Most of the time I like my dogs crispy and deep brown on the outside. But then there are the times I want my childhood comfort food, a dirty water dog. I remember the first one I had when i was a youngin' growing up in park Slope, Brooklyn. I was around five years old and my mom stopped by one of those small hand pushcarts, the real tiny one you don't seem much anymore where the yellow and blue Sabrett's umbrella is bigger than the cart, at the corner of Union Street and Seventh Ave.
They were a dime each, and seemed a bargain to me. My mom tried to order one for me with ketchup but they didn't have any and besides, I was already of the opinion that ketchup is for fries and burgers and would never let it dog my franks. I wanted the "other stuff," the bright yellow/brown "deli" mustard and the reddish, shiny stuff. So I had my first Sabrett's hot dog with mustard and Sabrett's onion sauce. It wasn't much to look at, kind of ugly and messy to tell you the truth, but it was mighty tasty and went down just fine, thank you. (By the way, I know that's a nasty photo. I wasn't able to take my own shot.)
Everyone needs a go-to mac and cheese recipe; this is mine, from a 1994 Gourmet magazine via Epicurious.com. I've made it for numerous Fourth of July parties, birthdays and summer lunches by the pool and it's the freakin' definition of "crowd pleaser." Nothing fancy, no additions of curry powder or green onion or smoked mozzarella (though those would probably all be good), just elbow macaroni, cheddar and Parmesan, bread crumbs, milk and butter, with a dash of cayenne, dry mustard and a little flour. Baked in the oven with a bread crumb topping and sliced into wedges, it's dense and creamy in the middle with a delicate crunchy top.
If you do want to try some additions, dozens of Epicurious commenters have left their suggestions. But I think it's just perfect for what it is, which is why I wanted to share. I'll be making four batches later for my pig pickin'. More on that later...
A couple of Friday nights, I took a break from school work in order to make a big pot of beef stew. I needed to retreat to some deeply comforting food and in cold weather there's nothing like beef stew (at least in my mind) to warm you up. It had been awhile since I had made it and but it's one of those recipes that always comes back to me when I have the ingredients spread out in front of me.
You can adjust this recipe to your tastes. I used about a cup of red wine to deglaze the pan when the veggies have picked up all the caramelized brown bits that come from browning the meat, but if you can use a little water instead. I always use parsnips in mine, but if you find them objectionable, feel free to leave them out. Instructions on how to make my version of beef stew are after the jump.
Happy National Meatloaf Appreciation Day! If you haven't done so already, today is the time to take out your baking pans and your mom's (or dad's) recipe for meatloaf and put one together. Serious Eats (National Meatloaf Appreciation Day is their brainchild) is going to be posting meatloaf submissions throughout the day, so if you are looking for a little meatloaf inspiration, go check them out.
In order to get in the spirit of the holiday, I made not one, but two meatloafs. The first was a veggie-infused loaf that was close to what my mom used to serve when I was a kid. You can watch me make that one here. Another meatloaf I made strictly for Slashfood readers (and the happiness of my belly). Riffing on the traditional meatloaf recipe that calls for a variety of meats, I went with ground turkey and a Italian seasoned chicken sausage (1 pound each). Make sure to cut the sausage out of the casings and combine well with the turkey.
In a medium frying pan, I combined 1/3 chopped onion, 3 crushed cloves of garlic, 1/3 chopped green pepper, 2 chopped celery stalks (for crunch), one very finely grated potato (I used a microplane) and four large mushrooms, chopped (all chopping was done pretty finely). I cooked the veggies together just until they lost their rawness. I let them cool a little and then added them to the meat, along with a beaten egg, salt and pepper. I mashed it all together until combined and scooped it into a loaf pan. I baked it for about 50 minutes at 375 degrees. If you grate the potato finely enough, it gets really tender during baking, absorbing a lot of the juices. This one was a real winner.
I first read Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me With Apples about five years ago. I loved it passionately upon the initial read, promptly lent the copy to a friend and never saw it again. Despite the fact that I haven't had an edition of the book in my possession for nearly half a decade, I always remembered that she included a recipe for mushroom soup that she would make for her mother and herself while packing up her parents' country house.
I recently reacquired the book and the first thing I did was flip through it, starting at the back, in order to find that recipe. I didn't see it on the first pass and momentarily wondered if my memory had been faulty. I decided to look again, and there is was on page 172. It seemed deadly easy and so I threw it together last night. It was easy, delicious and totally comforting, just the thing to eat when you are going through challenging times.
We've talked a lot about guilty pleasures here at Slashfood, and our friends at AOL Food have a whole category devoted to it. And one of those guilty pleasures (and also a comfort food) is Macaroni and Cheese.
Here's a recipe for Mom's Mac 'n' Cheese. Now, it's not my mom's mac 'n' cheese, but it's the type of dish someone's mom might make. My mom didn't put tomatoes in hers, but that's a nice touch. Full recipe after the jump.
On nights when you don't really feel like cooking, pasta is always an easy fallback. Now that people seem to be less terrified of having a few carbs in their diets, pasta is slowly returning to its position as a pantry staple. It only takes a few minutes to cook and you can make an infinite number of sauces, from 5-minute light tomato sauces to rich, slow-cooked ones. If you have an extra few minutes in your evening, it doesn't take too much more work to turn a regular bowl of pasta into a comforting baked pasta dish, with an oozy topping of cheese than gets browned and ever so slightly crusty on top. Just about any baked pasta dish is a welcome meal on a cold winter day.
