Comforting Memories - with lots of gravy!

What exactly IS comfort food?

I was just browsing through my chosen homepage of BBC Good Food and decided to have a quick look at their 'top 5s' list. At the bottom of their page they simply list 5 dishes, such as top 5 desserts, top 5 starters, top 5 comfort food dishes. The list, in no particular order, goes as follows:-

Steak and Kidney pie - my god yes!! There is nothing more lush than a rich gravied steak and kidney (must have the kidney) with a round of golden, crisp, puff pastry on top. Definitly a comfort.

Braised lamb shanks - ok, not what I would choose, but certainly understandable. Good meaty dish.

Champ - ermmmm, milk, onions and potatoes? again, ok, understandable but no thank you.

Cheesy swiss bake - no. comfort food should not be pasta bake, come to that, the only cheese based food I would class a vaguely comfort food is cheese on toast.

Panetone pudding - No, no, no. How pretentious! Bread and butter pudding yes, but panetone? just not right.

So I thought I would think about my favourite comfort foods. To me, true comfort food - not binge food, is food that is warming, home cooked and gives cosy, satisfying memoreis of childhood. The kind of food that envokes a smell from a memory, that pictures a small child curled up infront of a real fire in winter, wrapping their hands around a hot cup of cocoa. Comfort food takes you to where you are safe, where you are happy, where your fondest memories hide. No wonder comfort food can be addictive. I causes you to feel emotions that maybe you thought were long past, to think of days you thought long forgotten, to make you smile.

For me, these memories, these foods, stem from my mum and grandma Gill. I used to love watching them both cook, loved the smells from their kitchens (ok, not my mum's when she made pea and ham soup - eugh) loved getting to lick out the mixing bowl when the baking was done. These women are to blame for my liking of proper, old fashioned, home cooked food!

1. Roast beef, yorkshire pudding, good roasties and lashings of gravy! Nothing better - steak and kidney pie is nearly there but not quite. My favourite way to do roasties is this: Heat some oil in a roasting pan (hot oven). Meanwhile, par-boil some maris pipers in salt water. Toss the potatoes around in a collander so the edges break up and throw straight into the sizling oil. Turn once during cooking and bake till golden - so very good.

2. The good ol' cheese on toast - a decent quality creamy lancashire on thick white bread - a dash of worcester sauce goes well too.

3. Jam Rolly Polly Pudding and Custard - a lovely thick suet pudding with oodles of home made custard. I have never been able - well never attempted - a jam rolly polly, but one day!

4. A northern chip shop's pudding chips and gravy - to be honest, only from the Little Chippy in Adlington. Proper northern food. While checking out pictures for tonights blog, I found this website - made me giggle a lot! http://www.liquidice.co.uk/food/chipsngravy.html and in the words of my deputy head "Northern Girls Love Gravy!" Its true.

5. Chocolate goo - of various forms. When I was little and my mum was having a crap day, we would melt down a large bar of galaxy chocolate and eat the whole lot with a bag of crisps each. May sound horrid, but seriously not. So good it should be illegal. You would think my mum a huge woman from this description, but shes one of the slightest women I know.

I would be intrigued to know what other people view as comfort food. For me, when I feel low, these foods are the only things that will do. Sadly, somewhere along the line, the idea of comfort food got fuzzy. The 'lowness' became a constant, and the food became somewhat of an addiction. I lost the line between occaisional indulgencies and indulgent occaisions. The latter became more and more regular. It has been some time since this began, and it is only now that I am learning to love the comfort foods of my childhood again, not abuse them.