Friends! Today I finished a huge project, and the delight I feel in having done so has manifested in the making of cocktails with an unexpected friend, and I am about to make a vat of ~ Roberto ~, and I am wondering: do you have a comfort food to cook? The concept of comfort food to eat is very common, but what is something that feels comforting to prepare? Let’s make a comforting feast together in the comments and savour the leftovers all weekend!
Sooooup, especially squash soup; also, tagine. Beef or lamb tagine is one of my top 5 foods period and the smell of it cooking, lingering in the kitchen (doubtless to the consternation of my housemates), is one of the most comforting experiences I have ever had.
I love food that I have to chop for. Making a sauce, or a soup, or a chili, or a stew. Something that requires many ingredients. Savory and warm. Even if it's mashed potatoes, I make it with roasted garlic and rosemary and horseradish (probably yogurt and smart balance instead of milk and butter these days), and always with the onions. Mexican and Italian foods are the nearest and dearest to me, as they are staples of my childhood. Preparing and cooking meat is never comforting, but eating it is. I'm really glad for all the fake meat products these days.
I ADORE YOU, SILVER. I just named another geographical feature after you in my latest novella. I've lost count how many Amal-references I've put into my work by now...
Oh the two of you could get a room -- but wait -- this IS a room, where we get to see how much you love each other. Your patter is a not-so-secret Substack Joy! But to dish on your dish, CSE & Amal, I love my Instapot (OK, mine is a Fagor, but I love it), but at the same time, I miss the requirement of paying at least a little attention to a pot that is going low-and-slow for a LOOONG time...
Ooh, this is a great question. I find baking comforting, particularly somewhat intricate pastry -- macarons, croissants, layer cakes. I don't even eat sweets that much, but baking is meditative and relaxing for me.
On the savory side, dumplings. The process of making filling, making dough, rolling, stuffing, folding. Sometimes I'll do it by myself, but more often it's with friends or family, so there's the community aspect to it too.
Thank you! It's a variation on a bourbon sour: 2 oz Bulleit, 1 oz lemon juice, 1 oz burnt honey syrup, a few dashes of cardamom & orange bitters. I haven't named it yet; my friend Claire said it looked like Reading by the Fireside in drink form, and I was leaning towards Hospitality.
SOUP IS LOVE! That, exactly -- time and heat and your intention, and then vegetables fuse into more than the sum of their parts! It's magic AND fusion!
Cocktails: YES. What does she tend to like? Sweet? Bitter? Sour? I've been enjoying just taking a classic drink structure and playing with one element at a time, and sours are my faves -- with very little in the way of a bar you can make so many lovely drinks, just changing out the citrus and sweet components.
OK so a standard sour is 2 oz spirits, 1 oz citrus, 1 oz sweet, shaken, with egg white optional. So use gin, lemon, honey, and it's a Bee's Knees; use gin, lime, simple syrup, it's a Gimlet; use whiskey, lemon, simple syrup, it's a whiskey sour; use bourbon, lemon, burnt honey syrup, egg white, and a few dashes of cardamom and orange bitters, you get the cocktail pictured above (name pending). You can vary the brands of gin for a LOT of variation, make a variety of syrups, go to town!
Thank you!! The world of cocktails has always seemed kinda impenetrable to me but having someone break it down even a little bit like this is very helpful. :D I will report back on the results!
Haha! In this case a friend from another city was unexpectedly in town and our meeting up was contingent on a bunch of factors aligning, but they did! Post-work-completion even! So it felt celebratory as well as just delightfully surprising.
OMG! I do this! I comfort-bake. I make breads, preferably challah. I love the tactile feel of braiding and use a six-stranded braid just so that I get to handle the it longer. It makes me feel great to prepare, even if I don’t actually eat any.
Oh my gosh, challah. Challah is love & joy & delight & I have never made it BUT I have made braided loaves & they are absolutely a marvel to me! Bread-making in general, the smell & feel, oof!
