Pandemic Cooking: Fed up and Locked Down

By Oliver Monk

Part diary, part food blog and all cookery book, one man's light-hearted exploration of cooking during the pandemic. Over 100 planned recipes from unexpectedly tasty success to total disaster and take-out. Enjoy the journey yourself or give as a gift to the significant cook in your life. From chocolate cake to venison via salads, chowder and fish pie there is an idea for every taste.

This is half diary, half recipe book and two thirds a kind of blog about food. That makes it nearly two books in one - now there’s a bargain!

It started because I get quite excited about making food and am fairly vague about recipes. This is generally fine, but has led to some interesting calamities too (the solid couscous motorcycle helmet to name just one). It also means that when I do get it right and I / we think “that was fantastic!”, I can rarely repeat the experience.
So, this book was intended to rectify that. As you probably guessed from the title, this was mostly written during the recent COVID-19 lockdown(s). I’ve not laboured much on the difficulties and inconveniences of that, it is a given. Like most people, we stuck to the rules and focused on living and getting through it.

For me, a large part of that survival was cooking, which I (generally) find relaxing and fun. For those of you who want to know such things, there are approximately 100 recipes in here, made over a period of 12 months of varying levels of lockdown, May 2020 to 2021. Technically, for the purists amongst us, there are actually about 80 recipes and then I made some improvements and made some of them again.

I invite you to join me for a light-hearted view of my food-related lockdown experience. Try some of the recipes; there is plenty of variety from chocolate cake to venison via salads, chowder and fish pie. If you’re really good, I might invite you for dinner and share. Based on my track record so far, you might be lucky (or not) with the quality of dinner...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oliver Monk
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005068615

Oliver Monk

Food-loving engineer with a passion for creation Living in the UK, hoping to move to France at some point.

Book preview

Rhubarb Liqueur

~200g Rhubarb, chopped into chunks

70g golden caster sugar

375ml Vodka

Zest of 2off Oranges

10 crushed Cardamom pods (to open them)

1 cap of vanilla essence – supposed to be pods but I hadn’t got any, so essence it is.

This afternoon, we met up with a couple of friends in the park for a picnic – in a Covid-19 friendly style. Was lovely to see them and chat, best of all they’d been to the local pub for me, which seems to be doing a roaring trade in takeout in 4pint takeaway bottles – Enville from the Old Mo -heavenly! I made Hummus for us to take along and chopped up some of the huge number of carrots we seem to be getting delivered. It was ok, not my finest work, but ok with pine nuts and sunflower seeds. I realised afterwards that I’d added too much cumin and not enough garlic. Recipe below:

Hummus

3 garlic cloves

400g chickpeas, boiled to within an inch of their life with one of the garlic cloves (or 20mins to an hr, whichever is sooner). It’s best if you can plan to start boiling these several weeks in the future as the more time you can give them, the better and creamier the hummus (generally).

~40g of Tahini

1 tsp of cumin

2 tbsp oil

Salt & Pepper to taste

½ lemon squeezed

Boil the chickpeas, drain and add to a blender. Add everything else. Blitz. Taste. Adjust seasoning / lemon juice and oil to suit yourself.

I didn’t do it this time, but I have fond memories of throwing in a handful of fresh coriander to be blitzed – gives you hummus with green flecks in it, but it tastes amazing.

18.05.20 Monday – Rice and Bits

Monday is Able & Cole box day- one of veg, and one of random meats. Consequently, Monday is also plan-the week-in-food day. Fairly easy this week, got Carrots and Potatoes (again) – no surprise, but they’re not something we usually eat a lot of. Some lovely Asparagus, a Red Pepper and some delicious, sweet baby tomatoes (I had to try one they looked so lovely). For the meat, some Plaice fillets, beef mince and some Hotdog sausages (we were warned not to be put off, they’re organic and taste great). I’m a big fan of the slightly crappy frankfurter sausages and will happily pile into a pack cold, but thought for these I should make a bit more of an effort for Lizzie.

I’d toyed with the idea of making Daal as it’s one of our favourites, but it also lasts for a couple of days and I wanted to use up the fish. We don’t have a freezer, so everything has to be planned around eating it fresh. So, on the basis we’d got a few things lying around, I made the Harrison family fall-back meal – Rice and Bits. This is generally a large portion of rice cooked up with whatever you have to hand; bacon or lardons are probably the most consistent ingredient other than rice. Ours was particularly good this week. In part this was due to a lockdown issue some weeks ago. We’d been trying to get some rice when the lockdown was just starting, and failed – empty shelves.

However, I found in Sainsburgers a box of black rice, which we thought we’d try. It stains everything purple, but has a lovely nutty flavour. The best approach we’ve found is to use half brown basmati and half black rice. Oh, and rinse it first – there’s a lot of (purple) starch in it and while it tastes fine if you don’t, the resulting food is a fairly alarming shade of deep purple!

