Fiery Foods Festival

This is my favorite display from the festival–this was made by North Market Produce, and I thought it was terribly cool. Of course, I wanted to buy some of those pretty red chiles, but there were so many people milling around, it was hard to think of buying anything.

Zak says that he loves me and I should be happy.

Not only did he get up early-early for me yesterday and went to the Fiery Foods Festival at the North Market in Columbus, which is about forty minutes from where we live, and not only did he endure crowds for the sake of giving me support for my first chili contest, I didn’t even have the grace to bring home a prize!

No, folks, Chupacabra Chili did not win, but it was very well liked, and I made a pretty good showing for it being my very first chili cook-off. The folks who did like it a lot, I was fascinated to note, tended to be Asian or Latin American or just people who really liked goat and lamb meat. Many Anglos were reluctant to try the chili because of the goat meat, but a surprising number of people knew what the Chupacabra was, and the cards I passed out to raffle off a t-shirt featuring the Goatsucker in all of his glory went very fast.

I think I went a little -too- easy on the seasonings–one judge said it was “bland,” though it was hardly that. It was subtle–I wanted the meat to stand up and be the central flavor, which it was. But, I was concerned that a lot of folks in Columbus, Ohio, would not appreciate a lot of chile heat, so I tread lightly in that regard and perhaps too lightly. The predominate flavors were the meats, which were rich and dark, with cumin, garlic and onion predominating with the chile heat coming in at the back of the throat more as an aftertaste. Cilantro, stirred in just before tasting, and the tomatillos punctuated the combined melange with jolts of freshness, and the posole added a nice chewy corn deepness when you bit into it. It was quite a rich and heady dish, but maybe not traditional enough for a lot of folks.

The competitors stretch as far as the eye can see.

As you can see, there were twenty competitors, and according to one taster, who assiduously and methodically tasted each entry and made notes, there wasn’t one dog-awful bad chili entered. Interestingly, three of us, including the really nice man who shared the table with me, were all from Pataskala, Ohio–a very quiet formerly farming community that until very recently was steadfastly rural. It is currently becoming suburbanized as the reach of Columbus marches relentlessly eastward, but for now, it is still pretty country-like.

The winning chili, in fact, was made by one of the three Pataskalans. It was a smoked turkey and black bean chili, which unfortunately, I did not get to taste. In fact, by the time I got out from behind my table to go tasting, many of the chilis were already gone, including the other one I really had wanted to taste, the Chili Caliente, which won the People’s Choice award. Interestingly, I marked, without tasting, the two winners, though from what I tasted, most of the entries were quite good.

I know that the creator of “Carnivorous Concoction” who shared my table, had some fine chili–the main flavors were meat and beer with a bit of spice at the end. A nice chili.

Before I ran out of chili, I sent Zak down to give samples to the folks I buy the meat from, David and Cheryl Smith of Bluescreek Farm Meats. They raise meat that tastes like the meats my grandparents raised on their farm–in other words, meat as it is meant to taste. Their pork is a revelation in flavor, sweet, firm and fragrant; their beef, especially the meat that comes from the Belgian Blue cattle, is tender and delicious. I am especially fond of both the lamb and goat, myself–which is why I ended up putting them in a chili recipe–they are deeply flavored and strong, but without any gaminess or harshness to them at all. And of course, they are meltingly tender.

Some of the meat selection at Bluescreek Farm Meats. This meat is from a family farm–all organically raised cattle, sheep, goats and hogs. Look at those pretty cuts of lamb.

After the judging, I passed out cups of chili and cards with the blog address like mad, until I scraped up the last of the chili, then went foraging for tastes of my own. I really think that the contestants should be able to taste each others’ chilis before the judging starts; the folks running the contest were very strict about not letting any tasting happen before the judging. However, I think that in order for the contestants to really get a chance to understand what the judges were looking for, they should be able to taste each others’ chili and get a feel for what the winning and close to winning entries were like.

Besides, you know, we -all- wanted to know what the other ones were making.

