Comfort and joy!

I am still nurturing this stinking cold so that means simple to prepare and a great big hug of a bowl of comforting buttery mash potato. It never gets old – enough said!

Yet another oeuf cocotte

I think that an Oeuf en Cocotte has become one of my favourite comfort foods. I love that fact that there are a multitude of goodies that can lurk beneath the golden yolk crown. As long as I have a couple of fresh eggs and a slurp of double cream a satisfying and tasty dish can be concocted and importantly today, it’s not too trying when the thought of toiling over a hot stove fills you with dread. This time I had a few slivers of smoked salmon and a slice of buttered bread to anoint with the unctuous creamy eggy mixture. I’m also hoping that eating off my ‘Baci di Dama’ emblazoned tray from Harvey Nichols will somehow make me feel much better - and actually it does!

Salmon for the sick

Still feelingly annoyingly delicate so I need more food that’s simple to cook and soothing to eat especially for a scratchy sore throat. I’ve been pondering the usual repertoire of comfort food and thinking how often this means some sort of carb-tastic meal - bowls of creamy pasta, fluffy buttery baked potatoes, calming risotto, mash potatoes and as I crave the other day – chip butty. And frankly there’s nothing wrong with any of this but instead I went down my other comfort roué – eggs and opted for the old stalwart of creamy scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and finely chopped chives. Ah that’s better!

Chip butty for the soul

I was supposed to be in Cambridge this weekend eating, drinking and being very merry but neither D nor I are feeling too fabulous so I will stay tucked up at home with a alpaca hot water bottle and a mug of hot lemon to nurture this bug. And not intending to be around this weekend I didn’t have a full fridge to conjure meals from actually it was rather bereft. As a few tureens of soup have been sloshing around this my dining table this week I want something different today. Assembling the paltry items from my Mother Hubbard’s cupboard I discover that I have some remaining potatoes left in the bag from the potato soup ministrations and a couple of part-baked baguettes and frankly not much else. But that’s fine because the perfect restorative comfort food for an under-the-weather Northerner has to be a chip butty – really a dish that covers all the major food groups for a sickly Atkins-phobic diner.

I can’t face cooking my chips in a deep-fat fryer as the public information films of my childhood extolling the dangers of a chip pan have had a resounding effect and even if I don’t set fire to the kitchen (I am led to believe that the modern deep fat fryer has virtually eliminated that possibility) I really don’t know what to do with all that old fat. I guess if I found a local bio-fuel consumer perhaps it wouldn’t seem so wasteful. Also I find myself drawn to the new deep fat fryers I see in the Lakeland catalogue that seem to only use a soupçon of the dreaded oil but as intriguing as that seems if they were that good why wouldn’t everyone use one like that? So basically no deep fat frying for me, instead I cut some fat chips from my potato, dribble with the merest amount of sunflower oil and bake in the oven, the part-baked baguette joins the chips for the final 8 minutes and then I just need the finishing touches. The crispy chips are doused in malt vinegar and sprinkled with sea salt and stuffed into the split and liberally buttered still warm baguette. Mmmm, I’m feeling better already!

And a bowl of chicken soup as well

Okay it may not look beautiful but I am sinking due to some mysterious malaise and the thought of some chicken soup seems just so comforting. However I really don’t have the energy to stand at the stove and turn a handy chicken breast until some Jewish penicillin. But as a slightly poor substitute I figured I could manage to heat up the last portion of my as-seen-on-TV potato soup and in lieu of the porcini, Parmesan and parsley shred some cooked chicken on top. Definitely not pretty but thankfully not too strenuous and some much needed warming and hopefully medicinal succour for the soul.

Honey, I shrank the dinner

When Stephanie set the theme for February’s Blogging Party I was very pleased to see that it was comfort food. And this month I am sticking to her rules and producing only comfort food themed canapés instead of an entire three-course meal. So I got my thinking cap on to decide what little nibbles I should I consider produce. I made a list of some of my favourite comfort foods: sausages and mash (number one on the list, of course), beef Wellington, steak and mushroom pie, fish pie, cauliflower cheese, soft boiled egg and soldiers, fish and chips, risotto, poached egg on toast and macaroni cheese. And then all I had to decide was which ones to cook and how to miniaturise these into bite size canapé portions.