Was your "unexpected friend" a current friend you weren't expecting to see or did you unexpectedly become friends with your long-time nemesis?
As for comfort foods to make, there are chocolate-chip cake cookies and pantry meatballs. The meatballs themselves are just generic frozen meatballs, but the sauce is different every time. I just take anything in the herb tray, refrigerator and/or pantry and mix it. There are times I make something delicious and sometimes I really don't, but it is still fun.
I love to cook a grand meal for someone else. I used to host dinner parties once or twice a year where I would do 7-9 courses for friends and I enjoyed the heck out of it even though by the time everything was ready I wanted never to eat another food in my life. It is just so comforting to prepare something that brings joy and warmth and camaraderie to others. The last time I did it I did an entire menu focused on cheeses and every course showcased a different kind of cheese. It was so challenging and so rewarding.
Homemade red sauce is my go to comfort craft. It's the process of going to the store, wandering produce land with no idea what I want, reentering my body at the checkout line with a basket lined with everything I need, and then the actual alchemy of it. Browning meats and veggies, breaking down tomatoes, sipping every alcohol in the house until I find the one that *needs* to go in. Tear-streaks have dried and given way to smiles countless times standing at the stove, stirring sauce.
This has particular resonance for me just now, as I am cooking just for myself for the first time in what feels like decades but is probably only years. I will heartily agree with the other folks in thread that soups are wonderful -- the fragrances, the bubbling, the experiments with spicing. And taking those first tentative steps in the kitchen when I grew up ashamed of not knowing how to cook and not knowing how to ask (my mother had enough to do already, but that's another story.) Knowing that the only way I learn is by making mistakes, and being willing, almost eager, to eat the consequences(!) if it means making progress, slowly losing the fear of everything not being perfect the first time out. Soup, burgers, cheese toasties, the simplest of recipes -- all of them are magical to me as I marvel at my ability to make the kitchen (and the flat) smell like something wonderful is brewing.
Bread. The kneading is calming and the magic way that it turns from a bunch of liquids and powders into a cohesive unit. Plus you get some time to relax during the rises, and at the end you have a loaf of warm bread to spread butter on, and a house that smells like the best kind of home.
Today, I'm thinking about how the ingredients you bake into the dough make it so much better - say, Greek olives, or French rosemary, or raisins from grapes grown on Italian vines; rejecting them makes it just... plain.
Yeah, bread is extremely soothing. Depending on circumstance, I go either way on the embellishment. Olive bread or pan de jamĂ³n are fun for bread that’s adventurous, but if I’m feeling down, I opt for traditional. Just science-ing out a good, competent french loaf or schwartzbrot can really restore my inner sense of balance.
Also, pie, but I think that almost goes without saying.
For the longest time, I would comfort Bake; nothing terribly complex, but as a scientist the fact of the matter is that eggs and flour and butter do wonderful things together, in most delightful, atomistic way. So many molecules! (A particular favorite would be to make mince pies, tiny and involved). But, in my diabetic world, Baking is something for making things for other people now (largely -- I have not given up on almond flour and sugar-alcohols). So, over time, something that still holds thrall over my cooktop hear is anything that involves a lot of spice, and a lot time. Doesn't have to require effort of a zillion hours of sweaty knife work, mind, but Time.... Soups of all persuasions for one, particularly any veggie soups where you first char or heavily carmelize the veg to develop a whole new profile of flavor. There is something glorious about the mash up of dry heat, followed by wet, and then adding things for acid and texture. I made a ratatouille for a while from this recipe (https://www.salon.com/2010/08/07/ratatouille_weapons_grade_style/) and the key bit of just letting the tomatoes go, for a long, long, looooong carmelizing time ... in the long heat of a September summer that will not yet yield to fall, when finally consumed in the golden autumn light: It was a drunk summer in your mouth.
