoring added. But it's so easy. It's basically a water-based dish, and the flavors are coming from toasted spices, mostly. So again, I think that's such a quarantine friendly thing to cook. AndI love it.

What She’s Been Cooking

Charlotte: Well, I am a toast builder. I like to build things on toast. And this is not something that started with a pandemic. I live by myself with my dog. And what you make if you're one person living alone, versus what you cook for a family in a quarantine, I think, are going to be very different. And I love toast because I can do individual portions.

Like, listen, if I made a whole batch of beans, that would mean that I was probably going to eat beans for four nights in a row—possibly more—or I would be taking up room in my freezer. That's OK, but you also have to think about your real estate in your freezer. So, again, I don't want to be dumping on beans, I actually love them, and I have a whole bunch in my freezer that I already cooked... but I put them on toast, too.

One way I like to build toast is, I roast vegetables, and then take some ricotta—which lasts longer than people realize in the fridge, as long as you wait to open it, and use it up once you've opened it—I like to smear ricotta on toast, and then I put anchovies on there, and then I like to dump warm roasted vegetables on top of it with a whole bunch of condiments.

What Condiments She Likes to Throw on Her Ricotta Toast

Charlotte: I do love chile crisp. I love to roast peppers. And if I'm just doing this for me, I'll take a clove of garlic, I'll slice it in half, and I'll take one half and pound it in a mortar-pestle—you can do this with a fork and some salt, just kind of get it into paste form.

Editor’s Note: Sam Sifton wrote a good ode to chile crisp in the New York Times earlier this week.

And then I will add some vinegar. Everyone has their own vinegar that they like; I've been using a Japanese vinegar made with sake lees—again, because I am a food writer and someone gifted it to me. But I would happily do it with rice wine vinegar, which is the mildest, or balsamic, which gets a bad rap but is particularly good with roasted peppers. You could use red wine vinegar. You could use sherry vinegar. I'll mix that together with some salt. Maybe some dijon mustard, maybe not. And then I'll toss my very hot peppers with that.

I’ll use the other half of my garlic clove to rub my toast with. I put some olive oil on before I put down my ricotta, then I'll put down my anchovies, my peppers. I'll put some more olive oil on. Sometimes I’ll use smoked chili flakes, because they give you that bacon-y flavor that I love.

That’s something that I'll do a lot, and I do variations on that with other roast vegetables that I love.

🚨🚨🚨SARDINE SPAGHETTI 🚨🚨🚨

Charlotte: I could do anything with sardines. I love sardines, and I can eat them straight, and I can eat them on toast. But what other fun things can I do with them?

There's a crab recipe in the book: Meyer Lemon, Crab and Nori. You can use canned crabmeat, which makes this surprisingly pantry slash quarantine friendly, and will make things feel a little special or fancy during rough times. Obviously, refrigerated, fresh crabmeat is best, but we're on lockdown here! Time to be realistic. But I’ve been thinking I would like to do that exact same pasta, except with sardines.

For an everyday version, which you should have the ingredients on-hand for already (especially if you're a sardine-lover, like me), I'd swap 2 tins of olive oil-packed sardines for the crabmeat, regular lemons for the Meyer lemons, and up to 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper (depending on how much scratchy, tickly heat you like) instead of the pink peppercorns. I would also used finely sliced scallions instead of chives, but it'll still be good with chives.

Basically, what's happening here is that you have a meatier fish (the sardine), in place of the more delicate, sweet crabmeat, so you need some stronger flavors to balance that out. Another thing: that olive oil the sardines are packed in? Use that as part of your 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil; top it off with whatever EVOO you've got on hand.

Another thing to note about that is the many ways in which you can use nori, that I think people don't appreciate. You can take your nori and you can put it into a Cuisinart or a spice blender, depending on how big your nori is and how much you want, and it can become a seasoning, and it can become almost like a coating. I use it on crab cakes. I also really love nori in pasta. I like to cut it so that it's almost noodle-shaped, so it wilts into the pasta. I like it in salads, too.

What to Do With Your Eggs (If You’re #BLESSED Enough To Have Them)

Charlotte: If you're in a place where there’s not an egg shortage, baked eggs are a really good thing you can make for yourself if you're alone as a meal, because you can just crack your eggs into a small little thing. You can do it per person, per portion. There’s a recipe for baked eggs in the book, but you can use almost anything. You can use tomato sauce. You can use cream. You can add guanciale. You can add Chinese sausage. You can add roasted vegetables. I like to do it with olives in it. And it's also really hard to mess up. You know how when you poach an egg, you get nervous that you’re going to overcook it? It's really hard to mess up baked eggs.

Editor’s Note: BUY CHARLOTTE’S BOOK, but if you don’t, here’s another basic baked eggs recipe.

Another thing you can make if you're alone—it's also really good for a family, because you can have leftovers—is a frittata, because it lasts. You can eat it hot, and then you can eat it at room temperature. And a Spanish tortilla, where you're using eggs and potatoes. Which is, like, one of life's best things. And you can put sardines on top of it. It’s really good. I’ve done it.

Editor’s Note: Here’s a tortilla recipe from José Andrés, which requires only salt, potatoes, olive oil, and eggs to make. I’ve had this at [shudder] Hudson Yards, and it’s unreal.

RECIPE: Quarantine Chocolate-Hazelnut Skillet Cake

Charlotte: I'm one of the people who loves to bake. So instead of making pasta Bolognese, you will probably find me making cake or cookies. And my freezer—this is embarrassing—when I went to see what was happening in there, when the quarantine was first starting, it's mostly baked goods. This goes back to the question, “What do you like to eat?” which is also the reason you find me eating things on toast a lot: because it then allows me to have room and time to bake cake.

I just made a recipe up this weekend. I like to experiment, and I had done a recipe on Food52. I decided to make an olive oil cake that had actual olives in it. I really love this cake. It sounds weird, but I love it. And then I started riffing on it, because I really like the batter, and I did one this weekend.

It's olive oil-based, and it uses brown sugar and regular sugar and a little bit of almond flour mixed in with the flour, which helps you save your flour if you're rationing flour, which a lot of people are right now. And I actually was low on brown sugar, so I used coconut sugar this weekend. I added buttermilk this time; I had buttermilk that was gonna go bad, and it gives you an even more tender crumb. And I did it with cacao nibs, chocolate chunk, and hazelnut.

It's a lovely cake, it's delicious, and it doesn't take a lot of time.

Here’s the recipe:

Makes one 10-inch cake

Ingredients

3/4 cup AP flour

¼ cup almond meal

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup light brown sugar (or coconut sugar)

½ cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup fruity extra virgin olive oil (best quality you can muster), plus extra for the pan (about 1 teaspoon)

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon vanilla

1/3 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup cacao nibs 

4 ounces dark chocolate chopped or broken into generous chunks

1/2 cup roasted hazelnuts

Heat oven to 350°F with a well-seasoned 10-inch cast-iron skillet in it.

Sift or whisk together flour, almond meal, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. In the bowl of a stand mixer (or using a large mixing bowl and handheld electric mixer), beat the olive oil and sugars together on medium-high speed until thoroughly combined. Add the eggs, mixing to incorporate, then add the vanilla, followed by the buttermilk, continuing to beat until combined.

Decrease the speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing until just combined. (You don’t want to overmix). Fold in the nibs and chocolate chunks.

Brush the hot cast-iron skillet with olive oil (this is to prevent sticking). Spoon batter into the hot cast-iron skillet and use an offset spatula to level it off and smooth it. Slightly sink the hazelnuts into the surface of the cake.

Bake until cake is golden and a toothpick inserted into a center part of the cake comes out free of batter, 35 to 40 minutes. 

Wait about 10 minutes before flipping it out of the skillet—use a butter or dinner knife (not too sharp) to make sure the cake is loosened from the sides of the pan, and, if necessary, to coax the edges off the bottom of the pan for easy flipping. Have two plates ready, because you’ll need to flip it twice so it’s right side up. Let it cool completely before serving.

How to PLAY WITH IT:

• Let’s say you don’t have nibs. That’s okay! You can increase the amount of dark chocolate to 6 ounces. OR, you could include ½ cup chopped toasted almonds instead.

• Let’s say you don’t have hazelnuts. That’s okay! Use roasted almonds, pistachios cashews instead. You can even go with salted nuts for a salty-sweet effect. Fried, salted marcona almonds or smoked almonds would also work here—a little more grown-up, maybe.

• Let’s say your nuts aren’t roasted (i.e. they’re raw). That’s okay! Just toast them first.

• Let’s say you don’t have dark chocolate. That’s okay! Chocolate chips are fine. I bet Reese’s Pieces would fly, too—same for chopped-up Reese’s PB cups. (Confession: I’m dying to do this with chopped up SKOR bars for a toffee effect.)

• Let’s say you don’t have buttermilk. That’s okay! You can sub 1/3 cup regular milk with 1 teaspoon lemon juice stirred into it. Other workable swaps: crème fraiche, sour cream, plain yogurt (whatever style you like).

• Here’s a fun throwback riff I’m dying to try: THE WHITE CHOCOLATE MACADAMIA VERSION. For this, I’d use 6 ounces white chocolate, no nibs, and ½ cup roasted macadamias, and I’d sprinkle some sea salt over the top of the cake before putting it in the oven (to offset the sweetness of the white chocolate).

The Podcast to Listen to If You Want to Figure Out How to Support Restaurant Workers

Charlotte: I'm having a hard time with figuring out the right organizations to support, because there's so many in the restaurant industry. It's almost confusing to me. But what I would like to say is my friend Howie Kahn is doing a podcast called Take Away Only.

The reason I like it so much is that he talks to different chefs and people who work in the food industry every day, so you get to hear about what they're doing—what organizations they’re, if not starting, then supporting. It's a really good way to help figure out which ones to support.

And he’s talked to some really good people. Marcus Samuelsson was today. He talked to Ellen Bennett of Hedley & Bennett. She does aprons—like, fancy chef aprons—and she was, I think, the first person in the food industry to start doing masks. She started a donation program, like, immediately. He’s had a few people who have been working the floor.

It's a good way to figure out where you want to give, or just even know what's happening.

$1 Menu

My friend Jack Minton, who you might remember for his rendition of Morgenstern’s Apocalypse Sundae, tipped me off to this really cool thing Anton’s in New York City is doing to support their workers: Every single item on their menu is $1, from Whitefish Salad to Hand-Cut Angel Hair Francese, and all of the gratuity you give on top of that goes directly to the restaurant’s employees.

Order here to do good and eat well.

Hot Take

Dare you to make the Smitten Kitchen/Helen Rosner roast chicken and sleep on cabbage again.

You won’t.

Until next time...

Photo: Wes Frazer

On January 2nd, 1939, Time Magazine released its “Man of the Year” issue—with Adolph Hitler on the cover. Hitler, they declared, had done the most that year to influence the news “for good or ill.” Reader: It was for ill.

In 1968, Muhammad Ali posed as though he were being crucified for protesting the Vietnam War on the cover of Esquire, alongside the headline: “The Passion of Muhammad Ali.” Elijah Muhammad’s son himself had to give permission for Ali to take on a Christian pose. 

In 1980, Annie Leibovitz photographed a naked John Lennon spooning a fully clothed Yoko Ono. The same day, Lennon was struck four times by a .38 special revolver. The next month, that Polaroid appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. 

These magazine covers live on to this day because they captured a moment in time after which nothing would ever be the same. 

In a way, while far less famous, Cooking Light’s 2015 cover featuring Michelle Obama twirling a healthy bowl of noodles and veggies captures a similar inflection point. It was the first time a human being had ever been on the cover of the magazine, which is known for featuring blown up pictures of food. And it was meant to be a triumphant celebration of five years of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” campaign. 

The article concluded with a quote from former Cooking in Quarantine guest Andrew Zimmern: “How can we ever go back on Let’s Move?” he asked, rhetorically, before declaring: “We can’t.” 

A few years, which felt like a few decades, later, President Trump was serving the Clemson Tigers Filets-O-Fish and Big Macs in the State Dining Room. And in recent weeks, as COVID-19 has swept through the country, students haven’t only been left without the healthy school lunches for which Mrs. Obama advocated; in many cases, they’ve been left without any lunch at all.

Editor’s Note: Donate to No Kid Hungry, which is feeding young people across the U.S.

Why, you may be asking yourselves, am I ranting about magazine covers from history, besides the fact that I am desperately trying to escape the present? Well, the answer is that today’s guest on Cooking and Quarantine is the man behind that Cooking Light cover: Hunter Lewis.

After spending four years editing Cooking Light, he became the Editor-in-Chief of Food and Wine, my favorite magazine about, well, read its name. In a past life, he also worked as a food editor at Bon Appetit, before it was cool. 

Hunter has spent a lot of his career editing articles about cooking, but these days, like all of us, he’s doing even more of it than usual. And while healthy eating might be gone from the White House, the spirit of “Let’s Move” lives on in Hunter’s kitchen, where he’s been making miso salad dressing, cooking nutritious recipes out of his magazine, and eating what sounds like a metric fuckton of something called Bitchin’ Sauce. 

Here’s more on how he’s been Cooking in Quarantine:

How Hunter stocked up

Hunter: I've sort of gone through like a few different phases of stocking up. And the first phase was boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Buying those in bulk and then packaging them into fours and freezing those. 

And then also getting frozen wild Gulf shrimp—large wild Gulf shrimp from my fishmonger and freezing those in one-pound bags as well. So that was like my practical phase—trying not to go overboard, but making sure I had key proteins in the freezer. You could do a million different things with those staple proteins.

And then in terms of pantry items, I got rice. A lot of it. Carolina Gold, which I love and which is a precious commodity at any point—and then a couple different short and long-grain white and brown rices, including Lundberg. And then, randomly, three different kinds of miso. That was my weird impulse craving.

Editor’s Note: California Gold *does* appear to be available right now on Amazon, though it will take just over a week to ship.

My second phase of stocking up started with the idea of: Let's support the farmers, let's support the fishmongers, the local makers. Over the past two weeks, I bought way too many proteins—some might freezer-burn—and some pretty esoteric stuff. I mean, I've got some chicken feet that I need to make some stock with. I've got some beef shin bones that I need to make some broth with. Different kinds of frozen sausages, andouilles and things like that.

Even though it’s beautiful outside, we’re still in early spring when it comes to vegetables. So essentially every farm is offering produce right now, it's basically like a little baby CSA. We’re getting random boxes of monster kohlrabi, beautiful little potatoes and turnips, any greens that we can get our hands on—some beautiful chard, tatsoi, things like that. I think the really good stuff we're all greedy for right now, the strawberries and asparagus, those are in short supply so far.

How he’s using all the miso he bought

Hunter: I try to use it like I would Dijon. It's always there as a back note. Marinades. Stirring some into soups. Dressings.

The dressing I've been making is not like a typical miso-ginger deal. It's more Caesary. It's garlic, chili flakes, a little Dijon, miso, anchovies, lemon juice, splash of any kind of vinegar, and olive oil. And the miso and the mustard kind of help emulsify all that. And then sometimes I'll add extra garlic and do grated parmesan in there, too.

How to make Hunter’s go-to stewy congee 

Hunter: I've got this rice and pea and shrimp stew that I make a lot. Super easy. It's kind of like a congee.

So you marinate shrimp in a lot of black pepper and fish sauce—and a little sugar and some minced shallots. And then you sautee that, you dump in rice that you've broken up in a Vitamixer and a spice grinder to make it extra piece-y and starchy. And then you add water times eight. So it's like really, really loose. And then it all comes together and thickens up, and you throw in a bunch of spinach and scallions and mint and cilantro. And that's really good. That also works with, like, you know, shredded, roasted chicken, things like that.

The Food & Wine recipes he’s been making

Hunter: We did a killer issue of Food & Wine in March, and that's got some recipes that I'm craving right now. One recipe I made last night, I just had for lunch again today—smoked Khao Soi. And that's from the Nolintha family in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

READ: The Nolintha family’s Khao Soi recipe. 

And then another one—because I’ve got frozen quarts of black beans in my freezer—is called enfrijoladas. And that's from the Guelaguetza clan in L.A. That's in the same story in the March issue.

It’s almost like an enchilada, and you puree soup-like beans as your sauce, and you dip your tortillas in that. And then you shave cheese over the top of that, and thinly slice white onions.

READ: Bricia Lopez and Javier Cabral’s recipe for Enfrijolades.

The bitchin' pantry staple Hunter’s been loving

Hunter: I’m embarrassed to say, but there is a sauce that I get at Whole Foods, and it's called Bitchin’ sauce. The one I've got here is chipotle-flavored bitchin’ sauce. It's made in Carlsbad, California, by Bitchin’ Inc. It’s so good that I’ll dip Wasa crackers in it.

