Food in the Time of Corona

We are all stuck at home and we all have to eat but at this time more than any other, we have to make meals with what we already have. This is not the time to run out to a supermarket for some random exotic ingredient. It’s a time to improvise and be resourceful.

My friends Mirthe and Miguel live on the 7th floor of a building in the heart of Madrid. They have a beautiful apartment with a small balcony, in walking distance to everywhere. But they, and two of their three daughters, have been in total lockdown for almost a month. They don’t even go out to dump the garbage – that goes down a chute – and all food is ordered online. Madrid is not a place you want to walk around right now.

Trying to stay positive and make the most of the situation, we’ve taken to cooking sessions on Zoom. “Something like lasagne” was the request this week, and based on the ingredients they had and we had, this simple Mushroom and Spinach Pasta dish was born.

The key at these times is to make it work with whatever you have and dish like this is simple and adaptable. They had spinach, we had Swiss chard. They had button mushrooms, we had oysters. They had mozzarella and parmesan and we had some left over something hard and some feta that needed to be used up fast. Fortunately we both had pasta or that might have been a bit tricky!

So Zoom on, we got to work and cooked together and 40 minutes later sat down to eat!

Mushroom and Spinach Pasta Bake

Ingredients

(serves 4)

• 1 onion
• 400g mushrooms sliced – any variety
• Spinach/ swiss chard or other green leafy vegetable
• I tbs flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup grated cheese
• 1 ball mozzarella
• 400g pasta (we used penne)
• salt, pepper, olive oil

Method

Heat the oven to 180C/350F

Heat some olive oil in an ovenproof skillet or a frying pan. When the onions are soft and tinged with colour add the mushrooms and continue to cook. Meanwhile in a separate pan, start cooking the pasta.

When the onions and mushrooms are ready, add the spinach and cook down just until it wilts. Season well with salt and pepper – check the flavour. Then to make the sauce, simply move the vegetables to the sides to make a hole in the centre of the pan, sprinkle in the flour and about 1/4 the milk and stir vigorously. Keep adding the milk gradually, stirring all the time until the lumps of flour disappear and you have a thick sauce. Once the sauce is stable you can add more milk depending on how much sauce you want. Add a handful of the grated cheese and mix well.

Once the pasta is ready, rinse, drain and mix it into the pan with the vegetable mixture. Tip it all into an oven proof dish if not already in one, making sure there is a bit of a layer of the pasta on the top. Break up the mozzarella and spread it over the pasta and any other remaining grated cheese. Drizzle over a little olive oil, a light sprinkle of salt flakes and pop into the oven for 15 minutes till it’s slightly golden and crunchy on top.

You might not have spinach or mushrooms but perhaps you have leeks or tuna or something totally different. You can create something using the same technique with whatever you have and it’s bound to be delicious.

Meanwhile, in Madrid, lunch is ready and judging by the excitement, theirs tasted as good as ours did. Food in the time of Corona!