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Plague Diary 18: The COVID Cooking Series

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My Brother Dan with Grandson Oliver

Spending time with my brother Dan and sister-in-law Lori is my niece Jennifer, who has wisely chosen to quarantine with her family. Fortunately for me, and for everyone who loves good food, Jen has filmed Dan giving cooking instructions for some of his favorite dishes. Now I have mentioned before that I admire Dan’s cooking and am somewhat jealous that I am nowhere near so proficient as he is in the kitchen.

So, straight from Dan’s kitchen in Palm Desert, here are some wonderful dishes you can prepare at home:

  1. Hungarian Chicken Paprikás: Part 1 and Part 2. You can see the completed meal in Part 3.
  2. Vietnamese Lettuce Wrap with Skirt Steak.
  3. Quiche with Potato Crust.
  4. Da Bomb Eggplant Parmigiana. This is my favorite. If I can get Martine to try it, I’ll make this within a week or two.

My Niece Jennifer, Who Shot the Videos

Having enjoyed Dan’s cooking numerous times, I think you will find these a real treat. Let me know if you have tried any of the recipes.

 

Plague Diary 17: A Film About the Plague

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There Is Only One Film I Know About Quarantining from the Plague

In the early 1940s, a Hollywood movie producer named Val Lewton (his real name was Vladimir Ivanovich Leventon) was responsible for a handful of great horror films in which the effects were more psychological than crude, which placed him pretty much in a one-man category.

Today, I saw (for the nth time) his film Isle of the Dead (1945), set on a strange Greek island during the First Balkan War (1912-13). Boris Karloff plays the Greek General Nikolas Pherides who, together with an American journalist, rows to an offshore island to visit the grave of his wife. He finds that her grave had been broken into and her body stolen. Worse yet, he lands on the island only to find that one of the guests in the house where he is staying has died of the plague.

Karloff and the other people on the island must quarantine until the wind changes. Once the hot, dry sirocco wind begins to blow, that particular strain of the plague dies off.

Boris Karloff as General Pherides, “The Watchdog”

The psychological element introduced by Lewton is a superstition of a vampire-like creature called a vorvolaka which is promulgated by a Greek peasant woman named Kyra serving in the house. Karloff, who prides himself by his nickname of “The Watchdog,” buys into the possibility of the truth of this superstition, blaming a young serving woman who is enjoying rubicund good health for being a vorvolaka.

The film is a scant 72 minutes long and would be an excellent choice for a Quarantining-at-Home Film Festival, even if it is one lone title. There is also an Elia Kazan film called Panic in the Streets (1950) which involves the plague but has no claustrophobic quarantining.

 

 

Plague Diary 16: I Take a Walk

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Bus Riders in El Monte

Once again, I hijack a picture from the Los Angeles Times showing the impact of the plague on the life of the United States’s second largest city. One would hardly think that there were upwards of ten million people squeezed into the county.

Today the weather was sunny and cool, so I decided to take a walk into Santa Monica. Not having any bookstores to go to, I made another stop at Bay Cities Italian Deli near Lincoln and Broadway. There I picked up a couple rolls of toilet paper (at $1/roll) and the fixings for another Italian pasta dish. I had bought the sausage yesterday at Marconda’s Meats at the Original Farmers Market at 3rd and Fairfax.

It was a lovely day for a walk, perfect for avoiding the masked phantoms who occasionally crossed my path during the two-mile trek. The shopping done, I boarded the #1 Santa Monica bus for the return trip home. Once so busy, the bus is full of masked phantoms staying as far apart from one another as the seating allowed. (Needless to say, I wasn’t wearing my mask: It was in the pocket of my jacket.)

When this whole plague period is over and done with, will we remember how strange it was? Being retired, I have no problems with apportioning my time at home, though I miss going to places. And I miss seeing my friends. I keep in touch with them on the telephone, but it’s not the same thing.

 

 

Plague Diary 15: No Destinations

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The Beach During the Early Days of the Plague: Now Forbidden

I used to love taking walks, but now I am somewhat indifferent. You see, what attracted me was not the mere exercise: It was having a destination. And my favorite destinations were bookstores. Well before the coronavirus plague reached our shores, the bookstores of Los Angeles pretty much melted into history. Now I will occasionally take a walk to an Italian grocery in Santa Monica or to the West Los Angeles Post Office.

For a while, it was possible to walk along the beach, or over the bluffs in Santa Monica overlooking the beach. Now both are closed to enforce social distancing. The above Los Angeles Times photo was shot during the early days of the plague. Now, the police are out in force chasing people from the beach or anything else that looks like a nice place to walk. We are urged only to walk for the sheer fun of it, or to go to the market or pharmacy to shop for necessaries.

