Comfort Food Reinterpreted

[edemuth]

Malawry and I are putting together a retro shindig this weekend (I suppose we both couldn't wait to get back into the kitchen after our New York City visit).    We're gathering a group of 12 at our new yuppie bowling alley, Strike Bethesda (the sister of Bowlmor in NYC), and then having dinner afterwards.

We have been talking about doing a "comfort food reinterpreted"-type menu for some time:  50's-style classics, prepared from scratch with the best ingredients.  We wanted to give these favorites a modern update--retaining their comforting familiarity while adding a variety of colors, tastes, textures, and temperatures.

Here's what we've come up with:

Appetizers:

Grapefruit-pomegranate fruit cocktail

Liptauer cheese with pumpernickel rounds and celery sticks

The main event:

Tuna-noodle casserole in a bechamel sauce with mushrooms, peas and fried onion straws

Green beans in lemon vinaigrette

Dessert:

Pineapple upside-down cake topped with sour cherry sauce and small scoops of coconut sorbet and/or cinnamon ice cream

We thought we could start a discussion of the menu specifically and/or "comfort food reinterpreted" in general.  What are everyone's experiences with this, in entertaining or eating?

[Malawry]

I'd like to add to this that the pineapple upside-down cake idea came from the discussion on that very subject here. We're doing a deconstruction of the dish, with fresh pineapple sauteed in a rum-brown sugar sauce topped with a slice of yellow butter cake, the sour cherry sauce, and the sorbet or ice cream.

I derive a lot of comfort from foods like tuna noodle casserole, and now that I have the noodle/pasta roller I've mentioned before there seems little reason to resist doing a high-end version of said dish. Maybe we'll incorporate black truffle oil (sprinkled atop the onion straws?) to make the experience complete.

I looked through my housemate's mid-1940s The Settlement Cookbook for ideas and was surprised at some of the recipes I found there. The author mentions foie gras a number of times, and the idea for the grapefruit-pomegranate fruit cocktail came out of there. The food my grandmother taught my mother to make was mostly based on convenience products; growing up we always had eastern european Jewish classics made from scratch but almost everything else seemed to come from a package in some sense. So I suppose I underestimated the foods people might have actually prepared in the 1950s and 60s. I wasn't born until 1974 so I don't have much perspective on the issue, and was interested in the thoughts of others on the subject.

[lullyloo]

I've never done a retro comfort food dinner party, but I would love to hear how the tuna-noodle casserole turns out.  I never had it growing up and have always had this secret taste for it (like another American classic bologna, Velveeta, and white bread).  I'd love to see your recipe.  Your party sounds like fun!  I love pineapple upside cake, too.

[jhlurie]

Hmm.  How about an updating of Marshmallow Rice Crispies squares?  There must be SOMETHING that can be done to jazz it up.

There have been discussions of homemade cocktail weenies already.  That's a good item.

My mother's "comfort food" was always lasagna, but that's not retro enough.

Hmm.  Beef Stew with Carrots, Potatoes, Peas and Wide Egg Noodles in a Brown Gravy?

[Jason Perlow]

ed you may find that you won't be pleased with the results, no matter how good the

ingredients or how fine the preparation. I've seen people try to do

this -- for instance, Rachel made a re-interpretation of the age old

green bean casserole with fried onions and campbells mushroom soup base,

(which I dearly love in a lowbrow kind of way) for a holiday gathering

using fresh green beans, soup base from scratch and frying up

her own onions, but it did not taste the same nor as satisfying.

There are some things that should be left alone, I think.

[ahr]

for instance, Rachel made a re-interpretation of the age old

green bean casserole with fried onions and campbells mushroom soup base,

(which I dearly love in a lowbrow kind of way) for a holiday gathering

using fresh green beans, soup base from scratch and frying up

her own onions, but it did not taste the same nor as satisfying.

Don't forget the water chestnuts!  Or was that a local (Brooklyn) aberration?

[Malawry]

ed you may find that you won't be pleased with the results, no matter how good the

ingredients or how fine the preparation. I've seen people try to do

this -- for instance, Rachel made a re-interpretation of the age old

green bean casserole with fried onions and campbells mushroom soup base,

(which I dearly love in a lowbrow kind of way) for a holiday gathering

using fresh green beans, soup base from scratch and frying up

her own onions, but it did not taste the same nor as satisfying.

There are some things that should be left alone, I think.

I once tried a from-scratch variation of the green bean casserole, and it too was somewhat disappointing...not to mention labor intensive! But I have made other "cream of soup" casseroles from scratch before with great success. Broccoli-cheddar-rice casserole went over well, for instance. And I have made baked macaroni and cheese many times in different variations. So I feel reasonably confident about trying the same methods out on a tuna casserole. If it's not da bomb, well, we just won't make it again.

