When time is on your side

More than 100 days into the Time of Corona, we are still hunkered down. Yes, we venture out, but only occasionally. When we are away from Farm Dover, we find ourselves anxious to get back home – back to where we feel safe. Fortunately, I like it here.

Other than a handful of takeout lunches, our meals are created from whatever we have on hand or can harvest from the garden or forage from the woods and fields. Since I'm not cooking for a crowd, our meals tend to be quite simple. Sometimes only anchovy butter on sour dough toast, or carrots roasted and served with a carrot-top pesto, an Ottolenghi omelette, or asparagus from our patch cooked every which way I can think of. 

Most nights I wander into the kitchen while Ed watches the local news. If I don't have a pre-conceived notion of what I want to fix for dinner, I putter around until I come up with a plan. Rarely do I spend more than an hour cooking dinner; most nights, half that amount. It's time I enjoy, creative and stress-free for me.

One of the many strange outcomes of this strange time is that my notion of cooking has shifted ever so slightly. Because I'm home all day, it seems I'm more willing to invest in dishes that require time, in some cases, lots of time. But they don't necessarily require my constant attention; they mostly transform into something delicious on their own over a matter of hours, or even days. Call it kitchen alchemy, a seemingly magical process.

Let me give you some examples. Three come from a blog post: The 20 Greatest Recipes of All Time. Granted this was just one person's opinion, but the list intrigued me. I had already made a handful of Ms. Rosenstrach's nominations and I agreed that they were awfully good. I chose three new ones to try – each requiring a significant commitment of time. I was curious to see if it was worth it. And, as you know, I had lots of time on my side.

The first was Marcella Hazan's Bolognese Sauce, reprinted in the New York Times, which notes a total time requirement of four hours. But then I read through all the reader comments and discovered that the real magic happens sometime between hours 5 and 6, when the classic meat sauce turns sublime. All the recipe requires of me is to let it cook at "the laziest of simmers" and to give it a stir every hour or so. I almost never follow a recipe exactly, but both times I've made this, I have followed it to a T and can't think of how I might alter it. It is perfect, as is.

The second was David Chang's Bo Ssam, a dish from his famous New York restaurant: Momofuku. It's a slow-cooked pork shoulder with an insane caramelized crust, served in lettuce wraps with Korean-inspired condiments. I know, sounds weird. The recipe calls for marinating the pork for six hours in a sugar/salt brine and then cooking it for six hours. I did not follow the recipe exactly as I did not have any fresh oysters or cabbage kimchi. I did made some pickled radishes to go along with the sweet chili sauce and ginger scallion sauce and I did serve it in lettuce wraps. Maggie, Nate and Hazel were out visiting and I served it for dinner. It was a hit! Delicious and fun to eat. I placed the pork in the middle of the table on a giant cutting board and we each customized our wraps. Next time, I think I could cook the pork roast in a crock pot for the first six hours and finish it in a 500-degree oven for the last 10 minutes to get a crisp, sweet crust. I only made this once, but it will be on repeat whenever we can host dinners again.

The third entrée was a classic Japanese fish preparation made famous by the chef Nobu Matsuhisa. The recipe calls for soaking a black cod filet for three days in a four-ingredient miso marinade. It does require some specialty Japanese ingredients, which Maggie fortunately had in her pantry: sake, mirin, and white miso paste. But, it only takes 10 minutes to cook. I used sea bass instead of black cod, but any high-fat fish would work. I served it with some bok choy and rice. So simple. Foolproof and very impressive.

There are some other recipes that I have made in the past 100+ days that also require some time commitments. In particular, this Shockingly Easy Foccccia and this Homemade Naan were ones I'll make again and again.

I had always shied away from recipes that required marinating, yeast, or long stove-top cooking times, but, if anything, this time at home has taught me that sometimes really good things come to those who wait and, with a little kitchen alchemy – and plenty of time – seemingly magical things can happen.