Cooking and Baking in Lockdown, 03.-05.2020

Despite being a major inconvenience and even annoyance at times, the lockdown brought to us due to the COVID-19 crisis allowed me to take up several activities I did not have the time to do previously. under normal conditions. One very fun activity was that I painted and drew much more, but two other both fun and helpful activity I did more regularly were cooking and baking. I have been cooking occasionally for many years and find it very enjoyable, but have not had the chance to do it a lot. I bake cakes regularly, as it’s always nice to have something as a dessert in the house, but I had the chance to try new things now which was a good opportunity to expand my knowledge and experience in these life skills (particularly cooking).

Although I did the cooking partly for fun, I was driven by the intention to help my parents and do something useful, which is why I made food for everyone rather than a small snack for myself. One delivery saw us with a large number of bananas that we struggled to finish, so apart from making smoothies, I used those to experiment with banana fritters and banana pancakes over several evenings for us to enjoy when talking or watching a movie together. I didn’t use recipes so it was fun using different amounts of banana in the dough, or dunking mashed banana in batter and frying them without really knowing how the outcome would be.

Making the pakora.

Another thing I tried once were pakora, vegetables engulfed and fried in a batter. The batter is normally made from chickpea flour, but since we did not have dry chickpeas, I ground already cooked peas. I mixed these with milk, wheat flour and an egg and put slices of onion and peppers into it and fried the pieces. Although it tasted well, the batter was a bit bland – I did use turmeric, chili, cumin, pepper and salt but should’ve used curry powder and more chili. The vegetable inside became nice and soft, but I put the pakora onto paper towels to remove some of the oil.

One evening we thought that it would be nice to have Creme brulee, a French custard-style dessert that is incredibly delicious that I occasionally. The cool part about it is a caramelized layer of sugar on top, which is especially fun because I got a chefs’ blowtorch last year which gives much more control for caramelizing than under the grill of the oven. When I made the cream this time, I beat the egg yolks much longer than I usually do, which gave a much softer consistency after the custards were baked and caramelized. The baking is different than when one bakes bread or cake in that the custards are placed in a ‘baine-marie’ which is a having the ramekins placed on a tray with water, so that the air around them is humid while they are baked. After having caramelized them, they were really excellent and my family thoroughly enjoyed them, which is always a nice sign after one cooks something.

Chicken Tikka Masala.

The Indian cuisine is, together with the Italian, my favourite in the world, and of that, one of my favourite dishes is chicken tikka masala. The gravy tastes excellent and when the quality of the chicken is good, enjoying the curry with naan or basmati rice makes it an amazing meal. We got chicken delivered once during the lockdown which prompted me to make this dish. I have made it several times before, either using a recipe as a guideline or just using spices and other components how I felt would be good. This time, I wanted to use a different recipe that I found some time ago. In this recipe, the chicken is first marinaded and then baked (should be in a tandoori oven which we don’t have) and then added to a curry. A key ingredient is garam masala powder which we didn’t have, but I had many components of it so I mixed those. Making the gravy was relatively easy, and all the spices turned out to be well-balanced in the sauce. I made naan and basmati rice to go with the curry.

 

One of my Indian classmates occasionally bought paneer curry to school which was always a favourite with the class. Paneer is an Indian cheese that tastes very good in curries. Unlike many cheeses I know from Germany, paneer is not fermented. During lockdown I got the idea that I could make the curry myself and obtained the recipe. We were not able to get paneer through supermarket orders so I looked it up and it turned out you can make it yourself, which I promptly decided to do. I had to wait a few days for us to get fresh milk from a passing food truck, but then, following a recipe, I made the cheese which turned out really well. It was something completely new for me so I really enjoyed making it. Following this I made the curry, using the recipe as a reference but adapting it to my taste and the ingredients that were missing. Doing something very new for me like this was interesting and I feel now that I know how to make it, I won’t need a recipe anymore and have expanded my skills in cooking, which will be of real value in the future.

Apart from the above foods I made, I occasionally made bread, pasta, salads and other meals. Learning new recipes is a great skill I find because it builds on my knowledge of cooking which allows me later to make meals with whatever food I have at home and do not need to rely on recipes or even getting food delivered or needing to learn cooking later when many other things will be new to me as well. The better prepared I am for a more independent life now the easier it will be later, which will also allow me to have more relaxing time as I do not need to figure out so many things that would otherwise be new to me.

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