The first one was easy – abundant teaspoons of creamy mash topped with half a pork chipolata cocktail sausage. I got the idea years ago when hosting a client event and the caterers served platters of stainless steel spoons with yummy sausages and mash. And these went down extraordinarily well! In fact every time I organise any client entertainment now I try and have at least sausages if not sausages and mash. I did get one caterer to recreate this particular desire but they didn’t do a brilliant job frankly, plastic spoons (yuck!) and rather scalded mash. The clients still lapped them up but ‘must do better!’ kept ringing in my head. So when I recreated this it had to be a generous scoop of perfectly cooked mash on a tea spoon topped with part of a really tasty sausage. Just delicious!

Next I thought I’d shrink one of the egg dishes. I could not really think how a soft boiled quail egg would work but a poached quail egg on a toast square should work quite well. I consulted the French Laundry cookbook by the great Thomas Keller as he does a fabulous and infamous egg and bacon canapé that I painstakingly recreated years ago for a dinner party.

The method he recommends is whilst the pan of water is coming to the simmer, take your box of quail eggs and carefully slice the more rounded end of the egg off with a serrated knife (this allows the yolk to slip out more easily). Quail eggs are notoriously difficult to release from their shells, whether peeling them to dip into celery salt or cracking them raw like I needed to do. Mr Keller suggests placing the beheaded quail egg shells back into egg box ready for poaching as they don’t take long to cook and if you place one on the water and then start tackling the next, the first one would probably be overcooked. It’s a good idea and I prepare my little topless eggs and line them all up ready for their two minute poaching. They really don’t need any more than two minutes, in fact maybe a moment less. And even though they look a tad alien perched on top of the little blond toast squares, they are very tasty.

As I wasn’t having an actual party that I needed to make some canapés for, I opted to cook my petite comforting tasters over several mealtimes. And rather coincidentally my actual desire for culinary solace increased meal by meal as I caught the nasty cold bug that has been going around and craved comforting food.

My next meal was going to be steak and mushroom pies with cauliflower cheese. I didn’t want the pastry to be too overwhelming so I opted for making little puff pastry vol au vents and then fill them with a steak and mushrooms with a creamy peppercorn sauce that I'd already cooked. Doing it this way was a good idea because they weren’t too hot and made perfect little two bite portions.

I struggled to think what receptacle I could successfully serve the cauliflower cheese in and eventually opted for china spoons as these would enable me to glaze the cheesy top under the grill and would be easy to eat off. What I didn’t really take into account was how hot they would be and firstly they’d be almost impossible to pick up with oven gloves on as I couldn’t get a safe grip on the tiny china handles and they were way, way too sizzling to pick up without oven gloves. When I did finally get them out from under the grill and onto a plate I did wonder how on earth I would manage to actually eat them. Fortunately they took so long to get safely out from under the grill, arrange and photograph they were just the right temperature to wolf down. And so I did.

As my cold really took hold I craved a nice warming baked macaroni cheese so this seemed the perfect choice for my final canapé. I learnt from struggling to retrieve cauliflower cheese spoon from the grill so I served spoonfuls of macaroni cheese straight from the oven on my Alessi heart-shaped spoons and didn't attempt to glaze under the grill. When I first served the macaroni I realised that the pieces of pasta were just too large for a canapé portion and lined up on the spoon like little soldiers, so I swiftly cut the macaroni pieces up and tried piling it on the spoon again. These spoons are slightly bigger than a teaspoon but still the right size for a good mouthful so worked well as a macaroni cheese carrier.