Our rice and bits experience this week was particularly good, as follows:

Rice and Bits

Feeds 3 (or eat leftovers for lunch)

150g rice (75g brown basmati, 75g black rice), cook in 300ml of water until no water remains.

½ courgette, chopped fine

4 small carrots, chopped fine (small is around index finger sized)

2 cloves garlic, chopped fine

1 red chilli chopped fine (I include the whole thing including the seeds because we like a bit of heat)

1 red onion, chopped fine

4 rashers of bacon, chopped up

1 tin mixed beans, drained and rinsed

4-5 Asparagus stems, chopped into 1inch lengths

Put the rice on to boil, turn down to a simmer. While the rice simmers fry the onion, garlic and bacon with some oil until the onion goes glossy, or at least until you get bored. Throw in everything else except the Asparagus. Stir well. Put a lid on it, leave on a low heat. Once the rice has run out of water, its ready – taste test and throw into the main pan. Add the Asparagus and stir well. Let the Asparagus get hot and go bright green – it should be just al dente. Spoon into warmed bowls and serve.

There are lots of alternatives to the recipe we used, and no two Rice and Bits are truly the same; which is part of its charm. Naomi (my mother-in-law) quite often puts soy sauce and stirs an egg into hers to make a kind of egg fried rice – tastes spectacular – it does seem to pick up on that Umami kind of taste that’s so hard to aim for. Basically, the detail ingredients are up to you, depends on what is in the cupboard :)

Anyway, there’s enough left over for Lizzie to have for lunch tomorrow, so I think this weeks’ starter menu is going to look like:

• Tuesday – Plaice fillets – think I might curry them, but I have got a Greek fish recipe and we did get some black olives today…

• Wednesday – Hot dogs; going to look for some suitable rolls and cook with onions

• Thursday – Beef mince, we have some fusilli and mushrooms so I think a simple bolognaise.

• Friday – Daal with flatbreads – we’ve got lots of coconut milk and already have the split red – lentils

• Saturday – Probably leftover Daal.

• Sunday – No idea, depends how the rest of the week runs!

As always, it’s a starter menu as we adjust for leftovers, mood and wine consumption!

19.05.20 Tuesday – Greek Baked Fish with Bulgar Wheat

Lizzie was at home today and as I came back and fell asleep (in my defence I was up at 5am), she was kind enough to let me sleep and made dinner using the plaice fillets to make Greek Baked Fish. It’s an Able and Cole recipe; the lovely thing about it is the onion, tomato and black olive sauce – the black olives smell divine and taste equally good. Recipe as follows:

Greek Baked Fish

A Leek, trimmed, halved lengthways and finely sliced

Onion, finely chopped

3 Garlic gloves crushed and chopped

Handful of flatleaf parsley, chopped – separate the stalks and the leaves

80g Kalamata Olives

400g chopped tomatoes

340g fish or fish pie mix

75g Bulgar Wheat

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C / Fan 160°C / Gas Mark 4. Fry the Leek and Onion in a little oil until the onion is glossy. Add Garlic, Parsley, Oregano, Olives and Tomatoes and around 100ml water. Stir well. Leave to simmer for 5 minutes. Add the fish to an oven-proof dish and season. Pour the sauce over the fish and bake for 15mins or so. While the fish bakes, add 150g boiling water to the Bulgar wheat in a bowl, stir and cover for around 15mins. Dish up and enjoy!

As usual, the sauce for this and the olives smell and taste fantastic and it worked well with the fish. However, it’s also much better with a heftier fish – cod or hake or similar – the plaice is a bit too delicate – tasty, but you start to lose the texture.

20.05.20 Wednesday – Not-Dogs & Coconut Daal

So, as I mentioned the cooking plan rarely stands against first contact with the enemy. No rolls, so no hot dogs. Also, I was working from home Wednesday, so had the time to make the Daal. It doesn’t take long in itself, but it’s also much better tasting if it’s had a long slow cook and ideally a chance to cool and then re-heat. The spices mellow into it. I’d also forgotten that the recipe should have spiced ginger beef with it as a topping, so the beef mince also got used. Ah well, the Daal always lasts a couple of days, so I just need to hunt down some rolls on Friday for Hot Dogs.

Lizzie really likes homemade flatbreads with the Daal as an aid to dipping, and to be fair, so do I. This meant that they also need doing - luckily, they’re very easy, and quite satisfying to make for some reason.

The only other thing is that I remembered at the end that I don’t have any spinach. I was convinced that we did. Never mind, we’d had some Pak Choi in with the veg box, so used that instead, which worked really well. Recipe as follows:

Coconut Daal with Spiced Ginger Beef and Homemade Flatbreads

For the Daal:

300g Red Lentils

2 Onions

2 Green Chilli’s – I hadn’t got any, so I used 2 red birds’ eye chilli’s

2 Garlic Cloves

Handful of Coriander, chopped, separate the stalks and leaves. I hadn’t got any so this got left out.

