My tiny kitchen
Despite my whining about
standard time, I woke up feeling rested and full of energy this morning. Sophie
let me sleep until 7:45 daylight time—I am probably going to spend from now to
March adjusting the time to daylight time which will continue to be the
standard I follow. Anyway, an hour later when I’d dozed off, my brother woke
me, calling from the hospital. I was glad enough to talk to him that I didn’t
mind being pulled out of a funny, funky dream. We chatted a bit, but I didn’t
have my hearing aids and pneumonia makes him wheeze so that I had a hard time
understanding. Still, I was delighted he called, even if he did think I’d
called him.
I meant to write about ghost
kitchens today, because the new title of the latest Irene adventure is Irene
in a Ghost Kitchen, but before I got to that I spent a lot of time in my
very real, definitely not a ghost kitchen. My project for the day was to make
beef tips in gravy for dinner tonight, and this morning I got it put together—seasoned
and browned the meat, sauteed onions and garlic, made the gravy. It’s in the
fridge now but will come out to simmer for at least a couple of hours after I
nap. And the cooking dishes are all washed and put away. Yes, I am feeling very
righteous. It also smells delicious. Decisions, decisions—should we have mashed
potatoes or noodles with it? I thought of polenta but I don’t have enough in
the freezer.
These days I’m in a kitchen a
lot, whether it be my own, my imaginary dream kitchen, sometimes my mom’s
kitchen of memory, or Irene’s ghost kitchen. Irene wanted a café, like she has
in France, but as Chance, her billionaire lover said, “A ghost kitchen is much
cheaper.” Ghost kitchens, also known as cloud kitchens or dark kitchens, exist
only to serve online orders and deliver food. There is no on-site service, and
the customer has no interaction with the kitchen staff. Irene’s kitchen serves
her own gourmet dishes, but some ghost kitchens serve several popular brands of
food at one. Ghost kitchens have much lower overhead—they don’t have to be in a
fashionable or well-traveled location, and they don’t require nearly as much
space as a dine-in restaurant; they have no front-of-the-house staff such as host
or hostess, wait staff, bus boys, etc. The restaurants either maintain their
own delivery service or use one of the many delivery apps such as Door Dash or Uber
Eats.
Ghost kitchens existed before
pandemic but really flourished during that quarantine. Customers didn’t want to
go out to eat, restaurants couldn’t hire enough wait staff, some restaurants
were forced to close completely. Today, with quarantine lifted, ghost kitchens
are still popular. Some major restaurant chains operate ghost kitchens under
another name: Conviction Chicken is the ghost kitchen of TGI Friday’s, Cosmic
Wings and Neighborhood Wings are operated by Applebees, Chili’s has Maggiano’s
Italian Classics and Just Wings. The list is long.
Sometimes ghost kitchens are
shared—one building may house several, or an independent ghost kitchen may rent
space in an existing restaurant. A business called Fort Worth Food Works houses
several ghost kitchens and offers all the facilities and services a restaurant needs.
Perfect for a start-up chef.
Irene’s ghost kitchen, of
course, is none of those. It’s the whim of a faux French chef. She is, however,
going to offer small cooking classes in her kitchen. First up, the French classic
popularized by Julia Child (shh! Don’t say that to Irene!): boeuf bourguignon.
Then maybe a good hearty cassoulet; perhaps Coquilles St. Jacque (scallops in
wine sauce—someone once asked me what I fixed for company the night before, and
when I said Coquilles St. Jacque he said, “Gesundheit!” so I always explain it).
Lobster thermidor and coq au vin may be on Irene’s class last, but daily she’ll
fix appetizers such as gougeres, desserts like crème brulee, and special orders—her
secret liver pate. Will she make a success of the kitchen? Who knows? Certainly
not me at this point, though I hope to know by next spring.
Speaking of recipes I ran
across a custom that is new to me but apparently worldwide: putting recipes of
the tombstones of people, mostly women, revered for their cooking skills. Want
to make Bonnie Johnson’s No-Bake Oatmeal Cookies? Just go to the cemetery in
Nome, Alaska and get the recipe. Or read about it on Gastro Obscura The
family recipes carved into gravestones (mailchi.mp)
Happy Sunday night!
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