The rule of Stephanie’s blog party are canapés and a drink, but a comforting drink? This week I’ve been consuming many a mug of hot lemon but I wouldn’t inflict this on any party guest and it doesn’t really so to go with the nibbles so my thoughts turn to hot chocolate instead. Now as much as I love chocolate I’ve only had hot chocolate a few times. And this would be generally abroad like when very cold half way up some Swedish snow covered mountain, or on a balmy day in a fabulous little house of chocolate café in Valencia, or on a rainy day in the Vendee sipping very intense hot chocolate out if a tiny cup accompanied by a glass of water because the chocolate is so intense. But I’ve never made my own! My main issue is that I don’t like warm milk and I can’t bear cream just whipped and put on top of things so this might be a bit of a challenge. So the first thing I ensure is that I have some very fine chocolate to work with. I consulted the hot chocolate aisle in Waitrose and marvelled at the choice. There seemed to be a whole plethora of hot chocolate drinks flavoured with everything under the sun. Personally I was aiming for an intense chocolate flavour and was worried that these might be a little pale and watery. Green & Black’s have some interesting options but they all seemed to be cocoa and I wasn’t sure that was the comfort I had in mind. After due consideration I plumped for this sleek skinny tube as there were some words that particularly attracted me – ‘dark’, ‘100% real Belgian’ and ‘pure indulgence’. It seemed like I was onto a winner. As the thought of both milk and cream make me feel a little queasy, I opted to make mine just with boiling water. It was okay, definitely not my favourite drink, not even my favourite hot chocolate but an interesting experiment. Next time I’d perhaps make it with cooked cream or convinced myself that the boiling milk is just part way to making a béchamel (which I love) rather than just hot milk which I think smells funny! I think this hot milk abhorrence is deep routed in some sterilised milk trauma suffered at the hands of my grandmother. Sterilised milk is utterly vile, and probably the reason I’ve eschewed tea for so long! What a revelation weak milk-free Earl Grey was! I’m not utterly sold on hot chocolate but it did give me the chance to christen my Nigella liquorice matt and gloss cappuccino cup complete with egg-shaped saucer. So designed to have a resting place in between bites of a biscuit or small delight or in this case - more chocolate! As I can’t ever imagine drinking cappuccino ever, I think these will make perfect little soup bowls. And when I’ve decided how to inaugurate my new tiny Nigella liquorice espresso cups, they will be featured here.

I’ve really enjoyed pondering, preparing and consuming my shrunken comfort food morsels. It’s been an really interesting challenge to consider both scale and two bite-ability! And I feel thoroughly comforted now. See you at the party on Saturday!

Chicken soup for the bowl

I haven’t been particularly well this week, nothing fatal, just one of those ever so debilitating colds that aggravate your desire for comfort food. Luckily ‘comfort’ was a theme of mine of this week – more to come about this later.

I really fancied a chicken soup and on a brief foray to Waitrose I thought the Duchy Original Organic fresh chicken & leek with lemon and parsley might do the trick. Chicken – definitely considered therapeutic and isn’t lemon a main ingredient in the Greek Avgolemono soup (as well as an egg)? So surely this would make me feel much better.

But somehow it didn’t quite hit the mark. Maybe the first problem was when I tipped it from the plastic pot into the pan on the hob, it didn’t pour out as I expected but sat there like either a sandcastle fresh from the bucket or how I recall cat and dog food used to come out of the can before you took a fork to it. I squashed the solid soup down and continued stirring hoping that the consistency would improve on heating. And after plenty of stirring and gently heating it started to resemble soup, but still not with exactly the texture I desired. Secondly I wasn’t too sure about the colour, it was too green (from the leeks I guess) and with little pools of orange (from the diced carrots). I am sure all those lovely organic vegetables were doing me good but I just wanted a culinary hug, I wanted comfort. And I wanted my chicken just chickeny, creamy, yummy and not full of green vegetables. It just didn’t work for me today. Maybe I was hankering for good old Heinz Cream of Chicken soup from my childhood. I am sure it wasn’t as full of fabulously organic chicken and all the other goodies in the Duchy Originals soup is but it’s what I needed today. I think two of the important criteria of comfort food is simplicity and familiarity and this Duchy soup was a little too posh, too royal or something.

Perhaps the most sensible option would be to make my own chicken soup when I'm feeling better and freeze some for next time I have such an urge and not feeling so good. That would probably be best.

Handbag pie

Another quote leapt out at me whilst perusing Sophie's fabulous new Pies book, "I can often be found with a pie at the bottom of my handbag, just in case..." Now she has a pie in her handbag in case she comes across a hungry looking friend but I once had a pie in my handbag because it seemed a good idea at the time and had consumed a couple of post-work cold drinks!