1tsp Turmeric

2tsp Cumin Seeds

2tsp Curry Powder (I use madras)

2tsp Mustard Seeds (I use brown)

6 curry leaves. I never ever have any of these, so I kept it here for completeness, but never put it in.

1 vegetable stock cube – I use Vegetable Bouillon

400ml Coconut Milk. Coconut Cream works even better here.

Soak the lentils while you prep everything. Fry the onions, garlic, chilli (and coriander stalks if you have them) until the onion goes glossy. Drain the lentils and add them to the pan, throw in all the spices, stock and the coconut milk. Add 1Litre water – a bit less will give you a thicker Daal, stir it all up and bring to a simmer. Leave, go do something else for as long as you need to, stir occasionally as you pass through. If you’re making this way in advance then cook it for an hr and turn it off; reheat when you are ready.

Just before you are ready to dish up, stir through the spinach or Pak Choi and let it heat / wilt, then serve.

Spiced Mince Beef

250g beef mince – we used a 400g pack because we like it and that’s what we had

1 Clove garlic

1tsp Cumin Seeds

1tsp Curry Powder (I use madras)

Large Thumb of Ginger

Fry the garlic and the ginger lightly in oil in a large pan and then add the mince to brown. Add the spices, stir well and leave on medium heat, stirring occasionally. The aim is to get the mince to caramelise slightly, so it needs a longish slow cook. It probably takes around 20minutes or so – when you stir it, you’ll start to see a chestnut colour coming through.

Homemade Flat Breads

I’m quite proud of these; the trick is to roll them out as thinly as possibly, if they are too thick then the dough doesn’t cook fast enough and the flatbread is a bit stodgy. The key to making them really nice is to limit the amount of oil – too much and they go a bit dry and crispy, just enough and the flatbread stays flexible and tastes lovely. Not enough? Then you end up with cardboard. Trial and error!

150g Plain flour

1 Garlic clove, chopped

1-2tbsp olive oil- I tend to splash some into the bowl, which is probably why these are inconsistent, but this sems to be about right

Add water to work the above into a dough, it should be soft, squidgy and uniform in colour. Try to make it in advance and leave under a tea towel for an hr. Then, divide into 8 and roll out each flatbread as thin as you can – they should end up around hand sized. Put a frying pan on a really high heat and let it get hot. Dry fry the flatbread, it will start to swell into bubbles as it cooks, the side against the pan will brown (in spots usually) and lose the uncooked translucent tinge. Turn the flatbread over, cook until no longer translucent, but still flexible.

Serve the Daal in a bowl with the flatbread on the side, put spoonfuls of the spiced mince on top and garnish with the chopped coriander leaves (if you have them).

Wow! The Daal was superb this time around, the flatbreads were really good and the Pak Choi worked well as a substitute for the Spinach. All in all, a really good result. I think mainly driven by me using a tin of full Coconut Cream rather than coconut milk or making it from coconut cream block – will definitely be doing it this way again. Although, the bottle of fizz we’d had lurking in the fridge for a while also got opened, so that might have helped!

21.05.20 Thursday –Coconut Daal Again

Unsurprisingly given the industrial quantities of Coconut Daal I made yesterday, we had it for dinner again this evening. I made the flatbread dough when I got back from work and I was lucky enough that Lizzie made dinner – I’d fallen asleep (another ridiculously late night and early start). The mince doesn’t really work as well the second day – we’ve reconstituted it with caramelised onions and garlic before, which helps, but it’s just not quite the same. Still, seems criminal to throw it out. Also, flatbreads weren’t as successful this time – they were cooked just fine, so too much oil in the dough again. I really must make some batches and test for the right amount.

However, still good the second day :).

22.05.20 Friday –Hot Dogs or Not-Dogs?

So, the plan for tonight is Hot Dogs. We still have no rolls. I’m not sure that wraps are going to be quite the same – will have to see if we can get some; otherwise, it might have to be post-shop on Saturday. Which means tonight is either going to be creative or we’ll decide to have a fasting day. We’ve got some Chorizo in the fridge, so I’m leaning towards a pasta dish. Will have to consult with the boss.

I picked up some rolls on the way back from work, so we sliced onions thickly and fried them. The hot dog sausages were boiled and then sliced. Simple, but effective and very tasty – I’d picked up some mustard and red sauce to help them down. Lizzie also cooked potato wedges with rosemary and made sweet potato fries, so it wasn’t the heathiest meal but it’s good to occasionally just splurge. We ate the whole lot on our laps with a pot of mayonnaise to dip the wedges into – heaven!

23.05.20 – Saturday – How to Camembert the Lockdown

Lizzie went out to the supermarket this morning and obviously had inspiration as she returned with a Camembert, which we baked with some (more) Rosemary – the garden is full of it at present. We had a lovely carrot salad (lots of carrots in the veg box at present) and fresh baby tomatoes with it. The combination worked really well