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Plague Diary 11: The Cosa Nostra Cooking Hour

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I Develop My Cooking Skills

Living during a time of pestilence, I have decided to become a better cook. My goal is to cook meals that both Martine and I like. We both like Italian food, but for some reason, Los Angeles is not a great place for Italian cooking.

Although Martine was born in France, she spent her most of her childhood in Oceanport, New Jersey, where she loved the pastas with rich red sauce—not the pale imitation to be found in Southern California.

Several years ago I picked up a used cookbook written by ex-Mafioso Henry Hill entitled The Wiseguy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes from My Life as a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run. Now you may remember an entertaining gangster film directed by Martin Scorsese and released by Warner Brothers in 1990 entitled Goodfellas. The film starred Ray Liotta as a mafioso with the non-Italian moniker of Henry Hill. Well, it’s the same Henry Hill as wrote the cookbook.

Today I spent several hours preparing a favorite dish that Hill cooked while serving time at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania on narcotics charges. The recipe is for “Oven Penitentiary Sauce with Sausage” on page 133. For some reason, there is an Italian grocery in Santa Monica called Bay Cities Italian Deli whose shelves are not picked clean by hoarders. (I guess they’re too busy snooling on their stash of toilet paper.) So I have access to high-quality Italian groceries, while not having comparable access to American goodies at the supermarket.

The Oven Penitentiary Sauce with Sausage was a big hit with Martine, and I loved it as well. It was the rich Italian food of the Italian migration to the East Coast, with lots of garlic and fresh basil baked in a 350º oven for an hour. I even added my own touch, combining the sauce with fusilli pasta in the oven for an additional quarter hour.

I am looking forward to exploring this cookbook in greater detail during the prevailing plague conditions.

 

 

Plague Diary 10: Black Beans and Rice

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Simple Cooking During Times of Quarantine

Of late, my favorite dishes have combined vegetarianism with hot chiles. Meat doesn’t please me as much, probably because I suspect that over the years the quality has declined somewhat. On Tuesday, I cooked a tuna noodle casserole for Martine to eat for suppers this week. For myself, I made my favorite easy and mostly vegetarian black beans and rice dish. Here is a list of the ingredients:

½ cup olive oil
1 cup Basmati rice
1 chopped onion
2 minced Serrano chiles
Several cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
1 15 oz can of black beans with liquid
2½ cups chicken or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Garnish with chopped parsley or cilantro

Start by chopping the onions and adding to the heated olive oil. Then add the garlic, but don’t wait too long before adding the chile: Garlic burns quickly when left untended, leading to an unpleasant flavor. Basmati rice can be a little difficult to work with as the amount of liquid to use is often variable depending on the particular rice used. Add the rice to the browning onions, garlic, and chiles, and stir for a couple of minutes. Lower the flame, then add 2½ cups stock, cover, and leave untouched for about 12 minutes.

Then and only then, remove the cover and stir briefly. If all the liquid is absorbed, add some more and continue. Then open a can of black beans and pour the beans and the liquid it came with on top of the rice. Re-cover the pot and cook for another ten minutes or so, adding salt and pepper to taste. Before serving, garnish with parsley or cilantro.

This quantity of beans and rice usually lasts me for four meals.

The main difficulty during quarantine is that hoarders usually scoop up all the Basmati rice from supermarkets. You can buy it in 5- or 10-pound bags at an Indian or Persian grocery.

 

 

Plague Diary 9: Chinese Virus Torture

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LA Times Photo of Bus Riders

Looking back on yesterday’s very pessimistic post, I wish I had not posted it. And while I’m in an apologizing mood, I wish I had not used the title “Chinese Virus Torture” for this post—except, as you will see, it is oddly appropriate.

While I could see that COVID-19 is the news story of the century, I am appalled that the news media are pre-empting all other news to strike heavily and again and again and again on the subject of the virus. Almost as if it were a form of Chinese water torture. (I will not otherwise use the racist term Chinese Virus, much beloved of our Orange Führer.)

I think that, at this time, people should learn to laugh again, to remember that, yes, there will be life after the coronavirus slinks away. Other than five or six basic facts such as washing your hands, maintaining social distance, etc., there really isn’t much else to be said. When the broadcast media become all virus all the time, the result is to strike fear among the population.

When toilet paper suddenly disappears from the shelves of our supermarkets, it is an indicator that the news media is presenting an out of balance picture that creates an environment of irrationality and panic.

If I were in charge of programming, I would not replace the endless news cycle with some entertainment. Right now, it is difficult to avoid the talking heads drumming death into our eyes and ears.

The mess we are in is going to last a while. My post yesterday was a sign that the virus news hammer was starting to get to me. Today I feel a little bit better.