It's really good with tossing roasted carrots in, and you can eat those cold the next day. It's a nut based sauce, an almond base. A lot of garlic and other good stuff. It’s definitely been a snack-y pantry staple, almost in lieu of, like, hummus.

BUY: Bitchin’ Sauce, direct from their bitchin’ website.

What Hunter’s Been Thinking About In The Kitchen

Hunter: I've been thinking a lot about my grandparents, who are long gone. When this shit first broke out and everything was hitting the fan, I kept thinking: “Man, I would love to ask them questions about this.” Like: What was the depression like, and how did it shape them?  

And I can already see how this is going to shape us, and how we’re going to be talking about it decades from now. So, in my mind, I’ve been thinking: OK, what would they do? First order of business for my grandmother would be, like, ironing shirts. I’ve been thinking about her—she used to make a bleu cheese dressing with the last of the mayonnaise in the mayonnaise jar.

So that's on my mind, too.

So is skillet fried chicken.

Editor’s Note: I dug up this 2012 video of Hunter making skillet fried chicken, which looks delicious. I also found a beautifully written 2011 essay Hunter published about his grandmother’s first cookbook: a 1963 edition of The Joy of Cooking.

How you can support those who need help most

Hunter: So my first order of business is: Support local.

I’ve been buying some take out from my favorite restaurants in Birmingham—and from people I love with the farmer's market. And before my fishmonger closed, because the boats in the Gulf were shut down, I bought a lot from him. I also bought a lot from my butcher. And then I would expand that out.

I really love what Edward Lee is doing in Louisville, that Lee Initiative, and creating community kitchens and restaurants for unemployed restaurant workers—to feed them, to feed the communities.

I think what Chris Shepherd and his team are doing with Southern Smoke down in Houston, partnering with The Restaurant Workers Community Fund, is awesome.

I also think what the Beard Foundation is doing with their disaster relief fund is great, too.

Editor’s Note: You can support the Lee Initiative’s Restaurant Workers Relief Program here, the James Beard Foundation Disaster Relief Fund here, and Southern Smoke here.

Food and Wine also published a SUPER helpful article on how to support restaurants across the country. It’s comprehensive and has specific action items for readers, tailored to where you live, so click👏the👏link.

HOW TO SPICE UP YOUR COOKING, WITH BURLAP AND BARREL’S FOUNDERS

When Seth Godin and his family praised Burlap and Barrel in our newsletter, an unprecedented number of you clicked on the link to buy their insanely delicious spices. Clearly, folks are getting tired of relying solely on S&P for seasoning. 

And by “folks,” I mean “me.” So, like many of you, I listened to the Godins and ordered Burlap and Barrel. But because my brain is more scrambled than a Gordon Ramsay egg, I put in the wrong address for shipping. Naturally, I wrote an apologetic email to the customer service account on Burlap and Barrel’s website, assuming I’d receive an automated response, since, uh, people in the food industry have more important things to worry about. But then, I got an email back from one of Burlap and Barrel’s co-founders, who personally changed the shipping address—and threw in a few free spices for good measure. 

Which is all to say: These guys, Ori Zohar and Ethan Frisch, are mensches, and you should buy their spices. In case you’re not convinced by me—or by Seth Godin—I spoke to the Burlap and Barrel co-founders themselves. And they dished on why they’re the ones to spice up your quarantine cooking. 

Editor’s Note: This is not sponsored content! I just really like B&B!

Which spices you should be buying during quarantine

Ori: Our paprika is excellent. We've been selling a lot more of the royal cinnamon, because I think everybody's baking at home. That really sweet, a little bit spicy cinnamon just kicks up these dishes. 

We've seen a run in our bay leaves, because everyone's stewing, and making pots of stuff that they're leaving on the stove for a long time.

Ethan: It’s crazy – we’ve sold more bay leaves in the last two weeks than the last two years. We literally cannot pack bay leaves fast enough to keep up with the demand that has appeared overnight. It’s insane.

Ori: One of my favorites that we recently bought is our purple-stripe garlic. People have had dried garlic and it sucks, so people don't think about it too much. But this one smells and tastes like a roasted garlic. I smell lemongrass and basil in there. And it's just such a flavor booster. I keep adding it to everything that's savory that I cook.

Why you should choose Burlap and Barrel

Ori: The quick pitch is that spices have origins, and where they come from and how they're grown and how they get here really matters. And in the same way that we care about where chocolate, our produce, and our meat comes from, how our spices come to us really matters. So what we've built is a single-origin spice company. We work directly with small-holder farmers. We connect them directly to kitchens and homes and restaurants all across the U.S. And so what we have is really fresh, really high-quality spices that have been sourced equitably, paying farmers a living wage.

It’s kind of like the difference between having an apple at a grocery store, and then going to a farmer's market and taking a bite, and you're like, “Oh, right. This is what this should taste like.” So that's what we're trying to convey with our site and with the descriptions of all that stuff online.

People are home a lot more right now. They're cooking many more meals and they're looking to jazz things up.

Ethan: The thing that Ori mentioned already that’s worth restating and talking a little more about is the fact that people don't know anything about where their spices come from. Home cooks who care about their coffee, or care about their produce, or care about their meat, often have no idea that, for instance, black pepper is even a plant—let alone how to identify processes on the farm that influence the flavor of the ultimate product that you're cooking with. 

Cinnamon, likewise: one of the most iconic ingredients in the American kitchen. And people have no clue that it’s tree bark, that it’s four different species, that they all taste different, that the age of the tree matters. Cinnamon stick is really about the aesthetic of the curled stick, and not about flavor—it tends to be mediocre cinnamon that just looks really nice. 

There’s just this whole world of agriculture and supply chains behind spices that even pretty sophisticated home cooks have no idea about. And that's where we spend most of our time: trying to open people up to that—not even trying to change their minds, but just to introduce them to this concept of spices as coming from farms; as being plants.

What You Should Cook If You’re Scared of Spices

Ori: People look at spices and say, “Well, great. Now I need to learn how to cook Indian cuisine.” People assume that integrating spices into their cooking means that they need to start all over. I think it ends up being intimidating.

We just encourage people, as much as possible, to throw stuff on dishes that they already make—to play with them and experiment with them. Think of spices as awesome ways to add flavor that don't involve salt or sugar or fat. 

What we like to say is, cook with what you know. These spices are a really great upgrade to what’s in your pantry. 

I have a couple of go-tos. One is, I do fried eggs and throw spices on them. A fried egg with herbs and chili is heavenly. A fried egg is a really good place to experiment with different spices—I have some friends who throw turmeric on there, or ginger, garlic, whatever. It's all kind of fun and interesting. I always like to cook a big-ass pot of beans, and I throw paprika in there, thyme, more garlic, a little bit of ginger. The cumin is excellent in there. 

Beans are also really good, because by themselves they can be delicious, but they take on flavors really nicely. Those have been some of my hits here in the household.

Ethan: The other night, I made a flounder in spiced butter recipe, which was delicious, but also super versatile. You could make this spiced butter with any spices and use it in a lot of different applications. I did garlic powder, black lime, purple peppercorns, a little bit of cumin, quite a bit of coriander, over a very low flame. 

I actually did it in a wok, and let the butter infuse all the spices for 10 minutes. And then I added the flounder and let it cook really slowly. It came out really nicely, but I could’ve put anything—veggies or chicken or anything—into the butter, and stir-fried it or coated it, and roasted it. You can swap out the spices really easily, too.

How they’re keeping everything in stock, given the strain on the supply chain

Ethan: Luckily, we did a big round of importing in January and February. So we had a decent amount in stock. 

We're now working on other shipments, and we've had either total stops or delays. We had a shipment from Turkey that took three weeks to clear customs coming into the U.S., where in the past it’s taken a couple of days. We had two big shipments stuck in India. Who knows when the lockdown’s going to end there? 

We have a shipment stuck in Guatemala, with a lockdown there. So we're just trying to feel it out. 

Meanwhile, we've gotten a shipment out of Vietnam without any delays. We got a shipment on the water from Indonesia with no issues. We’ll see what happens when they get here, and how they clear. But it seems like every country has been dealing with it so differently that we just have different situations in every country we're working in. So it's really a day-by-day, trying to solve the problems as they rise type situation.

How their business is surviving this disruption

Ethan: March was pretty insane. It started off normal, and then we lost all of our restaurant accounts, which is about half of our business. That was rough for us—but not nearly as rough as it has been for the restaurants themselves.

So that felt a little bit apocalyptic to have half the business evaporate overnight. And we really didn't know what the next step could be for us. 

But direct-to-consumer has always been the other half—and people really stepped up.  It's been pretty incredible, pretty emotional. We wound up ending March having had one of our best months ever. 

We're in a good position now, and people cooking at home, people shopping online, that works really well for us. So we’ll worry about supply chains and sourcing and importing everything—the back end of it—how that's going to work going forward. But for the moment, I think we’re fine.

Editor’s Note: Ethan also sent a picture of his mother-in-law’s Kabuli Pulao, made with Burlap and Barrel spices. And, after some prodding, he shared the recipe, which you can read below:

Shazia's Kabuli Pilau: Spiced Rice with Meat (or Chickpeas)

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

~2 cups or ⅓ pound Basmati rice
3-4 tablespoons ghee, butter or neutral cooking oil
2 onions, diced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup raisins
1-2 carrots, julienned into matchsticks
¼ cup pistachios, toasted
¼ cup walnuts, toasted &amp; chopped
¼ cup almonds, sliced &amp; toasted
1 lb lamb or mutton (any cut with bones, traditionally shank or shin) OR 1 can (or 8 ounces cooked) chickpeas

Spices:

1 tablespoon wild mountain cumin seeds
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon verum
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
2 teaspoons smoked pimenton paprika
1 teaspoon tumeric
6 pods yellow (or green) cardamom pods
4 cloves
1 star anise fruit
2 x cinnamon tree leaves or 3-4 laurel bay leaves

Plus: 0.25g saffron

Directions:

1. Mix saffron and 2-3 ice cubes in a small bowl and set aside to infuse.

2. Wash rice in a colander until water runs clear, then drain

3. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and add the rice. Cook for 5-10 minutes, until slightly soft on the outside but still crunchy in the middle. Drain into a colander.

4. While the rice is cooking, grind all spices (except for cinnamon/bay leaves and saffron) in an electric coffee or spice grinder to a fine powder texture.

5. In a pressure cooker, heat ghee/oil and sear the meat until brown, then add the lid and pressure-cook until tender (generally 20-30 min). Remove meat from the pan and set aside.

6. In the same pot, add onions, salt and ghee/oil and cook until onions turn deep brown. Add garlic and spices and lower heat to soften. Cook for ~10 minutes over low heat, until the texture is like a paste and the spices are fragrant.

7. Combine onions/spice paste, rice, and meat (or chickpeas) in the same pot, add water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, wrap the pot lid with a cloth and cover. As the rice absorbs water, poke holes with the handle of a wooden spoon to allow water at the bottom to evaporate.

8. While rice is cooking, toast the nuts in a small pan and set aside.

9. In the same pan, sauté raisins in ghee until plump.

10. After raisins are plump, remove from pan and use the same pan, sauté carrots (with a sprinkle of sugar) in ghee until soft and sweet

11. When rice is done (al dente), add most of the carrots and raisins and salt to taste and gently fluff with a large slotted spoon.

12. Plate on a large serving dish and garnish with remaining carrots raisins, saffron-infused water and toast nuts. Serve with yogurt.

GOOD READ

Helen Rosner wrote the best piece on food I’ve read since the start of quarantine for The New Yorker. You should read it in full, but here’s a taste—her answer to the question of when you should dig into the stuff you’ve been freezing for when things get bad:

I want to say that the answer is never—because things will probably, almost certainly, be fine in the end. If you stumble upon your untouched baggies of broccoli florets eighteen months from now, I hope it’s because you need to make room for uneaten slices of birthday cake. I hope the cans of tuna and jars of peanut butter get called into action for school lunches. I hope that, soon enough, we’ll get to throw our emergency beans in the air and let them rain down like confetti around us.

Until next time...

Editor’s Note: Rocky III is the best Rocky, and it’s not even close. Sam Koppelman is not accepting rebuttals at this time.

This newsletter, which is ostensibly about chefs, has already featured Beto O’Rourke, Caroline Calloway, and Seth Godin. And yet, Tom Kretchmar might be the most surprising guest yet—because, by day, he works as a divorce lawyer. But by night, Tom is one of the foremost experts on Japanese cooking (at least for a white dude) and a card-carrying member of the foodminati.

Over the course of quarantine, he’s been posting dishes he says exemplify the idea of “austerity with flair,” filleting smoked eel in one Instagram and then eating its bones a few posts later. In today’s newsletter, he dives into his approach to cooking during this time; and shares a simple recipe for one of his favorite dishes: Gyudon. 

If you like Japanese food, you’re going to want to read this interview. And if you don’t, well, and I mean this politely, what the fuck is wrong with you?

On the Origins of “Austerity With Flair”

Tom: I’m very committed to this idea that right now, we’ve got to respect the circumstances we’re in. I think we need to make really mindful choices about what we’re eating and how we’re eating it—to be cognizant that there are real consequences of every food-related act of ours right now, in terms of our own health, the health of everyone who’s participating in the food-supply chain, and whether we’re being responsible or reckless in terms of burdening the infrastructure around us.

That’s how I came up with the idea of “austerity with flair.”

In ordinary times, privileged people in the United States don’t think about this stuff, but over the course of human history, times of austerity have always been oriented around eating food that’s built upon a foundation of starches and whatever trace amounts of protein—or, if you’re lucky, not-so-trace—that you’re able to build on top of that. That’s not Japanese, that’s not American; that’s global.

Just to be healthy and have food on the table is, right now, a blessing enough. The dining should be rewarding even if it’s nothing more than, like, a bare bowl of beans and rice.

Editor’s Note: Check out this dish to see the full extent of Tom’s austere side.

Having said that, it’s also still totally fine and important for cooking to be fun—and, to the maximal extent, rewarding. And I do think there are many ways we can elevate food in a mindful and fun way. That’s where you find the “flair.”

The two most interesting things I’ve cooked so far, in addition to the gyudon, which I’ll get to shortly, are Spam Musubi and the Udon dish I did with brussels sprouts.

Editor’s Note: If you want to learn more about how to make the Spam Musubi, Tom posted detailed directions on his Instagram. 

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO MAKE A PERFECT GYUDON

Tom: The question I’ve been asking myself is: how do I make a very special meal where ultimately I’m using some fundamentally basic ingredients and trying to stretch them? That dish, for me, is Gyudon. 

With Gyudon, you can certainly tack on piles and piles of meat and kind of turn it into an indulgence that way. But at the end of the day, it’s just another iteration of: get most of your calories out of an easily-sourceable, low-cost starch, and have your more fanciful protein on top, to an appropriately measured extent. And I really am trying to think that way about all aspects of dining right now.

The three basic things that are going into Gyudon, outside the sauce, are onion, beef, and rice.

THE BEEF:

Tom: If you can’t find the right kind of sliced beef, just buy the stuff in the freezer case that’s meant for making cheesesteaks at home. It doesn’t have to be high-level. Just get sliced, shaved beef, follow the recipe and you’ll have a good result.

The storefront outside of Bohemian, the secret restaurant, for years was a Japanese butcher shop: Japan Premium Beef, which trades in eye-wateringly expensive, genuine, real-deal Kobe, Wagyu, $130/lb craziness. But that store also produces a lot of trimmings of these steaks. You’ll see a bunch of these hundred-plus-dollar steaks, but you’ll also see these one-pound packages the trimmings, called kiriotoshi, that are $13/lb, that are the highest-grade beef. 

One of the last things I did before quarantining is I went down to Japan Premium Beef, and I bought four pounds of their Kiriotoshi, knowing that could be eight to sixteen meals. Not only is it delicious, but it’s kind of fun knowing I’m not just sitting down for a bowl of rice and beef—I’m sitting down for a bowl of rice with the fanciest beef on the earth.

THE RICE:

Tom: I always have a ton of rice around, because my cooking is very Japanese-oriented and influenced. For this dish, just use sushi rice but don’t season it. Any short-grain Japanese rice should do, though my go-to is Tamaki Gold. Another quality brand for home use is Kagayaki.

Japanese rice, at least in NYC, can be ordered via delivery through Mercato, whether from Katagiri or Sunrise Mart. Japanese grocery stores in New York are delivering right now.

THE ONIONS:

Tom: You start by putting some dashi in a pot. You can also make your dashi—it’s analogous to making your chicken stock—if you have kombu and bonito flakes. If people don’t have dashi on hand, instant dashi is available online.

Once you’ve got your dashi going, you’re adding in sake, mirin, sugar, and soy sauce, and getting that going to a mild simmer.

