Anne here, and today I'm blogging about comfort food. Of course what we class as comfort food varies from person to person, and is often culturally influenced, but it's usually something from our childhood, a simple, everyday dish of the kind that never makes it into recipe books of fancy restaurants, though some hotels and breakfast cafés might include some dishes.
But when you're feeling down, or tired, or maybe a little bit sick—or recovering from being sick— we tend to turn to comfort food. Or at least I do.
For some people it's their mother's chicken soup, or if their mother wasn't a cook, maybe a particular brand of canned soup. A childhood friend of mine always wanted canned tomato soup, made with milk and served with dry triangles of toast. She was always very specific about it. Triangles, not squares. And dry, not buttered.
When another friend of mine was very ill, she craved chicken soup, but kept rejecting the various soups her husband made. Friends brought different versions. It turned out my mother's chicken soup was the one she liked— because it was the closet thing to her own mother's recipe. It was comfort and nourishment and nostalgia all in a bowl
It's not just about illness — when a friend of mine's grown children come home to visit, they always want her to make chicken pie, and for dessert, golden syrup dumplings. To them it's a kind of ritual meal that means they're home. In my family a favorite childhood food was "scrumfus" -- minced steak (ground beef) cooked with onion and celery and carrot — a bit like an American sloppy Joe, only served on toast, not on a bun, and made without any sugar or tomato. (It was called "scrumfus" because when I was a toddler I heard my big brother say it was scrumptious, and thought that's what it was called, so it became one of those family names.)
For me —and this is an Australian thing that most other people in the world do not understand — the comfort food I turn to most often is toast with butter and vegemite. Vegemite is a black salty spread, a yeast extract, and most Australians were raised on it. It's a little like the English Marmite, but not the same. Those not raised on it don't understand the craving for it that the rest of us do. As you can see, you don't slather it on the toast — it's quite strong.
After a period of illness, or maybe a food poisoning episode, when I haven't eaten anything for a few days, toast and vegemite is the first solid food I will eat. This was my lunch today -- a piece of Turkish bread, toasted, buttered and spread with Vegemite. Not that I'm ill or anything; I just wanted it. And thinking about why inspired this post.
It's a cultural thing — a Macedonian friend will turn to toast with butter and a chunk of fetta cheese, or scrambled egg (no milk) with fetta — served on toast. For a Japanese friend, her comfort food of choice is a bowl of miso soup. Or maybe a bowl of silky tofu.
Another favorite comfort food is the boiled egg with toast soldiers. Do you know what I mean by soldiers? Toast cut into narrow strips, which you dip into the egg yolk and eat. Childhood bliss and still a favorite comfort meal of mine.
People often have little rituals associated with a comfort food, for instance with a boiled egg, some insist you must "behead" the egg in one swift movement, while others will tap gently over the top until it's cracked all over, and then gently lift the 'lid' of the egg.
In my books, I often like to include odd-sounding Regency-era dishes, like stewed lettuce, or buttered smelts, or cocks-comb-a-la-creme, which I find in my wonderful old Georgian-era cookbook, but sometimes the scene calls for something we all recognize as comfort food. For instance this scene, in my book, The Autumn Bride, when Lady Beatrice is discovered in a dire situation, badly neglected and fed only on gruel—which she loathes.
“I’ll make you something tasty to eat,” Damaris said. “What about a soft-boiled egg with soldiers?”
“A soft-boiled egg with soldiers?” the old lady repeated in a whisper. “I haven’t had that since—” She broke off, her mouth wobbling. Her face crumpled and she scrubbed at her brimming eyes. “Blast the dratted dust in here. It’s got into my eyes again.”
We all know and recognize that feeling, that it's comfort food, a dish from childhood that makes you feel loved and cared for.
Toast is central to quite a few comfort dishes, I suppose because bread is so central to our culture. On cold winter nights when I was a child we often used to make toast in front of the fire, toasting thick slices of bread, and sometimes crumpets, on long toasting forks. Toast tasted so much better that way, even if it was slightly blackened in parts or you had to brush off a bit of ash because you accidentally dropped it.
I've written several toasting-by-the-fire scenes because apart from the association with comfort food, sharing a fire fosters intimacy. This is from The Winter Bride:
It was late and the three three girls were gathered in Jane's room, toasting crumpets in front of the fire, and spreading them with butter and honey. Lady Beatrice was always tired after Literary Society days, and retired to bed early, while the girls enjoyed an informal supper.
Eating like this, supper on a tray, with soup, boiled eggs and toast, or crumpets and honey, eaten in their bedclothes in front of the fire, evoked their earliest days together, before they'd even met Lady Beatrice and reminded them all how lucky they were to have found each other.
Tonight three half-grown kittens watched the butter dish with propriety interest.
So what's your comfort food of choice? And do you have any little rituals associated with it?