Comfort food has to be circumstance related. You could be
alone, hurting physically or emotionally. You could be exhausted, hung over, or
homesick. Therefore it follows that comfort food doesn’t have standards. It
could be something which is essentially pure filth, like a Pot Noodle sandwich
(Bombay Bad Boy, thick white buttered Warburtons), Findus crispy pancakes
(mince and onion), or fish fingers (4, probably in another sandwich).
A subjective idea such as comfort food needs a few rules:
It has to be something you’ve eaten when you really needed
it, for reasons over and above the call of hunger.
It has to be woven into your memories; the experience of
eating it should be partly nostalgic.
It has to be warm. A salad comforts nobody.
So, here are my contenders. If you’re reading this and you
know me, you’ll have already guessed that it’s all carbohydrate:
Mashed potato. It’s the original tummy hug, reassuringly
heavy.
Rice. The sacred carrier of sauce, and for filling your
belly it’s in a league of its own.
Pasta. Cooked right, it has a glorious chewy quality
which you don’t get with anything else.
I also want to give honourable mention to tinned things like
baked beans and spaghetti hoops. In this case, it’s a balanced sweet and
savoury flavour, but mostly an unctuousness which makes them worthy of praise.
I don’t think comfort food is really involved when it comes to
severe emotional trauma. When I remember all the truly bad things which have
happened in my life, I’ve no idea what I ate during those times. True grief
kills your appetite. Take away food or convenience food is always great when
you’re tired or hung over, that goes without saying. But I think that most of
all, comfort food means something home cooked by someone that’s looked after
you when you were small. For me this would be my mum or my nana. Nobody is
better at cooking than them. Heston Blumenthal can shove his bacon and egg ice
cream right up his arse.
So with all that said, I’ve come to a decision.
I played a lot of sport growing up, including the best one
of all, cricket, for my local team. In
my mid teens I was as serious about playing sport as I ever got. Summer meant
Friday evenings at cricket practice, which I think was 5 til 7 or 6 til 8. Most
weeks a few of us would carry on after practice, playing until it got dark,
ignoring fatigue and hunger. Mum would pick me up, or sometimes I’d walk,
dragging my cricket bag through town. She’d always microwave me a massive bowl
of belated tea when I got back. I’d leave my bag in the hall and slump on the
sofa, sweaty, stinking and just about as tired as I could be, and she’d go in
the kitchen and sort it all out, bringing it in on a tray (such a brilliant
mum). There were many exquisite meals, but the one that sticks in my mind the
most is my ultimate comfort food:
Chili con carne, rice and garlic bread.
A warm, unctuous, spicy, double-carb savoury saviour.
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