Chili is such a personal thing. Everybody has a different taste in mind when they think of chili. Texans have their bowl of red, the uber-chili, the root of the chili family tree, the starting point of it all. Texas red is just chunks of beef simmered in chile peppers, onions, garlic, spices and sometimes tomatoes and often beer. That is it. Nothing else. No beans. Oh, lord, no beans. Beans are cooked separately and served on the side.

And then there is Cincinnatti chili, which I do not consider to be chili at all. I dislike it intensely, though some of my family really love it and crave it. There is standard midwestern ground beef and kidney bean chili–which seemed to be the standard that most of the entries in the contest were based upon. And then there are the white chilis with chicken or pork, there are the green chile-based pork chilis of New Mexico, there are venison chilis, vegetarian chilis and then there are other chile based stews such as pork posole. Beans, no beans, lots of beans, chunks of meat, ground meat, sausages…the varieties are endless.

What made this contest interesting, if difficult, is that there were no categories, so the criteria that the judges have in mind to judge the chili, other than the general terms of “aroma, consistency, flavor and overall” are unknown.

That is part of what makes it fun–trying to figure out what will appeal to the judges–what will make them think, “chili” when they taste it.

At any rate, I had fun, though I didn’t get to do much shopping for spicy goodness. By the time the contest was over upstairs, the downstairs had become a crush of people, so I didn’t get a chance to look at the offerings of the vendors or have a taste of any of the free samples on offer.

As we wended our way through the crowd, I did stop back by Bluescreek to see what they thought of the chili. They liked it and wanted the recipe. I gave them my blog address, and promised to put the recipe up in the next couple of days.

So–for those of you coming here because of the little cards I passed out with your samples of chili–keep coming back! I am writing out the recipe for the chili today and will post the recipe along with the number for the winner of the t-shirt raffle. Until then, find your little card, look at the number written on the back and see if you can use your Jedi mind powers to influence my random number generator.

And once I post the number, if it matches the number on your card, post a comment to the blog with your email address. I will email you, and get your snailmail address to send the shirt along to you. I’ll give a couple of days for the winner to post–maybe by Wednsday or Thursday, and then I may be forced to generate another number, until a winner steps forward and claims the t-shirt designed by my lovely and talented husband, Zak.

Until tomorrow, then!

Countdown to Chili

Chupacabra Chili v. 3.2

Let’s try this again, shall we? (I just killed the previous version of this post. (DOH!)

The final pot of Chupacrabra Chili, v. 3.2, is cooked, and is currently sealed up in a big cast iron pot, and is cooling out on the deck. One of the best things about winter is that I don’t have to work as hard to cool off anything I need to stick in the fridge. No sinks full of ice water and frantic stirring. Just stick it out in the natural cooler outside.

This batch is the best yet; I made a small pot last night for dinner so I could further refine the recipe. This time I am using a different kind of posole with larger corn kernels, and two kinds of beans: cannellini and small red beans. I lucked into the posole because Zak suggested going to a Latin American market (DUH!) to pick some up as I had run out. I was so happy to see they had it and fresh tomatillos, that I bought five pounds of each!

Here is a close-up so you can see the posole, the tomatillo, chunks of lamb and goat and two kinds of beans.

So, all I have to do now is mince up some cilantro to stir in at the last minute, get up early tomorrow, heat up the chili in the microwave, store it in the crock pot and get to the North Market on time. Then, check in, plug in the crock pot and get ready to serve up cups of chili.

Zak has to print up business cards with the web address for this blog so we can pass them out to those who want the recipe. They can come read the blog and look for the recipe to appear in a couple of days, after I get around to typing it up.

Now that the chili is done, I need to go clean up the pot so I can make our dinner: clam chowder!

Another comfort food that I didn’t grow up eating. Clams in West Virginia? Uh, no.

Not happening.

Oh, and one more thing– a piece of news on the Chupacabra front!

Someone has dragged a body they found in the desert near Albuquerque to a TV station and folks are saying it is a Chupacabra. Yes! Folks are saying it is the one, the only, Goatsucking Cryptid Creep–El Chupacabra. Click on the video for a sort of good look at the weird mummified–critter. Thing. Whatever.