Then you’re getting your onions in there. Some recipes tell you to use half, some will use a whole; it’s to taste. But the onion is important for adding a certain sweetness. It’s taking from and adding flavors to what’s essentially the broth. Once your onions have gotten translucent and have cooked down, in goes your shaved beef—you’re using a half pound, or some recipes call for more. And then it’s kind of a simmer to taste. It’s going to get cooked through very quickly. Once it looks right—if you’ve tasted Gyudon before, take a taste—but we’re talking two to three minutes. It’s done very quickly.

Tom: Stick your rice in a bowl. Put your beef on top, to whatever extent feels appropriate in terms of preserving some for the future. Throw your garnish on top.

TOGARASHI

One of the classic ways you can plate the dish is to shower it with Shichimi Togarashi, which is that Japanese seven-spice blend that you’ve seen on the counter at any Ramen shop or any Izakaya, and is readily available.

The shop in Tokyo where I bought my custom blend of shichimi togarashi, and where shichimi togarashi was originally invented, is called Yagenbori. Among other things, they’ll make you a custom blend, tailored to your preferences, of the seven different spices, and whatever seven different proportions you prefer. So I’ve got a ton of vacuum-sealed packets in my pantry of my custom blend of Yagenbori shichimi togarashi. It doesn't look like Yagenbori is available for purchase online right now, but there is more typical shichimi togarashi all over the internet, including at Katagiri and Sunrise Mart. People in NYC can order for delivery from both Sunrise Mart and Katagiri on Mercato.

PICKLED GINGER

One of the other garnishes for a classic bowl of Gyudon is beni shoga, which is that really pink pickled ginger. It’s the classic garnish. I don’t have any beni shoga in the house. Could I order some? Yeah. Could I have made the choice to involve the supply chain, and whatever consequences there are for people involved in delivery, to get beni shoga sent to my home? Yeah, I could’ve. But in my fridge, I have a batch of pickled ginger that’s almost become a legend among my friends, because the same batch has been pickling for, like, four years. So I used that.

MIKE ANTHONY’S PICKLES

Tom: What else can you garnish a bowl of Gyudon with? Scallions are kind of traditional, but I don’t have scallions. But before I went into quarantine, I was mindful of the fact that I was going to want vegetables, and I didn’t want to be the person who’s ordering in produce every four or five days, for the reasons we discussed. To me, what made a ton of sense was buying five or six pounds of mini cucumbers and pickling them.

The recipe I used was by one of my heroes, one of the greatest chefs and nicest people in the world: Mike Anthony at Gramercy Tavern. I sliced up, real fine, some of Mike’s pickles. 

READ: Mike Anthony’s pickle recipe.

That makes it super fun, super special, in an easy way, and it also avoids burdening the supply chain by getting beni shoga delivered to me just so I have it.

A NOTE ON POACHED EGGS

Tom: Another very traditional garnish for Gyudon is a poached egg, or what in Japan you would call an onsen egg. But here’s the thing: You don’t want to gild the lily, right? I’ve only got 24 eggs. I’m really trying to be smart about what I’m doing with what I’ve got. Do I really need to use up a whole egg on top of what’s already kind of a beautiful put-together dinner? I opted not to. Other people’s mileage may vary.

Staple Items You Should Have In Your Pantry to Cook Japanese Food During Quarantine:

Tom: For just approaching Japanese food generally, obviously you need rice. There’s no reason everyone shouldn’t have a lot of rice on hand right now. As I said, Tamaki Gold is kind of a Cadillac brand, but not bank-breaking because at the end of the day, it’s rice. You need soy sauce, of course. Kikkoman or whatever brand. Rice vinegar is very important, and a brand that I look for there is Mizkan, although really any rice vinegar will do. It’s hard to leave mirin out—sweetened sake. Definitely dashi, and instant dashi is the way to go—the go-to brand is Hondashi. Sugar has a way of showing up.

How He’s Lost 15 Pounds Since Quarantine Started By Eating Carbs

Tom: I have spent many years of my life being an aggressively no-carb or low-carb person. Right now, I don’t have any interest in that. I don’t think that’s necessarily a responsible way to be dining. And also, what’s kind of funny is—and my friends jokingly hate me for this—since we started quarantining, I’m down around fifteen pounds.

That’s really very much a function, I think, of portion control. But to me it’s funny, because I’m eating way more rice and grains now than in an ordinary course, but doing it in a different way. It’s down fifteen pounds in a healthy way. And it really boils down to portion control, because I’m being very mindful, way more than in the ordinary course. I’m thinking, I shouldn’t really be putting more than a half a cup of rice into a meal, I shouldn’t be putting more than three ounces of an animal protein into a meal, or whatever the measurements are—when it adds up, suddenly maybe you have cut your daily caloric intake, in a healthy way.

I first heard Gail Arnold’s name a few years ago—after a couple of my friends, Ben and Sam, had one of the best meals of their lives at Bobby Flay’s restaurant Gato. When they sat down, Ben and Sam thought it would be an ordinary evening, but within minutes, Bobby was table side, helping them order and throwing in several of his favorite dishes free of charge. 

When I heard this story from Sam, I asked her why they received this level of service, prompting her to respond with one word: “Gail.”

Turns out, their reservation was made by Gail Arnold, a legendary chef—who not only mentored Bobby but has spent decades personally cooking for Steven Spielberg.

Most of the chefs I’ve interviewed for this newsletter became famous cooking in restaurants. But Gail’s tips come from years spent in home kitchens, which means they’re applicable no matter who you are. 

So I hope you listen to what she says. And if you’re ever making a reservation at a restaurant of Bobby Flay’s, clearly you should say that Gail sent you. Who knows? Maybe he’ll show up at your table. 

ICYMI: Read Bobby Flay’s interview on Cooking in Quarantine!

Why you shouldn’t be afraid of your spices

Gail: People get so scared of spices, so they’ll make their eggs, they’ll fry their eggs, and they just never think, “Oh. Maybe I should just put a little bit of smoked paprika on there.” And that one dash of smoked paprika on top of your scrambled egg or your fried egg? It's just a total game changer. You’ve just made a different breakfast.

My husband. I love him to death, but he's like not a really creative eater; he's happy to have his eggs over hard every morning. But even for him, if I add the smoked paprika, or I'll put a little za’atar or something on top of his eggs—or even if it's in a mayonnaise, I’ll put something in there, some kind of spice—he's like, “Wow, this tastes really good today. What do you do different?” And it’s just the little dash of something that people are scared of ruining their dish. Just don't be scared.

People have these spices that they generally use for desserts around their house. And they don't think to use them for savory dishes. But I use a lot of cinnamon, I use a lot of allspice—and I’m not always using it for desserts.

If I'm making a stew, for instance, which I'm making a lot of right now, I might use allspice, a touch of cinnamon, and black pepper and some chili pepper, just to give it some mixed flavors.

I also love paprika, I just think it's a fabulous spice. I love Togarashi, the Japanese spice mix. Again, it's just something that adds pop. You know, it's really hard to get fresh mint, but a lot of Arab and Middle Eastern or Iranian cuisines use dried spearmint and that's fabulous if you want to marinate a piece of chicken or you're marinating even a pork or a fish or something.

So if you put a little bit of it on there, it just adds a certain flavor. Even if you're making a fresh salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, whatever, just put a little bit of dried mint in something.

Why you should put chocolate and taco mix in your stew 

Gail: One of the ways that I make a stew is almost like a chili stew. So instead of it being ground meat, I use whatever chopped meat I can find. Somebody we know had some venison and they were going out of town, so they just gave us some venison and yesterday, I actually made a venison stew. But it could have been beef. Or I could have used pork. Or I could have used chunks of turkey if I wanted to.

It was onion, garlic, carrot, potato, chilis. If you don't have some dried chilis—like, you know, chipotles, or guajillo chilis—Trader Joe’s makes a taco seasoning mix. And so if I were going to do the cheat, I would take the taco seasoning and I would put it in that stew. It’s really good!

Sometimes I'll add more spice because I like things pretty, pretty spicy, but just to level it off, I might just take a little chunk off of a chocolate bar and throw it in there, and it smooths everything out, and I get that nice little chocolate undertone, without having to spend hours and hours making my own mole sauce.

So, you know, the easy way: taco mix and a little bit of chocolate in your regular stew. And it really will change up something most people don't think to add. When you just throw in some wine and some chicken stock, then it can be kind of boring, to be honest. But with the Mexican spice mixes, it's a game changer.

How to cook for the same people night after night

Gail: First of all, you have to know your audience. You have to know what people want. Once you know what people like, that makes it that much easier. You can have fun.

You can be in a family, and somebody is gluten free and somebody is still trying to watch their carbs or something, and another person only wants to eat meat and potatoes. So how do you navigate all of those things? What I do is think about ways that I can adapt things.

For example, I had gotten a pork shoulder a couple of days ago from the butcher. And they're big. They're like seven pounds. So I cut it in half. And then I did one Mexican-ish style, and I did one North Carolina style. But I cooked them at the same time. I prepped them at the same time. I popped them in the oven. They came out. Now I've got six meals out of that.

And then I can adapt it for each person. So if somebody wants to be careful, you can have a little side salad. And then the other person, you can add on the potato thing, or the starch thing.

The other thing is, you can do like breakfast for dinner, and it’s fine. You don't have to have the perfect meal every single solitary time

But the one thing I would say to people is that they should lead with it:  “Tonight’s Cheerios for dinner. And your choices are to have it with almond milk or regular milk. You can put bananas on it, or I made a little bit of blueberry compote.” But you’ve got to be enthusiastic about what you're serving.

That, to me, is the main thing. Just be enthusiastic. “Yeah, this is a wrap for dinner. Isn’t this fantastic?” “Mom, it sucks, I hate this.” Well, great. Because that's what we're having.”

What organization you should support

Gail: No Kid Hungry.

Editor’s Note: Here a link where you can find out how to help No Kid Hungry during this crisis. 

BONUS EGGPLANT RECIPE

Texted to my friend Sarah Gouda by her mother, who Sarah (correctly) dubbed “the cutest ever recipe writer.”

Sarah added: Here is my finished product. Ignore my shitty photography! It is bomb I promise.”

🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆

Until next time…

I’ve eaten a lot of meals in my life—somewhere around 26,826—but I have to say, there’s nothing like dinner at the Godin home in Hastings-on-Hudson. As soon as you walk through the door, and manage to fend off a dog the size of a wolf, you’re blitzed with food: Gravlax they cured in their fridge. A loaf of bread as good as any you’ve eaten, baked by Seth Godin himself. Dips, cheeses, and crackers that would make Martha Stewart’s coffee table seem as uninviting as Martha McSally’s. 

When dinner starts, you’re already full. But then you see Seth’s roasted carrots, which make you understand, for the first time in your life, why they’re Bugs Bunny’s favorite vegetable. You eat Japanese sweet potatoes, which are somehow as creamy as they are crispy. Maybe he’ll serve a Korean noodle dish—or perhaps he’ll whip up sundubu-jjigae. 

You’ll encounter flavors you’ve never tasted before—and ones that take you back to Proustian moments in your past you thought you’d forgotten. And then, just as the meal is concluding, you’ll remember that Seth’s wife, Helene, owns By The Way Bakery and is a connoisseur of confections. Suddenly, the table is blanketed with cookies, cakes, and cupcakes—most of which, miraculously, are dairy free, gluten free, and [mic drop] kosher. Sometimes, she’ll even make a cake with your book cover on it! 

You eat the desserts, you keep talking, and then, in a final act of whiplash, more items suddenly appear on the table. Occasionally, it’s cups of coffee, which Seth brews masterfully, even though *he doesn’t drink caffeine*. One time, after we’d finished a plate of almond cookies, Seth pulled out a tube of oshinko. Who knew pickled radish from Japan was the perfect way to close out a feast?

Every generation improves on the one before it—Don Jr. notwithstanding—so naturally, Seth and Helene’s children, Alex and Mo, are even better chefs. If you are ever blessed with the chance to go to Alex’s apartment in Park Slope, you will watch a man cook half the Superiority Burger cookbook in around two hours, with the help of a propane wok that may or may not be legal in the five boroughs. Mo, meanwhile, lives outside of Lake Tahoe, and while I’ve never been to his abode, rumor has it he’s the best cook of them all. 

What’s most remarkable about dinner at the Godins’, though, isn’t the food you eat, but the way you feel when they’re serving you. Like at Olive Garden, when you’re dining with the Godins, no matter who you are, you’re family.

This, Alex explains, is the product of decades spent eating family dinner every night; and this staple of his childhood is what inspired Alex to start one of my favorite non-profits, Lemontree. In normal times, Lemontree’s mission is to serve family dinner to low-income New Yorkers—but as I mentioned in the Hallie Meyer newsletter, Alex is now focusing one hundred percent of his efforts on recruiting volunteers to address shortages at food banks in New York City. 

Keep reading to find out more about how you can support Alex’s work—and to learn what it takes to cook dinner at home like the Godins.

This interview covers A LOT of terrain, from how to make a perfect pot of rice to how to make a loaf of “rye bread for the ages” to the virtues of Kewpie Mayonnaise, yuzu kosho, and Burlap and Barrel spices. More than basically any other issue of this newsletter, I think you’re gonna want to read this one. 

So I’ll let the Godins take it from here: 

How the Godins Spice Up Quarantine Cooking

Seth: One of the challenges of buying things online during the year or during quarantine is that you are hurting the livelihood of the backbone of your local main street. However, if you go to Burlap and Barrel for your spices, you’re hurting no one, because they sell things you can’t get from anyone else, and the spices at Burlap and Barrel—they’re still delivering—are worth every penny they cost, and they are a secret ingredient available to anyone. 

Editor’s Note: Here’s the link to buy spices from Burlap and Barrel. 

Alex: I will say, my quarantine has been brought to you by Burlap and Barrel. The cumin is a game-changing cumin. The turmeric is next level. And I like the Urfa chili, the silk chili, and the cobanero chili.

Seth: I’m going to agree with Alex on the chilis. I don’t have any expectation that the turmeric is next level; it’s just turmeric. But the story that comes with each—because they’re getting it from the grower, him or herself—and just like Askinosie Chocolate, another plug for what you can buy online—they’re able to, by leaving out four layers of middlemen and a year and a half of storage, get you a better product at a better price, and get the grower a lot more money.

Alex: I think that Mo has the best pantry of the Godins right now. Mo is setting the pantry bar.

Mo: I have a five-plus year history of pissing off roommates with weird cooking gadgets, since I moved out of my family home, whether that be in college, when I bought an industrial deep-fryer, or this year, I have numerous Japanese condiments: yuzu kosho --

Alex: Mo is big in the yuzo kosho game.

Mo: It’s delicious. It makes everything taste better. It’s a great condiment. 

Editor’s Note: Here’s a link to a solid yuzu kosho brand, approved by Mo. 

Helene: If it’s really from Japan, it takes everything up a notch.

Mo: I’ve also recently gotten into mala spice, on the food side, a lot of spicy condiments from China. 

Editor’s Note: Here’s a link to buy da hong pai Sichuan pepper from Mo’s favorite purveyor. The full ma la kit is sold out, but they expect to stock up again in May.  

Mo: Unlike the rest of my family, I don’t live in an urban metropolis, or near one. The closest city is Reno, which is not known for its produce markets. So I order a lot of ingredients online. I ordered Kewpie mayonnaise on Amazon, as you do when you don’t have access to a Japanese market. And I get the package in the mail, and there’s a rip inside it—so it’s an empty package, clearly the mayonnaise has fallen out. 

And so I had to call Amazon for an exchange or return. And so I’m on the phone with this employee from Amazon, and she says, “what was the product that fell out of the package?” And I couldn’t bring myself to say “mayonnaise” over the phone, so I said, “Kewpie,” and she said, “Do you mean mayonnaise?” And there was so much judgment in her voice. It was magical.

Why Homemade Rye Bread Is the Perfect Supply Chain Resilient Food

Seth: I want to talk about supply-chain resilient food for a minute, if I could. So, I feel like the quarantine is primarily about time, in the sense that, if the quarantine only lasted an hour, no one would have noticed. And what the quarantine is doing is causing people to shift their expectation of time. And if you’re going to do that, it feels to me like fermentation is your friend. So what you want to do is produce things that you don’t want to rush, because they will work better if you don’t rush them. And with that said, yes, you can ferment and cure fish. But that’s a problematic supply-chain item, and an endangered species on top of it. So I would rather focus on rye bread in the following way:

It is possible to make a rye bread for the ages using only three ingredients: rye flour, water and salt. And if you have anything else at home, that’s fine, but if you try to make it in less than three days it will fail. And the beauty of a three-day rye bread is that you’ve actually done something with your time, not just squandered it watching TV on Netflix. 

