omething I enjoy doing (mostly thinking about, finances being what they are these days, though that is slowly changing) is what most chefs enjoy: take something classic or well-known, and make it my own. Recently I’ve been thinking about comfort foods, and how interesting it would be to take comfort foods and reimagine them.
Therefore… my question: let me ask you it. To my readers (all three of you), what are your favourite comfort foods? Please be sure to let me know why they are comforting to you, especially in terms of physical sensation and aroma.
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I suppose it is often the case that for someone my age (57) a comfort food is one associated with childhood happy memories, or with a taste acquired and developed so early that one only knows about it from hearsay — tales at Grandma’s knee, so to speak. Here’s my little list:
(1) scrambled eggs with cheese. Apparently for some months when I was between one and two years old this was literally all I would eat. When my Grandmother came to Schenectady New York to take care of me when my younger brother was being born, she refused to believe my mother when she told her about it — to her detriment, I may add, since when she tried to feed me something else I apparently pretended to eat the substitute until I had a bulging mouthful, and then spewed it all over her… Here is the Classic Recipe:
3 eggs
3 tablespoons of butter
4 slices process Kraft American Cheese
Melt the butter in a skillet. Beat the eggs; break the slices of cheese into pieces and add them. Cook slowly while stirring constantly with a fork until they are more or less just set — the butter will have been almost totally absorbed along the way — the texture is unctuous in the extreme. Accompany with two slices of toasted Holsum Bread or equivalent cheap store-bought brand…
I can see that I’m going to have to break this up into more than one post…
PS — Same address as last December?
(2) Liver sausage — it was many years before I learned of Braunschweiger or liverwurst or pate de foie gras or the various other patés and terrines, etc. — I acquired the taste for the stuff (unaccompanied — just a thick round slice that leaves grease on the fingers and palm when indulging) at the little store owned by Kay and her brother Val in Schenectady. My mother exchanged Christmas cards with Kay — the only way I knew of her other than this story — until she died perhaps ten years ago now.
I like the specifically *liver* taste, and the smooth, slightly sticky texture. I *don’t* care for liver in chunks or slices, though, — I find its texture in those forms quite unpleasant.
(3) Grilled cheese sandwich with dill pickle slices and a bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup (made with milk, not water, and with a pat of butter added to the surface before serving). The sandwich done on the top of the stove, three slices of Kraft process American Cheese, both sides of Holsum bread slices smeared with butter before frying in a skillet. Consumed in the following fashion (only *slightly* less complicated than Tsar Nicholas II’s explanation of how to eat Botvinia): (a) take a bite of the grilled cheese sandwich (b) without chewing, convey two or three hamburger dill slices to one’s mouth (c) chew them both together (d) swallow. Repeat (a)-(d) as necessary, occasionally alternating with spoonfuls of the tomato soup, into the bowl of which copious amounts of roughly-crushed Ritz crackers have been introduced and allowed to assume a texture halfway between crisp and mush.
Anyhow, there you have it. No doubt far more noxious than you would have feared, even aware as you are of my various proclivities…