Global Comfort Food

I've been thinking a lot about comfort food lately. Probably because it's spring and unpredictable temperatures can lead to frosty nights; spring means the end of the the school year and you can feel the stress palpitating in the air; mostly because I just enjoy the big bits of savory food that make everything--your belly, your life--seem right. As a result I have always been a big proponent of comfort food in its various iterations: the thick mashed potatoes on top of glistening minced meat in a baked shephard's pie; the creamy, chewy mac and cheese bites, even better fried in breadcrumbs the next day; a hot dog with all the fixings (yes, I find this comforting).

I have recently begun to think about some of the the more "adventurous" things we've cooked at home as comfort food, and post here various iterations of these culinary warm fuzzies as things to think about when you're looking to make your stomach give that satisfying something that just makes you go, "Yeaahhhh." One of the things about comfort foods, however, is that what makes you go, "Yeaahhhh" is often a pound or so of cheese, or butter, or other guilty pleasure. My hope is that these culinary trips around the world for different comfort foods will provide us with something a little more weight-friendly.

How do you define a comfort food? For me, it's in the type/speed of cooking -- it either needs to be a quick and easy meal that you can enjoy right away, or a longer, slower method for the oven to warm you up while the smells permeate your house. Comfort food is also starchy -- pasta, rice, noodles, or grains of some sort to soak up some delicious flavors and provide that filling bite and full belly at the end. Lastly, comfort food has flavor -- a taste that lingers with you after you've chewed and can surprise you. (This, for example, is why bacon, ham, or tomatoes elevate mac and cheese for me.)

We've been posting a lot about curries lately and this is no exception. It's also a good way to introduce this series of "Global Comfort Food" posts. I had a distinct craving to make biryani, which indicated that it was a comfort food of some sort. Again pulled from our trusty 660 Curries book, this recipe was simple to make and delicious.

What makes a biryani a biryani is that the sauce, usually cooked in intense flavors, is prepared separately from the rice, then cooked together afterwards. In this case, this South Indian recipe involved cubes of lamb shoulder marinated for several hours in plain yogurt and a blend of spices, including paprika, masala--a "hot mix" of many different spices itself--and turmeric.
(An interesting side note on marinades: there is a lot of debate/science behind types of marinades for meat--perhaps the subject of a more detailed post down the line--and the consensus seems to be that dairy-based marinades, in their enzymatic essence, do excellent work of tenderizing meats.)

Basmati rice was cooked and flavored by ghee, saffron, and other whole spices (again, once you stock your pantry with the basics for many Indian recipes -- cinnamon sticks, cardmom pods, mustard seeds-- you are set to go), then mixed in with the lamb and put in the oven until the lamb was tender and cooked through. We served this with a little bit of raita--a yogurt accompaniment--on the side. For this one, we mixed some finely chopped radishes, mint and cilantro into a bowl of plain yogurt with some salt for flavor.


The result was pure comfort: a steaming hot, hugely fragrant dish with layers of flavors. The rice was delicate but the meat was savory and offered great bite, and the raita added a creaminess with some satisfying crunchy, fresh flavors from the vegetables within. Consider this a delicious, healthy, and fairly easy alternative for those cooler nights when you want to curl up on the couch with a bowl of something hot and comforting!

All about Brad

We like food, friends, dogs, and challenges - so when our friends Brad and Jessie came by to eat dinner the other week, it was a good night. The dog part of the equation was Murray, a darling little, rescued dog that is a magnet for Jessie's affections. (Poor Murray was in the process of potentially being renamed, so Teddy, Bowie, Sully, and Buddy were all thrown at him at various points to see if anything stuck.) Brad is an avid FLD reader (who seemed keen on having a post about him), and he and his wife are fellow graduate school compatriots, so commiserating over our dubious humanities-based futures over curry with physical science-based Mark seemed like a good idea.
The "challenge" with this curry dinner was that it was to be all veggie, no seafood or meat. I put challenge in quotation marks because, for all you entertainers out there, curry is a great family-style meal that you can put out for vegetarians and know that it will taste great. Mark and I busted out our handy 660 Curries cookbook and picked some recipes we thought looked good. The winners were a grilled eggplant dip, chickpeas with spinach, cauliflower and potatoes, saffron rice, and naan.

The eggplants were grilled outdoors (why not enjoy the weather when you can?), then peeled and smashed with a chili-garlic mixture. Since this was more of a spread-like mixture, we decided to eat it with some sort of bread - and we wanted to take another stab at homemade naan. Previously, we had made naan in the stove, under the broiler I think, but this time we put a pizza stone on top of the grill to get nice and hot, and threw the pats of dough onto the stone for a few minutes. Some parts got a bit charred and the texture was cracker-like; we'll need to practice this naan-making thing more in the future.