Editor’s Note: Seth posted the recipe for his rye bread, pictured above, to a special page on his blog. You can find it here.

Helene: And it’s even better if you get walnuts at the market.

Seth: And dried cherries.

Alex: And while we’re talking fermentation, a plug for Sandor Katz and The Art of Fermentation. 

Seth: True that.

Helene’s “To The Left” Approach To Baking

Helene: Just to sort of add onto that, here’s my story about what to do when you have time: When I was first thinking about opening a bakery and teaching myself how to bake, I took the Beyoncé approach. Which was, I took out all my ingredients, and I put them on the right side of the counter. And as I added them to the bowl, I moved them to the left side of the counter. “To the left, to the left.” 

And then, when I was done, I put it in the oven, and if I turned around and there was still one item on the right side of the counter, I knew I had screwed up. The good news is, if you follow my method, you will know what the problem is. And right now, you have time to make it again.

How To Make Baked Goods Without All Purpose Flour

Helene: So we have a cookie that’s made with almond flour. We have these amazing almond flour honey cookies. And they just happen to also be dairy-free and vegan.

READ: Recipe for Helene’s almond cookies, which are astonishingly good.

Seth: And if you can’t find almond flour, you can make your own.

Helene: Right, you can take almonds and grind them in a food processor. As long as you don’t keep doing it and end up with almond butter, it works great. It’s actually better.

What Alex and Mo Have Been Cooking—and How To Make It

Mo: I think my philosophy when it comes to cooking is, the burner is either on high or off. And so the idea of the low-and-slow simmer or the long fermentation process is not really my mentality. So I use a lot of ingredients, but very quickly. 

I’ve been doing a lot of Mexican fried rice. So kind of a play on fried rice, you use a day-old rice, keep it in the fridge. Always make twice as much rice as you need, put it in a Tupperware, put it in the fridge. The next day, you’re going to make fried rice for breakfast, it’ll be delicious. 

And then use a little chipotle in Adobo sauce, some peppers, onions, mushrooms. Fry it up. Throw it in a burrito, grill it. Delicious. 

Editor’s Note: Mo says La Morena is the best brand for Adobo sauce—and you can find it in most markets near the Goya products. If you want to make it at home, this seems like an easy enough recipe.

Alex: What I think is unique in some ways to our family, and my childhood, is that every night growing up we had Family Dinner. And during the quarantine, I feel very connected to that tradition and that routine. 

And I’ve been cooking meals that are so reminiscent of the things that we’d eat growing up. Like, on Wednesday, I made the tofu recipe that we used to eat once a week growing up. 

Editor’s Note: The tofu recipe he’s referring to can be found in the glossary of  Seth’s 2001 book, “Survival Is Not Enough: Shift Happens.” Seth includes very specific instructions like, “Spray the pan with a Misto (or a can of Pam) filled with a blend of half sesame oil and half olive oil,” but Alex says the directions are even simpler:

“Take firm or medium firm tofu out of the fridge, press it for like 20 minutes, fill your pan with some oil (whatever kind) over medium heat, cut tofu into slices and put in pan. Cook it till it softens. Then, crank the heat as high as it will go. Dump some soy sauce on top. When the tofu is caramelized and your house smells great, it’s done.”

Alex: And this afternoon I made a batch of French fries for lunch, which was like a classic Sunday lunch Godin move. And we have done Zooms and phone things, but just cooking those staples has been really like going back to the dinner table.

The importance of learning how to cook rice 

Seth: I would like to contribute a cooking tip in memory of my mom. Which is, I think it’s important that people use this moment to learn to make rice; to learn to make rice properly. What you can do every day for lunch is, you can have a rice bowl. And a rice bowl consists of a perfectly-made cup of rice with various toppings that you are reusing from the morning. But so many people are afraid of rice. Don’t be afraid of rice. Learn to make rice.

Helene: And then, make twice as much so you can have fried rice for breakfast. 

Seth: I learned how to make rice from Ms. Royee Chen, and it was a mystery to me until she taught me. Step one, often overlooked: rinse your rice. You don’t need to rinse it under running water, though. You have to put it in a bowl, swirl it around with water, and then drain it a couple times until you have rinsed rice. 

Then what you do is you take a pot that has a lid that fits. You put in one cup of rice. If it’s white rice, put in just over a cup of water. You need more water for brown rice. Maybe two cups. You then turn the stove on until it boils. The second it boils, you turn it to its lowest temperature, you put the lid on, and you leave it there until it’s done. You do not stir it. You do not look at it. You just leave it there until it’s done. Or, for those of you who this is causing concern, buy a rice cooker for $39, and you will never have a rice problem ever again.

Alex: I will say that my rice tip is that if you make beans, preferably Rancho Gordo, with aromatics, dried beans, then you can use the water from your beans—your pot liquor, if you will—to make your rice, and you end up with an insanely flavorful bowl of rice at the end. You can mix in the beans after you’ve cooked the rice, and have the world’s best rice and beans.

Mo: I don’t think there’s anything else on my end. My brother’s love of bean water is enough.

Alex: Dayenu.

Why you should sign up to volunteer at a food bank at InItTogether.NYC

The food system is incredibly robust. It’s pretty incredible that besides all-purpose flour, supermarkets still carry everything that we need. And just like the institutions that exist to feed those of us who have enough money to go to the grocery store, there are also institutions that are able to feed folks who can’t afford to shop right now. 

And it’s truly incredible watching these organizations step up, and feed millions and millions of people, as job losses and other real tragedies take hold. At the same time, those organizations are built on the back of volunteer labor. In order to be as efficient as possible, the food pantries, soup kitchens, and food banks all rely on volunteers, and it’s truly terrifying watching as those volunteers dry up.

We’re talking to folks who mainly rely on senior citizens or corporate groups to volunteer—both of which don’t show up anymore, and so in the last month, more than 100 pantries in New York City have closed, while demand has skyrocketed.

So one thing that folks can do, is they can go and volunteer. And the best way to find an opportunity to find an opportunity to volunteer in New York City is to go to inittogether.nyc.

JOSE ANDRES IS POSTING THE BEST VIDEOS ON THE INTERNET

The man is cooking dinners with his kids while listening to Hamilton songs—and directing donations to the organizations that need them most. (The best part is: None of the dishes take longer to cook than it takes to listen to one (1) song from Hamilton.) If you haven’t yet seen these videos, I am so honored to introduce you to the best content on the internet:

DO NOT SHARE YOUR STARTERS

You heard Seth Godin: You can make your own Rye starter. So there’s NO REASON AT ALL why, according to Eater, people in San Francisco are LEAVING STARTERS ON TREES TO SHARE THEM WITH ONE ANOTHER IN THE MIDDLE OF A GLOBAL PANDEMIC. As my sage boss, and buddy, Ben Krauss put it in a Slack message to me: “This is the anti-vaxxing of baking.” 

I have done my fair share of weird things for a good loaf. In fact, I once brought Tartine country bread with me on a plane flight from San Francisco to Boston. But guess what? Tartine! is! still! open! So if you live in SF and want to go hard on bread, maybe you should consider ordering it from the best bakery in the world—or making your own damn starter. 

Money doesn’t grow on trees. Bread shouldn’t either. 

Until next time...

Photo: Kathleen O’Neil

Since moving into her grandma’s condo for quarantine, Caroline Calloway has posted a seemingly endless stream of food pictures to her Instagram. Avocado toast. Salad. Sweet potatoes. More avocado toast. More salad. More sweet potatoes. Rinse. Repeat. 

But last week, on the day Caroline released her long-awaited response to accusations her erstwhile best friend Natalie made in The Cut, food was notably absent from her Instagram page. So I figured I’d ask her if she ate anything special to celebrate releasing the essay—and raising $30,000 for COVID-19 first-responders in the process. And friends, Caroline👏Calloway👏did👏not 👏disappoint. 

“I’m worried that by telling you this, I’ll be cancelled a third time,” she said, before revealing that, a few hours after her essay dropped, she walked to the grocery store and brought back blinis, crème fraîche, and two tins of sturgeon caviar. 

“I don’t know anything about caviar, but it was the most expensive,” she explained, “so I chose it.”

She also bought a large stick of truffle salami. “If it makes it any better,” she clarified, “I stocked up on other essentials like coffee.”

Even Nero, who played the fiddle while Rome burned, would bow at the altar of Caroline’s ability to remain bougie in the face of tragedy. And Marie Antoinette would have no choice but to respect Caroline's hustle. 

“Let them eat cake” is so 18th century. We live in the world of “Let them eat caviar” now. And while Marie couldn’t survive one guillotine, Caroline has been cancelled twice—and she’s still standing. 

If you want to cancel her a third time, be my guest. But ask yourself: If you raised $30,000 for charity in a week, are you sure you wouldn't be eating caviar, too? 

Here's what else she's been eating—and how to cook it:

How to turn your canned sardines into a beautiful salad

Caroline: I love sardines tucked in olive oil and parsley and lemon and garlic. If you make a salad with some bougie lettuce—like, nice lettuce—like, lettuce that looks like it could be in a Dutch still life—you toss that with just olive oil. And you put the sardines on top. You don't even have to cook them. So you're done. It's been 30 seconds. It takes longer to explain how to make this dish than to actually make it. 

What a typical day of eating is like for Caroline

Caroline: Mainly, I like to snack on the bones of my trolls and the heads of my haters, but when I’m not eating that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I try to eat a pretty plant based diet. 

Avocado toast. Handful of nuts for a snack. Walnuts, pecans, and almonds. Lunch is a giant ass salad with arugula, basil, heirloom tomatoes, and garlic hummus. Dinner will be like three mangoes and a sweet potato with butter. 

Since I’m at my grandma’s condo, all of the food I did not bring in myself from the grocery store has been here since the 1950s. 

Pictured: Mango Chutney that expired in 2015.

So as long as I don’t buy myself sugary snacks, I don’t have the option of binging sugary snacks. 

I’ve been buying a lot of produce from Jessica’s Stand in Florida, so shout out to Jessica.

How she makes her avocado toast

Caroline: Pour the olive oil on the bread before you put the avocado on, otherwise it won’t sink in. Otherwise, chili flakes, salt, pepper to taste. 

Usually I eat two slices of bread per day. Sometimes I eat four. 

Editor’s Note: Put some lime juice in your avocado toast, Caroline!

The secret to the papaya snack she keeps posting to Instagram

Caroline: It’s papaya, banana, and a pinch of sea salt. Sweet and salty. 

Make sure they’re refrigerated before you slice them, because if it’s cold, get the fuck out of here. 

How she decides what food to post

Caroline: I feel an obligation as a public figure to provide support for people, whether it’s in the form of entertainment—to distract them from the news—or working out and giving them some motivational reminders to keep their body healthy during quarantine. And posting about food on Instagram started as a way to remind people to eat vegetables. 

So far, I have an amazing track record of going to the grocery store and buying a shit ton of nuts, fruits, vegetables, and whole grain bread, and the occasional nut butter and caviar. So I just had a bunch of healthy food and I saw an opportunity to intersperse my daily content output with little reminders to eat healthfully. I thought that was another small thing I could contribute at this time. 

I actually posted all of my food for the first three weeks of quarantine. Every single thing I put in my mouth, I posted. And right now, I’ve gotten in enough of a habit that I’m still eating healthfully. But in order to raise money, I just have to post the article. So there’s not going to be a lot of food content.

How to buy Caroline’s essay—and provide health care workers with PPE 

Caroline: We’ve raised over $25,000 in the past 36 hours towards getting doctors face masks and we’re looking toward a goal of $50,000 over the next three weeks. We’re on day one and a half, and we’re halfway there. 

I’m really passionate about what we’re doing. And 100 percent of the proceeds of this website go towards the donation. I paid for the web design out of pocket. None of the money goes anywhere else, except toward Direct Relief, which is the charity giving health care workers in the U.S. personal protective equipment. 

So, yeah, you could donate directly to them, but if you go through my site, you’ll get at least 45 minutes of solid, petty internet drama. And who can ignore a bargain like that? Everyone needs a distraction right now. 

Editor’s Note: Caroline has now raised more than $30,000 for Direct Relief. You can buy her essay at iamcarolinecalloway.com. You can send your donation straight to Direct Relief by clicking this link.

How to make Nature’s PB&J

A few days after Caroline and I spoke, I saw a text from her appear on my phone with one word: “EMERGENCY,” accompanied by this image:

And then, she texted me the recipe for what she calls “Nature’s PB&J,” which I’ve included below:

When I asked her follow-ups—favorite bread, favorite peanut butter, favorite berry—she said: “Use what you have on hand. JUST DON’T FORGET THE HONEY!!! People forget the honey sometimes and those people are GOING TO HELL.”

“John Mulaney would be able to adlib something better than this,” she added, “but I’m not John Mulaney.”

Homecooking Hacks from University of Texas Coach, and Former Chopped Contestant, Herb Hand

Herb Hand and my dad weren’t supposed to be friends—and not only because they met on an airplane, where you’re more likely to be elbowed by the person next to you than strike up a conversation with them. As Coach Hand puts it, “Your dad’s a northeastern atheist liberal, and I’m a transplanted southern conservative Christian.” 

“And yet,” he continues, “We’re friends. Because even though we don’t agree on everything, we have a common humanity.” 

Turns out, they also have a common love of food—and when my Dad tagged me on Twitter after seeing a video of Coach Hand cooking wings on Twitter, I knew I had to have him on the newsletter. 

Here’s how he makes his wings: 

Coach also posted an entire video dedicated to wing sauces, including ingredients ranging from hoisin to Frank’s RedHot:

After Coach Hand released these videos on Twitter, he received a call from the team nutritionist. “Hey, we really like the wing video,” they said, before asking the co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach if he could post something more “educational” for the school’s players—a healthier dish, maybe, that they could make “on a college athlete’s budget.” 

That inspired Coach to post a video tutorial for his signature “chicken, broccoli, RiceARoni deal,” which you can watch here: 

More than any ingredient, he says that the key to cooking is to “put a little extra love in there.” That, he explained, “is what makes it taste good.” 

When I asked him for workout tips, he said “the first thing is you gotta do something.” And, he added, you need to “develop a solid routine every day, cause it’s so easy to get up and not shower, and that’s bad business.” 

Before hanging up the phone, he suggested that I watch this video from Jocko Willink, in which the retired Navy Seal explains what we can all learn from Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day: 

Did you hear the man? Find some ice, and start sculpting. 

Volunteer To Help Seniors!

Last week, I received an email from an organization called Umbrella, which is delivering groceries and medication to seniors across the country who can’t leave their homes because of the novel coronavirus. They told me their demand has grown exponentially over the last few weeks, and they need volunteers who can shop for elderly neighbors. 

Follow this link if you’re up for it. It’s an excuse to leave the home while STILL being a good person. As our president likes to say about potentially toxic drugs: What do you have to lose? 

I’ve also been talking to an organization called Mon Ami, which is doing a similar thing. Here’s the link if you want to help them out, too. 

Bobby Flay’s Short Rib Recipe

Perfect, he says, for the holidays:

HALLIE MEYER IS POSTING VIDEOS TO INSTAGRAM OF HER NOW FAMOUS “TWO POT PASTA METHOD” 

Remember when Hallie Meyer changed the game on this newsletter with the Two Pot Pasta Method? If you haven’t read that interview, you should; that is, if you want your pasta to look like this:

In recent days, Hallie has been posting Instagram Lives, in which she demonstrates how to use the Two Pot Method to make everything from aglio olio broccoli to cacio e pepe to pomodoro. Go to her page and watch these videos immediately. 

How better to end a Caroline Calloway newsletter than with some noods?

Until next time... 

There’s no other way to put it: I fucked up my first interview with Kwame Onwuachi. I asked boring questions. I stumbled over my words. I hung up too soon. As you know, until last week, I had been writing one of these basically every day. And even though the Health app on my phone would tell you I’d been walking under 100 steps a day, by the time I dialed up the James Beard Award winning chef at Kith/Kin, I was exhausted. 

So, after our phone call, I bought Kwame’s book, thinking I’d skim a few chapters and find a couple of details I could include to spice up the newsletter. But as soon as I started reading—and came across sentences like, “Fine dining lines are as white as the tablecloths that cover the tables and the patrons that sit around them”—I realized I wouldn’t be able to close down the Kindle app on my computer until I’d read every word. (Yes, I’m a Kindle guy. No, I’m not proud of it.)

Kwame’s memoir, “Notes From A Young Black Chef,” co-written with Joshua David Stein, is the best book about food that I’ve ever read. But, of course, that’s because it’s not really a book about food.

