2020 has been unlike any other year in recent times.
Once in a while, I enjoy the pleasure of testing new recipes to see if they work just as well for normal people like me who are not trained chefs.
The first time I tested a new recipe from a chef, I was totally nervous about it. I did not know whether I could pull it off, or whether I was going to waste my ingredients and disappoint the people who were going to taste it.
Now, I test a new recipe every month. I choose a recipe that sounds delicious and will get me to do something I don’t usually do. The challenge is exciting.
Testing new recipes has given me a chance to really think about the accessibility of different ingredients during this time of Covid. I used to go out of my way to find things like unique types of chile or fresh herb. Now I am more likely to order it online or Google substitute ingredients instead of going out in search of a hard-to-find ingredient.
Even when you have the money to order unique ingredients and have them delivered to your house, you will find that the pandemic has made us all more conscious of what we are eating and how it gets to us.
I find ways to incorporate any leftover ingredients in the next meal, to avoid wasting it. Pumpkin left over from a pumpkin-tahini mousse pie, will probably find itself in a spiced chocolate pumpkin cake. The leftover tahini will probably end up in brownies or swirly loaf cakes.
I wonder how other people do about recipe ingredients they haven’t worked with before. What happens when it is not stocked in your local grocery store? What if you don’t want to end up with unused portions that you can’t afford to waste?
Even as we think about food ingredients, we need to remember how our purchasing decisions affect farmers in far off places like India, where farmers are marching to protest against harmful agriculture policies and unfair markets. Diaspora Co is a spice company that works with farmers in India to address this problem.
Some restaurants within the US are doing anything they can to adapt to the realities of the pandemic; from selling groceries, to laying off workers (which 17% of restaurants have done). Restaurants are expected to continue laying off workers in the days to come.
