Friday open thread: comfort food

[dolorosa_12]

Edited to add that I feel this post would fit the criteria of today's snowflake_challenge: In your own space, interact with someone.



This generally isn't much of a problem for me — I try to post at least one comment or reply every day, and that's certainly the case today. However, it occurred to me that this post might be a good opportunity for people to ease their way into commenting, or interacting with others (it doesn't have to be me! you could reply to someone else's comment!) in a hopefully low-pressure context. My Friday open threads are intended to be the ultimate in low-pressure posting: each week I ask a question, answer it, and open up a space for others to answer too. The questions are generally fairly low pressure topics, although of course that is somewhat subjective. So ... feel free to jump in! Consider this post license to comment if you've never commented before, or to interact with perfect strangers. (Or don't: the whole point is that it's meant to be low pressure!)

And we're back for another round of the Friday open thread. This time, my question is a simple one: what is your favourite comfort food?

I have a lot of things that would fit this definition — basically anything that is warm, flavourful, and takes a long time but not a lot of effort to cook (so soups, stews, slow-cooked curries, etc) is comforting to me. And my stepmother introduced me years ago to the healing powers of congee, and ever since I've cooked it when I have a cold. But really, there's one dish above all others that I turn to for comfort: Marcella Hazan's pasta with tuna sauce. This has been a staple in my family since before I was born — my parents encountered Hazan's cookbooks when they lived in New York in the 1980s, and when they returned to Australia they taught every other adult member of my family how to cook it. There are photos of me as a baby with this dish smeared all over my face and upper body. I've been cooking it myself since I was first allowed to be solo in the kitchen — so probably since I was about ten or eleven years old — and I helped my mother, father, and various other relatives cook it many years before that. (We are a family that has always encouraged children to be active observers and participants in the kitchen, and it's generally resulted in said children growing into confident cooks and adventurous eaters, not that this dish is 'adventurous' by any stretch of the imagination.)

I've moved house around fifteen times in my adult life, and this dish is always the first thing I cook in a new kitchen.

Its beauty is its simplicity: it has only five ingredients (plus salt, pepper and olive oil), and it can easily be doubled to serve four, or be saved as leftovers to serve one person over two days (although I'd generally cook new pasta fresh on the second day rather than reheating old pasta, which I find disgusting). And it takes about five minutes to prepare and fifteen minutes to cook.


Pasta with tuna sauce (serves 2)

2 cloves garlic, finely diced (increase if you prefer more garlic)
bunch flatleaf parsley, finely chopped (the curly kind can be used instead, or dried parsley)
1 400g tin tomatoes
1 tin/jar of tuna (I prefer the kind in oil, and I then use the oil to fry the ingredients, but tuna in brine or water would work fine)
Enough pasta to serve the required number of people

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan. Once the pan is hot, add the diced garlic and fry until golden, then add the chopped parsley, and fry for a minute. (If the pan is really hot, the parsley may jump around, so I sometimes remove the pan from the heat at this point.) Add the tin of tomatoes and reduce heat to a medium simmer. Cook until the tomatoes are a good consistency — you shouldn't see much liquid in the pan — generally for about 10 minutes. Add the tuna, breaking it up and spreading it around the pan so that all ingredients are well mixed together. It's okay if a bit of oil from the tin gets added to the sauce at this point. Once the tuna has been heated up, remove the pan from the heat and combine with the pasta to serve. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

(I am assuming everyone knows how to cook pasta, so have not included this in the recipe!).

What are your comfort foods?

Comments

[forestofglory]

I don't think I could pick just one comfort food! It depends on the circumstances a bit too. When I was studying in the UK I would get burrios for the place run by someone form northern California when I was feeling homesick, and even now that I'm back home I find burritos comforting.

Other foods I find comforting include macaroni and cheese, chicken soup, and ice cream

[dolorosa_12]

Good burritos are certainly difficult to get hold of in the UK — I've heard other American friends complain about this, so I'm glad you were able to find a place that fed you when you were feeling homesick.