Chocolate pudding cake is an intensely satisfying, yet simple, dessert. As it bakes, it separates into two layers - a tender chocolate sponge-type cake and a very rich chocolate sauce/ pudding base - so the cake needs no accompaniment unless you want to throw a scoop of vanilla ice cream into the bowl, too.
The second best thing about this cake (the flavor is the first, of course) is that it is incredibly easy to make because it is mixed in the pan that you bake it in. This means that cleanup is minimal and that you can have a delicious, from-scratch dessert on even a very busy weeknight. Not that you shouldn't have it at other times, as well. Any excuse is a good one for chocolate pudding cake.
Cook and Eat's latest posting of Honey Orange Bread Pudding looks like it is the perfect combination of bright, seasonal citrus and the custardy comfort of regular bread pudding. In short, it might just very well be one of the most appealing winter desserts that we've seen all season - especially because the orange used in the recipe was blood orange. The recipe is a take on one of Macrina Bakery's offerings, which uses lemon instead of orange. It is a restaurant style bread pudding, which means that instead of being baked in a casserole dish and scooped out for serving, as so many homemade bread puddings are, it is baked in a loaf pan and simply sliced into portions when it has come out of the oven and set up. C&E used mini loaf pans and baked the bread puddings in a waterbath very slowly, ensuring a creamy and delicious result.
Ad Hoc is the name of Thomas Keller's comfort-food restaurant in Yountville, California, just down the street from Keller's other restaurants, French Laundry and Bouchon. The restaurant opened about six months ago with the intention of providing a "Sunday dinner atmosphere" to diners, with a focus on seasonal ingredients and comfort foods, as opposed to the seasonal by upscale offerings at the French Laundry. It offers only one fixed price menu and everything is served family style. When it opened, Keller declared that the restaurant would be temporary, as he really wanted to open a burger restaurant in the location and needed something to occupy the space while the plans for that upscale fast food venture were ironed out. Ad Hoc has become so popular, both with diners and with staff, that Keller has decided to lengthen its stay. Permanently.
He is not, however, giving up on his "burgers and bottles" idea of a gourmet fast food restaurant that complements its offerings with high quality wines from the surrounding vineyards. He is simply looking for yet another location in which it can be realized. For the time being, Keller says that he might add a burger to the menu at Ad Hoc just to get the ball on the idea - which Keller has been keeping on the back burner for 15 years - rolling.
The cover illustration from Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make You Melt is more than enough to stop any grilled-cheese lover in their tracks. And fortunately, when it comes to cookbooks, making your selection based on the cover illustration isn't an entirely bad idea.
The single-subject cookbook contains 50 recipes that are the very embodiment of comfort food. Some are simple combinations and others are a bit more involved, but all result in a warm, satisfying and delicious meal. The book opens with a detailed discussion of various types of cheeses and the pros and cons of using each for this particular type of sandwich. Some of the ingredients, in addition to various types of cheeses, that are added to the sandwiches are prosciutto, creme fraiche, fig jam, pesto, fresh herbs and sausages. And in addition to simply listing the various ways in which the ingredients can be combined, the book is filled with tips for toasting them to perfection (very helpful if you don't own a panini press) and on how to select the right sorts of bread for grilling. Highlights include Bacon and Cheddar with Chipotle Relish, Halloumi Sandwiches with Lime, Goat Cheese and Cilantro Mint Ginger Quesadillas and Grilled Ham, Cheese and Pineapple.
The recipes are great and there are plenty of comfort-food favorites to choose from, like Biscuits and Gravy, Lemon Pudding Cake, Macaroni and Cheese, Banana Bread, Buckwheat Pancakes and Chicken Pot Pie , all of which have had gluten-containing components eliminated. The most useful parts of the book are probably the sections that discuss the properties of different "exotic flours" and other supplies that are commonly used in gluten-free baking, many of which will not be familiar to someone who has relied on wheat flours before.
The original pound cake got its name from the fact that it contained a pound of each of its basic ingredients: butter, sugar, flour and eggs. The average pound cake these days tends to be a bit more refined, using some sort of leavening agent in addition to eggs and often incorporating additional ingredients, such as vanilla, sour cream, heavy cream or even chocolate.
Pound cake, needless to say, is not a low fat food. It is dense, tender, buttery and something that is best eaten in small portions if you are watching what you eat. Of course, pound cake tastes so good that it can be hard to stop with just one slice. This recipe produces a lightened pound cake that is almost entirely fat free, so you don't have to stop with a mere sliver.
I don't honestly think that the KFC Famous Bowl looks appetizing. It is a bowl containing layers of mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, fried chicken pieces and shredded cheese. The idea is that, unlike most fast food meals, it actually has the same components as a real homestyle dinner. Why you would want to have all those things mushed together is clearly a matter of personal taste, but it is safe to say that you are much better off combining your own homemade ingredients than buying KFC's concoction, even if the fast food chain is eliminating trans fats from their recipes. Homemade will taste better and will probably be less fattening. A regular Famous Bowl has 720 calories and 34 grams of fat. The nutritional content of a homemade one will depend on your personal recipes for each of the components, but if you want to go really low-fat, you can always try Hungry Girl's KFC-Ya Later Bowl. At 285 calories and 6.5g of fat, her madeover bowl has less than half the salt and almost half the carbs of the original.
Start your year with 
We've talked a lot about guilty pleasures here at Slashfood, and our friends at AOL Food have a whole category devoted to it. And one of those guilty pleasures (and also a comfort food) is Macaroni and Cheese. 
Ad Hoc is the name of Thomas Keller's comfort-food restaurant in Yountville, California, just down the street from Keller's other restaurants, 
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
Morbid thoughts? Have a cookie
