Comfort Food & the Comfort of Cooking

As we live through these uncharted waters of COVID-19, I found myself turning to food for comfort for my soul. I am truly happiest when I’m in the kitchen, puttering around a new recipe or going back to the recipes that bring me comfort. I remember when my grandmother passed away, I immediately took joy and comfort in baking pies. I think I baked at least 5 fruit pies that day. The process of making pie dough, shaping the crusts, filling them with glossy, sugar coated fruits, then baking to perfection was therapy for me.

My grandmother taught me how to make cherry pie from scratch. We actually went to a park and picked cherries together. She explained how we would need to adjust the sugar depending on the tartness of the cherries (apparently not all of my picked cherries were perfectly ripe). I was stunned to learn it was so much more than a store-bought pie crust and a can of cherry pie filling.

Some of My Cooking Experiments

During the quarantine, I experimented with foods I hadn't made before. Many people tried their hand at no knead bread, baked in a cast iron pot. I was curious as well. The recipe I used was from the website www.thekitchn.com. It was the first time I encountered the phrase “shaggy dough.” The bread was delicious, a good dense crumb with a crispy crust much like I used to get on baguettes in France. The secret to that crust is steam. French ovens incorporate steam as they bake the bread. In this recipe the cast iron pot creates and traps the steam.

I now had some leftover bread and it felt wasteful to throw it away. (I confess, I honestly did want to eat the entire loaf by myself when it came out of the oven, but self-control!) So next I tried a Simple Bread Pudding by Mark Bittman on the New York Times website. Perfection!

Other recipes I tried included Maialino’s Olive Oil Cake from www.food52.com, which was a delicious success. Then I tried Magnolia Bakery’s Banana Pudding recipe. You can check out three Magnolia Bakery cookbooks from the library. Another fabulous new recipe was Caramelized Shallot Pasta from Alison Roman. The pasta sauce called for a tin of anchovy filets. I’m sure I was the only one who had that item in their curbside grocery pick up that day – maybe that week! The anchovies only added a umami taste to the pasta, not fishy at all. So good! I also tried Martha Stewart’s Kitchen Sink Cookies but gave them all to my granddaughters. The cookie recipe is a keeper and I’ll definitely make them again.

Time to Try a New Kitchen Gadget

My sous vide equipment

I made lots of batches of cookies but finally realized that all that sweet food was not in my best interest. I certainly needed to slow down on the baked goods and look for healthy options. I decided to break out a present I received for Christmas but hadn’t found the opportunity to play with yet. I knew little about sous vide cooking, or using an immersion circulator, but I was ready to give it a try.

Sous vide cooking is putting your food in a vacuum sealed bag (or a bag with as much air removed as possible) and letting it go for a little swim in a temperature-controlled water bath. I was skeptical. Did I really need another gadget and how good can it really be? The answer is – yes, it’s that good! Since the water is a controlled temperature, the food is cooked to precisely the right temp. I tried a pork tenderloin, tri-tip steak, roast, salmon, asparagus and chicken breasts.

The proteins come out moist, tender and succulent. I am beyond impressed! Some things need a quick sear in a pan to add caramelization but that’s an easy step. I even made some fresh pineapple infused rum for my son-in-law. I have a list of other things I am anxious to try with the sous vide machine.

Continued Comfort

I hope you have found comfort where you can these past several weeks. Whether it was baking, sewing, watching old movies, playing board games or just moving through each day. Things will get better and we will move forward.

While the internet is great for recipe searches, I still love flipping through the pages of a good cookbook. I always find several recipes to try in each cookbook. By checking out cookbooks from the library I can try before I buy. Not all cookbooks are ones I want to add to my permanent collection. Here's a list of comfort food cookbooks you can check out.