Your other comfort foods are all also great!

[forestofglory]

Yeah, I hear the the Mexican food situation is getting a little bit better over there, but most of it is not what I'm used to. It was lucky for me that the person who ran this restaurant was form the same part of the world as me and made the exact kind of burritos I wanted.

[superborb]

Oh, I'll have to try that now that I regularly keep tuna in my pantry!

My comfort food is clear Chinese style chicken soup: boil a whole chicken with cooking wine, garlic, ginger, and a little salt or soy sauce. If you want to eat the chicken, stop after 1.5 h, but my grandma boils it for two days. A little jinhua ham is good in it too, if you can find some; that needs to be rinsed and boiled for longer for max flavor extraction.

[dolorosa_12]

That soup sounds absolutely delicious, so I'll definitely have to try it.

I hope you like the tuna pasta!

[raven]

My most comfort food is a fried egg with black pepper! There's just something about it. This reminds me of a wonderful article in the Washington Post I read ages ago - they had interviewed every country's ambassador to the US living in DC and asked them which restaurant in town they ate at when they felt homesick, it was extremely lovely.

[dolorosa_12]

There's nothing better than a fried egg! Black pepper is great, and I also like them with chili oil or sriracha.

I love the sound of that article! Most of my friends in the UK are fellow immigrants, and we often have conversations about the foods we miss and find difficult to find here. And everyone always suggests tips or places people could go to find their respective hard-to-get food — when I first moved here, all the Australians would be passing around tips for the handful of Australian-style cafes in London with the air of it being top secret hidden knowledge, although thankfully good antipodean-style coffee is much easier to find these days.

[chestnut_pod]

My auntie's famous spinach casserole, which is the epitome of hippy 70s cooking. I credit it with my lifelong appreciation of "squidgy" as the ultimate textural pleasure.

[dolorosa_12]

It's amazing how much nostalgia and memory feed into our notions of comfort food, isn't it? I'll have to admit that 'squidgy'-textured foods are not my thing, but I'm glad they give you joy!

[chestnut_pod]

I feel like she unwittingly prepared me for a lifetime of mochi and bubble tea and the like, so thank you, Auntie :D

[regshoe]

Ooh, that sounds good—I may try the recipe.

My favourite comfort food is fresh bread—with plenty of butter, and optionally with honey. Having a bread machine means I can eat the first slice of every loaf fresh, and occasionally I just make that my lunch—delicious. I've also recently learnt via my mum to make cauliflower and cheese soup—this recipe, but with the cheese grated and blended into the soup instead of just used as a topping—which is an amazingly good comforting soup.

[dolorosa_12]

Oooh, fresh bread is wonderful, as is good soup. I'll swap you my tuna recipe for your cauliflower soup, as it sounds delicious!

[whimsyful]

My comfort foods are also congee and soups! Clear chinese chicken noodle soup, pork bone lotus root soup, chicken congee...having a pressure cooker has made making these faster and easier too, so I usually end up making one of these at least once a week in the winter.

[dolorosa_12]

Oooh, all those soups sound lovely as well, and there really is nothing better than congee!

[corvidology]

Curries and long simmered stews. DNA will out! Recently, Lamb Harrisa has become my go to recipe.

[dolorosa_12]

I see you share my love of flavourful, slow-cooked foods. And I love lamb harissa as well.

[sophia_sol]

I'm with you on soups and stews being all just comforting in general! In terms of more specifics....I have a soup recipe from my grandma that she called "mulligatawny" but bears basically no resemblance to any dish anyone else calls mulligatawny (spelling variable). It's basically a curry chicken soup with rice, and it's very White Person Indian food, but it's a soup of my childhood that is somehow enormously comforting.

[dolorosa_12]

Food from childhood is always so comforting, isn't it? I think I've had mulligatawny before, although I'm not certain. I definitely have some recipes from my grandmother that are nostalgic and comforting to me too.

