The note from the editor in the most recent Cooking Light was very interesting, lamenting the fact that upscale chefs have hijacked the notion of "comfort food." As he said, the idea of comfort food has been "roped to spectacular quantities of cheese, meat, fat and sugar when, in fact, the emotional dopamine of the perfect dish can just as easily come from chicken soup, or Proust's cookie, or, in my case, a bowl of wild raspberries."
I thought about this as I marveled at the internet's ability to provide even the most obscure bit of information. Living up here in NJ, one thing I REALLY miss are all the good restaurants back in Dallas. Because for all its faults, Dallas has a great selection of restaurants. And one thing that has been on my mind lately is the dal with rice that I used to get from Cosmic Cafe on Oak Lawn. When I was pregnant with Grace this was one of my lunch staples (a very spicy "comfort food", if you will). So I Google "Cosmic Cafe dal recipe", and sure enough I actually get a hit. Not for the restaurant's recipe per se, but for a dal recipe that had a comment saying it tasted just like the dal at Cosmic Cafe. So very soon I will try to make it, accompanied with some jasmine rice with toasted cumin seeds, to see if I can replicate that awesome taste.
I also found a recipe that is supposed to approximate the cashew tamari dressing from Mother's Cafe in Austin. I used to buy it at Whole Foods in Dallas, but it's not carried at the Whole Foods stores up here (probably because it's refrigerated with about a 2 week shelf life - not real good for shipping 1500 miles). This is the salad dressing that would actually make me eat salads. Don't get me wrong - I love salads, but don't like the amount of work that goes into making one for lunch when it is so much easier to reheat leftovers from the night before. I just got the rest of my ingredients yesterday, so tomorrow I shall try making the dressing to see how it turns out.
Thinking again about comfort food, probably the one I think of most from my childhood would be grilled cheese sandwiches. Or tomato soup with cheddar cheese in it (maybe with a grilled cheese on the side?). Or the ultimate, though I bet it wouldn't give me too much comfort to eat it now because my palate has hopefully matured a bit, Spaghetti-O's with a slice of buttered bread on the side. Sigh.
4 comments:
"Oh - Oh - Spaghetti-Os"
Tomato soup, Spaghetti-Os - so when did folks figure out your love of cooking from scratch must have come from someplace else in the family? It certainly wasn't inherited from your mother...
Oh come on - you make a mean Campbell's Tomato soup!
Grilled cheese and tomato soup - perfection.
I was just thinking the other day about the fact that I have a few strange comfort foods, Yellow squash with cheese and stewed okra and green beans cooked with onion are some of my favorites that make me think of my grandparents. So even vegetables can be comfort food!
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