How I Cook, Eat and Learn from Crisis
By: Mai Mislang
Tags: Love, Food, Covid 19 Crisis, Vegan, Cooking

That episode in my personal history repeated itself in March of this year. Clients didn’t need my advice all of a sudden. They just needed to stay afloat. Out of work once more, I started to fret. I couldn’t sleep. But there is now that familiarity with loss, a belief steeled by experience that anything can be survived because I have. Fate feels more forgiving.

I am also not alone in my sorrow — the whole world is in mourning. And I am home, in Manila, Philippines, in the house where I grew up, in the company of people I love.

Having learned from overcoming crises before, I knew exactly what I needed to do to feel much better.

I needed to eat.

But there is now that familiarity with loss, a belief steeled by experience that anything can be survived because I have.

Cooking for survival

To eat well in a pandemic, one must know how to cook — a skill I luckily learned 22 years ago.

Cooking is never a chore. It is a form of meditation and relaxation. It is a personal passion that has tremendous benefits. It has given me not just my health, but strong relationships with my family and friends, who generously share some of themselves while enjoying the food I prepare.

Cooking has taught me to create a safe space for my loved ones, to value their health that they are briefly entrusting to me, to reciprocate their trust with thought and abundance, and to expect nothing in return but their company. We may have lost some of our liberties in these coronatimes, but we can still make our own food, entertain safely, and share the bounty with our friends and family.

That is what I set out to do as it becomes clear to me, the more I spend time in the kitchen, that food will ultimately help me survive this crisis.

This survival plan requires a kitchen retrofitted for disaster. It should have a working stove, oven, blender or food processor, freezer, and a fridge (ideally defrosted to optimize storage). It should be able to churn out meals with ingredients that comply with the minimum safety standards of house arrest: nutritious, delicious and don’t spoil easily. It should have root crops that have a long shelf life such as potatoes, radishes, and turnips. It should have canned beans and vegetables. Asian pantry staples such as rice, noodles, sesame oil, soy sauce, hoisin, turmeric, sesame seeds, gochujang, rice vinegar, and fish sauce must always be replenished.

We don’t have to suffer from hunger while living in a bunker. In fact, we can live a bit on the edge using some of the extra free time we now have.

Cooking has taught me to create a safe space for my loved ones, to value their health that they are briefly entrusting to me, to reciprocate their trust with thought and abundance, and to expect nothing in return but their company.

Eat healthy but heartily

Before the pandemic, I would reserve Sundays to prepare my meals for the week to save time. In ongoing quarantine, I suddenly have all the time to experiment, to create something impromptu based on fridge inventory.

But one thing remains the same: the meals that I make are healthy and hearty. No scrimping necessary.

The lingering uncertainty forced me to be more intentional about the menu. I have to create dishes that suit both my palate and my parents’ to avoid waste. I have to inoculate them from COVID-19 by feeding them foods rich in antioxidants such as fruits and vegetables. At the same time, I have to preserve the joy of eating comfort food by offsetting their usually high sugar and salt content with fresh ingredients.

There will be no junk food in my home.

To err on the side of overcaution and visit the grocery less frequently, I decided to switch to a predominantly vegan diet.

Let your tastebuds travel

I have gone vegan before on a month-long experiment so I know how doable it is. This wasn’t a big deal for me, but it is for my parents who are used to their traditionally pork-based Filipino fare.

I love the food I grew up with, but ironically for an archipelago surrounded by water, much of the popular Philippine dishes are meat-based. Take for example my favorite local dish — sinigang, a satisfying pork stew soured with tamarind and mixed with radish, eggplant, spinach, and taro. The secret of its majesty is in this step: sauteeing the pork belly in garlic and letting the fat simmer long enough to absorb the acid from the tamarind. The soup is ultra savory with a few drops of fish sauce. It is perfect with rice and perfect for rainy days.

I have too much history with culinary perfection that to mess with it by using substitutes seems a travesty. Tofu sinigang cannot exist. Someone else can boldly make the attempt because I won’t. As a result, I have not had sinigang for six months.