Yes, it includes recipes for dishes like egusi stew, gumbo, and shrimp étoufée, as well as stories from inside the kitchens of restaurants ranging from the McDonalds in Macy’s to Eleven Madison Park. But Kwame’s story is also about race; about resilience; about how it feels to go from selling candy on the subway to serving food at some of the best restaurants in the world. 

And it’s about knowing that, no matter what you accomplish, everything you’ve built can fall to pieces overnight—because of deals gone bad; because of systems built to stop people who look like you; or even because of a pandemic no one could have seen coming. You should buy the book and read it for yourself. (If you’re running short on money right now, respond to this email, and I’ll buy it for the first ten of you who ask.) I hope you dig it as much as I did. 

One of the parts of the book that hit me hardest was when Kwame talked about cooking on a boat for workers who were cleaning up the BP oil spill. Kwame was in his early 20s at the time. Before he arrived at Deepwater Horizon, the guys were being fed, in Kwame’s words, “tasteless bland slop.” There was no reason why Kwame had to cook them anything delicious. But he made sure that during every meal, the workers would find “a taste of home” and “a bit of love” in their food. Because his whole life had taught him that, when times are tough, there’s nothing better than that. 

When I read that scene, I decided I had to ask if Kwame could do a second interview. Because I realized he had wisdom that went far beyond what you should cook with whatever you have in your pantry. And I wanted to hear how he’s thinking about the meaning of food in the time of corona. 

Thankfully, Kwame gave me a second shot. And I’m so glad he did.

Here’s what he had to say over the course of our *two* interviews. 

What he’s been cooking

Kwame: I’ve been cooking up a storm. I made braised oxtails, coconut rice, and peas on the side. 

Editor’s Note: Kwame demonstrated how to cook oxtail on Bon Appétit’s Instagram story, which you can watch here. Brace your salivary glands.

I also made a salmon head miso stew, with yukon gold potatoes and fennel and I also marinated goat to make curry goat. 

I went grocery shopping this morning. So I’m doing Pollo Guisado today, virtually catering for Freddy Yonnet, who played harmonica for Prince. He’s a good friend of mine, and he does these shows in his house, where he lifts all the windows up on Capitol Hill so the neighborhood can hear really cool live music. So I’m doing virtual catering for the interlude. 

I’m doing osso bucco. Lots of chicken salads. Al Pastor. Going to get all that stuff. 

I’ve been doing an Instagram show called Eating Clean While Quarantined. All of my dishes are, like, fat-free, sugar-free, low-carb, high protein dishes, so you don’t gain weight while you’re sitting around at home.

Editor’s Note: These dishes might sound complicated, but if you check out Kwame’s Instagram page, you’ll see that you can make them at home. Here’s his video demonstration of how to make Goat Roti.

Why Cooking Is So Important At Moments Like This

Kwame: Cooking, as much as it’s an act of nourishment, is also an act of care and love. It’s putting a little bit of yourself into something and sharing it with someone. And the more detail oriented you are—which doesn’t have to mean perfect knife skills, it just means caring about the steps that go into cooking—the more you’re sharing a little bit of yourself. 

I think that’s why cooking is very therapeutic for me and for most people. Because you’re putting emotion into something, and then, at the end of the day, someone is consuming that. I think it’s the only art form that people ingest. 

So it’s an extension of you. It’s an extension of your nostalgia. It’s an extension of your story. It’s an extension of who you are. 

So that’s why I think cooking is so important in times of need because it’s comforting. You think about when you’re sick, you look forward to meals as that moment of distraction from whatever ailment you have that also nourishes your body. So I think there’s a huge emotional connection with food that’s psychological as well as physical. 

What You Can Do To Make Your Meals Feel Extra Special During Quarantine

Kwame: I always revert back to connecting food to a moment of nostalgia. When a dish has a story, it has a soul. And you’re not just cooking for perfect seasoning or just to eat, you’re cooking to remind yourself of something. Those are the times when cooking, for me, nourishes more than just my appetite. It nourishes something in me that needs something on an emotional level. 

And you don’t have to cook it for yourself. For me, eating and experiencing the food that makes me happy is really important. 

My meal when I’m feeling down or in a rut is Chinese takeout. It reminds me of my childhood growing up in New York City, eating chicken wings and pork fried rice with my family. It was a cheap meal. It fed the whole family for like a day and a half. 

But it was more than the price point. It was more than even the socioeconomics of that dish—of Chinese people trying to adhere to the American palate in the 70s. It’s more than all that shit. It’s not a history lesson. It’s the way I feel when I eat it. 

Editor’s Note: In our first interview, Kwame mentioned that when he’s sad, he also eats egusi stew, a dish that plays a prominent role in his book. Here’s his recipe. 

Why We Can’t Afford to Lose Restaurants As A Result Of This Pandemic

Kwame: Think about the immigrants that come here or the people that have saved up everything to open up their restaurants. They don’t give a shit about awards or anything. The people who opened these restaurants wanted to give opportunities to their children to go to college or get out of a certain scenario. 

And they might not have the tax documents or records that would make them eligible to get any of the long term benefits from the PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] or things like that. 

I’m worried about that because those are the restaurants that feed America. They’re the restaurants I go to as well. But those are the restaurants that Americans go to to eat for nourishment. They’re the restaurants that fed me as a child when my mother was scraping together money and just didn’t want to cook—and wanted that moment of solace and peace in this world of chaos. 

So I think those restaurants are just as, if not more, important than the restaurants that are striving for awards day in and day out. 

These restaurants are the heartbeat of America. 

Cooking Advice For People Who Used To Go Out For Every Meal

Kwame: Cooking is an act of love. It’s not always meant to be scrutinized. You know, I posted a recipe the other day, and someone was like: “I don’t have apricots or sultanas, white raisins. I only have these ingredients, What do I do?”

I was like: “Have fun with it. It’s cooking. Use another dry fruit.”

Cooking is easy, you just have to put a little love in it—that’s what Leah Chase said. So don’t be afraid to experiment and don’t be afraid to use as few ingredients as possible. Like, you don’t have to do the elaborate recipes. A lot of my recipes are five, six ingredients. So have fun with it.

There’s this perception that you have to be perfect every single time you cook. But it’s okay to make mistakes. And it’s okay to not be good at something and then become good at something. There’s a beauty in that—in not being good at something, and then working at it every single day, and you look back a month later and you’re a totally different person than you were when you started said task. 

Think of it that way. I don’t care what you’re good at—whether you’re a computer programmer or you make fucking dog leashes—the first time you did it, you weren’t great.

Pantry Staples You Should Have, Which You Might Not Think of On Your Own

Kwame: Really good spice blends. You can get a really good curry that’ll last you a couple months. Or, like, Creole spices. Different types of chiles—dried chiles are really good to have on hand. Tomato paste is always a good thing to have on hand. And preserved anchovies—because you can always chop them up and put them in a sauce.

Editor’s Note: Kwame shared some other pantry staples with GQ. No, I’m not mad they blatantly stole the concept of this newsletter. Why would I be mad? That would be so petty! 

How He Finds Strength in Difficult Moments

Kwame: I try to remember that man plans and God laughs. You can plan all day but shit, things happen, opportunities present themselves, opportunities fall through, and it’s really your inner being—not just confidence, but being okay with the unknown—that will allow you to get through a moment like this.

It’s okay to not know what you’re going to do or what you’re doing next and take that as a part of life. That’s kind of cool. For once, maybe you’re just living—and maybe that’ll help you get through the day. 

And then, it’s about letting emotions pass. The last two days, I was not feeling great. I was like: Man, when is this shit gonna end? Walking around, it’s like the apocalypse. But then, I said to myself: I’m gonna let this feeling pass. And then when I’m happy again, I’ll be happy. 

Part of being a human being is having emotions—so don’t get caught up on any one emotion and obsess over it.

What Organizations He Hopes You Support 

Kwame: No Kid Hungry and The Independent Restaurant Coalition. 

Editor’s Note: Kwame is also raising money for his staff at Kith / Kin. You can support them here. 

Homecooking Hacks from Chef Justice Breyer

The Wall Street Journal broke a BIG story: Justice Breyer, by far the most likable member of the Supreme Court with a Y chromosome, is a slow cooker bro. Specifically, he’s been slow-cooking up a storm of pot roasts. Thanks to Jess Bravin for including, like, the entire recipe in her article. Here it is:

You need about a 4-pound roast, about a dozen peppercorns, some olive oil, a big yellow onion chopped up, three or four cloves of garlic, minced, two or three stalks of celery, three or four carrots, a cup of good wine—not drinking wine, any kind of wine—and a 28-ounce can of Italian tomatoes or crushed tomatoes, salt and pepper. Chop up some parsley for the garnish.

So what you do is you combine the spices, the cinnamon cloves, allspice and peppercorns. You have to put them in the coffee grinder or something to chop them up, which means your coffee will taste of spice for a while, or your roast will taste of coffee, who knows? But you grind them up to a powder. Then you get a big pan and over medium heat you heat the oil

Brown the roast on all sides, for about 10 minutes. Then put it in the slow cooker, but if you don’t have a slow cooker I’m sure you could use a big casserole thing or any kind of a big pot. Next, take a saute pan and add the chopped onion, stir it for a while until it softens and is slightly brown. And you add to that the garlic, the celery, the carrots and you do some more sauteing until they are softened and then you put in the spice mixture and cook for another couple of minutes.

And then you add the red wine and cook it for about 10 minutes or so until the red wine is reduced by about a third and then you stir in the tomatoes and salt and pepper—well, you have pepper already in there but you could add some salt. And you pour the sauce over the meat, you cook it for eight hours, and there we are. That’s the secret.

Hey, Justice Breyer, if you’re reading this: I love you, but if you don’t stay 6 feet away from Justice Ginsberg, we’re gonna have a problem. 

“It’s Not The Money; It’s The Recipes”

Seth Shapiro got his law degree / 

He moved to Brooklyn from Schenectady, ‘93 / 

Got some clients in the food industry / 

He says it’s not the money, it’s the recipes. 

That’s a verse from one of my favorite Fountains of Wayne songs, “Someone To Love.” As I’m sure many of you know, one of the driving forces behind Fountains of Wayne, Adam Schlesinger, lost his life to the novel coronavirus last week. I hope all of you celebrate his life by listening to his music. I suggest starting with “Hackensack.”

If I’ve learned anything talking to chefs over the past few weeks, it’s that, like Seth Shaprio, they don’t do what they do for the money, though they need it now more than ever. They, too, do it for the recipes. I didn’t know Adam, but I think he felt the same way about music: He didn’t become a rock star for the glory; he did it to bring joy to the world. And while I’m heartbroken that he’s gone, I take some comfort in knowing the words he wrote, and the chords he played, will be with us forever.

Until next time...

Photo credit: Kate Grewal

New Yorkers aren’t exactly known for admitting when we’re wrong. (See: Trump, Donald; de Blasio, Bill.) But today, I am going to apologize for a paragraph I wrote in one of last week’s newsletters, in which I claimed Boston had only two redeeming qualities. (No, I didn’t even include Ben Affleck’s performance in The Town.) Why the reversal? Because, a few days after I maligned Beantown, my friends reminded me of the meals we ate at Myers+Chang, forcing me to concede that Boston has at least three things going for it. 

When I lived in Boston, Karen Akunowicz was the Executive Chef at Myers+Chang, which was one of my favorite restaurants. And the year I moved back to New York, my palate was vindicated when Karen received the highest honor in cooking, winning the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef in the Northeast. 

For most of us, a victory like that might have been a reason to take it easy for a while. Turns out, you don’t become Karen Akunowicz by taking it easy. So, the next year, she left Myers+Chang when she was at the top of the cooking world—like Michael Jordan in ‘93, hanging it up to go play baseball. Except, unlike Mike, her next chapter was even better than her first. 

In 2019, Karen opened Fox & the Knife, which is by all accounts one of the best new restaurants in the country. And over the last few weeks, Karen told me, as Boston has shut down, Fox & the Knife has become far more than a place to eat. Now, it’s a wholesale pasta company by day, which is making it easier for thousands of Bostonians to cook at home, and a takeout restaurant by night. 

Somehow, even as she runs two businesses, and works 16-hour days, Karen is still finding some time to cook at home. And in today’s newsletter, she shares her tips for how to make meals that can last you the whole week with whatever you have in your pantry. 

Plus: She reveals the recipe for her famous Taleggio Stuffed Focaccia—or, as she calls it, “the cheese pull heard round the world.”

ICYMI: Yesterday, Beto O’Rourke shared recipes on the newsletter—and talked about why we should all be donating to food banks like El Pasoans Fighting Hunger. Check it out.

RECIPE: Taleggio Stuffed Focaccia 

Photo credit: Brian Samuels

Karen: People are baking a lot right now, so I thought this might be a good recipe to share. Here’s the backstory on it. 

I knew that I wanted to serve focaccia at Fox & the Knife, I just wasn’t sure exactly how. Did we bake it on sheet trays and cut like Sicilian pizza? Did we shape it in individual loaves for each table? When I finally moved into the restaurant space, I found we had inherited a LOT of pie pans and I needed to make use of every little thing we had. We opened with a small budget and needed to keep it that way. I knew immediately we would bake the focaccia in those pie pans. I originally wanted to top it with stracciatella but as we tested it over and over, I knew that it wasn’t quite right. Finally the idea came to fill it with a strong yummy cheese, and taleggio was a perfect foil for the focaccia, but it didn’t have that cheesy pull-ability I wanted. So I added mozzarella and our focaccia was born! 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Pro tip: Have a plastic bench scraper handy

Yields two focaccia rounds

Ingredients:

• 14 oz warm water

• 7g active dry yeast (also equal to one packet of red star yeast or similar brand)

• 13g sugar

• 480g AP flour

• 120g bread flour

• 13g salt

• 4 oz evoo

• 2 T chopped rosemary

• 6 ounces taleggio cheese

• 4 ounces shredded mozzarella

• Extra olive oil for drizzling

• 1 Teaspoon Maldon or sea salt

To start, combine yeast, warm water, and sugar in a pitcher and whisk a bit to help dissolve sugar/yeast.

Add flours and salt into a stand mixer bowl and mix the flours and salt with your hand until evenly distributed. Fit the stand mixer with the dough hook and add the water mixture and oil to the bowl. Start the mixer on low. As it mixes, scrape down the bowl halfway through mixing. Make sure to get down all of the sides and towards the mound at the bottom of the bowl. This is where flour likes to live and it needs to get absorbed into the dough. 

Continue mixing on low until dough is thoroughly combined. Increase speed to medium and mix until dough is smooth and soft. If it is a little too wet add a touch of flour, but be careful not to overdo it. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and fold the dough once to the left and once to the right. Then, flip over so seam is on the table.

Divide dough in half with a bench scraper, and loosely shape to a boule. Place each piece of dough in a pie plate oiled with olive oil. Add one tablespoon of chopped rosemary to each dough.

Next, dimple the dough with the tips of your fingers thoroughly through the whole pan making sure to pop any large bubbles. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil to the top of the dough and lightly dimple again to incorporate the rosemary. Slide the pie pans into the pre-heated oven and bake for 25-35 min rotate halfway through, checking often during the last 10 min of baking. T

The focaccia should be completely golden brown—make sure to check the bottoms of the bread for doneness. Cool completely in pan, and then turn out onto a cookie sheet. When the focaccia is completely cool, slice evenly through the equator and add 3 ounces of taleggio and 2 ounces of shredded mozzarella to one side. 

Place on a cookie sheet and bake in the 425 degree oven for 8 minutes. When you pull the focaccia out sandwich the halves together and cut into 6 or 8 slices. Drizzle with good olive oil and top with Maldon salt. 

What she cooks when she’s at home

Karen: I am actually only home two days a week, because I’m still at the restaurant so many hours a day cooking. But my spouse went out and did a little bit of grocery shopping. And then I went out last Sunday. And I’m lucky—I have a local grocery store, kind of at the bottom of my street. Family owned. They were still pretty well stocked, with the exception of eggs and chicken. 

I know there's a tendency to be like, “Okay, I'll just goldfish crackers all day.” I think that could be part of the reality. But we’re more focused on how we can take whole foods and turn them into something that we can use and then use again.

I buy a lot of carrots, onions, potatoes, lots of dark leafy greens. We make a lot of soups and we freeze them. 

That means making a lot of vegetable stock or something like that, and saying, “Okay, we can use this, we can heat up fregola in this, or we can heat up pasta, or rice.” And we’re cleaning out our cabinets, as well. 

We always have a ton of lentils in our cabinet. We always have a ton of, like, rice and grains and things like that. So we’re kind of cleaning that out and making those, and doing things like cooking off a ton of leafy greens, cutting off a ton of rice, steaming vegetables, steaming broccoli, and then putting them together in different ways as the week goes on.

