How to Have Fun in Quarantine
Having fun is fucking difficult. Peaceful, calm, tender, reflective — that’s more within my range these days. I wouldn’t say I was great at it in the best of times. But now in this space that is always the same, where nothing ever happens except of my own volition, it feels almost out of place.
I’ve been thinking about how to have more fun and initially thought I’d write a list of creative ideas, a sort of How to Have Fun in Quarantine guide. Almost immediately, it struck me as contrived and kind of bleak. Forced fun is the worst activity, as anyone who’s worked at a well-funded company can attest. And when it’s an attempt to stave off some darker feeling, it can be downright scary. I can’t spark your imagination for you or come up with activities that make sense in your life. I think we might try to make a fun zine about how Laika looks like Putin, but that’s hardly a universal recommendation.
So, don’t force it. I do think it’s worth reflecting on, but you’ll have to do it yourself. Maybe just see where you can invite creativity or a little bit of absurdity into your apartment or routine.
Meanwhile, I’m going to use the rest of this newsletter to write about pancakes, which are unequivocally the most fun food.
What I’m Cooking
Millions of Savory Pancakes
I’m not sure if pancakes are the most fun food (could be dumplings), but I was looking through my Instagram and realized that since quarantine I’ve been making some kind of pancake every other day. Pancakes are versatile, difficult-to-mess-up, often keep well, and have the best toppings. Everyone at the table can customize their plates, which has always been my favorite type of dinner party. They’re inherently creative, and I think that’s usually what I mean by fun.
Almost all pancakes are, well, okonomiyaki which means, “cooked how you like.” Treat these recipes more like guidelines and adapt them to your tastes and what you have in the house. Basically anything goes as long as your pancakes hold together in the pan, and if they’re falling apart you can usually fix the batter with more flour and/or egg. (An exception being doughs that require rolling out, like moo shu pancakes or tortillas. Does that mean they’re not pancakes? We can fight.)
Za’atar sourdough pancakes Starter discard is probably the main thing that causes me anxiety about sourdough, because I refuse to dump it and can only make so many sheet-pans of Wheat Thins. I didn’t feel comfortable enough with it to deviate from Internet recipes until my friend suggested just turning it into a pancake, as is, no extra flour. I’ve embellished on his suggestion a little, so here it is as a recipe:
Let your starter come to room temperature. Heat up a cast-iron pan to medium heat, coat the bottom with olive oil and then pour the starter in. Spread it around to get it about a centimeter thick. Cook for a few minutes on one side then flip and cook on the other. When you think it’s browned on both sides, spread a little more oil on the top and sprinkle za’atar liberally over the whole side. (Here you can get creative again! What other seasonings would go well with a bit of sourness?) Flip it again so that the spiced side cooks, around 30 seconds, but doesn’t get too burnt. Remove it from the pan and slice into pieces using a pizza wheel. We’ve been eating it with yogurt, hot sauce or zhug, and sometimes pickled things if they’re around. An egg would also be nice.
Scallion pancakes
These were one of the foods my mom requested from my grandmother on her birthday, and they became one of my favorites as well. Like croissants, they’re basically thin layers of dough with fat in between (a process called “lamination”) and I guess kids are little butter-hungry lamination-detectors so it makes sense that we grew up loving them.
The process involves a lot of folding and rolling, but it’s something you get better at after just a couple tries. Like the pancakes above, this recipe uses a boiling-water dough which makes it pretty soft and easy to roll out. I like Kenji’s recipe, with some call-outs:
I added a few pinches of salt to the initial flour-water mix
Make sure to cut the scallions quite small, so they don’t break the dough later on (this will still happen but you want to minimize it)
Brush only a very thin layer of sesame oil on the disks so that you can roll them up more easily
Kenji’s big innovation is to have two steps of snailing/rolling out the dough; I think you could drop to one and everyone will live; your pancakes might even come out softer
If you want to eat your pancakes later on, freeze them after they’re shaped. Place them on oiled wax paper on a baking sheet, uncovered, in your freezer for about an hour until they’re rock-solid. Then you can put them into a plastic bag (with the wax paper separating them) and when you want to eat them, put them on your skillet directly from the freezer and add a minute of cooking to each side (3-4 minutes).
Moo shu pancakes
I’ve seen these called “Mandarin pancakes” on the internet, in my grandmother’s cookbook they’re simply “Chinese pancakes,” but I think of them as the pancakes that come with moo shu pork/vegetables. They’re excellent in that format: soft and thin wrappers with a sweet slather of hoisin or plum sauce and the crunchy texture of barely-cooked vegetables. I’d also like to try them with soft-scrambled eggs and maybe some kimchi as well.
