Kitchens, ghost and otherwise

 

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!

 

Not my favorite time of year

 

With my brother, at his ranch

This time of year brings out my negative thoughts, so I’m going to put them all in this blog and get rid of them. I bet you share some with me. Tonight we set the clocks back an hour—very few people want to do that. I used to hear that it was for the farmers’ sake. But to my understanding with new farm technology, that extra hour in the morning doesn’t matter to farmers (someone correct me if I’m wrong). To the rest of us, standard time means it gets dark—and depressing—in the late afternoon. Truthfully, I don’t care about an extra hour of daylight in the morning. All it means to me is Sophie will wake up an hour earlier than I want her to. But I love the late afternoon sunshine. So there! That’s my first whine.

Second is that weekends in this season are all about football. Okay, I understand that the nation is crazy about watching young (and some not so young) men fight over a pigskin ball on a huge field. I am not intrigued, but I would be willing to be gracious about it, if it did not mean that regular news programming is cancelled. I am my father’s child, which means that I want to see the national news every evening, particularly in these times when both the international scene and our own House of Representatives is exploding. Football takes a distant second to the threats to our democracy, our climate, our world.

And then, tonight, there’s my green bean story: I am slowly learning to mark the “No subs” box when I order from Central Market, because I have gotten some really strange substitutions. Like skinny baby eggplant, when I wanted nice round ones to stuff. I have found a brand of frozen green beans that taste just like the fresh—they are easy to keep in the freezer and cook however many I need. One day I got instead a package of green beans to microwave, which didn’t do me much good because I don’t have a microwave. Last week, I got a pound of fresh green beans when I ordered frozen. Okay, I’m not above snapping off the ends and cleaning them, though Jordan tells me tonight that she doesn’t like them fresh.

Anyway this pound of fresh beans came in a baggie that was not closed in any way. Yep, you got it. I dumped it all over the floor. Had to call Jordan because the only way I can get things off the floor is to sweep, and I didn’t want to sweep the floor with the beans. She was all for throwing them away, but my Scots blood rebelled. So as she was carefully picking them off the floor, she muttered, “You better wash these carefully.”

Tonight I double washed them, first in a bowl of salted water—a trick I learned from my mom who insisted the salt scrubbed things clean. She used to clean mushrooms that way, which I think now was probably ill-advised, but I thought it would work with beans. And it did. The second water was much clearer. Then I blanched the beans for my dinner tonight. Then Jordan comes out to tell me she and Christian do want the leftover meatloaf I was having. So we’re having a delayed dinner together. She still doesn’t want the beans.

One complaint I can’t erase by writing about it: my big brother (and the only sibling I have) is back in the hospital with what he, a physician, would probably call old man’s problems. Please pray with me for a speedy recovery. As I think back over our lives, I realize how much each of us has shaped the other’s life. I wouldn’t have left Chicago without his prodding; he wouldn’t have moved to Texas if I weren’t here—not that he moved to be close to me, but that because of me (and my ex) he knew of the opportunities here for him. Over the years, we have been close, then not so close, then especially lately closer. Perhaps our golden era was when we were both single with kids in high school, and I used to gather everyone for Sunday supper—such treasured memories. I’m feeling a bit nostalgic tonight.

Foodie adventures

Last night I reported on my relatively unsuccessful attempts to cook simplistic meatloaf and pasta sauce. The meatloaf made a great sandwich today, and I added crunch with the semi-cooked onions from the pasta sauce. But I think the sauce will go in the garbage. The lesson learned is that I should have simmered a pasta sauce with herbs the way I usually do and made meatloaf the way I do with celery, chopped onion, ketchup, mustard and all those good things.
I got to reviewing in my mind what I've eaten in the last couple of weeks and it's been a varied diet--starting with white anchovies, lamb carpaccio, and a marrow bone. Then homemade chili, not too hot but with a kick, two nights in a row and a generous helping; tuna in a restaurant where I knew better than to order tuna--I think they just opened the can, put it on some wedge lettuce and covered it with tomatoes and grated cheese and served it with a side of ranch. Then there was sushi with generous wasabi, more marrow bones with foie gras mousse (very bland, tasted like whipping cream), fried oysters, and a Greek meal--ate just a little vegetable moussaka, all the green beans, spanakopita, and Greek salad. No wonder my stomach is in an uproar. I'm sticking to comfort food for a while. And lots of yogurt.
I'm still finding it gloomy that it gets dark all day, and today had only small bits of sunshine. I had nothing I had to do--no shopping or errands, no deadlines--and as a result I spent the day piddling on the computer or reading a novel that I'm really enjoying. But it made for a lazy, non-stimulating day and I felt draggy. Glad tomorrow is Sunday--church and probably Jordan and Jacob for lunch, then dinner with friends.
Got out of the doldrums tonight to have dinner with good friend Mary Volcansek. You know what? I felt brighter already when I put make-up on! We went to Pacific Table and had a fabulous meal--she had scallop salad and I had tuna carpaccio (so much for sticking to comfort food). We split a grilled artichoke--so good!
The world looks brighter to me tonight. Jordan and Jacob were waiting when we got home, and Jordan's gone off to a dinner party. Jacob and I will go to bed early, though he's hungry but doesn't want any of my offerings. Surprise!