We have other dishes that could be veganized easily but old habits die hard. Then I caught myself: why settle with local cuisine during the quarantine? Why resign to tradition? We are going vegan for health reasons, to take full advantage of the pure nutritional benefits of fruits and vegetables. That is the bar, and it is not the end of the world if the bar is not met, like when there is leftover shrimp, which my mom loves. I am not throwing away that shrimp. I am going to use that shrimp to make scampi with loads of garlic.

Now is not the time to throw food away. Now is the time to at least try and go vegan on most days. With that as the goal, we will still end up healthier than most people and better equipped to protect ourselves and others from the coronavirus.

There are many plant-based options everywhere, including popular dishes in other countries that remind us of our travels. Or exotic dishes and spices that can take us to a place we have never been. In India alone, there are a variety of meatless curries, a lesson in spices in every bite. Coriander, cumin, and cinnamon — add the three Cs to your vegetable dish for gastro magic and it will taste incredible enough to forego and forget meat. Cumin and coriander are also essential in Mexican cooking. Cinnamon is vital to baking.

Why did the Europeans expand their empire in the East? Spices. How did the Chinese influence Filipino cuisine? Spices.

Conquistadors needed an armada to have what now sits abundantly in our cupboards. Perhaps we can pay tribute to the spice trade with just a little bit of creativity?

Or perhaps, we should make that the mission of our quarantine adventures — to let our palate do the exploring. To travel despite the travel ban. To get lost in the euphoria of flavors right in our own homes.

Why settle with local cuisine during the quarantine? Why resign to tradition? We are going vegan for health reasons, to take full advantage of the pure nutritional benefits of fruits and vegetables. That is the bar, and it is not the end of the world if the bar is not met.

Create then elevate

The first dish I cooked that was out of the ordinary was aloo gobi — an Indian vegan dish made with potatoes and cauliflower. It was a dish that I first had in Rajasthan during my last foreign travel before the lockdown and that I had promised to make for myself when I get home.

My second creation was vegan bread. I had never baked anything in my life before March of this year, but because I love artisanal bread and not the long lines just to get one, I knew I had to make my own.

Making my first-ever bread was a pivotal event in my kitchen journey because the recipe called for the traditional way of making bread — kneading by hand. It was an homage to the early Egyptians who, around 8000 BC, crushed grain and, by accident, combined the resulting flour with water. The strange mixture rose to become bread which would feed mankind for generations to come.

Bread is inexpensive, yet nutritious and filling. Learning to make it increased my chances of surviving this crisis tenfold.

My homemade vegan dinner rolls

I have since created vegan spreads and soups to pair with my homemade bread, such as hummus, cashew cream cheese, and cauliflower chowder. I would try to remember standout dining experiences and the dishes I wanted to eat again: baba ganoush, tzatziki, tom yum, pumpkin pie, and so on and try to improvise using local ingredients to make them vegan/vegetarian. Since March, I have “traveled” to Italy, Japan, Thailand, China, and will soon “visit” Israel by making shakshuka. It is no longer unusual in our household these days to be “traveling” to three countries at the same time. Yesterday, I made sushi rolls using leftover brown rice, pesto rosso — a vegan pesto sauce made of sundried tomatoes, and our local banana fritter called turon. They don’t really pair well, but who cares? We are traveling without moving!

Bread is inexpensive, yet nutritious and filling. Learning to make it increased my chances of surviving a crisis tenfold.

Fake it ‘til you taste it

The downside of experimenting is that some of the ingredients that are critical to successful rendering are not that easy to find.

For example, I have been to several groceries, including one that is 20 kilometers away, and not one had cardamom in the spices section. I did find harissa from Tunisia, but I still need cardamom so I can make my own garam masala.

It is tough to cheat your way through Indian mastery in these parts, but authentic Chinese, Korean, and Japanese ingredients are much more abundant so I do end up making those dishes more.

