We’re still in a lockdown, saving lives as it’s a terrifying amount of lives lost to this killer so stealthy and unprepossessing. We cook to keep ourselves and our near and dear fed and well, we cook to keep ourselves sane – nothing like baking to give you a bit of therapeutic ritual to it – and we cook because it's one bit of happiness to give ourselves and our families.
I am going flat bread this weekend: I’m baking a batch of pita breads to stuff my pork gyros, my bulgogi beef, my spiced prawns into. A pocket of goodness: warmed up pita with the spicy meat stuffed in, with shredded cucumber and hey, maybe mast o khiar dip for an ultimate experience? If you don’t fancy bread, you can have a dinner of lamb koftas and a spicy yoghurt dip. And if baking is totally not your thing, try tortillas stuffed with pork griot or gyros.
What about chicken fiorentina spooned over plain spaghetti? Make it with frozen spinach. I miss fresh vegetables, especially the seasonal ones like asparagus – am I going to get any this spring? Ones I could eat raw in a salad, will I be incredibly lucky to buy some fresh, local asparagus? I doubt it.
But obviously lots more important things than asparagus; we’re surviving, getting on with it, soldiering on. We’re baking: featured in The Guardian last week my old dough bread recipe hopefully has made a few people happier; and there’s worse to be doing than baking Samin Nosrat’s midnight cake.
More simple flat bread perhaps for later this week: focaccia savoury or sweet. I’ll certainly do creamy chicken for dinner one night and the chicken tray bake on another. I’ll make the bacon and blue cheese lettuce, be it a side or a skinny main meal. I’ll cook. I’ll stay sane. You do likewise.