How Karen Makes Food Healthier as the Week Goes On

Karen: If you’re making pasta one night—maybe you're just making pasta and tomato basil sauce—then the next day, maybe you're adding broccoli, you're adding dark leafy greens, kale or Swiss chard or something like that, and bulking it up with vegetables. 

That way, the next day, you’ve gone from having a meal that is primarily a starch, and then the next day maybe it's more vegetable, less starch, but you’re still utilizing that pasta sauce. So taking the same thing and sort of adding more nutrients, as the week goes on, to it. 

I think another great thing to utilize, whether they're canned or whether they're dried, are beans. At the restaurant we’re soaking chickpeas and cannellini beans, borlotti beans, and making soups and adding them to pastas. And I think that's a great way to get nutrients and to get protein, and to utilize something that is inexpensive. It could be used in a lot of different ways. The other day I made a smoky tomato and chickpea soup with a ton of spinach in it, and smoked paprika, lots of mirepoix, and you could easily turn that into a pasta sauce the next day.

How to make your beans exciting

Karen: You could soak a ton of chickpeas or soak a ton of white beans and then use them or cook them off the next day, hold them in your refrigerator and use them for three different preparations. You can make hummus out of that. You can make a white bean dip out of that. You could then use it in a soup, you can use it in a pasta sauce, you can use it in a stew. 

ICYMI: Bobby Flay shared his hummus recipe on Cooking in Quarantine.

There are so many different things that you could do with beans. You cook take chicken or, you know, whatever protein that you're using, and cook that pasta sauce with beans alongside the protein in the oven. Put a little parmigiano reggiano on top, maybe some breadcrumbs, and you’ve created a chicken bake or something like that. 

You know, I think those are great ways to utilize a product more than one time, especially something like beans or chickpeas, or white beans, or borlotti beans.

How she makes lentils—and turns them into tacos

Karen: My spouse is vegetarian, so we cook a lot of vegetarian food at home, and lentils are something that, in the same way, I'll just cook a big pot of them and then we’ll utilize in different ways throughout the week. So making lentil tacos is one of the things that's our favorite. Instead of using meat, you can use lentils. They’re super satisfying, they’re delicious. And that's a great way to utilize them in a way that is not a soup or something like that. 

You know, it's great to eat it at breakfast; put an egg on top of them. Lentils are something that I always have in my cabinet, that I think is a great staple, especially when there's sort of like nothing else in the cabinet. You could do a lot with them.

I cook them like you would pasta. I bring a large pot of water up to a boil. When it's boiling, I add the lentils. I'll add a bay leaf, some garlic cloves, some olive. I just simmer them until they’re soft and drain them through the colander. And then I reserve them, and whether you sauté or bake them, it's really simple. It doesn't take a lot of time or a lot of effort. And then you have them for the week.

How Her Restaurant Transformed Itself For Quarantine

Karen: We actually flipped my restaurant kind of on a dime and created two businesses. So we are running, basically, a wholesale pasta company called Fox Pasta Boston, open 12-4 every day. We’re selling house-made ricotta, pints of three different kinds of sauces, three different kinds of fresh pasta, olives, giardiniera, sliced prosciutto and all of that kind of stuff.

Part of that was saying, “How can we continue to feed people?” And knowing that people are at home, and people are cooking, we were asking ourselves: “How can we kind of encourage that?”

We are doing takeout at night, from four to eight, but during the day, we're completely selling out of, like, 36 pints of ricotta. Like, a hundred and fifty sauces. 75 pounds of pasta a day. The response has been overwhelming, because people are taking those and they’re cooking with them at home. 

It's been amazing to see everybody's pictures. You know, people are posting, like: “Here’s the before and after; “Here's the meal that I cooked with it;” “I took a third of the ricotta, and I put it on top of the pasta;” or, “I made pasta and the next day I put ricotta on top of my pancakes.” Or whatever it is. So we've seen this beautiful response from people who are taking home our sauces and cheeses. 

Why you should support No Kid Hungry (if you can)

Karen: Right now, with so many kids out of school, there are children who depend on school breakfast and school lunches, and they're not getting those meals. And I think that is one of the most heartbreaking pieces of this pandemic: There are so many children who are losing out on those critical meals that they received five days a week, whether it's breakfast and lunch. No Kid Hungry is working hard to make sure those young kids are fed.

Editor’s Note: Donate to No Kid Hungry here. 

Help Junzi Feed The Health Care Workers on the Front Lines

10 days ago, I featured Junzi’s Lucas Sin on this newsletter—and he dropped knowledge on how to make spam slap and why you should try putting ketchup in your fried rice. It’s one of my favorite issues. So if you missed it, go back and read it. 

Anyway, since then, Lucas has been delivering meals to first responders across New York City. So if you want to help restaurants, and all of the nurses, doctors, janitors, and hospital staff working to keep us healthy, smash the link and support Lucas.  

Stanning Shallots

I know it’s not unique to exalt Alison Roman—especially since she’s been dubbed “the domestic goddess of the apocalypse” by The Cut—but I do want to shout her out for tipping me off to the wonders of shallots, the only food sweeter than candy that seems like it might still be healthy. 

Here’s Alison’s famous caramelized shallot pasta recipe, which is the bomb dot com, as the kids say. And I also made this (very!) simple shallot jam this week from Food & Wine, which I’ve been putting on everything—and also eating directly out of the container. (Alison, come on Cooking in Quarantine!)

Shallots have lived in the shadow of the onion and garlic for far too long. Today, we must stand together and declare, loudly and clearly, that when it comes to alliums, shallots are supreme. 

Until next time...

Photo: Isaac Dovere, The Atlantic 

The night Beto O’Rourke lost to Ted Cruz—but won more votes than any Democrat in the history of Texas—he came home and cooked his kids quesadillas, wearing the same blue button down he was sweating through a few hours earlier when he looked out at a crowd of supporters and declared: “I’m so fucking proud of you guys.”

The next morning, Beto made blueberry scones, which he called “baking therapy.” A few days later, he sent out a thank you letter, in which he described cooking his kids a feast earlier that morning. “I went on a run with Artemis and then made breakfast,” Beto wrote. “Scones, German pancakes, bacon, eggs, and some bread that Jim and Christine brought by last night with butter and jam on it.”

“It’s not Whataburger,” he concluded, before reflecting on the campaign he ran: “How was I so lucky to be part of something so amazing?” 

Speaking of Whataburger, you may have seen pictures of Beto there eating a double cheeseburger (hold the tomato) with Vice President Joe Biden on the eve of Super Tuesday, which was somehow only four weeks ago, because we are living in a time warp. Or you might remember Beto playing air drums to Baba O'Riley on line at a Whataburger drive-through the night of his first debate with Ted Cruz.

In private and public, during his senate campaign and his presidential campaign, Beto’s choices of what to eat have helped shape our image of him. And I’d be lying if I said that video of Beto at the Whataburger drive-through didn’t factor into my decision to uproot my life and move to El Paso to work for him.

But when I think about Beto and food, the first meal I picture isn’t any of the ones I mentioned above—or even the scandalous English muffin burger he made on Instagram. No, I think about a dinner that received far less media coverage.

This was in July of 2019. Beto’s presidential campaign was stagnant in the polls. And the debate in Detroit was less than a week away. But instead of spending the night memorizing talking points or rehearsing with a mock debate, Beto and his wife Amy cooked spaghetti with a family in Flint. 

More than half a decade after the water crisis had begun, the family whose home they ate at still didn’t have clean water. So they had to use two gallons of bottled water to boil pasta. They had to change the filter in their shower about every month, because otherwise it would destroy their skin. Their dog, who didn’t know better than to drink the water, would have deformities for the rest of its life. 

When I asked Beto about that night, he told me he never could have learned all of this at a traditional campaign event. “Cooking lends itself to a conversation that goes well beyond small talk or niceties,” he explained. “I had such a better appreciation of what it was like to be in Flint over the last few years, and what their hopes were going forward, than I would have if I’d read a briefing memo or been at a roundtable meeting.” 

The next week, a gunman came to El Paso and killed 22 of Beto’s neighbors in an act of white supremacist violence, and his response to that event will always define his campaign. But for me, Beto’s presidential race—indeed, my understanding of Beto—will always be shaped by that night he spent making spaghetti. Because more than anything else, Beto runs for office to learn the stories of everyone with whom he shares this country; and then, to represent them in the halls of power. And as he saw in Flint, there are few better ways to understand America than through the food we eat—and the conversations we have while doing it. 

That’s why I asked Beto to be part of this newsletter—because I wanted to hear what he thought about the importance of cooking at this moment in time... and, if I’m being honest, because I wanted to understand why the hell he puts burgers on English muffins. 

Enough me. 

Now, Beto O’Rourke.

How Beto Figured Out How To Cook His Mom’s “Oven-Baked Lemon Chicken” Recipe (After Failing A Bunch Of Times)

Beto: I have been trying to master this lemon onion chicken that my mom makes. She's an amazing cook and it's the best thing she makes—and she makes a lot of really good stuff. And I have unsuccessfully, over the last couple of months, tried to make it. And I just have not been able to get it right. And Amy's kind of getting sick of me trying to make it.

But I made it last night. And I'm just really proud of myself and really satisfied because it was so much work. And it also was just not self-evident how to do it. Like, I followed her directions to a T... and the skin on the chicken wasn't crisp, beautiful, and brown like hers. So I put the chicken back in for another 40 minutes. And it's perfect.

Editor’s note: Look at that char!

It’s hard to describe the taste, but it's just amazing. It's buttery. Lemon, onion, garlic. And it’s just so good. So I pulled that off. I'm really happy about that. It's a big achievement because I kind of worried that my mom will take that stuff with her to the grave, and none of us will be able to replicate her mastery of all these recipes. 

And she has so many of them, but at least getting this one down felt good.

Here’s the recipe for the chicken, as conveyed to Beto through texts with his mom. (#RELATABLECONTENT.)

How Beto Makes His Famous Flank Steak

Beto: It started out as a Mark Bittman recipe. It's basically a marinade of lime, soy sauce, garlic, ginger and a little bit of sugar.

READ: Mark Bittman’s flank steak recipe.

I let it marinate for an hour or two and then I take it out of the marinade, pat it dry, heavily salt and pepper it, so it'll have a nice char to it. Then, I put it on a really hot charcoal grill and do each side for four minutes. And then, I put it on a little bit of a cooler part of the grill for two minutes a side. 

And it's the best thing that I've learned how to make. And when we serve it, Amy will make potatoes. She dices them and puts them in like a tin foil pouch with a big slab of butter, some jalapeños, salt and pepper, and maybe some green onions. If we have a guest over that we're trying to impress, we typically serve that.

Editor’s Note: You can watch Beto and Amy make their signature dishes at the beginning of this video from ABC News. 

How Beto Started Serving Burgers on English Muffins

Beto: It's a function of marriage. This is something that Amy brought to the relationship. But I've really come to enjoy it. We do a diner-style hamburger where there's high fat content in the ground beef. And you don't touch the meat at all. You don't knead it or anything. You just get it into a ball, put it down on the frying pan, and immediately smash it really thin. Salt and pepper, flip it, put some American cheese on it, and double stack it on a toasted English muffin with mayonnaise. And then I put raw onion and that's it.

And it's just a meat bomb. It is so good. 

I try not to do a ton of that. The last couple of times I've been to a doctor, they're looking at cholesterol and things like that. I'm inching closer to 50 years old. So we'll do that maybe once every few months, but it is really good. 

Outside of the house, of course, you can't get a burger on an English muffin. I resisted at first when Amy introduced it, but I really, really like it. 

Why Beto Turns To Cooking in Difficult Moments

Beto: It’s so fulfilling to bake and to cook because it's a defined process. You understand all the inputs. You know when you're done. And it's very easy to judge your performance. And you can constantly get better, as I seek to do with any of this stuff that I'm making.

You know, the world of politics is so uncertain. There are so many variables out of your control. And a campaign, depending on what you're running for, could be up to a two-year process, like the Senate campaign in Texas. We started in January 2017—and of course, it didn’t end till November 2018.

So I like having this thing that you can completely focus on to the exclusion of every other distraction. There's no Twitter going on. At most, you have the radio on a news program, or a playlist, or a podcast. And even with family coming in and out of the kitchen, I can be singularly focused on the task at hand.

There are a few things like that in my life. And so I really, really appreciate that. I didn't realize this until you brought all that up, but probably at moments of higher stress or uncertainty or anxiety, I may naturally turn to cooking because it defeats all of those things. 

Why You Should Support El Paso’s Food Bank Right Now (If You Can)

Beto: Last Thursday, Amy and I volunteered at our local food bank, which is called El Pasoans Fighting Hunger, and the line of people waiting for food was two miles long. And it's wonderful that the community can feed itself in that way. People have been generous in donating money and volunteers are generous in donating their time, but I'm afraid that demand is far outpacing the capacity that we have in the community.

El Paso is one of the poorest urban counties in the country. We're a county of about a million people, of which more than 200,000 are food insecure. And when you add to that the massive layoffs that we've seen since the coronavirus pandemic, it helps explain those very, very long lines. But an added challenge is that because we don't have the money or the resources that many other communities have, it means that our food bank is bidding against food banks in Chicago and New York and L.A. and Houston for the food that we need to feed our fellow El Pasoans. And we're just really having a hard time making ends meet.

So we are both volunteering our time and then trying to encourage people to donate to El Pasoans Fighting Hunger. [Editor’s Note: Donate here.] This is a food bank which, by the way, fed a lot of the community after the August 3rd Walmart massacre. It's a community that, along with Annunciation House, has fed a lot of the asylum seekers and refugees as well as the relief workers and volunteers who help out those asylum seekers and refugees. 

So it's a food bank that, in addition to feeding a fairly poor community, has also fed them in times of extraordinary stress. And this is a moment where it really needs the help of as many people as can answer the call.

One More Thing, From Me, Sam:

If you’re watching Trump’s press briefings every day, and you’re thinking to yourself:

Then you need to register to vote, and show up to the polls in November. We should be done social distancing by then. But in the meantime, call your governor and demand that they allow vote-by-mail.

Just in case.

Until next time...

Photo Credit: Liz Clayman

Hallie Meyer’s Instagram account is the World Wide Web’s capital of pasta porn—and for years, I have been staring at the noods she posts, wondering how she makes them.

Hallie is best known as the wizard behind Caffè Panna, one of New York’s foremost purveyors of ice cream, affogato sundaes, and shots of espresso dolloped with Italian whipped cream—so I made sure to ask her for her tips and tricks on how to make ice cream at home. (When quarantine is over, go to Caffè Panna. It’s amazing.)

But I’ll be honest: The ice cream questions served as a Trojan Horse for me to get to the bottom of how Hallie makes the best looking pasta in the world.

Turns out, there’s no recipe, per se, for any of Hallie’s pasta, but she did share a method—dubbed the “Two Pot Method”—which is the secret to making delicious pasta with whatever’s at your home, as long as you have olive oil, salt, and, well, water.

Quarantine will last a few months, but the “Two Pot Method” will teach you how to make pasta for the rest of your life. So you won’t want to miss this letter.

The Two Pot Method for Pasta Making

Hallie: The same way you can put different mix-ins in ice cream, you can make a pasta out of anything.

Everyone asks, “Oh, what's the recipe?" but there’s not really a recipe for pasta. It’s all the same method.

Basically, with pasta, you build your sauce in one pan and you boil your pasta in the other pan. How you build your sauce might vary, but you always take the cooked pasta, you put it into the sauce pan along with a bunch of its water and more oil, and then you stir it like crazy. So a gloss forms on the outside of it. Then you finish the cooking process of the noodle in the sauce. And that is the secret to good pasta.

And you can literally do it with anything. I'm talking, like, cream cheese and ham pasta. Like, you can do that.

For example, we had sausage and broccoli the other night. With sausage, crumble it up and sear it in a big pot with olive oil, and then with broccoli, you probably want that to be soft—so boil it first and then crumble it up into the pot where the sausage is. That will become, like, the sauce.

How To Cook Carbonara Using the “Two Pot Method”

Hallie: So you're cooking the pasta in one pot, and then, in your other pot, you just put olive oil and pasta water and it makes this gooey kind of thing. And then you can put some black pepper in there if you just want to flavor it a little bit and get that coated onto the pasta.

And then you put the pasta into that boiling inch of pasta water and olive oil and then you toss it and toss it and toss it.

And then, in a separate bowl, you have egg yolk and pecorino and black pepper—which you’ve whisked together.

So you take the pasta off of the heat because you don’t want it to cook too much. And then you mix in that eggy sauce just like you'd mix in cheese off the heat.

And then, maybe you add like drizzles of olive oil and more cheese as you go—or more water. In order to get the gloss, you have to be mixing, mixing, mixing constantly.