It looks to me like the work of a mad taxidermist–rather like the“Fiji Mermaid” which is a monkey’s torso wedded to a fish’s tail. But hey–it is still fun, and a timely tie in to my Chupacabra Chili.

Winter Returns, and Comfort Food Rules Supreme

Okay, this picture was taking a year or so ago–but it is a good illustration for what the world is looking like right about now. That is our outside cat, Pyewacket, framed by two trees in our woods. I bet he wishes he could come inside for some ma po.

Two days ago, it was sunny and sixty degrees out. This morning, the forecast said that we would have some snow flurries and there might be a sprinkling of snow in grassy areas. I just looked outside to see a totally white world with no visibility and at least an inch of snow coating the ground.

An inch is not a sprinkling. I wanted to call the weather people up and suggest that they look outside before they update the website, but well, I think they live in a windowless bunker anyway, so it would do no good. Suffice to say, our world has gone from a muddy, damp place where spring was thinking about tip-toeing into the picture back into a winter wonderland in the space of about an hour.

This is a good picture of what our ravine looks like now:

Winter reached out and took hold of our world again this morning; this makes me all the more glad that I cooked comfort food last night and am making some more tonight.

So, I was looking at an old (1998) back issue of Bon Appetit that I found at the bottom of a stack of Fine Cooking Magazines in my office closet while packing stuff yesterday. I was about to stick it in the “donate it to a deserving doctors’ office” pile when the cover story caught my eye. It declared, in what appears to be 28 point type (where is my type ruler these days?) that “Comfort Food Is Back!” The subhead is “Great New Recipes for Warming Up Winter.”

Serendipity is my friend, you understand, so I had to open up the magazine and check out what they had to say, since now at least three blogs have taken up talking about comfort food these days. So, I open up to page 57 to have even bigger type greet me with the following statement: Comfort Food at its Best: Dinners Like Mom Used to Make–Only Better.”

Okay, so the folks at BA agree with Alice May Brock (You remember Alice–she has a restaurant) and myself that comfort food is meant to remind us of Mamma’s cooking, but they take it one step further–it is Mamma’s cooking done better. I note that the author does not have an Italian surname, which is healthy for him; the Italian Mammas I knew growing up would have taken a wooden spoon to the backside of any kid who suggested they could top her cooking, even if it was just meant to sound good in a magazine.

Anyway, the text of the article opens with the question, “What in the world is comfort food?” Basically, the author’s notion is that comfort food is those dishes that evoke memories of good, safe happy times that make human beings feel wrapped up in a glowing blanket of love. That isn’t exactly what was said; that is a poetic paraphrase, but you get the idea. He also points out that comfort food is the perfect fit for the long, dull, cold days of February when all of us are so tired of winter that we just want to dive under a quilt and hibernate until April brings showers and May brings flowers.

So, I guess that it is only natural that we are all ruminating on this comfort food idea right about now. Winter is still here, the fickle sun had dashed back off to the tropics for the rest of her vacation and we are all still stuck here, hungry and cold and wanting love.

Lacking warmth, we head to the kitchen to create some.

Which is just what I did last night. I frolicked off to the kitchen, and cooked Zak and I up a nice mess of comfort food.

The only thing is–I realized something was flawed in my theory of comfort food. When I said it is essentially, the foods we grew up with that remind us of Mamma’s kitchen and her arms around us, I wasn’t thinking to clearly about what comforts me. Because I have a whole list of comfort foods that I crave on blustery days that have diddly squat to do with my childhood background. No one fed me real Chinese food until I was in high school, and I didn’t taste Chinese home cooking until I was in my mid-twenties. So, if that is the case, why the heck did I crave Ma Po Tofu like it was a lifeline last night and had to make it even though it was nine-thirty in the p.m. before I was hungry?

Before I answer that, let me tell you what Ma Po Tofu is, so you know what the heck I am talking about. From Sichuan province, Ma Po Tofu is essentially a hearty one dish meal of firm tofu braised in a spicy sauce with ground meat. I am told that traditionally, it is ground beef that is in the dish, though I wonder about that; beef is rarely used in China because cattle are beasts of burden. Pork tends to be the preferred red meat in most places in China, with lamb as the primary choice in areas with a heavy Muslim population, or in the extreme north, where Mongolian influence was strong.

