when life gives you potatoes, make croquettes.
55 days of confinement, and we can finally leave the house without having a signed attestation, stating why we are leaving the house. As I reflect on the past nearly two months, I realize that I have done very little with my time at home. Yes, I started a garden and now have arugula and kale coming out of my ears. I’ve listened to countless episodes of My Favorite Murder and Love it or Leave it, and I am tanner than I have been in a very long time. But I wrote zero blog posts, and I’ve only read 87 pages of Traité d’Oenologie. I haven’t been that great about keeping in touch with friends, and I haven’t learned a new language or honed a new skill. I guess pandemics are not the time to be overly productive in any case.
The one thing I have excelled at is cooking. I cooked dinner six days a week for the last 55 days. Frequently dinner consists of a quiche with whatever I have in the fridge or spicy fried rice. Or any type of pintxo. I’ve also been working my way through Mimi Thorisson’s cookbook. But at the same time cooking a torte with duck confit and foie gras and cognac seems a little extravagant when we are locked in our homes with a pandemic raging around us.
While there have been some shortages at the supermarket (read: rice, pasta, eggs, and flour are the usual culprits), we haven’t had to forgo anything, and we haven’t been hoarding either. Although the way I use butter makes it look like I’m hoarding it when I go to the store. Who says half a kilo of butter is not a normal amount to purchase every time you go to the supermarket. Butter is the one thing I can’t go without. Plus this gâteau Breton calls for a quarter of a kilo of butter.
Anyway, we’re lucky to have two fruit/vegetable stands, two boucheries, two supermarkets, and a boulangerie all just 5 minutes from our apartment. Meaning, the fridge is usually stocked to its gills, especially given it’s a small French fridge. In preparation for confinement, we bought the usuals: pasta, rice, butter, grated cheese, and canned goods (read: tuna, duck confit, pâté, and foie gras). Normal, right? Nowadays, our shopping lists usually always include fresh chorizo, padrons, onions, garlic, oranges for fresh squeezed OJ, butter, eggs, puff pastry. Those are the things that are almost always in our fridge. Our staples if you will. We also stock up on cheese once a week at the local fromagerie. And baguettes are consumed on a daily basis, one to two a day.
Below are a few of my favorite meals from our time in confinement.