And then, on the side, you've already rendered guanciale to be really crispy—and you could probably add some of the guanciale fat as you’re emulsifying the sauce onto the pasta. And then the guanciale is more like a topping. Or you can mix it in and have it hide inside the piece of rigatoni.

How to Choose Your Pasta Shape

Hallie: The shape depends on what the sauce is usually. So there are some of these rules in Italian cooking—like, unwritten but yes spoken rules. Like you never do carbonara with anything but spaghetti or rigatoni. It’s never going to be anything else. Amatriciana is only ever going to be bombolotti or bucatini. Cacio e Pepe should be tonnarelli.

I like to kind of like play around a little bit, but I also agree that, for something like the sausage and broccoli, you would want to be able to get a satisfying bite of whatever the pasta was in the bite with the sausage and broccoli. So, like, sausage and broccoli on a spoon, plus a spear of paccheri.

How To Make Ice Cream at Home

Hallie: For a good white base or sweet cream base, a simple recipe is just go one to one on cream and milk by weight. So, for example, start with 480g of cream and 480g of milk. And then, add two cups of cream and two cups of milk. And I would add, like, one cup of sugars total—and I would split that sugar between regular sugar and corn syrup.  

I think the biggest tip in ice cream making is adding a solid to the base, which could be anything from more sugar to corn syrup to freeze dried fruit—anything that adds solid to it, because you want to get as much water out of ice cream as possible, cause water becomes ice. And ice cream at home can be really icy, since you might not have stabilizers or emulsifiers or xanthan gum on you.

If I wanted to make chocolate ice cream, on the side, I would make a vegan fudge sauce. So on the stove top, I’d mix water, cocoa, sugar, and a touch of corn syrup to bring it together—and then just whisk it together until it's like a sludge and a lot of water evaporates.

And then I’d put it in my ice cream base. And then, the only other thing you're missing is salt. And, if you have xanthan gum, add a pinch in with your sugar and disperse it. That will help with the scoopability of it and kind of like holding it together.

You can use a Cuisinart ice cream machine, which is like eighty dollars.

Editor’s Note: I think I found one for $63!

Why Oil Is The Key To Good Banana Bread

Hallie: I happen to be on my seventh loaf of banana bread right now—because we have all these bananas that are going bad.  

My advice is: Use oil, not butter, which isn’t moist enough. You should still butter the pan—and you can use a pad of butter just if you like the taste or something. But for a loaf, I do two eggs in the mixer with a cup of sugar. And again, the cup of sugar can be a mix of brown and white or all white or all brown. And you could even put a little dash of maple syrup in it to make it darker.

I have three or four banana in the mixer. And then like three quarters of a cup-ish of oil—maybe a little bit less if you’re gonna do a pad of melted butter as well. And again, that's kind of just for flavor. Sort of like how, with pie crust, people use lard sometimes or butter sometimes for flavor.

And then, I add two cups of flour, a teaspoon each of baking soda and baking powder, and a teaspoon of salt, and then just mix it all together.  

What Organization You Should Be Supporting Right Now

Hallie: In It Together NYC

Editor’s Note: In It Together was started by one of my best friends in the world, Alex Godin, who has spent the last few years serving family dinner to low-income New Yorkers through his non-profit, “Lemontree.” When COVID-19 hit, he realized that local banks and organizations like City Harvest were short on volunteers—so he launched In It Together, which is connecting New Yorkers with safe volunteering opportunities to feed their neighbors. If you want to fight hunger, or if you’re just in New York and want a morally justifiable reason to leave your home, sign up now at inittogether.nyc. 

Homecooking Hacks

Since I started this newsletter, naturally, I have been sent *a lot* of pictures of food people have cooked during quarantine. Most of these pics are pedestrian looking loafs of bread, which I nonetheless respond to with this Mike Breen meme: 

Editor’s Note: If you don’t know who Mike Breen is, I couldn’t imagine a better way to be introduced to him than his quarantine PSA:

But while most of the food pics I’m sent are ordinary, there’s consistently been one exception: Tyler Lechtenberg. He’s been sending me pics of the food his wife, Sara Rhodin, is cooking, and holy shit, look at this frittata:

All of her food looks this beautiful—and this delicious—so I asked her how she’s doing this, while juggling a newborn baby and Tyler’s desire to watch underdog sports movies, and here’s what she said:

1) Take inventory of your pantry. “Over the past few years, you’ve probably bought things you didn’t even realize you had,” she told me. So her advice is to dump everything out of the pantry, write down whatever you have left, and figure out what you can make with what you’ve got. (This is also how you’ll realize if you’re missing anything essential.)

2) Stock up on eggs. “Eggs last a month and a half, so it’s not silly to buy a bunch of eggs,” she said. “You can use them for everything and they’re a great source of protein.”

3) Cook food from middle eastern countries, she advised, “because it’s made of a lot of stuff you might already have in your pantry.” Think: chickpeas, rice, and canned tomatoes as examples.

Sara has been using a 1976 Detroit Arab Women’s Union cookbook called “Sahtein.” 

The book is out of print, but she kindly shared this recipe for eggplant makloubeh. She used chicken, not lamb, because that’s what she had, and she had a few other tips for adapting the 1976 recipe for 2020’s quarantine:

I added some cumin, celery, and onions when boiling the meat, and froze the extra broth. Also added more cumin, coriander, and za'atar when cooking the meat. Oh and I baked the eggplants at 400 for 30 mins, mostly for time's sake, and used canned tomatoes rather than the two fresh tomatoes. I threw some sliced almonds into the rice. 

The book includes three different recipes, one with cauliflower, one with eggplant, and one with carrots. I made the eggplant one, but the other two are very similar and frozen cauliflower and carrots are easier to come by if you can't find any fresh eggplant. 

As if Sara weren’t busy enough with this, she’s also responsible for feeding her newborn. Thankfully, she says, “he only eats one thing and I can provide it.” 

Bonus Recipe: Frozen Cauliflower Rice Paella With Tinned Seafood

That headline might sound disgusting, but desperate times call for desperate measures—and everything Will Magliocco cooks is delicious. So, take my word for it: If you follow this recipe, you will be happy. 

Heat some olive oil in a saucepan over low heat. Crush a clove (or more, depending on how much you’re making) of garlic into the saucepan. Add dried thyme, crushed red pepper, and fennel seed. Blooming aromatics in oil like this is an important step, because it imbues the whole dish with these flavors down the line. If you add aromatics to a dish at the very end when you season, you’re only going to pick up the flavor here and there. The fennel seed especially is very, very fragrant, so don’t add too much.

After blooming the aromatics, add onion, cut into strands/ribbons. Turn up the heat so you can get color on the onion. Add some salt to help the onion expel all its moisture. This is a good time to add liquids that can contribute body — squid ink from tinned calamari, maybe a little bit of white wine, especially if you’re adding clams down the road. 

Add frozen cauliflower rice. As the cauliflower defrosts, add a little more salt to help the cauliflower expel more moisture. Mix. 

Towards the end of cooking, add your tinned seafood — cockles, mussels, calamari, octopus. maybe even sardines. Two important things here: first, if the seafood is preserved in a lot of brine/pickling liquid, rinse it before adding; second, add the seafood at the very end only to heat it. This seafood is precooked and will get tough very quickly if overcooked. Another nice thing to add at this stage would be some cut up cooked and jarred red bell pepper. 

Serve!

“Blooming the aromatics” is the weirdest term I’ve ever heard for smoking weed, but if Will says to do it, I’d trust him. 

Until next time...

As a rule, I don’t like when people tell me they were into something before it was cool. Like, congratulations on listening to Kendrick when he went by K.Dot. You knew Zion would be an All Star when he was a freshman in high school? Sick. Let me guess: You also liked David Benioff’s novels before anyone had heard of Game of Thrones. 

I despise this Ray Jaysian “I Hit It First” mentality as much as anyone else, which is why I hope you will forgive me for saying, just this once, that I was into Milk Bar before it was cool. 

Back when there was only one Milk Bar, I would travel down to the East Village for cereal milk soft serve whenever I could get my mom to bring me. First, when Milk Bar was attached to Ssäm Bar. Then, when it moved across the street. By the time Milk Bar expanded to Midtown and then the Upper West Side, I was going from store to store like I was a Deadhead and birthday cake truffles were LSD. 

Which is all to say: I was really, really excited to interview Christina Tosi, whose Milk Bar empire now spans the country. And friends, I am happy to report that this interview exceeded all of my expectations. She dropped, like, five different dessert recipes in the span of five minutes. She shared a groundbreaking hack for how to replace All Purpose Flour with homemade Oat Flour. And, most importantly, she reminded me that, even with everything we’re going through, happiness is only ever a few sticks of butter away. 

I’ll let her take it from here...

How To Make Salty, Malty, Sweet White Chocolate Pretzels

Christina: Even outside The Now Times, I am on a never-ending pursuit of how to hack a dessert after dinner. One of my favorite things to make currently is this: I melt some white chocolate chips and while they’re in the microwave and melting, I take pretzels and I crush them up and I fold them into the melted white chocolate until they’re nice and coated and you get this sort of salty malty sweet combination of things.

For some reason, dark chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips don’t do it for me. There’s something about the white chocolate that lets it be about the malty pretzel vibes that I’m very into. 

How To Hack Rice Krispies Treats 

Editor’s Note: I have no idea why “Rice Krispies Treats” is the official spelling of this dessert. The double plural boggles the mind. It’s like “Attorneys General,” which is already weird, except if it were “Attorneys Generals.” Makes no sense!

Christina: One of my other dessert hacks lately is I put a few marshmallows in a bigger cereal bowl with a little thing of butter and melt them in the way you would in large scale to make a big rice krispies treat, and while that’s melting, I go into the pantry and choose whatever cereal I have—usually it’s the remnants of boring cereals, things that aren’t super sugary or don’t have a lot of personality. And then, I’ll fold other stuff into that. 

So, like, I’ll take peanut butter and chocolate and when the marshmallow melted butter has pussed and gooed, I’ll stir those things in. And we’ll stir in the boring cereal or maybe some pretzels from there.

But I riff off the basics of a Rice Krispie Treat. 

You can go in so many directions with spices and seeds and nuts and dried fruits and rando baking ingredients or leftover chocolate bars from Valentine’s Day. These are the things in my pantry. I’m showing myself. 

What’s fun about this is, one, I get a little bit of that weird high you get when you engage your imagination, and two, it’s just for myself. That’s why I do these things at night in my DIY dessert land. 

How To Make Pie Bars Out Of Whatever’s On The Door of Your Fridge

Christina: I have been baking during the day a lot more now, and the thing i’ve been jonesing on the most is taking stock of what is on the doors of the fridge, which usually have jellyish vibes. I’m talking about the strange jars of things you never quite finished. And then figuring out how to repurpose those things. Cause right now is a good opportunity to clean out the old shit. 

So I kind of go through the rabbit hole every few days of, like, I have all this jam and jelly, what do I do with it? I made these pie bars the other day, which are like butter, flour, sugar, salt, pulsed together as though you’re making a pie crust but you don’t bring it all the way together with water. You just push half of it into a baking tin, use all of your jellies to cover it, crumble up the rest of it on top, and throw it in the oven. They’re extraordinary and simple, which is the sign of a great dessert. 

WATCH: Christina making oat cookie bars on Instagram. 

Why Homemade Oat Flour is a Perfect All Purpose Flour Substitute 

Christina: One of the first things I always want to do is take the item and grind it all the way down to understand what that state is. So if it’s dry, I want to grind it down into a flour. If it’s wet, I want to puree it down to see how much it holds its shape, and then I decide how to repurpose it from there. 

With oat flour, one, it’s super easy to bake with, so I made Cut Out Cookies yesterday, which are made with butter, light brown sugar, salt, and then whatever your flour is. But most people can’t find all-purpose flour on the shelves. I own a bakery, so it’s easy for me to go dig into my vats of flour, but it’s more fun to be like: What do you do without all purpose flour? So you can replace every cup of flour with about one and one thirds cup of oat flour.  

WATCH: Christina making four ingredient cut out cookies on Instagram.

Ground down oat has a flour-like consistency, which is super interesting, and it is not as flavor-bearing as whole wheat flour or rye flour or otherwise. It just has this really cozy vibe to it. What I’m finding is it holds all these other different things. As you can imagine, it holds cinnamon and sugar well. It’ll also hold some cozy savory flavors, like I’ll make some crackers today with curry powder and this oat flour, because the flavor of oat is just really soothing.

If you think about like, oat, or this idea of like hot cereal or porridge, it exists across all cultures. So then you can kind of start to ping around in your spice drawer as well to sort of play the sweet or savory game.

How To Make Oat Flour

Christina: You can use whatever you would normally use to, like, dice an onion or make salsa in a machine. So you can use your food processor. Or you can use a blender. I used a blender the other day cause I didn’t have a food processor.

So you can put it in the pitcher of a blender. Just don't crowd it. So do like a quarter cup at a time, just so it really starts to get going. And you just want to get it down as far to flour like consistency as possible. And that takes more than 15 seconds is what I tell people, because they’re not as patient in that pursuit.

How Christina Came Up With The Idea For Milk Bar’s Corn Cookie

Christina: Anything dry that you can grind down is a really fun way to think about a flour sub. Like that's how we made our corn cookies in the first place. I was like, “Oh, I love freeze dried fruits and vegetables from working at WD 50!” And I was like, “Oh, what if I take these and grind them down into a flour like consistency and then all of a sudden you start to learn how to swap those things out in really interesting ways?”

Milk Bar’s corn cookie is a sugar cookie with freeze dried corn substituted in. We grind it down into a flour and you can just sub it out.

So when everyone's going for the hearty stuff on the aisles of the grocery store, go for the freeze dried vegetables. 

READ: Here’s the recipe for Milk Bar’s corn cookies, which are my favorite Milk Bar cookies.

What pantry ingredients you should always have around if you want to bake

Christina: In the most basic form, I'd say you need a fat. Butter’s the most delicious fat. Olive oil is also a great fat for baking. Or shortening lard.

You need some sort of binder, which is flour or an adjacency. You need some sort of salt because I just am a very big believer that every dessert needs salt to just find a balance of flavor. 

And then you need a sweetener, which can be anything from granulated sugar to 10x powdered sugar to light brown sugar, dark brown molasses, honey. 

You can make do with all of that. And from there, you just have to know your ingredients, which is like: If you’re using honey, honey’s wet. It has water content. That means that you are going to have to offset it either by baking time or by adding more of your binder or what have you. And then you find the balance of flavor there. 

But I think the best part of this day and age of baking is like this is where the brilliance comes out of your kitchen. Don't take it so seriously. Don't go for perfection. Go on an adventure of what you can learn and find. And the internet is your best friend.

What charities to support

Christina: We do a lot of work at Milk Bar with the Birthday Party Project. They throw birthday parties for kids who don't have the resources to throw their own birthdays, whether they're homeless or just in an economic distress. And I mean, as you can imagine, because so much of my work comes from childhood moments and memories and nostalgia, that's just something that I hold really near and dear to protecting outright and always. 

I'm also obviously a very big believer in our independent restaurant food community.

And the IRA is doing really great things in Congress to try and get that 2 trillion dollars spent. So if you need to put your voice out there, go to saverestaurants.co. We need all the voices possible. 

But if you're just looking for a way to support humanity in general, I think little children need to know that they're loved and that a day where they get to feel celebrated is at thebirthdaypartyproject.org.

Shout Out: Grocery-Store Workers 

As Olga Khazan reported in The Atlantic, several grocery-store workers across the country have tested positive for COVID-19. This is heartbreaking—and it’s a moment for all of us to recognize the sacrifices they have made to keep our country fed. 

Make no mistake: Grocery-store workers are first responders; and they deserve to be treated like it.  

JAMIE OLIVER HAS A QUARANTINE COOKING SHOW

As a proud member of the literati, I would never read the Daily Mail, let alone believe an article in it. But let’s imagine, as a hypothetical, that I do read the Daily Mail; and that I read that Jamie Oliver is hosting a cooking show called “Keep Cooking and Carry On;” and that, in the first episode, he manages to make tagliatelle with nothing but flour and water in “minutes.” Were this true, I would 100%, absolutely, unequivocally be watching this show. (And I know you would be, too.)

Until next time...

But before I interviewed him, I had no idea just how thoughtful, big-hearted, and kind he would be. 

When he picked up the phone, he was walking through his freezer prepping for the day ahead—not only for takeout orders, but for the family meal he’s been serving for free to service industry workers every day at 3pm.

“If you’re a dishwasher, come over, we’re going to get you fed,” he told me. “There’ll be beans and rice, cornbread, gumbo and whatnot—because a lot of people are living hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck, and they just need a hot meal.”

