Knock, knock--it's your neighbor!

Rewards of food and friendship in fraught times

“You’re not there,” my husband says some days when we head out on a walk in the early morning or late afternoon. And he’s right. I’m floating off into a happier space than the present moment—usually in my kitchen dreaming of the next dish I might make. It’s my go-to comfort place these days, and obviously I’m not alone.

“There’s so much we don’t know, can’t know, can’t imagine,” wrote New York Times Food Editor Sam Sifton in his May 10 column. “And so we cook. We cook to feed our bodies, to feed our imaginations, to deliver deliciousness and beauty, to make a statement that this — this roast, this galette, this focaccia garden — is something we can control.”

Focaccia that I shared with my neighbor Susie. (You can find the recipe below.)

I can relate. In my family, food was always a central concern—and often seemed to be the panacea for any ailment. I still remember an apocryphal story about a cousin who took my grandmother’s car out for a spin and had a crash. When he came back to her house, my grandma’s first words were: “Poor boy. You must be hungry!” I’m sure if I call up anyone in family, I’ll get a dispute about the truthfulness of this tale—or even if it happened at all. But the underlying message is undeniable. No matter the problem or occasion, the solution almost always involved food. Miserable about a test you’re cramming for? Well, you have to have dinner! Can’t study on an empty stomach! Family coming to visit? What’s on the menu? Calling on a sick friend? Can’t arrive empty-handed. Got to bake something.

In the midst of a pandemic, no one’s coming to visit. But everyone’s hungry and obsessing about the next meal. If you don’t want to listen to people arguing on NPR or CNN or read the newsfeed on your phone, if you’ve suddenly developed ADD and can’t seem to focus, even on escapist fiction or TV, and if another walk with your husband could lead to comments about your inattention or the mask he’s not wearing, food is definitely the answer. So what can I cook? And who can I feed? There are only two people living here right now. It helps to have a hungry neighbor.

Susan Raycroft, whom everyone calls Susie, and I became friends after her husband Randy passed away in 2013. We’d known each other to wave at before that, but suddenly she was alone. And she told me she didn’t like to cook. Her four sisters are great cooks, as were her mother and grandmother, but not Susie. “I just never liked it,” she says. But she loves to eat and isn’t at all fussy about what she eats. Growing up in a large family may have had something to do with it.

“We were healthy and had a good diet, but my family wasn’t wealthy and there was never quite enough,” she told me. The five hungry girls polished off what was on their plates, but there were seldom any seconds.

Susie, who grew up in Westwood (Los Angeles), would snack at the homes of well-to-do friends on treats not allowed at her own—potato chips, cupcakes, Coca-Cola. A weight problem in childhood made her self-conscious, and she lost 20 pounds after leaving home—and has never put it back on. To look at her slender frame, you’d never guess there was ever any extra weight there. At 74, she can no longer drive and stays fit by walking a lot, so when I come over with a plate of treats, she seldom turns me down. But she’s very disciplined about how much she eats—usually one or two sweet things, and the rest get saved for later.

Mini Morning Glory Muffins shared with Susie (Check out this recipe from King Arthur Flour.)

When her daughter Jill was growing up, Susie told me she did do some cooking—mostly classics such as grilled cheese, which she sometimes burned; spaghetti; meatloaf; the occasional batch of cookies; lots of canned and frozen veggies; sandwiches, and salads. Randy often barbecued on weekends. But unlike her sisters, Susie never enjoyed cooking—and couldn’t stand dealing with the mess in her kitchen afterwards. Gardening, not cooking, was—and is—her passion. “I’d rather pull weeds than wash dishes,” she said.

Susie’s very “Marie Kondo” living room.

So when she was suddenly single after Randy’s death, Susie simplified her life—no more meals that would result in a sink full of dishes. Her kitchen, and the rest of her house, are immaculate. Almost everything she eats is uncomplicated, with very few pots involved. "I’m a minimalist,” she says, and so are all her sisters and her daughter. Marie Kondo, the famed Japanese organizing consultant, “doesn’t need to organize me,” Susie said. “We were raised that way.”

When you cook for yourself, you can eat what you want. For Susie, that’s often Greek yogurt (Fage Total 2%, if she can get it) with dried fruit and granola for breakfast (sometime the granola is my contribution), a salad from Trader Joe’s for lunch, and maybe some scrambled eggs for dinner. Since the coronavirus hit, she no longer goes to the market, mostly giving a fairly unvarying list of what she wants to a caregiver, who comes twice weekly and does her shopping for her.

But for a home cook in quarantine with a lot of time on her hands, a yen to try something new—and a husband who would be happy if he ate the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week—Susie’s a godsend. She never turns down anything I give her and shows a surprising knack for tasting that hidden pinch of allspice or spoonful of orange liqueur that I added to the recipe. Often she sends detailed texts or phone messages that warm a cook’s hungry heart. When I made a sun-dried tomato focaccia the other day and gave her a piece with a little salad, her message said, “Oh my god! I put it in the oven and my kitchen smelled like an Italian restaurant.”

Comments like that make up for a lot of time fretting about an unknowable future. Now I’m trying to think of what else I might make for Susie—perhaps some more of her favorite granola.