Baking for sure. Anything easy that I can throw together. My favorite go-tos are carrot muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and the adorable round loaves from the Bread Toast Crumbs cookbook. The smell of baking and the promise of buttery goodness to eat is always comforting.
Oddly: it's sandwiches for me. I don't quite have the facility for baking, though it's something I wanna learn this year. And sandwiches do, for me, what someone below described in crafting dumplings. The careful division of thinly sliced meat, timing the toasting impeccably to get the slightest browning and the melting of cheese. And then, smelling it wafting through the room as it cools, knowing momentarily you'll savor this work of art. Even if the edges aren't quite even, or the meat's smooshed a little to the middle without even spreading. That this thing you've invested with your time and care's become a work to be proud of just for that, and just letting that anticipatory smell surround you.
The problem is that I only know how to cook for six to eight people, and I'm usually eating alone these days. It's often not worth spending an hour making dinner when I probably won't get through the leftovers before they expire. Ah, well. Tomato soup is almost as comforting.
(I know it's no longer Friday, but it's been a hell of a rough weekend already. >.> )
Congratulations on finishing the project and even more for feeling good about it. My favorite comfort food is an Egyptian beef stew called kabab halla (kabab in pot). Quite easy to make but needs longer cooking time on the stove. As the stew develops, the aromas starts to fill the kitchen. Subtle touches like a pinch of cumin, cinnamon or cloves give interesting variations
As with others here, soup and bread are both comfort baking. Bread partly for the physicality of the kneading and the rewarded patience, and partly for the memories of making multiple loaves at my grandmother's house when I was young. Soup for the process of chopping and cooking, and for the endless variety of combinations all of which will turn out subtly different in the end product.
I think my ultimate comfort food for cooking is a Sunday roast, with potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, steamed vegetables and gravy. I can lose myself for a couple of hours in the process and the sequencing of doing everything at just the right time so that it all comes together at the end. In a well-planned roast, I'm never doing more than one thing, but I'm also never idle, at least in the final hour. One thing that I miss from going mostly vegetarian is the roast meat aspect of that, and it's less for the finished product and more for the way that one of the alternatives I've so far found fit well into the timing gaps. I need something that can go in before I start the potatoes and then come out half an hour early to relax to be replaced by the Yorkshires. Any suggestions welcome!
My comfort cooking is almost always improvisation - there's something about having the energy and time to plan, play, consider. It usually starts with a vegetable, something new or a particularly delicious-looking old friend. I can't chop as much as I used to, but there's delight in precision and care, and in the way it gilds itself into soffritto, which can turn to so many things.
It's a delight, for that matter, to open the herb & spice cupboard, and not just reach for the same few things, but make decisions and mix flavours on the fly, infusing and reseasoning and garnishing.
I am traveling through next week, and not able to cook, but soups and stews are always comfort foods. A four ingredient chicken stew in the instant pot, Japanese-style curries from scratch, and Cyn's cabbage, linguisa, and pork soup make me feel at home. On this trip I had donair kebab and currywurst which are new comfort foods for me.
Sooooup, especially squash soup; also, tagine. Beef or lamb tagine is one of my top 5 foods period and the smell of it cooking, lingering in the kitchen (doubtless to the consternation of my housemates), is one of the most comforting experiences I have ever had.
TAGINE!!!!!!! Oh man I want tagine RIGHT NOW! Who could complain about the lingering scent of LITERAL HEAVEN!
Also, huge congrats on the project completion!! Enjoy your weekend and Roberto :)
Thank you Vlad! I'm so excited about it and hope to speak to it more anon!
Tagines! Lamb and prunes is one of my favorites!!!
I love food that I have to chop for. Making a sauce, or a soup, or a chili, or a stew. Something that requires many ingredients. Savory and warm. Even if it's mashed potatoes, I make it with roasted garlic and rosemary and horseradish (probably yogurt and smart balance instead of milk and butter these days), and always with the onions. Mexican and Italian foods are the nearest and dearest to me, as they are staples of my childhood. Preparing and cooking meat is never comforting, but eating it is. I'm really glad for all the fake meat products these days.
