Lockdown Bulletin - Cooking Notes

Now that being anywhere near strangers feels as dangerous as hanging about beside a radioactive reactor rod, I'm being very careful with food, using every last scrap of even the most unappetising objects I find skulking in the refridgerator. I don't want to go to the shop again, unless I absolutely have to.

But I'm also trying to cook nice food.

Which calls for some adaptations and compromises.

To give an idea of what I'm talking about, last night I spotted some large, unprepossessing carrots hiding up the back of the vegetable drawer. I think at the time that I bought them the phrase 'social distancing' was one that I had not yet ever heard - yes, that old.

I took them out, remembering a recipe I'd seen in a weekend paper for carrots cooked in ginger. I hunted the recipe down. It called for finger thin baby carrots. Never mind, same diff. It called for ginger infused cider. Well I had some fresh ginger but cider ...

I crawled under the hall table where we keep wine and after a bit I found a small bottle of Tokaji somebody very kindly gave us in 2009 or '10. The cork had begun to crumble. Ideal.

I followed most of the rest of the recipe's instructions, (more or less, honouring it in spirit if not in whatever).  And believe it or not, they were the most delicious carrots either of us have ever eaten. And I'd never have cooked them, if I hadn't been in this peculiar, somewhat anxious situation. Which may mean there are if not silver linings at least shiny tin foil or copper bottomed ones?

The only problem is, having not actually followed a recipe and not having access to a constant supply of small bottles of Tokaji with rotting corks, will I ever be able to make them again?

Forget the honey, I’d say.