[nerakrose]

I think my comfort food is actually just food that other people have cooked for me.

in general I struggle a bit with the concept of comfort food, in the sense of a food that brings me comfort - if I'm hungry I eat, and that's nice. if somebody else has cooked for me, even better because then I didn't have to do it. having somebody else make me food is more important than the food itself and is something that can make me feel really loved.

food in terms of nostalgia is different, it's less about the food itself and more about wanting an association to a certain thing, or sticking to a tradition. in my family we have 'the favourite cake' which we also sometimes just call 'the rice crispies cake' - it's a cake made with two meringues, the meringues are made with brown sugar and rice crispies are mixed in before they're baked (this turns the rice crispies into these little caramelised nuggets of brown sugar flavour, which gives a nice crunchy texture to the meringues). the meringues are layered with whipped cream and a drizzle of chocolate buttercream fudge. we make this cake for every birthday and every special occasion. my siblings can't remember a time when we didn't make it, I on the other hand remember the first time we did make it because my mum got the recipe from a booklet from Icelandic chocolate company Nói Síríus (who used to make these free little seasonal recipe booklets, we had a little stack of them) in the early 90s, when my siblings were either not yet born or too young to remember details like that. not having that cake for a family celebration would feel deeply wrong, just as much as having it on the table feels fundamentally right.

when first lockdown hit I got a strong craving for foods I associate with my childhood, I suppose because I needed to feel some kind of sense of safety. one of those foods is nesquik chocolate powder for mixing in with cold milk, but specifically in the context of making cold chocolate milk to have with freshly buttered toast with cheese. I used to have that for breakfast or as a snack or even for lunch on weekends or holidays when I was little. as an adult I would sometimes get a box (or bag, depending on country I was living in) of the chocolate powder to keep in my cupboard so I could sometimes make a glass of chocolate milk to have with toast (which I also didn't eat often), as a treat. one of those boxes or bags could last me a year or more as I just wouldn't have it that often. but now for the past two years I have been having toast and chocolate milk almost every day, either for breakfast or for lunch, and I don't think I'm ready to break out of that habit yet. does that count as a comfort food?

[dolorosa_12]

That all makes a lot of sense. I think for me cooking itself is a comfort if it's something I find easy to prepare (although 'easy' cooking is a relative concept, and for me it means something that might take a while to be ready, but has few steps involved and that I know how to do without following a recipe), then there's another level of comfort if the food smells nice while cooking slowly, and finally memory and nostalgia can also make specific foods comforting. Whereas for you it seems that comfort is entirely separate from nostalgia when it comes to food.

one of those boxes or bags could last me a year or more as I just wouldn't have it that often. but now for the past two years I have been having toast and chocolate milk almost every day, either for breakfast or for lunch, and I don't think I'm ready to break out of that habit yet. does that count as a comfort food?

I think that definitely counts, and in any case each person is the best judge of what comfort food means to them. I have a similar comfort nostalgia food, which is sourdough toast with Vegemite and butter, served with a cup of black tea, because that's what I ate all the time for breakfast as a child, and it's hard to get Vegemite in the UK!

[nerakrose]

oh that I definitely get. I have a few go-to dishes I make because I don't need to follow a recipe and even if it is sometimes labour intensive it doesn't matter as much because I know every step and how long it takes, so there aren't any unknowns in the recipe. even things like lasagne which I make fairly often with varying ingredients (I don't have a recipe and usually just use whatever veggies I have in the fridge for it) counts as one of those, because it doesn't really matter what goes into it because I've made so many iterations of it that I know exactly how it'll come out every time anyway. I guess in that way it can be a comfort because it's predictable and safe.

true. I think I've just been sometimes feeling a little left out of the comfort food conversation, as it were, as I so often get the impression that comfort food fits within a narrow range of universal foods (culture-specific, but still) that are heralded as the ultimate comfort food and I'm just like...it's a food. what is the comfort element of it? I still don't really understand what comfort food actually means to people when they talk about it.