I love anything I have to put wine into to make it better.
mmmm bet if you put wine into me you could make me better >.> (LOVE ME CLAIRE)
I ADORE YOU, SILVER. I just named another geographical feature after you in my latest novella. I've lost count how many Amal-references I've put into my work by now...
SHE MAKES GEOGRAPHY OF ME!!!! O!
NATURALL-Y-Y-Y!
Oh the two of you could get a room -- but wait -- this IS a room, where we get to see how much you love each other. Your patter is a not-so-secret Substack Joy! But to dish on your dish, CSE & Amal, I love my Instapot (OK, mine is a Fagor, but I love it), but at the same time, I miss the requirement of paying at least a little attention to a pot that is going low-and-slow for a LOOONG time...
The memory of you making coq au vin -- no matter the kitchen! -- is of deep comfort to me!!!
I never mind cooking with meat if it's for a BELOVED. Even better to be cooking WITH a beloved!
Ooh, this is a great question. I find baking comforting, particularly somewhat intricate pastry -- macarons, croissants, layer cakes. I don't even eat sweets that much, but baking is meditative and relaxing for me.
On the savory side, dumplings. The process of making filling, making dough, rolling, stuffing, folding. Sometimes I'll do it by myself, but more often it's with friends or family, so there's the community aspect to it too.
Also, congratulations! That cocktail looks lovely! What is it?
Thank you! It's a variation on a bourbon sour: 2 oz Bulleit, 1 oz lemon juice, 1 oz burnt honey syrup, a few dashes of cardamom & orange bitters. I haven't named it yet; my friend Claire said it looked like Reading by the Fireside in drink form, and I was leaning towards Hospitality.
OH, and there's egg white too!
Soups of all kinds. I like the meditative aspect of combining a bunch of different things and then just waiting for time and heat to do their jobs.
Also - I got Julien a bunch of cocktail accoutrements for her birthday (which is tomorrow). Any favourite recipes you'd recommend? đŸ˜‹
SOUP IS LOVE! That, exactly -- time and heat and your intention, and then vegetables fuse into more than the sum of their parts! It's magic AND fusion!
Cocktails: YES. What does she tend to like? Sweet? Bitter? Sour? I've been enjoying just taking a classic drink structure and playing with one element at a time, and sours are my faves -- with very little in the way of a bar you can make so many lovely drinks, just changing out the citrus and sweet components.
Oh, go on then - let's say sour. :D (we both tend to like all kinds, but "little in the way of a bar" sounds pretty good...)
OK so a standard sour is 2 oz spirits, 1 oz citrus, 1 oz sweet, shaken, with egg white optional. So use gin, lemon, honey, and it's a Bee's Knees; use gin, lime, simple syrup, it's a Gimlet; use whiskey, lemon, simple syrup, it's a whiskey sour; use bourbon, lemon, burnt honey syrup, egg white, and a few dashes of cardamom and orange bitters, you get the cocktail pictured above (name pending). You can vary the brands of gin for a LOT of variation, make a variety of syrups, go to town!
The spiced sour sounds so yummy! I have to try to make one for my husband. He loves bourbon and cardamom.
Thank you!! The world of cocktails has always seemed kinda impenetrable to me but having someone break it down even a little bit like this is very helpful. :D I will report back on the results!
Oh, Amal. :) Congratulations on completing! I am so curious about the phrase "unexpected friend". It gives me classic fan fiction vibes. <(^___^)>
I live alone and I find stew to be comforting to prepare. It feels like a love letter to my future self.
> Oh, I am tired? Look at all of this vats of nourishing stew that past-me has prepared.
Haha! In this case a friend from another city was unexpectedly in town and our meeting up was contingent on a bunch of factors aligning, but they did! Post-work-completion even! So it felt celebratory as well as just delightfully surprising.
