5 January 2009: A Comfortable Table

With the advent of each new year, the national food magazines all turn clairvoyant and try their hand at predicting the year’s hot trends in cooking and eating.

Some of these predictions will inevitably catch our eyes and find their way into our cooking and dining, but most of them were stale as a cold biscuit by the time the February issues hit our mailboxes.

For the last couple of years, the buzz phrase in almost every one of these articles has been “before you die” – the hot restaurant you simply must experience, the hot new ingredient you must become acquainted with, the hot new dish you must try.

Frankly, all this incessant and artificially urgent “before you die” trend chasing just makes me want to curl up with a bottle of bourbon and never get up again.

Not that I see anything wrong in trying something that’s new to me. It’s always fun and interesting to broaden one’s perspective in the kitchen and at the table. But, really, how many new things can there really be in this old world?

Half the trends that we see are retreads from years gone by. Food & Wine unashamedly admitted as much when they presented us with a “modern” (whatever that is supposed to mean) turkey tetrazzini and root beer float.

Besides, especially in this rather uncertain time, the beginning of a new year does not seem like the time for jumping blindly into the next trend, but for looking back, reassessing what we’ve learned over the years past, and for finding comfort in the simple elegance of good ingredients simply and well prepared.

There’s more merit in a simple wedge of carefully selected and perfectly steamed cabbage, judiciously seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground pepper and drizzled with butter or a bit of good olive oil, than in a gallon of packaged pre-cut slaw mix stir-fried in an abusive amount of toasted sesame oil the way one misguided Food Network celebrity demonstrated this past weekend.

Better never to taste toasted sesame oil than to misuse it like that.

Likewise, it is more important to master a technique than it is to get carried away with an ingredient. If you don’t really know how to pan-broil a steak to perfection, and have yet to master the simple techniques of an egg emulsion, you are better off ordering pizza from Vinnie’s than attempting what will at best be an indifferent boeuf béarnaise with a prime rib cut and expensive handful of fresh tarragon.

For me, the real pleasure at table lies not in an endless litany of exotica, but in the perfections of that simple cabbage, well-broiled steak, and impeccably executed béarnaise. That is my idea not only of “gourmet” cooking, but of real “comfort food.”

Fellow food writer Ann Braly recently asked me why I thought comfort food appealed to so many people, and that’s part of it. There’s a tremendous comfort in a dish that is carefully and thoughtfully prepared no matter how exotic or humble its ingredients may be. Comfort food doesn’t have to be limited to mashed potatoes, chicken soup with matzo balls, or macaroni with cheese, or, indeed, any of the dishes that are usually trotted out under the name.

In fact, what is deemed “comfort” food changes with each country, culture, and family, because it is deeply rooted in the childhood of the person whose spoon is dipping into the dish.

Let’s face it, regardless of your background, there is little comfort in gluey, lumpy mashed potatoes, watery canned broth with heavy, chewy matzo balls, or boxed macaroni in cheese-like sauce mixed from a packet of orange-dyed powder.

Yes, making those things from scratch is a lot of work, but if you aren’t worth a little extra work and trouble, then you need more help than I can give you here.

This year, then, let’s buck the trendy trendsetters, and get back to basics, choosing first quality ingredients and preparing them with the best techniques we can master.

9 January 2008: For more, and for the recipes mentioned here, be sure to read my column in the Savannah Morning News this coming Wednesday, January 14.