{"id":29101,"date":"2020-04-13T19:56:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T18:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tourradar.com\/days-to-come\/?p=29101"},"modified":"2020-04-15T18:22:51","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T17:22:51","slug":"paying-homage-to-quarantine-cooking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tourradar.com\/days-to-come\/paying-homage-to-quarantine-cooking\/","title":{"rendered":"From World-Travellers to At-Home Cooks: Paying Homage to Quarantine Cuisine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s a rawness to cooking in a pandemic. It bears permeation of admission that this is comfort food but not in the way we know, and it’s being dished around the world as an act of compassion.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my dearest friends in LA just sent me two recipes for banana bread, one which she assures me is the crack of banana bread, and the other is more wholesome but still pretty delicious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While stirring a pot of mutter paneer<\/em>, my brother in the United Kingdom also shoves not one, but two loaves of banana bread in the oven \u2013 which after eating my sister informs me are as soft as a baby’s bottom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Banana bread has become one of the official comfort foods of the COVID-19 pandemic | \u00a9 Klara Avsenik\/Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another friend who lives down the road tells me he’s almost perfected something similar to Toronto’s infamous Burger’s Priest<\/em> beef patty \u2013 no small feat I assure you. An acquaintance I follow on Instagram has just put the kind of chocolate cake you dream about on her story, and I take note of the recipe, vowing no more chocolate mug cakes to fix my sugar cravings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My husband started following a home chef on YouTube called Afzal Arshad<\/a>, who measures all his spices with a tablespoon and cooks in Pakistan’s wild outdoors. He is now attempting to replicate Arshad’s Peshawari karahi with a bottle of passata. And a couple of weeks ago, Massimo Bottura made mac and cheese live for the world to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Grammarly Premium still identifies the word foodie<\/em> as slang, whether in a pandemic or not, it’s safe to say for most of the general population, being foodies is at the centre of much of what we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Food is an important aspect of many cultures, quarantine cooking gives us a way to tap into that | \u00a9 Avel Chuklanov\/Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am from one of the many countries where food plays an important role in the culture. Most of us live in cities where we can virtually (pun-intended) find almost any cuisine on our doorstep, and in a time when Netflix shows like Chef’s Table and Ugly Delicious fuel our appetite for drool-worthy adventures across the globe. When most of us travel, among all the things we look forward to, eating locally is high on the list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bearing all this in mind, it’s no surprise that while destined to stay at home, many of us have turned to sourdough, banana bread and mac and cheese. Vox nailed it on the head when they said, “quarantine cooking is about more than just feeding yourself.<\/a>” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I cook in my kitchen, I\u2019m missing my parents. Italy. The hot sauce at my favourite restaurant where I can get a plate of momos for CAD $7. I love going to this restaurant because we can chat with Nepalese owner in Urdu. There, we talk about the food my husband and I ate in Namche Bazaar the previous year while hiking and trekking to Everest Basecamp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eating food from our travels is one way to keep wanderlust satiated | \u00a9 Susankhya Mool\/Pexels<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Post-travel, like plenty of others, I’ve found that food is the most tangible way to keep vacation hangovers at bay and memories of destinations close to home. Whenever we miss the mountains, we visit that restaurant and take leftover packets of hot sauce home and while it lasts, eat it with almost everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trying to re-create that hot sauce, sacrilegiously enjoying it with a simple plate of homemade pasta, and telling our parents about it on the phone is an act of love that did not exist in the same context three months ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the obsession with posting pictures of our plates was born of Instagram, at present, the need to talk about food and share our creations is no longer about hashtags and amassing likes. Cut-off physically from the outside world, our loved ones, and other life-enriching experiences, the colourful minutiae of burger patties, crack banana bread and mutter paneer<\/em> have become an emotional antidote in the face of a virus that currently has no real cure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years now, the landscape of social media and the online world has led to feeling disconnected and lonely. In this imposed self-isolation \u2013 because of our kindred whims to bake and cook \u2013 at long last, it has become a place to find connection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We now live in a world where we will never take eating a meal with friends and family for granted again | #itsthelittlethings #onthetable #fromwhereistand #flashesofdelight #thehappynow #italy #happyhour #aperitivo<\/a><\/p>

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