Page 19 - FDCC Pandemic Book

Living in a Pandemic: A Collection of Stories on Coping, Resilience & Hope
Here’s the beauty of this whole setup: I didn’t have to worry about the pork overcooking, because the sous vide would keep it at the perfect eating temperature. I didn’t have to worry about my rice burning, because the Instant Pot would cook it perfectly and keep it warm until we were ready to eat. I could spend the rest of the afternoon practicing law. When everyone was hungry, I took the pork out of the sous vide, cut it up into bite-sized pieces, and put the pieces into the Instant Pot. I added some peas straight from the freezer and gave everything a quick stir. Two minutes later, I called dinnertime.
In April, I felt like I had a decent handle on things.
By late May/early June, I realized how little of a handle I had on anything, as the world around me turned stupid and vicious. My pandemic-riddled brain took a good look and demanded comfort in the form of calories.
Definitions of comfort foods differ, but usually, you find comfort in what you ate when you were a kid. My grandmother made oxtails back in the day. Back then, oxtails were considered scraps, which made them well suited to the budget of a family that had made its way from Shreveport, Louisiana to Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the Great Migration.
Also back in the day, my mom worked weird hours at the post office, which meant that she often either had to (1) make and eat dinner right before she left for the night shift or (2) make dinner after she got home from work in the morning. As Midwesterners, we knew that chili + spaghetti is good eats. Mom would make a quick chili with ground beef and kidney beans, add some spaghetti to it, and that would be dinner. Sorry, Texans, but it was delicious.
One Sunday in June, my inherited predilection toward pasta with elaborate meat sauce combined with a craving for oxtail. Of course, I looked first to my Instant Pot, which always produces a good oxtail stew, but then I figured I had time for something more elaborate.
I made the tomato sauce first. I roasted some canned tomatoes, carrots, garlic, and capers in the oven, while I simmered the juice from the tomato can with herbs. Eventually, I threw everything together in the saucepan and hit it with my immersion blender. After I did the sauce, I browned some oxtails in our Dutch oven. After browning, I deglazed the pan with some cabernet, making sure to reserve a glass or two for quality control purposes. I added my tomato sauce and I threw the pan into a 300-degree oven for a few hours. While the oxtails were cooking, I made fresh flour- and-egg pasta noodles. Just before the oxtails were ready, I boiled the noodles for about a minute, then I added them to the pan with the oxtails. By then, the tomato- wine sauce had reduced substantially, and I basically had oxtail-tomato-pasta stew. Being from Wisconsin, I immediately added cheese.
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