A topic of food conversation during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has been on recreating the foods you have missed. Most of my missing foods would be "cured" by an air fryer. I've also been missing fried clam strips. I swore those were in the frozen food section but haven't seen them.
Comfort foods reflect the past, the safety of the known. The unknown might be more fun where you can invent something new.
I learned about bagna cauda years ago from Nigella Lawson. Lawson didn't invent bagna cauda but she was reading my mind about something I hadn't contemplated.
Bagna cauda combines 4 of the best foods on earth: garlic, olive oil, anchovies, and butter. The recipe varies but you combine the first 3 ingredients, making sure the anchovies dissolve in the olive oil. Add the butter in last.
I was thinking about bagna cauda as I went searching for spaghetti in the pantry. Why not do bagna cauda spaghetti?
You could certainly have a lovely dish of spaghetti, garlic, olive oil, anchovies, and butter. That could be very tasty. A little bland, though, since spaghetti doesn't bring much to the party.
My variation of something I just invented was to add a little tomato puree, some red pepper flakes, and a little black pepper. Bagna cauda spaghetti with a bit of spice.
You might have had spaghetti with butter as a child. You might have had garlic, anchovies, and olive oil with spaghetti. You might have had tomatoes with red pepper flakes with spaghetti. This combines a bit from each of these categories.
The garlic is local; lost my local butter supply but good tasting butter and olive oil really helps this dish.
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Restaurants do certain foods better than most cooks. I have been craving onion rings, which they do better than I would do. No restaurant can do bagna cauda spaghetti better than I can because I invented the dish. I already know I can make it because I invented the recipe.
A friend of mine who has been staying away from pizza during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic was talking about the pepperoni shortage. I replied that you could substitute chorizo for pepperoni and have a different approach to pizza.
Pizza is another good way to reinvent something more to your liking. You can put ingredients that pizzerias might not have such as chorizo or eggplant or a local farmers market sausage.
Experiment with foods such as your love of kalamata olives and use them in ways you might not have considered. Feeling the need to bake bread during the pandemic? Slip in a few kalamata olives for olive bread.
My local farmers market has homemade breads. I tried the zucchini bread this year. Not a huge fan of zucchini but the zucchini bread was rather good. Well, the bread had raisins and I am not a fan of the raisins. I might experiment with zucchini bread with no raisins.
Go through your pantry and look for foods you bought to experiment. Have a small can of chipotle peppers? You can make a spicy mayo with the peppers, adobo sauce (the one the peppers came in with the can), and regular mayonnaise. You can slip in roasted red pepper in a hummus for a different flavor profile.
You have the time to be creative and build a whole new dish that a restaurant would be jealous to have on its menu. The dish can be consumed at home while keeping socially distant for a lot cheaper price than you would find in a restaurant.
photo credit: me
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