I thought vegemite and marmite are the same thing but with different names? I wouldn't know as I have never had either - an Aussie friend brought a jar of vegemite with them when visiting Europe one summer because they didn't want to be without, but I never even dared taste it because the smell was very beer-like (in my recollection) and beer is one of those flavours that I can't stand to begin with. Sucks that you can't get vegemite here! I'm lucky in that one of my own staples are actually available here - skyr - because it's a relatively recent introduction to the UK (and probably was introduced around the same time as it was in DK, I think about 8-10 years ago. before that I would have to go to the trouble of straining natural yoghurt to get a look-alike product when I wanted it).

[dolorosa_12]

Vegemite and Marmite are basically the same thing, but they're very much something you have to grow up with to enjoy — I don't know anyone who ever liked the taste if they hadn't been eating them from very early childhood. The thing is if you grow up with one, the other just tastes slightly off, so Marmite tastes to me like Vegemite gone wrong... They're certainly made of the same stuff as beer (yeast extract), although weirdly I hate beer myself.

It's certainly easy to get skyr here these days, although I think that's only been the case for about ten years, as I can remember friends bringing it back in their suitcases from Iceland before that.

[justanorthernlight]

My comfort foods vary based on season and whether I'm the one doing the cooking, lol!

If I'm cooking it's usually a fried egg sandwich. Just two fried eggs, yolks a little runny but not raw, on toast or a burger bun lightly cooked face down in the same frying pan.

Summer comfort food is zucchini, onion, and garlic cooked (stir-fried?) together in a pan with butter.

Winter is either wild rice or a carrot, cauliflower, and cheese casserole that my mom makes.

[dolorosa_12]

Ooh, good fried eggs are absolutely wonderful! I like them best served with chili oil, sriracha, or salt and pepper.

Your summer comfort food is very close to my own summer favourite, but I would fry in olive oil and include tomatoes as well — and probably serve the whole thing with a fried egg!

[justanorthernlight]

My family makes a casserole version of the zucchini and onions that has tomato, cheese, and bacon in it, but I'm not the biggest fan of tomatoes (texture, ketchup and sauces are fine), and I can rarely be bothered to pre-cook the bacon for it without eating all the bacon while I'm prepping it.

[falena]

Pasta col tonno (cooked pretty much in the same way as you do, hee, except I add the parley after the tomatoes) is just the perfect dish to whip up with staples you've got in the pantry/freezer because you haven't had time to go shopping.

My comfort food...is focaccia genovese. Precisely because you don't have to cook it. :P You just buy it from the nearest bakery. If I have to cook comfort food myself, pasta with broccoli florets, then. Steam broccoli florets, sautee them in olive oil and garlic, toss the pasta in the pan, add a mixture of breadcrumbs, chopped capers and grated parmesan. A bit of black pepper if you like it. It's heavenly.

Does tea qualify as comfort food? I guess not, it's a beverage. Still, nothing is more comforting, imo.

[monksandbones]

I don't know, tea is up there for me, too! I like it so much, and find it so comforting, that even when I stopped being able to drink caffeinated tea in the evening, I switched to a decaf black tea. When I had to give up all tea briefly last spring, and could only drink certain herbal teas, it wasn't the same in its emotional effects!

[dolorosa_12]

To be fair, your method for pasta con tonno is probably the correct one, since I have no idea how much the original has been garbled in the transmission from my parents to me. I think putting the parsley in after the tomatoes would prevent the problem I always have, which is that it starts jumping out of the hot pan.

You're one of a number of people here for whom comfort food means food they don't have to make themselves, and that makes a whole lot of sense. The broccoli dish sounds really nice — I must try it myself!

I think tea definitely qualifies as a comfort — I find it very comforting myself, and am in fact about to go and make some.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> This time, my question is a simple one: what is your favourite comfort food? <<

Fresh fruit. Often when I want comfort food, it's because I'm tired. I want something uplifting and refreshing. Cool juicy fruit is good for that.