“Funds are tight,” he added, “but I got food, so that’s one of those things we can do.”

This interview is full of important advice—on what to cook, yes, but also on how Hurricane Katrina taught Isaac to be resilient in the face of hard times. So I’m going to cut this introduction short and let Isaac speak for himself.

What Isaac Has in His Pantry

Isaac: I’m not going to say I’m lucky, but I’m lucky for this one little fact: I have a fully-stocked restaurant of dry goods. And booze. So I have a hundred pounds of dried beans in the back of my restaurant now. I always keep a pantry full of dry pasta, dry goods. My freezer is stocked full of meat and whatnot. We have a lot of seasonings. I’m a condiment whore by heart.

So I’m good at the house, and I have two giant freezers of food that we just packed full at the restaurant, so I’m okay, and what I can extend to friends, family and people in need is that every day at 3 o’clock, we’re having family meal for whoever needs it.

Editor’s Note: Isaac is raising money to make sure he can continue serving family meal every day. If you can donate, their Venmo is @toupsmeatery.

Why You Should Be Cooking Beans Instead Of Pasta

Isaac: Dry beans are a great source of protein, they’ve got some nutrients in them, and they’re really good because once they’re dry, they have a near-infinite shelf life. And if you got some sausage, you got some chicken, you got something in the freezer—even if you just have some seasoning, some salt, a little butter—you can make a pot of beans good. Feed a lot of people, doesn’t cost a whole lot. So beans are my number one. And it’s red beans and rice every Monday over here. 

READ: In honor of New Orleans, here’s Kenji López-Alt’s red beans and rice recipe. (Yes, this is my FOURTH TIME mentioning Kenji in this newsletter. No, he has not come on yet. No, I am not giving up hope.)

I prefer to go beans over pasta, and I prefer rice over pasta—I think rice has got a little more nutrients. I’m not that great of a doctor to say which one’s more healthy, but you also want to switch it up.

You eat beans three days a week, you start to go nuts. So, try to have some different seasonings around, some variety. Try to eat frozen vegetables. Get your produce while you can. I don’t know how long it’s going to last.

I went to the store the other day, and it’s weird: all the toilet paper and ramen noodles were gone, but the produce, the fruit and vegetables were great, and the meat was great.

Why You Shouldn’t Eat Ramen All Day (And Should Instead Google How To Grow Vegetables)

Isaac: What I do want to shout out is what not to do. Don’t eat ramen noodles all day. And that’s nothing against ramen noodles—I’ve been guilty of eating a pack or two myself, here and there, but that’s not a great way to sustain a living. So make sure you get your nutrients in.

Now is a great time to fire up that garden. It’s springtime, start growing your vegetables. You don’t know how to grow vegetables? Guess what, you’re at home all day. Google it.

What Seasonings You Should Stock Up On

Isaac: Get some of those cans or boxes of stock, or even those—I would never suggest this in a professional setting—but in a homemaker setting, those stock bases. Those stock bases and some of those low-sodium chicken stocks, beef stocks, and pork stocks—those are gonna be the ones that carry a lot of flavor, with minimal cost.

ICYMI: Ivan Orkin also endorsed stock bases. And David Chang uses bouillon cubes in his tomato sauce. 

You can get a jar of those bases for a couple of dollars and it’s enough to make five gallons of beans to keep you going. I keep fresh-ground black pepper in some of those waiter grinders. I keep cayenne pepper and Aleppo pepper around. Smoked paprika. A bunch of different good hot sauces. And you could doctor up anything, with just those five things.

Oh, and butter. Butter doesn’t go bad. Olive oil. You gotta have your fats. Salt makes everything taste better.

A pat of butter at the end of everything will make everything go great. Instead of using water to cook your beans, use stock. And bust out your crockpot or your slow-cooker, and put your beans on the night before, and let it rock until the morning so you have to do minimal work.

What He’ll Do If He’s Stuck At Home

Isaac: I’ve already got a plan if we get quarantined in the house: I’m going to get real good at my guitar real quick. I don’t watch a lot of TV right now. I’m only on season 2 of Game of Thrones! I’ve got so much TV to watch, it’s unbelievable. I haven’t read a book in a long time and I’ve got a stack of books to read. And I’ve got some menus to develop. 

How Hurricane Katrina Taught Him To Stay Positive

Isaac: I am actually pretty naturally calm under duress. Especially this type of duress, like during the Hurricane. I’m calm as a soldier. And I feel a responsibility to stay positive. 

I’m not a soothsayer, I can’t predict the future, but I do genuinely have a good feeling that once this is over, the recovery process is going to go faster than everybody thinks. You know, we’ve been through hell and disaster down here and I’ve seen some shit. And I think that’s why everybody’s calm down here in New Orleans.

We didn’t have water and utilities and roofs for a long time. But we still have water and electricity now. What, we’ve gotta stay home? We stock up on booze, fuck it. So I think there’s a general sense of: We’ve done this before. It sucks right now, but everything’s going to be alright... hopefully.

You have to have a positive attitude. You start getting a negative attitude in your head, then it’s over. Be positive until you gotta go negative. And if it goes negative, fuck it. Try to be positive then too.

What you can do to support restaurants right now

Isaac: To support the people who need it, go to the actual restaurants that are doing takeout right now and trying to keep their employees paid. I’m not that internet-savvy, I’m pretty sure my wife would slap me in the back of my head because she does all that type of stuff, but quite literally, if you know a restaurant that’s doing takeout and you can afford it, please support that restaurant. If you can, tip them; if not, we understand completely.

If you can’t afford to go out to eat, we’ve got family meal at three. Do what you can, but we all understand. If I get very minimal business, I get it. Funds are tight and this is a bit of a nightmare. So if we have to shut down until it’s all over, we shut down. We’re going to play it by ear. But do what you can. If you’re well-off, come spend some money. If not, come eat some family meal. We’ll all hang out together.

READ: “Will we have an America without restaurants?”

In the Washington Post, chef Naomi Pomeroy wrote about why restaurants need economic assistance to open back up. And in the New York Times, Missy Robbins, Tom Colicchio, Marcus Samuelson, and more asked a harrowing question: “Will we have an America without restaurants?”

If that image terrifies you, call your representative and senators right now: 202-224-3121. (Seriously, do it. It’s not hard. And it really does make a difference.) 

JOSE ANDRES IS MAKING ANCHOVY SUSHI

That, my friends, is what cooking in quarantine—and Cooking in Quarantine TM—is all about: Taking what you have and making it delicious. 

Chef Floyd Cardoz

This morning, we learned that Chef Floyd Cardoz lost his life to coronavirus. I never met Floyd, but I know what he meant to so many people—and I am heartbroken for everyone who loved him.

Here’s what David Chang wrote:

I am sending strength to all who are grieving this morning. And I hope this story serves as a reminder of why it’s so important for you to stay home. Lives really do depend on it.

Until next time…

When you’re born in New York, you swear on oath to fulfill a few sacred duties: Thou shalt not compliment any other city’s bagels. Thou shalt not walk slowly. And thou shalt not say even a kind word about Boston. 

I have lived my life by these commandments, especially the last one. I will be the first to tell you there’s more to do on most blocks in Manhattan there is in all of Downtown Boston; the F train, alone, has more character than the MBTA; and Bill Belichick definitely deflated those footballs.

But despite my piety to New York, there are two exceptions to my belligerence toward Boston. The first is David Ortiz’s “This is our fucking city” remarks, which, in my professional opinion, deserve a place in the pantheon of great orations next to The Gettysburg Address and Dr. King’s “How long? Not long” speech.

Which brings me to the second exception to my disdain for Boston, Michael Scelfo, who not only runs three of my favorite restaurants in the world—Alden and Harlow, Waypoint, and Longfellow Bar—but is also one of the kindest dudes around. 

If you’ve never had his squid ink gemelli or his root vegetable latkes with honey roasted figs or his take on pigs n’ blankets, it’s hard to capture just how fucking delicious his food is in writing. 

Editor’s note: LOOK AT THESE PIGS N’ BLANKETS:

But I do hope our interview gives you a sense of how generous, decent, and wise Michael is—and inspires you to do everything you can to support restaurants like his when they need it most. 

He shared great tips on how to cook, stretch meals, and plan ahead during quarantine. He’s also been posting recipes of the food he’s been making on Instagram, so as soon as you’re done reading this newsletter, you should follow him there to learn how to cook dinners that look like this: 

This was one of the most engaging conversations I’ve had since starting this newsletter—and I hope you dig it, too. 

But first, I have big news: Michael shared the recipe for his legendary pickled corn pancakes, which was originally written by his mom. When he texted it to me, I told him I felt like I was Nicholas Cage stealing the Declaration of Independence. But unlike our founding document, this recipe lives up to the promises it makes. 

This dish is the best, and I am going to make it tonight. You should, too. 

HOW TO MAKE PICKLED CORN PANCAKES

Ingredients: 

-Yellow Corn Grits, 4 cup

-Cornmeal, coarse grind, 4 cup

-AP Flour, 6 cup

-Kosher salt, 6 TBSP

-Baking powder, 3 T

-Baking soda, 3 T

-Grapeseed oil, 1/2 cup

-Buttermilk, 10 cup

-Black pepper, ground to taste

-Pickled corn, 4 cup (Note: Regular canned or frozen corn soaked in vinegar over night will work too.)

-Honey, 3 T

Method: Mix dry ingredients. Add wet and mix well, make sure there are no lumps. Allow to rest 15-20 minutes to hydrate the flour.

Heat butter in pan and drop dollops of batter in, cook like traditional pancakes

Why meal planning is so important

Michael: I think meal planning right now is huge. People should be thinking about their budgets, thinking about what they need to get through for a week, week and a half. 

Write out exactly what you’re going to make for dinner each day and then just have enough on hand to cover that, and then whatever incidentals you have. And that'll go a long way to stretching food for everyone across the board, and kind of controlling and keeping people from just kind of hoarding and overstocking on stuff.

Editor’s Note: In addition to chicken stock and tomato sauce, which Michael talks about more below, Michael told me that people who are meal planning should be cooking frittatas, macaroni casseroles, and pork shoulder roasts—and stir-frying leftovers into brown rice. Those are dishes, he says, that can last for days and can be transformed in all sorts of interesting ways.

He’s also been grilling vegetables, which he then repurposes: 

What meals you can stretch

Michael: If you do a chicken with carrots and vegetables and make a nice broth, you can get three or four meals out of that. You can pull the meat off the bone and shred it and make a salad. You can take the vegetables out and chop them up and put them back in the broth and throw in a little pasta and make a soup out of it. You know, you can use that stock to make other things at home. So I think that's a great one. 

READ: Michael Symon shared his tips for how to roast a chicken in one of last week’s newsletters.

You can also make a simple tomato sauce, very classic. I’m thinking about the kind of things that my mom made when we were kids, that we got meals out of over the course of a week. Those are the kind of things, you know, classic old school comforts that'll last a while, that you can turn into several meals. I think you got to kind of think like that right now.

Editor’s Note: Michael saved an Instagram Story to his profile, where he posts step-by-step instructions for how to make his tomato sauce. Here are the ingredients:

You should watch the entire “Meal Ideas” Instagram Story saved to Michael’s profile, where he’s constantly demonstrating how to make meals like this: 

How to make magic out of the stuff in your pantry

Michael: Vinegar and lemons and acid of any kind is going to be your friend right now. You can use it to jazz up whatever you have in your pantry right now. If you've got beans and tuna and canned vegetables that you haven't used in a while, make a salad out of that. Dress it with some olive oil and some lemon juice and some dried oregano out of the cupboard and a little red pepper flake and some salt. 

Toss it together and let it hang out on the counter for 30 minutes, and it's a nice salad.

Look, we're all doing what we have to do in our own respective ways right now. So do the best you can with what you have and try to make magic out of those things that have been sitting there.

How Michael is supporting his staff

Michael: My restaurant went from a full service restaurant to a food rescue for my low-income and food-insecure staff in a matter of hours. We immediately took all of our perishable product and started to reorganize it. We continue to do this, trying to think in terms of rationing. We made spreadsheets for our staff members to tell us, “Hey, what do you need to navigate the next month?” Like, “What does your family need? Is it diapers, tampons, formula, toilet paper?”

You know, eggs, milk, rice, vegetables, whatever we could do. So we started making these packages up and handing them out. Luckily, we were sitting on industrial-sized cases of toilet paper. We had hundreds and hundreds of rolls at each restaurant that we could divvy up and give to people, because you can’t get it in the store right now. Which is just crazy, you know? 

So that's what we've been doing. We’ve also had some small Venmo funds and reduced gift card sales to contribute and offset the cost of this. But my mission now is to just kind of carry my team through this as best as I can, and hopefully navigate it and get us to a point that we can reopen.

Why the government needs to bail out restaurants

Michael: The problem is that it's very clear at this point that restaurants are not going to reopen for most of us in this industry without some type of federal or state-level support or bailout. There's just no way that everyone's going to be able to pony up the resources it's going to take. It's very expensive to reopen, rehire all these people, retrain people, get your restaurants back up and running—assuming your landlord is being cooperative. Not every landlord is being cooperative right now. Landlords are a finicky bunch, to put it kindly. 

We’re going to need a lot of help. So now my attention is turning to how can I get senators and local politicians here to fast-track programs that are, in my opinion, inevitable.

If we bailed out Wall Street, if we're talking about a bailout for a cruise industry that has about a quarter of a million employees total—compared to the restaurant industry, which has about a twenty to twenty-five million people workforce—let’s be real: Something is going to have to be done. 

We need a hard focus on insurance companies. We need the federal government to leverage them—and say, “Look, we are going to federally back you on honoring business interruption claims.” If they do that, I think most of this is survivable.

I'm sure the politicians are hearing from the insurance company lobbyists that are in their pockets that, you know, “You're gonna tank our industry if you honor this,” just like they said with mortgage backed securities. But we bailed them out then, so everyone didn't lose their house. This is the equivalent of losing your house, en masse, across the country. In an even worse way, because our house generates incomes for hundreds and hundreds of people. 

So that's kind of where we're at. It's not great news. But, you know, I'm oddly optimistic that we're gonna get there.

What you can do right now to support restaurants 

Michael: First and foremost, call your local congressman and senators and public officials at any level right now to advocate on behalf of the restaurant industry. 

Editor’s Note: Call the capitol switchboard at (202)-224-3121.

I would also say, find your favorite restaurant that you enjoy supporting on a regular basis—and buy some gift cards from them, buy some merchandise from them. A lot of restaurants have set up Venmos for their staffs to have their income supplemented. We’ve done that for our staff and it's being run by our staff itself.

Editor’s Note: If you want to support Michael’s staff, Venmo them here: @LF-AH-WPstaff. 

One fun thing we did is we asked people to post their favorite moments or favorite dishes from their favorite restaurants onto Instagram. I got some really touching posts. Someone out of Seattle texted a friend a picture of pickled corn pancakes they tried to make for their home quarantine meal the other night. And it actually looked pretty good. I might hire that person.

WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE LINING UP OUTSIDE CARBONE?

Eater reported that the police had to be called (twice!) because so many people were waiting outside Carbone for delivery. I like (genuinely excellent) overpriced rigatoni as much as the next guy, but there are SO MANY restaurants that really need your help right now. So don’t force your Caviar courier to stand next to 100 other couriers on Thompson Street and become a vector of COVID-19—all because you and your other I-banker friends want super sized veal parm. 

Order L’Artusi instead, and donate the $50 you save on dinner to the Restaurant Workers’ Community Fund. 

Cool? Cool.

Homecooking Hacks: GO TO H-MART

A VERY IMPORTANT PSA from my friend Adam Farina, who’s one of the best writers I know and one of my favorite humans, even though he, too, is from New England: 

Twitter is usually not the best place to go for advice on, well, anything—but this tweet that went viral last week advocating for people to support their local asian supermarkets is a notable exception. My girlfriend and I went to our favorite H-Mart on Sunday, and not only was it nearly empty during peak hours, but we got everything we needed, from hot pot ingredients to onions to toilet paper, and left without waiting in line for more than a minute. On the way home, we passed our local Whole Foods (which, as far as I can tell, hasn’t carried an onion in at least 10 days) and its line stretched down the street. 

Trump’s racism during this pandemic has led to increased physical and verbal attacks against Asians, and, at least anecdotally, kept people away from Asian restaurants and supermarkets alike. Unfortunately, we can’t vote against him for another 8 months—so, in the meantime, I encourage you to join me in fighting his racism by voting H-Mart. 

At least three friends have verified Farina’s reporting: While supermarkets around the country have empty shelves, H-Mart is FULLY STOCKED. Don’t be racist. Go to your local Asian supermarket. Thank me later. 

Until next time...