The main flavorings are Sichuan chili bean paste–a paste made from fermented soy and broad beans and chili peppers ground together, salted fermented black (soy) beans and Sichuan peppercorns, which are the seeds and seed cases of an ash tree that are dried and which impart a flowery, tingling peppery essence to any dish they are added to. I always buy them whole and toast them before grinding them up and adding them in generous amounts to my cooking.

Sichuan peppercorns being toasted in the wee green Le Creuset pan.

Anyway, the first time I ever tasted Ma Po was when I worked at Huy and Mei’s restaurant around fourteen years ago, when I was well out of childhood. I only had it once, but I loved it immediately and longed for its flavor until I learned to make it myself. No other restaurant I ever had it in satisfied me–I think it is was because they didn’t use the chili bean paste for the spiciness–lots of them used chili garlic paste which makes for a cleaner, less complex flavor and aroma. It is also less satisfying.

The ingredients for Ma Po Tofu. In the foreground is the cup to my mini food processor; inside it is minced garlic, fresh ginger and Sichuan preserved vegetable, which is a salty, spicy cabbage-like critter. Whatever it is, it is tasty. The stuff in the jar with the blue and red label is chili bean paste, and the jar with the yellow, red and white label contains salted, fermented black beans.

The name, “Ma Po Tofu” is often translated as “Pockmarked Woman’s Bean Curd,” which is one of those unappatizing names, but it is said that the woman who invented the dish an unspecified number of years ago, was marked with smallpox scars. It sounds really insulting to call a someone “pock-marked woman,” but that isn’t the way it is seen in China. Folks in China give each other nicknames based on physical characteristics all the time, and often these names are not flattering in the least, but no one minds it. It is teasing. For example, if someone is heavy in China, they often get called, “Fatty,” which is shocking to Westerners. But it is simply how it is. Sometimes the names are poetic sounding, but they still refer to a physical characteristic. For example, all of we American waitresses had Chinese nicknames so the kitchen guys could talk about us without us knowing. One of Mei and Huy’s daughters told me about it. One of the names they called me was “White Cloud,” which I found to be odd, until one day I was asked, “How did your bosom grow so big?” by Mei. “Did you drink a lot of milk growing up?” Her daughters were scandalized, but she went on and said, “They make me think of fluffy clouds in the sky.”

Then, suddenly, the name made perfect sense to me. I still giggle about it.

Anyway, that is why ma po tofu has such an odd name.

Ma Po Tofu

Serves 3 with rice for dinner, or 6 with rice and other dishes

Ingredients:

1 block extra firm tofu (about a pound—I like White Wave Organic Brand)
medium saucepan of simmering water
1 small (about 3 inches square) piece dried cloud ear fungus (optional)
1 tbsp. peanut oil for stir frying
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ tsp. fresh ginger, minced
2 tbsp. Sichuan preserved vegetable, minced
6-8 ounces ground pork
4 fresh water chestnuts, peeled and minced (or use fresh jicama–don’t used canned water chestnuts)
2 ½ heaping tbsp. Sichuan chili bean paste (or to taste)
1 tsp. fermented black beans
¼ cup Shao Hsing wine
1 cup good chicken stock
1 tsp. sugar (optional)
2 tsp. light or thin soy sauce
4 tbsp. cornstarch dissolved with 6 tbsp. cold water
½ tsp. ground roasted Sichuan peppercorns
¼ cup thinly sliced scallion tops
handful of minced fresh cilantro (optional)

Method:

Cut the tofu into about 1/2” cubes. Put into saucepan of simmering water, and turn heat down so the tofu simply steeps. This will help keep the tofu firm, and preheats it before it is added to the sauce.

Soak the cloud ear in warm water until it rehydrates. Trim any woody parts, and then mince roughly.

Heat oil in wok until smoking. Add garlic, ginger and preserved vegetable. Stir fry 30 seconds. Add pork. Stir and fry until the pork is dry and somewhat crunchy, breaking up large clumps as you go. Add cloud ear and water chestnuts.