Chickpeas came out of a can and were mixed with some spinach and mustard seeds, along with a blend of spices. The flavors were light and layered, but I would use fresh chickpeas because sometimes the canned ones are a bit too mushy. We also used baby spinach but I would use the curlier, larger spinach leaves that hold their shape more and add more flavor to the dish.
The cauliflower and potatoes were, like all the other curries in the book, easy. After cutting up a head of cauliflower, it went in a large wok with seasonings, tomato sauce, and cut up potatoes. After about 20 minutes, everything was fork tender and ready to go. It was garnished with fresh cilantro at the end, which added a nice freshness at the end. I think this dish might also go well with the addition of cashews or some other nut to add a level of crunch to it.

And, the saffron rice - rice stirred in to hot ghee (clarified butter) and then a teaspoon of saffron threads thrown in to coat. Water and salt were added in, and in about 10 minutes (while the cauliflower was cooking), the rice was done and ready to be fluffed up and served. The saffron adds a really nice, delicate flavor to the rice that, I feel, brings out the flavor in the curries a lot more. Lastly, there is nothing like the flavor of mango to add that last sweet flavorful note to your meal as a simple dessert.
The meal turned out pretty tasty, overall, and had a lot of different, fun elements to it, including sitting out by the grill, maneuvering balls of naan dough around, and smelling all of the different curries and sauces come together in the kitchen. The dog did an excellent job of hanging out, our cat did an excellent job of avoiding the dog, and no one felt the slightest bit guilty for having a curry feast on Easter Sunday (although hot cross buns were our other dessert).

There is nothing like a full belly, some bottles of wine and beer, and good company to make you forget about job markets, housing markets, and any other dwindling market that has you down!

Salmon dinner

On weeknights when we feel the need for lighter fare or something different, we often turn to fish. Fish is an easy way to add some variety into our dining, and we have no qualms about searching the racks in various stores for those pre-packaged, frozen fillets for a quick dinner when we need one. A few weeks ago, we pulled out some salmon and, as it thawed in the kitchen, began to brainstorm ways in which to cook it.

I had remembered seeing a Giada De Laurentiis episode back in the day for Salmon in Lemon Brodetto with a pea puree. It was one of those lazy days surfing through the channels and coming up on a Food Network show where things begin to look so good you end up drooling on the couch. Giada's recipe calls for a piece of fried salmon on top of a parmsan-y pea puree in a lemony broth:
To add a little more interest and "oomph" to the dish we decided to encrust the salmon in potato. We first shredded the potato, slathered the salmon in a roasted pepper mustard we had in the fridge, and rolled the fillet in the potato. We seasoned it with salt and pepper and fried it till golden brown, then flipped it over and finished it in the oven for a few minutes till the fillets were cooked through.
This was a good refreshing take on salmon, given our usual tray-baked or grilled approach. The potato crust is something to try with other fish and whatever mustards you like; this fillet would have been great with lemony, garlicky potatoes or some fresh arugula.

Well done, Charlie.

Well, spring time is here and we've been busy getting back into the dirt in the garden behind our house. What have you all been up to? Our spare bedroom has become a greenhouse for indoor starters, mostly flowers (cosmos, daisies, marigolds) for cover in the garden, along with some basil plants, green onions, chives, and satellite squash plants that will take some extra time to grow before transplanting. We just added some arugula and lettuce up there as a recent addition and they are coming along nicely under their little plastic dome.

Outdoors, cool-weather crops like peas, spinach, beets and carrots have been planted along with our onion sets and garlic. We may have jumped the gun in planting so early, but we'll see what happens - right now some seedlings are up from the soil so, so far so good!

One of the things that really launched us into spring was the acquisition, after a period of research, of a quarter of a steer that will hold us through the summer. Mark found a wonderful farm in Mason, MI - just outside of Lansing - an organic farmer raising free-range cattle, goats and chickens, ready to take some steer to butcher. After heading out west in Michigan earlier that day with some friends (hooray for labor summits in the middle of nowhere), we brought them along down to Mason on the way home to help us with the beef.

A quarter of a steer was anywhere from 150-200 lbs hanging weight, so we ended up with a few huge packages of ground hamburger, enormous chuck, sirloin and rump roasts, ribs, steaks, and other tasty cuts. Split between us and four other friends who love beef like we do, everyone received about 27 lbs of processed meat for $100... definitely a cost-per-pound bargain given what some organic, free-range meat costs in stores. Plus, we knew the date it was butchered and processed, our farmer got all of the proceeds, it went straight from his house to ours, and I had the chance to name our bovine Charlie in a move of farm-to-table appreciation.

A quarter of a cow, by the way, can fit into the trunk of your car no problem:

But yes, I was saying earlier that this really launched us into spring. I should say that our visit to the farm was accompanied by snow flurries and gusty, freezing winds; back down in Ann Arbor, however, a minor cold snap passed quickly and the next day brought clear skies and temperatures in the 70s, along with the presence of our good friend Dan. How can you pass up this opportunity?


We bust out two pounds of ground beef and celebrated the good fortune with an impromptu barbecue. A big bowl of guacamole, grilled asparagus, and big, thick, butter burgers (my blend of secret spices and accompanied by a pat of butter in the meat) topped with aged cheddar, lettuce and tomatoes. Thanks Charlie, and see ya, winter!