The best time to fake it is when preparing vegan ingredients, which are devoid of eggs and dairy. This can be pretty challenging for folks who love cheese as I do. I have yet to create my own vegan mozzarella cheese, but I have had some success with other cheese substitutes. My favorite recreation is vegan parmesan cheese, which is a combination of nutritional yeast, ground cashews, and garlic powder. If you sprinkle some of that on warm pesto, you can abandon Parmigiano-Reggiano, at least for a while.

Another vegan essential is tofu, one of my favorite fake meats, which is affordable and surprisingly versatile. The easiest dish that I make is Korean tofu bites, which are just diced extra-firm tofu cooked in the air-fryer for 10 mins at 190C and then tossed in sesame oil, gochujang and brown sugar. I top that with green onions and sesame seeds. It’s a fun fiery red appetizer to start off a meal with just the right kick.

Korean tofu bites, topped with parsley because I was out of leeks

Let me have cake

Like I’ve said, I have never baked anything in my life before March, but things got way out of control in no time after family and friends tried my vegan bread and asked for more.

Time to turbocharge my inner Christina Tosi and bid adieu processed desserts. I am going to make my own and I’m going to make a lot of them.

I didn’t use the mixer right away and started with the easy beginner stuff: no-bake peanut butter cups. This is just like Reese’s, but without palm oil (which I abstain from to save orangutan habitats), dextrose, emulsifier, and all these synthetic preservatives that should be banned from entering the human body in the first place. I make them muffin-size big and top with sea salt because I love that salty-sweet contradiction banging against each other in my mouth. I continue to experiment on this since my friends started ordering after I gave them away as presents.

My homemade peanut butter cups

I love that salty-sweet contradiction banging against each other in my mouth.

While there are many vegan desserts that are incredible (my improvised mango torte with coconut cream was a Sunday family lunch star), I want to make all kinds of desserts. My favorite sweets have eggs. They really are essential for structure. While I did try to make flourless chocolate cake with the flaxseed meal egg substitute, that had to be thrown out. So for my sweet tooth, I have decided that there should be no inhibitions. I will follow Sally’s recipes to a T. Weren’t the lockdowns restriction enough?

Time to go all-in during the quarantine.

Learning the strange art of acceptance

It is not always easy to keep the spirits up every time jobless zombies like myself enter the kitchen to make something. Believe me, I spend an hour as soon as I wake up meditating and silently affirming the many reasons I have to be grateful. “I am healthy, alive, and strong enough to care for my family.” Or the standard picker-upper “this too shall pass.”

But we don’t know when. I don’t know when I can dig my heels in the sand again. I don’t know when I can perform live again.

I don’t know when I will work again.

In the absence of answers, I have chosen to accept being in limbo as my new normal. It is just less stressful that way. You can say I am lucky to have that option, to be buoyed by parents who are secure in their pensions and happen to need the help of their daughter who failed to launch. I know not everyone is as fortunate.

And with this luck, this lifesaver that is keeping me afloat in these testiest of times, I am slowly adding important life skills to my growing arsenal: kneading dough, making a sushi roll with a bamboo mat, properly storing produce to extend their shelf life, knife skills, turning chickpeas into hummus and fermenting radish. These skills, I now know, ensure my survival. They can’t be bad for the world. They might even lead to a new career. Nutritionist? Food researcher? Farmer? Who really knows, but I do know it would be amazing to be any of these three.

The kitchen “pro”

With this new life, it helps to apply whatever bankable skills we already have as a professional.

In my case, I had once worked as a presidential speechwriter and chief of staff for a Cabinet minister. I have years of training in managing a political communications office, anticipating public crises, and peacefully handling inter-department skirmishes.

These skills may initially seem out of place in the kitchen, but as I spend more time there, I realize that I am learning my way around food and baking and progressing rather quickly because I am organized. I clean the kitchen before and after I work. I cook only when the mise en place is set.

The ability to track multiple moving parts while managing egos in my past life originated from a genetic predisposition to pay very close attention to the tiniest things. I just used the same programming which is already lodged in my brain anyway in my cooking — helpful when making pasta al dente while the sauce is stewing.