These pancakes follow a more particular set of rules than the others here, and this recipe does a good job of describing them. There are a couple interesting techniques. One is that you add boiling water to flour which gelatinizes the starch (I wrote more about that previously) and makes the dough soft and pliable. Another is that you roll out and cook the pancakes by stacking two on top of each other — well-oiled so that you can pull them apart later — which lets you roll them thinner and causes each one to have a brown-spotted cooked side and a steamed side, which creates a nice texture.
Okonomiyaki
Okonomiyaki might be my ideal drunk-food. It’s a fried pancake that’s basically a platform for mayonnaise, sweet-savory okonomi sauce, and bonito flakes. There are two distinct styles: Osaka, which is made from a thick batter with all the ingredients chopped up in it, and Hiroshima, which has distinct layers of cabbage, yakisoba, fried egg and everything else, held together by a much thinner batter. There’s something I like about the way the cabbage gets crispy in Hiroshima okonomiyaki, so I’ve made that kind but without the noodles.
It’s not that hard and you don’t really need special ingredients despite what the recipes impress upon you. These are a good start: Hiroshima and Osaka. I didn’t have tenkasu, Japanese yam, aonori seaweed or bonito (but sprinkled furikake over everything). I do have okonomi sauce (though it sounds like you can approximate it) and Kewpie mayonnaise, which I vastly prefer to Heinz in any situation.
Vegetable fritters and latkes You should probably make fritters soon, because you probably have random bits of vegetables to use up, and this way they will be crispy and trick you into thinking you’re eating something totally new. You can use pretty much any vegetables, chopped small (probably half-inch pieces or so), and then mixed with flour, an egg, salt and pepper or other seasonings. If you’re vegan, a little baking powder and cornstarch can help replace the binding and leavening role of the egg.
Take a look at this broccoli-parmesan recipe or this zucchini one to get started, based on what ingredients you have. One thing to watch out for is the water content of your vegetables. For example, for potatoes or zucchini, shred them first with your food processor or grater, scoop them out into a colander or piece of cheesecloth and then wring out as much water as you can. For tough veggies like broccoli, a little pre-cooking will help ensure they’re not raw when the rest of the pancake is done. Then go wild with the sauce. You can take yogurt in different directions, with the additions of lemon, garlic, dill, feta, za’atar, tahini, cayenne, turmeric, etc. Or make a salsa or pesto or your own aioli.
Kimchi and pickle pancakes
Kimchi pancakes follow almost the exact same formula as other vegetable fritters, but you don’t have to worry about pre-cooking or much seasoning. In fact, they’re so easy that I started thinking about what other jars of vegetables I have, found some dill pickles, and remembered eating fried pickles from a boxcar diner in Montana when I was staying out there.
For either of these directions, chop up the veggies and mix them with flour and an egg or cornstarch. For the pickle pancakes, I also added some Italian breadcrumbs. I made my kimchi pancake the size of my pan and cut it up like pizza, and the pickle pancakes into smaller pies (the only constraint is whether you’re able to flip a larger pancake). For dipping sauces, go Asian for the kimchi (maybe something with gochujang, or scallion pancake-style toasted sesame seeds, soy sauce and black vinegar) and Southern American for the pickles (a remoulade or fast food-style mayo + honey mustard + bbq sauce).
Crepes
Every time it snows, Anthony makes a double-batch of crepes. We invite friends over and eat as many as we can, with sour cream, caviar, sometimes rolled up with farmer’s cheese or mushrooms, or with fruit preserves. Then we drink a lot of gin and go out into the snow. Much later in the night, there are usually some crepes left for a second round.
This recipe is a good start, but make sure not to add too much flour (or add more milk) to make a very thin batter. The tricky parts have to do with getting your pan (nonstick!) to just the right temperature so that the crepes are cooking but the butter isn’t burning, and pouring the batter in a smooth motion to make a round crepe. We’ve also experimented with sourdough crepes (recipe but with just 2 eggs, some flour, oil instead of butter) and substituting in buckwheat flour, which makes them gluten-free and an awesome purple color. As you’re cooking them, stack the finished crepes on a plate, buttering each one as you place it on the top.
Tortillas
Tortillas probably deserve their own list, because there are so many varieties with very different ingredients and preparation methods. This is just to say that it’s worth making some fresh tortillas, sometime. You need masa harina for corn tortillas (the corn is soaked in lime which softens it and makes it more digestible). For flour tortillas, it’s better to use a fat that’s solid at room temperature. You can use lard or shortening, but I really enjoyed the taste of coconut oil, which came through very lightly. Recently I made these fermented whole-wheat tortillas (using water not milk), which weren’t particularly traditional, but were tangy and substantial and great with mild cheese and sautéed onions and jalapeño.
To all the pancakes I haven’t made before:
Dosas! Egg hoppers! Injera! We’ll get there. If you’ve made any of these and want to send me tips, please do!