Quarantine Cuisine

This key lime pie was a TRIUMPH!!

What have I been doing during the stay-at-home orders, you ask? Cooking up a storm! It all started with a request to all of my friends on Facebook for their favorite recipes that are time-consuming and special. My thought process was that I finally had time to make all of those prep-intensive dishes that I would typically avoid. My request yielded TONS of fun suggestions from my circle of friends. Off I went!

We started with homemade Chinese dumplings, which were delicious. However, since we couldn't find ground pork in the grocery store (Damn hoarders.), we had to fill them with a ground turkey base. This made for a drier dumpling interior than I would have liked. The other thing I learned while making these is that you really can't roll your dumpling dough TOO thinly. As far as I'm concerned, the thinner the better, as the dough swells a bit when it's steamed. We served these with edamame and lots of soy sauce for dipping.

I don't have a tagine, but you don't need one to make this delicious dish!

Another quarantine cuisine winner was Chicken Tagine with Lemons and Olives. (I didn't have preserved lemons, so I used a smaller amount of fresh ones.) This one turned out REALLY good, and we served it with couscous to soak up the sauce!

We also made potato and onion latkes, which were so tasty! I rarely fry foods in  my home (the mess, the smell, etc.), but these little crispy pancakes were worth it! We served them with several options for accompaniment, but I think my favorite was a dollop of sour cream, a sliver of smoked salmon, and a swallow of cold vodka. Divine. This is the recipe, which my friend Chris shared with me:


Potato Pancakes
(naleśniki ziemniaczane — pronounced NAH-lez-NEE-kee JIM-nyah-CHAIN)

4-5 large Russet potatoes
1 large onion
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons flour
½ - ⅔ teaspoon salt
Dash of pepper
¼ to ½ cup cooking oil

Peel and finely grate the potatoes and onion, then drain about half of the liquid they make. Don’t panic when the grated potatoes and their juice begin to turn brown; this is normal. Add the eggs, salt and pepper, then slowly beat in the flour. The batter will be thick, but wet.

Cook the pancakes on medium heat in your largest skillet. You want the oil to just come up to the edges, not engulf the pancakes. Make each pancake with about a quarter cup of batter, pressing them flat with a spoon or spatula until they’re about ½ inch thick. Stir the batter between batches. Cook them for 3-4 minutes on each side (until golden brown; darker brown is better), then drain them on paper towels. The uncooked middle doesn’t get too hot, so I gently flip them onto my fingers and carefully slide them into the oil to avoid splashing.

Top with ketchup, sour cream, applesauce, your favorite syrup or nothing at all. Makes 12-15 pancakes (about three inches in diameter).

There's a lot of butter and cream in this rigatoni,
but it is so, so good.

I, like everyone else in America, also made banana bread. Mine was sweetened with applesauce and honey, and I've already made a second loaf of this recipe! You can find it here. (I also add nuts to my banana bread - either walnuts or pecans.)

We made Ina Garten's rigatoni with sausage and fennel, which is really not good for you while being so, so good for you. I was surprised by how much crushing the fennel in a mortar and pestle and adding it to the dish made a difference. Delish!

During quarantine on a random Friday night, you may find yourself hankering for oatmeal raisin cookies. And frankly, what else have you got to do? So you make them! These were fantastic warm from the over with a glass of cold milk. And raisins and oatmeal are healthy. Ergo, this is a "health cookie."

One of the chief triumphs of quarantine cuisine was these chicken enchiladas. Oh, my friends. They are so, so delicious. The recipe makes 6 big enchiladas, and one is plenty for a meal. So, for our family of three, this recipe serves us twice. (And you could make TWO recipes, then portion them out and freeze them, for a total of FOUR meals for our little family of three.) The homemade enchilada sauce (which I made with homemade chicken broth) is what really puts these enchiladas over the top. Amazing.

The other over-the-top standout so far has been this key lime pie. Key lime pie has long been hubs' favorite dessert. If we're out to dinner, and key lime pie is on the dessert menu, he'll order it. Well, we were stuck at home, and I thought, "Why not? How hard can it be?" Turns out, not that hard. He gobbled this pie up almost as fast as I made it! A huge hit!

One of the standouts of quarantine cuisine - this fantastic recipe for chicken enchiladas! A keeper!

Eight weeks in to isolation, we're starting to ease up a bit on quarantine cuisine so we can still wear our blue jeans. BUT it's been really fun to try some of my friends' favorite recipes, and we've definitely found some keepers!