THESE VATS***
OMG! I do this! I comfort-bake. I make breads, preferably challah. I love the tactile feel of braiding and use a six-stranded braid just so that I get to handle the it longer. It makes me feel great to prepare, even if I don’t actually eat any.
Oh my gosh, challah. Challah is love & joy & delight & I have never made it BUT I have made braided loaves & they are absolutely a marvel to me! Bread-making in general, the smell & feel, oof!
Was your "unexpected friend" a current friend you weren't expecting to see or did you unexpectedly become friends with your long-time nemesis?
As for comfort foods to make, there are chocolate-chip cake cookies and pantry meatballs. The meatballs themselves are just generic frozen meatballs, but the sauce is different every time. I just take anything in the herb tray, refrigerator and/or pantry and mix it. There are times I make something delicious and sometimes I really don't, but it is still fun.
Haha, the former, but the latter sounds very exciting! (PANTRY MEATBALLS)
I love to cook a grand meal for someone else. I used to host dinner parties once or twice a year where I would do 7-9 courses for friends and I enjoyed the heck out of it even though by the time everything was ready I wanted never to eat another food in my life. It is just so comforting to prepare something that brings joy and warmth and camaraderie to others. The last time I did it I did an entire menu focused on cheeses and every course showcased a different kind of cheese. It was so challenging and so rewarding.
Congrats on the project completion!
Homemade red sauce is my go to comfort craft. It's the process of going to the store, wandering produce land with no idea what I want, reentering my body at the checkout line with a basket lined with everything I need, and then the actual alchemy of it. Browning meats and veggies, breaking down tomatoes, sipping every alcohol in the house until I find the one that *needs* to go in. Tear-streaks have dried and given way to smiles countless times standing at the stove, stirring sauce.
This has particular resonance for me just now, as I am cooking just for myself for the first time in what feels like decades but is probably only years. I will heartily agree with the other folks in thread that soups are wonderful -- the fragrances, the bubbling, the experiments with spicing. And taking those first tentative steps in the kitchen when I grew up ashamed of not knowing how to cook and not knowing how to ask (my mother had enough to do already, but that's another story.) Knowing that the only way I learn is by making mistakes, and being willing, almost eager, to eat the consequences(!) if it means making progress, slowly losing the fear of everything not being perfect the first time out. Soup, burgers, cheese toasties, the simplest of recipes -- all of them are magical to me as I marvel at my ability to make the kitchen (and the flat) smell like something wonderful is brewing.
Congrats! It’s cold and windy so I made homemade pho’ ga!
Bread. The kneading is calming and the magic way that it turns from a bunch of liquids and powders into a cohesive unit. Plus you get some time to relax during the rises, and at the end you have a loaf of warm bread to spread butter on, and a house that smells like the best kind of home.
Today, I'm thinking about how the ingredients you bake into the dough make it so much better - say, Greek olives, or French rosemary, or raisins from grapes grown on Italian vines; rejecting them makes it just... plain.
Yeah, bread is extremely soothing. Depending on circumstance, I go either way on the embellishment. Olive bread or pan de jamĂ³n are fun for bread that’s adventurous, but if I’m feeling down, I opt for traditional. Just science-ing out a good, competent french loaf or schwartzbrot can really restore my inner sense of balance.
Also, pie, but I think that almost goes without saying.