Below is the focaccia recipe, which Susie assures me she will not be making! But for those who enjoy the challenges of baking with sourdough, this is a great recipe! Don’t be intimidated by the number of steps. The basic dough (Steps 1 to 8) can be used for a variety of breads, including baguettes, round boules, English muffins, rolls, and bialys. It always blows my mind that you can make so much out of so little—just flour, water and salt (and time)! But if you prefer something simpler (though there will still be dirty dishes!), try King Arthur’s No-Fuss Focaccia.

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See you in the kitchen!

Sun-Dried Tomato Focaccia

(Recipe from The Cheese Board Collective Works, a wonderful book of recipes from the iconic employee-owned neighborhood, cheese shop and pizzeria in Berkeley, CA)

Makes one focaccia, approximately 9 by 12 inches

Prep time, including rising and baking: 9 hours (unless rising overnight);

Active time: 1 hour

Ingredients for Dough:

4 cups (20 ounces) bread flour (I use King Arthur)

1 1/4 cups cool water

1 tablespoon, plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt*

1 1/2 cups (8 ounces) Sourdough Starter**

Additions:

2 tablespoons coarse yellow cornmeal or polenta

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Ingredients for Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto:

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes

2 cloves garlic, peeled

1 cup warm water

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Topping:

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

`Directions for crust:

1. Put the flour in the bowl of a stand mixer or a large bowl.

2. If using a stand mixer,*** add the water to the bowl, and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment until the ingredients are thoroughly combined, about 2 minutes.

3. Let rest for 10 minutes. Add salt and sourdough starter.

4. Switch to the dough hook and increase the mixer speed to medium, kneading for 12 minutes or until the dough is slightly tacky and soft. (After a couple of minutes, the dough should gather around the hook; you can add extra flour by the tablespoon if the dough doesn’t pull away from the sides of the bowl.)

5. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for about 5 minutes or until the dough is smooth and a bit shiny.

6. Form the dough into a ball and place it in a large oiled bowl. Turn the dough over to coat it with oil.

7. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel, and let it rise in a warm, draft-free place for at least 4 hours, or until doubled in size.

8. The dough can also be refrigerated overnight. In that case, let the dough stand at room temperature for 2 hours the next day before proceeding with the recipe.

9. Sprinkle a large baking sheet (13 by 9 inches) with the cornmeal. Place the dough on the baking sheet and cover with a floured kitchen towel. Let rise for about an hour, or until soft enough to stretch easily without springing back.

10. In a small bowl, combine the crushed garlic and olive oil. Set aside.

11. Gently pull, pat, and stretch the dough to make a 7- by 11-inch rectangle with an even thickness throughout. Brush with the garlic oil and cover with a floured kitchen towel. Let rise in a warm place for at least 2 hours, or until increased in size by about one-fourth.

To make pesto:

1. In a medium bowl, soak the sun-dried tomatoes in the warm water until softened, about 30 minutes.

2. Drain the tomatoes, reserving the liquid.

3. Put the tomatoes and garlic in a food processor and process to a smooth puree.

4. With the machine running, gradually add the olive oil. If the pesto is too thick, add a small amount of the reserved liquid. Transfer the pesto to a small bowl and set aside.

To bake:

1. Remove all but the middle rack of the oven.

2. If using a baking stone, 45 minutes before the dough has finished rising, place the stone on the floor of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. If using a baking sheet only, preheat the oven 15 minutes before the dough has finished rising.

3. Using the tips of your fingers, dimple the dough over the entire surface.

4. If using a baking stone, place the baking sheet in the middle rack of the oven, bake for 15 minutes, then rotate sheet front to back. Bake 10 minutes longer, then slide the focaccia from the pan directly onto the baking stone and bake for 5 minutes more, for a total baking time of 30 minutes, or until crisp on the bottom and lightly browned on top.

5. If using a baking sheet only, after rotating the sheet, bake for 15 minute more.

To assemble:

1. Transfer the focaccia to a wire rack and brush a second time with garlic oil.

2. With a rubber spatula, apply a thin layer of tomato pesto. Sprinkle with the green onions and Parmesan cheese. Let cool for a few minutes. Serve warm with a green salad and the extra sun-dried tomato pesto.

Notes:

*Most, but not all, kosher salt has a lower sodium content than sea salt. If you’re using the latter, reduce the amount of salt in the recipe by about half.

**The Cheese Board cookbook has a recipe for making a sourdough starter, but I used one I wrote about in my April 26 post. Either one—or your own—will work, as long as it’s recently fed, active, and has visible bubbles. There’s no added commercial yeast in this recipe.

***If you’re making the dough by hand, mix in the water with a wooden spoon, let the dough rest for 10 minutes, add salt and sourdough by hand, and then knead on a lightly floured surface for 15 minutes, adding flour only as necessary to keep the dough from sticking.

Recipe note: There are several focaccia variations in the cookbook, including toppings with rosemary, pitted Kalamata olives, fresh tomatoes, capers, basil pesto, and ricotta salata. As with pizza, toppings for focaccia are a matter of individual preference, with the variety limited only by your imagination. But the thick crusty bready-ness and full flavor of the finished product is hard to beat.