I'm also a big fan of comfort food that fills the house with delicious smells for hours. Most crockpot recipes serve this purpose. The other day I made one with beef chunks, baby potatoes, mushrooms, and onion plus sage, rosemary, and thyme.

A lot of what I post in my Recipe tag is comfort food, if folks want to browse for ideas.

Re: Thoughts

[dolorosa_12]

Oooh, I love fresh fruit! Mangos, nectarines, peaches, and summer berries in various combinations are my absolute favourite.

Slow cooked/crockpot recipes are absolutely the best for comfort, and yours sounds delicious!

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Oooh, I love fresh fruit! Mangos, nectarines, peaches, and summer berries in various combinations are my absolute favourite.<<

I love all those too. Here I have lots of mulberry trees along with some black raspberries and blackberries.

>> Slow cooked/crockpot recipes are absolutely the best for comfort, and yours sounds delicious!<<

I've written down some for reference, but mostly I just think about the meat I have and what would go well with it. I still have half the onion and potatoes, so I'll probably thaw a chicken soonish.

[senmut]

Sounds good!

And my go-to comfort food is actually... boxed mac and cheese. The stuff with the creamy cheese, not the powder. I tend to turn to that when I want carbs, have no spoons for cooking, and want cheese.

[dolorosa_12]

I think for a lot of people, food that takes really little effort to prepare is very comforting, and that definitely sounds like the case for you.

[monksandbones]

My favorite comfort food is unquestionably baked potatoes. Eaten right out of the oven after baking for an hour and a quarter at 400°F/200°C, split in half and fluffed up and seasoned with butter (margarine) and salt and pepper, and then some sour cream spread on the inside of the skin after I've finished eating the insides of the potato. Om nom nom, the perfect, almost no-effort meal!

[dolorosa_12]

Oh yum, that sounds great! Low effort meals that taste delicious are definitely a great kind of comfort food.

[spikedluv]

My comfort food would more likely be something that DIDN'T take a long time to make, lol! (I'm not much for spending time in the kitchen.) That said, I do like a good hearty homemade soup (and had one last weekend) and I'd also have to vote for mac and cheese.

(Regarding reheating pasta, I've discovered a way to do it that doesn't make it all mushy. I just run hot water over it and then soak it in hot water. Heats it up without re-cooking it.)

[dolorosa_12]

Reading the other comments here, you're definitely not alone — for a lot of people, it seems, quick meals that take little effort are the most comforting of all. The soups, stews and so on that I mentioned take a long time to cook, but mostly can be left alone once they're simmering, so in general although they might take several hours to be ready, the prep time is more like twenty minutes.

Thanks for the tip on reheating pasta — I'll give it a try!

[spikedluv]

TBF, there is nothing better than a roast or stew in the crock pot that fills the house with yummy scents all day. *g*

I hope the pasta trick works for you! I should have mentioned that having a colander helps, as I just set that in the pot or bowl so I can get the pasta out without any fuss.

[tetralogy]

In our house it's definitely a whole roasted chicken with crusty bread (ideally bolillos but we've often used ciabatta) and rajas (canned, pickled serrano peppers; sometimes they also come with carrots and onions). You just slice up the chicken and bread and make an open-faced sandwich with the rajas.

I had it once in Mexico and have been obsessed with it ever since. It's the perfect combination of fat, salt, meat, carbs, and acidic spiciness.

[dolorosa_12]

That sounds so delicous!

[thawrecka]

Food is fairly fraught for me these days, but when I was younger my comfort food was my late father's steak and kidney pie.

He emailed me the recipe once (or at least attempted to assemble a recipe, given he'd just memorised how to do it and added things to the stew to taste), but I never cooked because it wouldn't be the same without him doing it. And now I couldn't because I can't eat half the ingredients.

[dolorosa_12]

I have similar family recipes like that, where there's no recipe, and the ingredients are just added by taste or sight, which makes them obviously difficult to replicate.

I'm sorry to hear food is a fraught subject for you now.