Many, many moons ago I was drinking (coincidentally rather a lot of PIMM'S) with a much too long absent T and random work colleagues. After quite a few tall glasses, T and I had a burning desire for some food. Though not just any food, no we wanted nothing but proper hot chips. The bar that had been supplying us all those PIMM'S couldn't assist us so we hatched a cunning plan. We had no idea where we could procure our much desired chips but we knew a man who did. We thought if we flagged down a black cab and asked him to take is to "chips, good chips!" the taxi driver would know where to go because they always know a place! And it worked, I don't know where we ended up but we got our chips and whilst visiting the proper chippy I spotted a pie. I can recall pie and chips and not so much fish and chips from the chippies of my Northern childhood and clearly a little spark of evocative homely comfort was ignited and I decided to get a pie to go with my chips. T said I should save it for later as it might be useful and I duly secured it in my handbag. Who knows what sort of disaster she thought might befall me that would warrant whipping out my emergency pie to save the day but I never asked.

Our plan (a. again, the one that never happens) had been to return to the bar with our lovely hot and salty chips but somewhere on the return cab journey we abandoned that idea and decided to call it a night. Not much later I was sat on a rather crowded tube and opened my handbag and to my utter and heartily expressed delight discovered the temporarily forgotten pie all toasty warm and just ready to eat. For some reason me eating a pie that I'd just found in my handbag caused the other tube passengers to think I was odd (clearly it must have been a slow night!) and they gave me a wide berth. It was fine by me; I had a seat, some space and a hot steak and kidney pie. It's amazing what you can find in your handbag!

A whiter shade of pale

Bankside is a place H and I had previously had bookings for but had to cancel due to various changes in plans and have never got to eat here. But I was walking past today mightily hungry and thought it'd be worth checking out. The restaurant and bar are underground but it wasn't at all dingy, there's bright artwork on the walls and acres of pale wood tables, a single orange flower at each table and crispy linen napkins.

Most of the tables are for two but there are a few big oval tables and curvy light suede banquettes for sharing.

The menu is very simple, just three different prices with a couple of supplements if the dish contains a particularly extravagant ingredient. This is a curious note in very small print that states that - "a complimentary selection of fresh organic wholesome bread is served on your arrival". Now this struck me as odd. Had they previously worried diners into believing they'd be charged exorbitant rates for the basket of wheaty comestibles? Did they fear that their clients wouldn't recognise it as wholesome or be alarmed at this wild custom of proffering bread at the beginning of a meal? All a mystery but the bread was very lovely with seeds and fruity bits.

The menu was labelled a summer menu and has quite an extensive 'best of British' section with Cumberland sausages and mash, fisherman's our, big pork chop with mustard mash and apple fritters, salmon fishcakes, a couple of chicken dishes, calves liver, fish and chips, Welsh lamb chop and Scottish rib eye steak. I plumped for Smoked Haddock and Poached Egg on Spring Onion Potato Cake with Rarebit Glaze. I amazed myself by eschewing mash potatoes but funnily enough the potato cake turned out to be really spring onion mash in the shape of a potato cake! I ordered a side order of Cauliflower Cheese -clearly I was on a comfort food bender. And it was very comforting and pale and interesting also. The haddock was thankfully undyed and hence pale and translucent on top of pale mash sorry potato cake. On top of that was a poached egg that remained almost invisible until I exposed its golden centre. The cauliflower was of course just off white and the cheese sauce equally pale. If it wasn't for a few green leaves it would have been a plate of whiteness. However it tasted really good, an effortless thing to eat, complete nursery food I guess. And I loved the rarebit glaze which was more of a sauce than a glaze but very yummy!

I am so used to sharing a dessert now, but even though it was just me I fancied a few mouthfuls of something sweet. One of the desserts was Mrs Bourne Cheshire cheese with sweet beer chutney, which sounded very English, but I selected the Dark Chocolate and Walnut Brownie with Ice Cream. The brownie was okay but the ice cream was a bit of a mystery. I could see it was streaked with pink and had an occasional fruity nugget but I couldn't really identify it. I knew I didn't really like it and I asked my friendly waitress to put me out of my misery and she did by informing me that it was 'sour cherry'. Personally, I'm not sure that it worked well with the brownie.

I thought Bankside was very pleasant, I would eat there again but I wouldn't bother with the sour cherry ice cream and I've given it one white fork.

D, E & F - finally!

For any regular readers I realised that I hadn’t kept up my homage to Second Helpings of Roast Chicken and Other Stories that I started in June. I’d chosen the ‘chapter’ headings but had only got as far as C. So here is D, E & F as they all have only one ingredient each.