I always put water chestnuts into my tuna noodle casserole, but come to think of it edemuth and I haven't discussed whether or not we oughta throw them in. (I keep canned ones around the house, so we could decide at the last minute.) Should we? FWIW, I'm from North Carolina, not from Brooklyn, and we used 'em there.

[Rachel Perlow]

Officially, this is how I make the green bean casserole now. The modern variation was universally hated (I even used fresh green beans), but I still can't bring myself to use canned green beans. A lot of recipes call for adding milk, but I find that even if you drain all the veggies thoroughly they don't need the extra liquid. Additional salt isn't needed but I'm sure I grind in some black pepper. The onions now come in cans twice the size as the original. So that I didn't just eat them straight from the can last time I made this I just used up the whole can in the casserole (same half & half proportions) - it was so good.

1 large bag frozen green beans, french cut (very important), thaw & drain

1 can (12 or 16 oz?) bean sprounts, drained

1 can (8 oz.) water chestnuts (sliced or whole, doesn't matter cause you have to chop them up), drained & chopped

1 can Campbells condensed Cream of Mushroom soup (I can't even get away with using the healthier version of this!)

1 can French's Fried Onion Rings

Mix all the ingredients together, reserving half a can of the onions. Spray a 2 qt casserole with oil and pour in mixture. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Sprinkle on reserved onions and bake for 5-10 more minutes until they get a little browned & crispy.

You can make this ahead up until baking, bring to room temp first or add a few minutes to the cooking time.

[Wilfrid]

My goodness, there are some cultural differences here.  I am sure the Americans and the British must have some comfort foods in common, but as one raised in the environs of London, some of the "comfort" foods on this thread sound really quite creepy.  I'm sure it's mutual.  Smoked haddock with an egg on top, anyone?

[ChocoKitty]

Hmm.  How about an updating of Marshmallow Rice Crispies squares?  There must be SOMETHING that can be done to jazz it up.

Gael Gand has a recipe in "Just a Bite" that uses caramel spiked with orange peel to hold the Rice Krispies together.  Simple and non-fat!

[Malawry]

My goodness, there are some cultural differences here.  I am sure the Americans and the British must have some comfort foods in common, but as one raised in the environs of London, some of the "comfort" foods on this thread sound really quite creepy.  I'm sure it's mutual.  Smoked haddock with an egg on top, anyone?

I think smoked haddock with an egg sounds pretty good, actually. But I think comfort foods aren't comforting per se unless you grew up with them. I find gefilte fish quite comforting but most people who aren't exposed to it as children seem to find the very idea unappetizing.

About new versions of rice krisipe treats: These don't feel very sophisticated or "adult" to me, and I don't plan on making any of them, but the Washington Post food section yesterday covered a slew of similar recipes. Make! Don't bake <---click there!

[Jinmyo]

Good God, yes. Kippers with eggs are comfort food. But green bean casserole? Tuna noodle thing? Creepy and strange. Why would anyone subject themselves if they knew better? But smoked fish and eggs are transcendently great: lox and eggs; smoked haddock and eggs etc etc.

What "comfort" foods are transcendent? Cross at least a few cultural boundaries? I mean, toast yes. But anything else?

Here's what I mean: A "comfort food" meal for me might be a typical Sunday lunch throughout childhood: roast leg of lamb, a vinegary mint sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans. I expect leg of lamb has no such associations for Americans. But how about mashers?

[jhlurie]

No self-respecting American would refer to them as "mashers".  

Please note that items like green bean casserole and Tuna-noodle casserole are probably very "1950's" as American comfort food, Wilfrid and Jinmyo, not contemporary, or even from the childhood of many of the board partipants.  

edemuth is very clear about this, but some of the comments since then have lost that point a little.  As kids, at least those of us who grew up in the 1970's were probably just as mystified by them.

[Rachel Perlow]

I rarely had mashed potatoes growing up. Maybe sometimes in restaurants, but my mom & grandmas never made them. Might be something to do with being jewish & kosher. There's usually dairy in mashed potatoes yet they are mostly served with meat, and they all grew up kosher and the grandmas kept kosher homes.

I suggest soup as the most likely universal comfort food. I don't think there's a culture on earth that doesn't consider some form of soup either a necessity at every meal or a cure-all for what ails you.

[Liza]

Comfort food, circa 1974, New Jersey, for me:

Potato-chip chicken, where the chicken pieces are coated with crushed potato chips. (or is that too Paul Leibrandt?)

Vegetables? What vegetables? Well, maybe stuffed baked potatoes.