Add bean paste and fermented black beans, stir-fry a minute, until very fragrant. Add wine, and allow alcohol to boil off.

Add chicken stock, sugar, thin soy sauce, bring to boil. Turn down heat.

Drain tofu, and add to the sauce. Allow to simmer in sauce about two or three minutes to pick up the flavor of it. Stir gently, using the back of a ladle in order to not break up tofu cubes. If you stir vigorously, no matter how firm your tofu started out, it will crumble.

Pour about 1/3 of cornstarch mixture into sauce. Stir. If it thickens to desired consistency, remove from heat. If you want it a bit thicker, add a little more. Do not just add it all at once! You may not need it all. You want it to just be a nice, moderately thick sauce, not a gel-like gluey consistency. As soon as it is the desired thickness, remove from heat.

Add peppercorns, scallion tops and cilantro, and stir.

Serve in bowls, with spoons, over rice or with the rice on the side, as you wish.

Here is the finished Ma Po. No, green beans do not traditionally go in there; generally I make a batch of Sichuan style dry-fried green beans with minced pork to go with, but I only felt like making one dish with steamed rice last night. I wish you could smell it; a divine and delicious combination of aromas swirl from a well-made batch of ma po.

So why is Ma Po Tofu a comfort food to me?

Maybe because it reminds me of Mei and Huy and how good they were to me at a really hard time in my life. I worked there during my divorce, and in that time period, I felt very beset upon from all sides; very few in my family were being supportive to me and the custody battle was a long, horrible process. The folks at the restaurant took me in as family, and that place became a haven for me. I was treated with kindness and respect and love, something that was in short supply in my life right then. The foods of my childhood no longer filled me with joy, but sorrow, so it is no wonder that my psyche and tastebuds latched onto newer flavors as sources of comfort.

I have since made peace with that time, and with my family, and so the hillbilly cooking that I grew up on no longer makes my throat close up with unshed tears, but brings me back to the kitchens of my grandmothers, aunts and mother in a positive way. But the foods I learned to eat in those cold years when I essentially learned to make my own family, still call to me, and I will cook and eat them when I want to remember that love is the greatest power that human beings wield in this world, and there is no act more sacred than sharing food and love with a lonely person who hungers.

Fourteen years ago some people shared with me. And they saved my heart and soul by it. And so, now, I pass that love along to others in need.

The world may buffet us with cold winds and blinding snow, and the sun may hide her face to us, but in our kitchens we can make our own warmth and give it to all who have need of it.

May you never hunger.

Rite of Spring

Okay, it is not spring yet. But spring is thinking about happening. I know. I can tell.

It isn’t just that there are snowdrops blooming in our garden. Nor does the one brave purple crocus who is thinking of unfurling her petals tomorrow who tells me spring is just around the corner. It isn’t the singing of the wrens nor the mating calls of the crows which give my sign that spring is imminent.

No, it isn’t the calender, nor even the fact that it was sixty degrees and sunny out yesterday. (Yesterday. Today it was in the twenties, and snowing, and dismal. That is Ohio, for you.)

No, it is because the sacred purple bags are out on store shelves again.

The Cadbury Dairy Milk Mini-Eggs are available. They are out there, and Zak brought a bag of them home to me yesterday.

Yes, it is that time of year again. The Month of Mini-Eggs is at hand.

But what a bag! Supersizing has hit my favorite springtime treat. If you look closely at the picture you can see that the larger bag is a whopping 22 ounces–a bloody pound and a half of rich milk chocolate encased in crisp, vanilla scented sugar shells.

Can I say this?

OH MY GOD!

I think he is trying to kill me. Or, more likely, make me grow a bigger butt. I don’t think he ever got over the loss of my ass when I went down about three dress sizes a few years ago.

I mean, I was happy, but then I saw the size of the bag and was torn–what do I do?

Because you know what? I love those damned little crispy, creamy, rich, milky wonderful little nuggets of Eastertide goodness so much that I cannot open a bag of them without dire peril. They are addictive. I cannot just have three of them at a time–which is why I buy them in the more moderate, fifty-cent one and half ounce sized bags, pictured next to its gigantic cousin.

