Foods Under Quarantine

This time of being locked indoors has made the gathering of foods feel like an Olympic event. The need to plan, shop, and organize feels like we’re living in a bygone era when mothers spent a great deal of time planning, shopping, organizing, and cooking meals for their families.  Added to this historical reality of domesticity, in my house there was the factor of being Korean, which meant an equal amount of time spent in tiny Korean markets where my mom would stock up on the essentials for a Korean kitchen. Admittedly when I was very young, there were no Korean markets in Suburban Philadelphia. My dad would drive us into New York City to 32nd Street, which still serves as Korean street, to stock up on the necessary items that my mom would need. Like any good Korean-American, my kitchen is also stocked with Korean food items, along with all of the usual pantry items of an American kitchen, meaning my cabinets are very full.

 I love to cook and find browsing recipes and reading cookbooks as a way to self-soothe. You can imagine the hours I must be spending reading cookbooks and browsing cooking sites given this incredibly stressful period. I find being in the kitchen one of the ways I like to relax. Cooking provides me an opportunity to be creative, something baking does not since that requires a precision I find tedious and slightly constricting. My time in the kitchen had been limited these last few years, so this quarantine has provided me with oodles of time to muck around in the kitchen. You’ll know the quarantine has gone on too long if I start baking, which as of this writing has produced a blackberry cake (very good) and an olive oil cake (amazing). My son, who has always loved food, has now joined me in the kitchen, which has only made my happy space all the happier.

Here are a few of the things that I have been cooking in these past 4000 days. I will admit that the years of cooking has given me many skills that translates to…I’m very fast in the kitchen, or as my family likes to say about me, I’m in there turning and burning at a rate most people would find slightly dizzying. All of this means many dishes coming out of the kitchen, but the kitchen looking like a bomb had gone off, translation, a massive mess left behind.

With all of this time I’ve been experimenting by creating meals where one ingredient is the star for our dinners that have become so important to us as a family. One of the ingredients I’ve been using has been Japanese Miso, an ingredient not foreign to me, but new in the ways I’ve found it used while browsing my two favorite cooking sites: The New York Times Cooking and Food52. 

Of all of the Miso dishes I have cooked, the hands down favorite was the Miso-Mushroom Pasta recipe from Yi Jun Loh on Food52. Mushrooms and Miso are both heavy umami flavors, so imagine the flavor bomb of the two together. This dish, while complex in flavors, is easy and a quick, almost a 30 Minute Meal, a nod to Rachel Ray, who coined and made a fortune off of this idea of a meal only taking 30 minutes. I shall not digress with my opinions about Rachel Ray or my other “favorite” Food Network personality I love to comment on, “The Pioneer Woman”.

The other star ingredient has been ramps, a delicate leek that grows wild and is only available for such a short window in the spring. Ever since moving back East I have been obsessed with ramps, always looking for different ways to use them. This year it was a tie between the ramps pesto and the risotto with ramps and asparagus. The pesto recipe is thanks to NY Times Cooking while the risotto with ramps and asparagus was from Food52. I used the pesto at a later date for a pasta dish, which was a lovely side for a simple baked salmon.

Aside from using one ingredient in a number of ways, I’ve been finding recipes that utilizes items in my pantry as well as fresh ingredients that need to be used before they go bad. One recipe that was a massive hit was the Creamy Tuscan Chicken from Katie Workman on Food52. The recipe used many of the items I had on hand, required very little prep, and was amazingly fresh and light in taste in spite of the use of the heavy cream. It was so well received that my son has asked for it again, which is the highest of compliments.

Hooni Kim, a wonderful chef and owner of two highly touted restaurants in NYC, Danji and Hanjan, just released his first cookbook, “My Korea”. As an avid fan of his food, I was very excited to receive my signed copy of the book. His attention to fresh ingredients and sourcing of these ingredients is to be applauded. The first recipe I cooked were the Perilla Dumplings with Pork and Shrimp. Perilla leaves or sesame leaves replaced the dumpling skins that we all know very well. Since the leaves I had were quite large, the dumplings were a healthy size. I did not have the garlic chives, but had ramps which I used instead. I put the large platter of dumplings down and I swear they were gone within 10 minutes. Sadly they were eaten before I could take a proper picture of them, which I guess is the best endorsement yet.

Food, the greatest comfort for many people and cultures, has become the central event of our disjointed days. It is the time when my family gathers together, recount our days (even if our days are spent within the same apartment), discuss different topics, and try to find the good in these times when so much seems bad.

Miso-Mushroom Pasta recipe from Yi Jun Loh on Food52.

Risotto with ramps and asparagus from Food52.