For the longest time, I would comfort Bake; nothing terribly complex, but as a scientist the fact of the matter is that eggs and flour and butter do wonderful things together, in most delightful, atomistic way. So many molecules! (A particular favorite would be to make mince pies, tiny and involved). But, in my diabetic world, Baking is something for making things for other people now (largely -- I have not given up on almond flour and sugar-alcohols). So, over time, something that still holds thrall over my cooktop hear is anything that involves a lot of spice, and a lot time. Doesn't have to require effort of a zillion hours of sweaty knife work, mind, but Time.... Soups of all persuasions for one, particularly any veggie soups where you first char or heavily carmelize the veg to develop a whole new profile of flavor. There is something glorious about the mash up of dry heat, followed by wet, and then adding things for acid and texture. I made a ratatouille for a while from this recipe (https://www.salon.com/2010/08/07/ratatouille_weapons_grade_style/) and the key bit of just letting the tomatoes go, for a long, long, looooong carmelizing time ... in the long heat of a September summer that will not yet yield to fall, when finally consumed in the golden autumn light: It was a drunk summer in your mouth.
Baking for sure. Anything easy that I can throw together. My favorite go-tos are carrot muffins, chocolate chip cookies, and the adorable round loaves from the Bread Toast Crumbs cookbook. The smell of baking and the promise of buttery goodness to eat is always comforting.
Oddly: it's sandwiches for me. I don't quite have the facility for baking, though it's something I wanna learn this year. And sandwiches do, for me, what someone below described in crafting dumplings. The careful division of thinly sliced meat, timing the toasting impeccably to get the slightest browning and the melting of cheese. And then, smelling it wafting through the room as it cools, knowing momentarily you'll savor this work of art. Even if the edges aren't quite even, or the meat's smooshed a little to the middle without even spreading. That this thing you've invested with your time and care's become a work to be proud of just for that, and just letting that anticipatory smell surround you.
Btw, congrats on the project!!!!
My favorite comfort foods to cook are red beans and rice (though I use chicken andouille sausage because I'm a heathen) and this amazing black bean burger recipe: https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/03/the-food-lab-the-best-black-bean-burgers.html
The problem is that I only know how to cook for six to eight people, and I'm usually eating alone these days. It's often not worth spending an hour making dinner when I probably won't get through the leftovers before they expire. Ah, well. Tomato soup is almost as comforting.
(I know it's no longer Friday, but it's been a hell of a rough weekend already. >.> )
Congratulations on finishing the project and even more for feeling good about it. My favorite comfort food is an Egyptian beef stew called kabab halla (kabab in pot). Quite easy to make but needs longer cooking time on the stove. As the stew develops, the aromas starts to fill the kitchen. Subtle touches like a pinch of cumin, cinnamon or cloves give interesting variations
Congratulations on the finished project!
As with others here, soup and bread are both comfort baking. Bread partly for the physicality of the kneading and the rewarded patience, and partly for the memories of making multiple loaves at my grandmother's house when I was young. Soup for the process of chopping and cooking, and for the endless variety of combinations all of which will turn out subtly different in the end product.
I think my ultimate comfort food for cooking is a Sunday roast, with potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, steamed vegetables and gravy. I can lose myself for a couple of hours in the process and the sequencing of doing everything at just the right time so that it all comes together at the end. In a well-planned roast, I'm never doing more than one thing, but I'm also never idle, at least in the final hour. One thing that I miss from going mostly vegetarian is the roast meat aspect of that, and it's less for the finished product and more for the way that one of the alternatives I've so far found fit well into the timing gaps. I need something that can go in before I start the potatoes and then come out half an hour early to relax to be replaced by the Yorkshires. Any suggestions welcome!
My comfort cooking is almost always improvisation - there's something about having the energy and time to plan, play, consider. It usually starts with a vegetable, something new or a particularly delicious-looking old friend. I can't chop as much as I used to, but there's delight in precision and care, and in the way it gilds itself into soffritto, which can turn to so many things.
It's a delight, for that matter, to open the herb & spice cupboard, and not just reach for the same few things, but make decisions and mix flavours on the fly, infusing and reseasoning and garnishing.
I am traveling through next week, and not able to cook, but soups and stews are always comfort foods. A four ingredient chicken stew in the instant pot, Japanese-style curries from scratch, and Cyn's cabbage, linguisa, and pork soup make me feel at home. On this trip I had donair kebab and currywurst which are new comfort foods for me.