I swear, they put crack in the sugar coating. I cannot be -that- much of a jello-kneed weakling about the things, can I? I mean, I -do- have willpower, after a fashion. I mean, I did lose that weight, though mostly that came about because I quit drinking soda habitually. But still. I quit smoking cigarrettes years ago, cold turkey. I should be able to open a harmless bag of chocolates and have just one or three or seven or a handful or half the bag: you see what I mean.

He laughed at me. The bag stayed on the counter, unopened for twenty-four hours. This is a record in our house. He knows I wait all year for these things, so he came home from his doctor’s appointment and said, “I see you still haven’t opened my present. You don’t love me.”

“I do,” I pleaded, “But I don’t dare open them. If I do, I my doom awaits and I will die of chocolate inhalation.”

“Do you want me to open the bag, give you some and then hide the rest?” he asked helpfully.

“No!” I shook my head. “No–you don’t want to turn me into a junkie, do you? You don’t want me following you around, twitching and tugging at your sleeve all day begging for a fix, do you?” I folded my arms. “Or was that part of the plan?”

He told me I was paranoid.

I suddenly wished I was a devout Christian so I could give up Mini Eggs for Lent.

I told him I wasn’t opening the bag until Morganna comes to visit. She has the metabolism of a hummingbird, and can burn off every calorie in that bag with one good spate of dancing or a long run out in the woods. I could walk from here to Shanghai, (Well, they’d have to build me a good long bridge to do it, but you get the idea) and still not burn enough calories to justify eating even half of that bag. You could probably fuel an entire small village in India with the calories in there.

So, we went out to the grocery store this evening so I can pick up green beans. And while we were there, I saw a display of the tiny bags of Mini Eggs. A huge display. I pointed. “Why didn’t you get those?”

“I didn’t see them!” he said, dragging me to the Easter candy display aisle. “See, here’s the bag of Mini Eggs I got you.” They are at eye-level right as soon as the aisle starts. And then, we walk down the aisle, and he says, “See–Reeses, Hershey’s Kisses, Dove….do you see any other Mini Eggs? Any smaller bags? Because I looked, I did–I knew you would get neurotic over the huge bag. I knew it!”

At the end of the display, at the very end, there were two boxes of the tiny bags of Mini Eggs. I grabbed one and crowed triumphantly, “See! Here it is–a bag of a decent, reasonable size! A bag that I can open and eat every last one without feeling guilty or worry that every tooth will fall out or that my pancreas will crawl out of my body in despair! I’m buying it.”

I tossed it in the basket and we went to check out.

There were two folks bagging our stuff–a high-school aged girl and a boy, and our cashier was a boy of about the same age. When the little purple bag came down the conveyor, the girl’s eyes widened and she gasped. “Where did you find these?” she whispered. “Where?”

One of the boys says, “I told you there were little bags around here somewhere.”

The cashier shook his head and said, “I don’t see why you don’t buy the big bag. It is cheaper in the long run.”

She shook her head. “I -told- you I don’t dare, because if I open it, I will eat them -all-!”

Zak and I cracked up, and I started nodding. She looked at me and said, “You understand! It’s true–I keep telling them how good they are, but they don’t believe me. You can’t help yourself, can you?” She glanced around. “Where’d you find that little bag?”

“Come on,” I said, beckoning her back to the Easter aisle. “I’ll show you.”

I told her about Zak buying the big bag, and she shook her head. “That is just torture,” she said. “My boyfriend got me a huge bag for Valentine’s Day, but I haven’t opened them yet, and I won’t. Not until Saturday when I’m having about seven girlfriends come over for chick flicks. A pound and a half of chocolate between eight girls is a better way to go about things.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I told Zak as we were going home that I was going to write about the big and little bags of Mini Eggs this evening. He thought it was cool. “Who knows,” he said. “You may find more people in the world share your addiction to them.”

It could be.

So, here I am. The huge bag of chocolate is still set up on the windowsill where I perched it for the photograph. One of my cats is laying next to it. She helped me photograph it. I can smell the vanilla scent of the sugar shell still and the rich sweet chocolate from here.

The smaller bag?