Duck
- Well duck has got to be the easiest, as I did so much duck research for the -tacular! I could just choose the three dishes I cooked a couple of weeks ago but there are also the duck dishes I didn't cook. Definitely my first recipe would be duck carpaccio as this was introduced to us on a balmy evening in Normandy (and barmy, if you consider the pseudo Dutch couple!)
- duck pizza on a hoisin sauce covered base would be the next recipe. This is a favourite at the Gourmet Pizza company and was a fabulous pizza before they decided to slip tomato sauce into it! Hmphh! At least Pizza Al Rollo have kept tomato out of theirs, so far!
- only left out of duck dinner due to time constraints is the fabulous duck confit, a worthy third! I am hoping that on my summer gourmet pilgrimage to Cambridge we will try some confit-ing. Maybe it’s not particularly summery but I had such a good duck confit with figs and honey in Café Du Marche on Bastille Day last month and that was extremely good (and not just because it was served with mash!)

Eggs
- Eggs are just so perfect! They have a pleasing shape (it can be no coincidence that much of Nigella's kitchen range is modelled on the egg) and yet they are so versatile too. And my top egg dishes? Well, the top hark back to my childhood comfort food would always be soft boiled eggs and soldiers. The soldiers would have to be made from a slice of buttered (don't come near me with nasty margarines or spreads - 'I can't believe it's not butter!', that's because it's not, it's just some chemical concoction that's never been near a cow! Okay, maybe I’m being unfair but it’s made by Unilever – they make my washing power and bath oil, enough said) white bread cut in a specific way. It would be cut in half and then one half would be cut into long 'soldiers', not lots of little ones but a couple of long ones. And the other half would be left to make a sandwich - again, the northern tendencies! When I was little I'd insist on peeling the egg before eating now I don't mind lopping the top off and revealing the golden liquid beneath. And how dark the day suddenly becomes when you realise there is no liquid but just crumbly yolk that defies all dunking attempts. A dark day indeed! But as much as I love a fine soft boiled egg and soldiers I think it's not really a recipe. Instead I think I would have Eggs Benedict as you need both beautifully poached eggs and a silky hollandaise sauce to top it all. I like making hollandaise but I would always rather whisk it in a bain marie rather than use a blender. I've only made it once in a blender and it was too cold and didn't taste brilliant and then there was all this unnecessary washing up afterwards. So it will have to be the cubes of butter added slowly to the mixture on top of a stove for me. Like making risottos, I find it therapeutic, the soothing whisking whilst watching the alchemy of all that butter emulsifying into the satiny yellow nectar taking place in front of my eyes.
- For my second egg dish I would have Egg Custard Tart with plenty of nutmeg on the top. And I am sure I could do no better but to select Marcus Wareing's recipe from the queen's 80th birthday at Mansion House.
- And now I have to choose between a quiche (or tart if the word 'quiche' disturbs you!), a perfect omelette or an amazing dish that I had at my first ever visit to Gary Rhodes' restaurant City Rhodes as was. My starter was an artichoke bottom with other perfectly roasted vegetables stacked on top and the final crowning glory was a plump pillow of ravioli hiding a poached egg inside. When you cut into the ravioli a river of golden yolk flowed over the vegetables into the artichoke heart. Just such a stunning dish and very Gary! I have scoured all his cookbooks (from my extensive collection of over 500! -101 cookbooks eat your heart out!) and not been able to find this recipe. I even wrote to Gary but unfortunately I think the email was an old one. I believe that Gary’s poached egg filled ravioli would make the perfect final egg recipe. Update: I have finally, after first tasting it so many years ago, made my own gooey egg in a fresh ravioli – see here for the results.

Foie Gras
- Clearly I have rich and expensive tastes – but then I never doubted that for a moment! The first foie gras recipe would always have to be Tournedos Rossini. It really is a fabulous combination of the soft buttery foie gras, the more robust and juicy steak all on top of a nice little croute. And if I’m really lovely it’s served with some creamy mash!
- Gordon Ramsay has a stunning recipe for a Game Mosaic Terrine that I haven’t tackled yet. It uses goose fat, chicken breasts, pigeon breasts, pheasant breasts, quail breasts, partridge breasts, prosciutto and foie gras. Phew! That is one game recipe!
- It’s a toss up for the final recipe between a fat slice of sautéed foie gras served on a herb salad or some soft of tasty appetiser à la Petrus with the yummy little triangles of foie gras in puff pastry jackets.