One thing I absolutely refuse to do is wear a mask while taking a walk. If some random bozo attempts to upbraid me for it, I will gladly send my sputum in his direction. As I wrote in yesterday’s post, until I can find another solution, I cannot exercise while fogging up my glasses. I will gladly stay far away from other walkers, as my distrust of strangers long predates the arrival of the coronavirus. I am always happy to answer strangers’ questions in my ungrammatical Hungarian, which may include some colorful expressions of contempt.

Later this week, I will probably walk to Bay Cities Imports (the Italian deli in Santa Monica) to pick up one of their delightful Spaniard sandwiches together with some ingredients for a future Italian meal. Their pasta, sauces, and Italian sausages are nothing short of superb.

 

 

Plague Diary 14: From Not Recommended to Mandatory

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What’s Next? Encasing Our Heads in Blocks of Lucite?

A scant week ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) was recommending that face masks should only be worn by people who had the coronavirus. Now, all of a sudden, security guards are turning away customers who are not masked. In no way does a face mask protect the wearer from getting exposed to the virus, unless it is from another person who has the virus but is not masked.

Now all this causes problems for me. First of all, my exhalations result in my eyeglasses fogging up. So imagine trying to read the ingredients of a food item through a fog of one’s own creation. I will try to rig up some kind of improvised cloth face mask for myself using a scarf, if I can.

Secondly, anything that inhibits me from inhaling normally occasionally causes me to gag or choke. Again, an improvised cloth face mask may be the answer.

The face mask I wear is identical with the one in the above photo, except that I have stretchy rubber loops that attach to my ears.

 

 

Plague Diary 13: Rainy Day Quarantine

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Death’s Head Overlooking Venice Beach

Once again, I have taken a Los Angeles Times photograph from their evocative series on the effects of the quarantine on L.A.’s public spaces.

Today has been a day of steady rain, which started late morning and will probably continue through the night. We did get out around 11 am: Martine needed repairs to her eyeglass frames that only an optician could make, and I picked up a couple of Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwiches for her. Martine was none too happy with the yellow split pea rice pilau I had cooked the previous evening, preferring meat dishes even as I drift slowly into a vegetarian diet.

Returning around noon, we have stayed in the apartment. I sat in the library finishing Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. As I compare the current coronavirus disease with the bubonic plague, I would have to say that COVID-19 is by far less horrible. Whereas the mortality rate of the current outbreak is 2% of those afflicted, some 69,000 Londoners out of a total of 500,000 died of the 1665 outbreak.

The way that London enforced quarantine was to lock up any household where there was an instance of plague, enforced by two shifts of watchmen who would assist the tenants of the house get food and other necessities. But if one person in a household got the plague, it was fairly certain that all would die horribly.

On most days, I see at least one film, either from Spectrum Cable, Netflix’s DVD.COM service, or my personal DVD collection, consisting mostly of American and foreign classics. Today, since Martine did not go out for a walk, I decided not to induce her to retire to the bedroom to avoid listening to samurai sword fights, Western gunfights, or other irritatingly loud sound tracks.

Tomorrow, the rain will gradually taper off, and I will be able to play one of my films.

 

 

Plague Diary 12: Ways of Escape

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I Keep Looking for a Way Out

For the first thirty years of my life, I was stuck either in Cleveland or in school. I loved my parents, but they wanted to control my life—and my whereabouts—for much longer than I thought was right. So one day in 1975, instead of taking a flight to Cleveland and remaining stuck in childhood, I flew to Mérida in Yucatán. Ever since then, I saw Cleveland as part of a past that I just happened to sidestep.

Now, during the awful coronavirus plague of 2020, I feel once again that my hands are being tied tightly behind my back. The only difference is that there is a matter of survival involved. For a few weeks, I could stay at home and remain more than six feet away from everyone but Martine. But my mind is traveling. While I eat, I page restlessly through an old Lonely Planet Mexico guide (cover illustrated above) picking places that look promising. Places like Bahía Kino and Alamos in Sonora, Morelia in Michoacán, or San Blas in Nayarit.

It seems that travel has become necessary to my feeling of well-being. I would even pick an American destination so that I can travel with Martine. Of late, she has shied away from going to foreign countries. She has even neglected to renew her passport. I would prefer to travel with Martine, but above all I need to travel.

Have I developed a thousand-mile stare? Perhaps I have. I guess spending a childhood in Cleveland will do that to one.

 

 

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.