Peaches cooked in sugar syrup.

And a coke, from a glass bottle.

Other comfort foods: cinnamon toast. Toast with honey. Any kind of toast, really. Macaroni and cheese. A root-beer freeze from Dairy Queen. Baked clams at Friendly's, with a watermelon cooler chaser.

[Wilfrid]

I am with Jinmyo on the wacky Eisenhower-era casseroles.  Bizarre.

Yeah, I think mashed potatoes must be fairly cross-cultural, although in the UK they aren't served with that pale floury gravy that's popular in the States.  Toast, sure, but a big British deal is toast with savory toppings:  baked beans, melted cheese (the upgraded version being Welsh rarebit, which can include mustard and/or beer), sardines, cod's roe, eggs again.  Sardines on toast - a real childhood flashback (the canned ones of course, not fresh).

Also, various commercial fried fish products - by which I mean, not fish shop fish 'n' chips, but things like fish fingers, cod balls (careful!), fishcakes.  Served with mushy peas.

[Jinmyo]

Wilfrid, that's right. Americans (and many Canadians) primarily pile sweet jams and jellies on toast. Gah. Sarnies on toast. Now, that's comfort food.

Never got into mushy peas, myself. My mother couldn't abide them.

RPerlow's right about soups of course. I'd say that soup is pretty much world wide (except perhaps for aboriginal peoples and there I just don't know). Miso shiru, hot and sour, soupy dals, potato and leek, and then the ubiqitous tinned soups like Cambells.

[Wilfrid]

And stews, of course.  Quintessentially comforting.  I would single out oxtail stew as a personal favorite, but also simple chicken and beef casseroles.  Let's hear it for shepherd's pie too (Andy Lynes can't spell that).

[Fat Guy]

I wrote something on this thread last night, and it was brilliant I assure you, but I think I forgot to post it. Now I will write a non-brilliant replacement post.

One thing that's interesting: It seems this sort of retro party is becoming very popular now. I've been invited to a couple lately, and I keep getting e-mails from people asking for ideas.

I think the big issue with planning such an event is that you have to decide how authentic you want to be. I mean, at some point the dish is no longer retro or evocative of anything. If you use fresh tuna and handmade egg noodles, you no longer have a tuna-noodle casserole. So there's a certain amount of self-imposed badness necessary to give a dish its authentic taste, especially given the primacy of artificial and prepackaged convenience foods in post-War cooking.

I'd also mention that retro food and comfort food are two different things, but with some overlap.

[Jinmyo]

True. "Comfort" food and "retro" food are indeed two different categories with a definite overlap for some. As jhlurie points out, the retro dishes here are not from the childhood of most of the particpants. And yet they are recognized as signifiers of "comfort".

As such, these dishes have an interest more conceptual in nature than pure comfort dishes.

Almost every chef has "ironic" dishes: Keller's "soup and sandwich", the "mac 'n cheese" dishes made with penne or ziti and artisinal cheeses one finds everywhere and so on. I do this myself, calling kale and canneloni beans with rosemary over bruschetta "beans on toast" and so on. These dishes make reference to the concept and then rub the concept and actual experience against each other to provoke a new appreciation of flavours.

Would making authentic reproductions of Atomic Age casseroles then lack this kind of irony? Or be so arch that the idea is the point and flavour a secondary or tertiary matter?

edit: Oop. I want to make sure that edemuth and Malawry understand that I'm not talking about what they're doing. As edemuth has said, they want to reinterpret the dishes. Hm. But even so, the base material sounds so bad that it might be better to just dally with the idea and go for flavour.

[yvonne johnson]

Broccoli-cheddar-rice casserole, tuna casserole—never tried these. Maybe it’s true you have to grow up with them to appreciate them.

Lots of the dishes mentioned above are ones we’d have for a supper on Sunday evenings. I suppose the logic was you needed something more like a snack than a dinner after the heavy Sunday lunch. Anyway these Sunday supper things were always a bit disappointing, not because I disliked the food, it’s just, as a kid, they didn’t fill you up.  Sardines on toast, pilchards on toast, Welsh rabbit* (with lashings of Lea & Perrins to jazz it up), sliced tongue on white bread (not my favorite, I admit), porridge, brose (raw porridge!), cheesy potatoes (regular mashed potatoes with tons of grated cheese within and on top browned under grill), Spam sandwiches with mango chutney (I actually tried this recently, and it was plain awful ), yellow fish with a poached egg on top (my favorite).

Favorite comfort foods from childhood that I eat when my husband is away (he cannot abide them) are sausage rolls and beans; curried beans on toast; pork pie (Meyers of Keswick makes pretty decent ones) with loads of mustard.