Comfortably numb!

A couple of days ago I lost my voice. I thought I might have been shouting too much (not that I do that particularly) but as the loss was accompanied by an inability to swallow and a fever, I guess there was a medical reason. I endured the evil brew foisted on me by my chemist and very quickly my thoughts turned to food. Comfort food that is!
I think there are several categories of comfort food. There's the end of a relationship food when you convince yourself that all you want is Death by Chocolate or a tub of Häagen Daz or both. In fact you probably briefly think that you want to die and it might as well be at the hands of excessive chocolate consumption. Then there's the arrived home shivering after being caught in torrential rain, blizzard and/or up to your waist in icy water comfort food. On these occasions you need the culinary equivalent of a duvet. You want apple crumbles, bowls of warming soup, beef stews, steak and kidney pies, Cumberland sausages, mountains of mashed potato and the like. And then there’s the harking back to childhood, the tired and emotional days where you want to curl up into a ball and eat the stuff your mother used to make preferably served by your mother on tray in front of the TV (the height of decadence!). Maybe it was that light meal you always had when you were officially ‘on the mend’ after a bout of something or maybe it’s that signature dish that just conjures up a person, place or special occasion basically - a gastronomic hug. The dishes that evoke my childhood are soft boiled eggs and soldiers (classic illness recovery meal), my mother’s fish pie and cottage pie both topped with fabulously cheesy mashed potatoes. Chip butties made with thick white buttered bread with salt and malt vinegar - I’m showing my Northern roots here now! My granny made a fine Lancashire hotpot and the meat and potato pies from the local shop always did it for me. My other granny had a dubious repertoire when it came to cooking for her grandchild. I believe she had been an accomplished cook but in her later years had adopted a love of tinned vegetables (which made everything taste tinny) and packet foods like the dreaded Angel Delight. I still can’t abide tinned new potatoes and butterscotch Angel Delight from those days – about 30 years ago. But she did make a very fine egg custard tart and I do remember eating and developing a love of strawberry jam sandwiches. I know that she often fed me a Goblin meat suet pudding which I loved as a child but on revisiting many years later suspected that the flabby suet pastry was encasing small chunks of cat food. That one will have to remain a memory I think!
The problem with comfort food is that there is a fine line between comfort food and guilty pleasures – those strange foods you like but know that others could be surprised or maybe disturbed by such concoctions and you save those for solitary indulgences. I probably crave unusual sandwiches or maybe ‘sandwiches’ is too strong a word. I think my Northern tendencies emerge when I put odd ingredients between two slices of white bread (or even a barm cake or an oven-bottom – sorry that’s a bit of vernacular for my non-Northern readers!) And even though I don’t remember evolving this idea as a child I have been known to make quiche sandwiches much to the horror of many a gourmand! Though someone I know eats raw potatoes which I’ve always found very weird (you know who you are, D!)
On this particular occasion I had the craving for comfort food because I needed cosseting but also couldn’t swallow particularly well and therefore had to choose my diet to meet both these criteria. I plumped for cheesy mashed potatoes (naturally!), macaroni cheese, smoked salmon pate and soft floury rolls, leek and potato soup and very crucially Chocolate ice cream. Armed with my shopping bag I could batten down the hatches for a few days and recuperate. The only mistake was the soup – I thought this would be ultimately comforting as I adore cauliflower cheese soup which I make regularly in the winter months but somehow this Covent Garden Co soup didn’t hit the mark. Firstly I managed to burn my mouth trying to eat it and I found that after a few mouthfuls I was rather bored. Obviously Marcus Wareing’s stunning leek and potato soup and leek foam at Petrus had spoilt me for others. Maybe I should have decanted my Covent Garden soup and topped it with leek foam? Or maybe that was too cheffy?

My conclusion after trialling my selection of soothing foods is that really any dearth of comfort can be remedied by a dose of good mashed potato! It would have to be my definitive comfort food – with a good measure of Häagen Daz as backup (Belgium chocolate for my preference!).

Mmmm mash - the ultimate culinary hug!