I had to open it for the picture, so there were some eggs scattered around for visual interest.

I bet you can guess the fate of those eggs and their fellows.

Yep.

But, I am not touching that big bag.

Nope.

Comfort Food Without Borders

Kate, in her excellent blog, “The accidental Hedonist,” wrote in a recent entry about what exactly constituted “comfort food.” She notes that comfort food is a term that is not limited to entrees, side dishes or desserts, and that it seemed to include foods that did not appear on the menus of three-star restaurants. She says, “From this, I’ve come to a conclusion. “comfort food” is a term that is analogous to the phrase “guilty pleasure”. A guilty pleasure is something that you enjoy that you feel as if you shouldn’t. Comfort food is a food you enjoy but you probably wouldn’t find on a three star restaurant’s menu. In short, “comfort food” is a food you enjoy, but you believe you need to qualify it as somehow worthwhile.”

I think that she has part of the answer. One generally does not find “comfort food” dishes on the menus of fancy restaurants; such artless, simple food, is not what one expects to get dressed up and sit down to a white linen and crystal laden table for. Wine lists and comfort foods just do not go together.

I think that “comfort food” encompasses any simple, homestyle foods which remind a person of their childhood, and the comforts of home, hearth and Mamma.

Alice May Brock, of “Alice’s Restaurant” fame (yes, Virginia, there really is an Alice–did you think Arlo made the whole thing up?) says in her cookbook, The Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook, that comfort foods are all those milky, soft things that make us feel like we are back in Mommy’s lap being cuddled.

I tend to agree with Alice, except for the milky and soft part.

Because every culture has comfort food, and many of them have nothing to do with dairy products, nor are they all soft.

I mean, a lot of them are soft. A typical American comfort food is mashed potatoes–you cannot get much smushier than that. Oatmeal is a comfort food for many of my Scottish friends–that is pretty mushy, too.

Cantonese folk are comforted by congee–a porridge made with rice and chicken stock, which is served either plain or with a dizzying array of condiments or accompaniments, like fish balls, thousand year old eggs, shreds of pork or pickled vegetables. It is a breakfast food that is considered to be highly nutritious for everyone, but particularly for the very young or old, and women recovering from childbirth.

Soups are comforting the world over–chicken soup being a favorite almost everywhere. What Jewish American doesn’t crave matzoh ball soup when they are feeling under the weather or a little depressed? I am told by my Thai friends that tom ka gai-chicken coconut milk soup with galangal will cure the common cold, a hangover and a broken heart. My Pakistani personal chef clients loved red lentil dal cooked with chicken and lots of garlic and chili peppers. They told me it cheered them up just to smell it cooking on the stove.

Cucumber mint raita was another big comfort food for them. I would make quarts of it for them, and they kept asking for it over and over.

My Syrian Aunt Nancy was comforted by the smell of garlic and basil cooking–she grew up in an Italian/Portuguese/Middle Eastern neighborhood in Providence Rhode Island, and just smelling anything Mediterranean in origin on the stove gave her a smile and spring in her step.

Among Native Americans, I suppose a good example of a comfort food would be fry bread–a Navajo recipe that is widely cooked and served on the powwow circuit. Fry bread serves as a substitute for tortillas in Indian tacos–ground buffalo or beef meat served on hot fry bread with some cheese and salsa and lettuce on top. My daughter craves those, and can eat inordinate amounts of them at a sitting.

Essentially, what I am saying is this–comfort food is no one thing. It has no one meaning, no one definition–it is a concept which is both universal and fluid. There are no borders to comfort foods–every culture has them, and while they may never feature in the fancy restaurants around the world, they form the backbones of the real cuisines of every country on earth. The real cuisines are not made in restaurant kitchens, but in the hearths of every family on the planet. Professional chefs do not invent cuisines–they refine them, they change them, they are inspired by them, but the soul of a cuisine comes from the hands of mothers and fathers all over the world who toil to feed their families every day.

The creators of “comfort foods,” are the ones whose food moves our spirits and call us back to the table.

They are the real heroes of cooking, and one should -never- be ashamed to eat their food.

I agree with Kate wholeheartedly–food does not have to be anything but good.