*I see Wilfrid used the gentrified (according to Jane Grigson) rarebit . Hope I'm not boring the pants off people with all this historical stuff, but I see that as far back as the 16 century the Welsh called bread and melted cheese Welsh rabbit , because, for the poorer among them, it was the nearest they could get to rabbit and in ways it was as tasty as rabbit. . and of course they were severely mocked for so doing. (The Scottish surely can't tease the Welsh. Afterall, a dish called Scotch Woodcock is absent the bird, and amounts to anchovies on toast! Must try.) Anyway, we never went to the bother of doing the fancy type of Welsh rabbit: melting butter, cheese, egg and cream in a pan and then browning in little pots under grill and serving with toast as you're supposed to as per Grigson, or even the simpler version, mixing in some ale or mustard. Welsh rabbit for my family was simply one piece of toast with cheese grilled on top, and don't forget the Lea & Perrins.

[Bux]

I would have written a brilliant response if I had read this thread last night, but since Fat Guy has lowered the bar, I won't bother. There's not a lot to say about my mother's cooking in the fifties, but she never made casseroles and I never ate school cafeteria food. I had some terrible sandwiches from home--the usual bologna, or if you prefer "baloney," and my mother was not beneath calling lettuce and tomato, between slices of bread, a sandwich. The first time I had tuna casserole was in the early sixties in the home of a young American who invited a small group to his apartment in Paris. It was so alien to me that I asked if he learned to cook it in Paris. He was honest and said it was a recipe he brought from home. I haven't had the dish too many times since. I've had it's cold weather equivalent, tuna salad with pasta and mayonnaise, quite often and find that satisfying.

Two things struck me about using homemade noodles in this dish. They have a different quality and I wonder if the would be more likely to over cook or if they would taste right. Then I thought why not go creative and make a tuna lasagne with the same ingredients layered. Either way, it's not what I'd spend my time cooking.

I enjoy prosciutto and some fruits as a first course and have even enjoyed a melon as a first course, but rarely would I order straight fruit as a first course. Even as a kid, I found fruit cocktail strange as an appetizer.

I'm inclined to agree that tinned sardines are excellent on toast with a little olive oil from the can and maybe a spritz of lemon. A little cheese is good, especially if you can put it under the broiler or in a toaster oven. Any leftover stew or some beans are good too. I think it's called bruschetta in Italian.

Smoked fish and eggs are classic. My father never cooked but one dish that I can remember. He made scrambled eggs with lox, onions and mushrooms.

[jhlurie]

Broccoli-cheddar-rice casserole, tuna casserole—never tried these. Maybe it’s true you have to grow up with them to appreciate them.

That's exactly MY point Yvonne.  I (and I suppose I'm only speaking for myself here) am about 20 years too young to have grown up with these "delights".  For me it's totally retro-food.  Retro of a time when my parents were kids.  I may have seen the occasional tuna casserole at some friend's house when I was a kid... but we always thought those folks were weird.

Fondue on the other hand... now that was the 1970's!!!  

[Wilfrid]

Yvonne:  Sorry about the "rarebit", I must be getting snooty - but I agree, the dish I ate in my childhood by that name was just cheese on toast with Lea & Perrins.  Pilchards on toast too, absolutely.

I was reflecting this morning, that although I list these comfort dishes, I actually hardly ever eat any of them.  Then you jogged a guilty realisation.  I do sometimes buy tins of Spam and make Spam sandwiches.  I have done so within the last month.  My condiment, however, is coleslaw, which provides a bit of crunch to offset the sponginess of the bread and Spam.  Mango chutney doesn't sound wise.

On the smoked fish and eggs thing; everyone seems to agree it's a classic.  Personally, I think the smoked haddock which I mentioned is quite a different deal to smoked lox, sturgeon, etc.  Smoked haddock can't be eaten as it comes.  It has to be cooked, and it's typically served in a big, meaty chunk with a poached egg on top (and maybe some melted butter).  A very different kind of dish to thinly sliced lox with scrambled eggs, for example.

[yvonne johnson]

Then you jogged a guilty realisation.  I do sometimes buy tins of Spam and make Spam sandwiches.  I have done so within the last month.  My condiment, however, is coleslaw, which provides a bit of crunch to offset the sponginess of the bread and Spam.  

 

Oh, heaven forfend. Spam and coleslaw sandwiches. I'll have to go and lie down. After not tasting Spam, in what?, over thirty years, what got me was the smell of it.  And that weird watery jelly it's wrapped in. And I wasn't alone....our cats around a year ago when we had all three all turned their noses up at it. And let me tell you, our Seamus loved his grub.