Comfort Foods and Indulgences

The beginning of a new year continually fills me with a sense of renewal, a longing to de-clutter my life and an overwhelming desire to live more simply. My effort and elbow grease spent on creating and implementing holiday meals are behind me now and it’s time to move forward with new plans, goals and ideas for the future.

I am not one to make too many New Year’s resolutions but this year I have vowed to get back to basics in the kitchen; emphasizing fundamental kitchen techniques such as grilling, sautéing, braising and finally perfecting that “good white sauce”. These are just a handful of skills I feel all good cooks should be able to carry out with ease.

I resisted Facebook for years, but the ease with which I could share and view pictures of a high-school reunion compelled me. So like most people my age, I found myself using the site to reconnect with a past I had previously ignored or forgotten. Then, when my husband passed away suddenly a little more than a year ago, Facebook became a strange lifeline during my first year of grief. Frankly, being on Facebook makes me think about what it must be like to be dead, floating like a ghost into and out of people’s lives, into and out of all the worlds we’ve inhabited. The compression and conflation of time that Facebook provides makes way for the beguiling draw of nostalgia.

Nostalgia, like grief, is essentially homesickness, and we tend to get homesick when we want to restore the parts of ourselves we think we are losing or have lost. Soon enough, I found myself looking up my old summer camps, my old junior high school (that’s what we New Yorkers called middle school), and inevitably I discovered a Facebook page dedicated to Riverdale, the small northwest Bronx neighborhood where I spent my formative years.

We all have our own rituals for fall Sunday afternoons. Some guys sit around and watch football; for me it takes only about a quarter before I need a nap. Others feel inspired to take up household projects; the less said about my ability with a hammer the better.

Instead, I cook. Well, I cook all year round, but when the days start to cool and the light turns golden, I get more ambitious. Rather than 30 minutes at the grill, I throw myself into hours-long kitchen projects. This year, it's been lasagna.

It started in late September. I had just gotten back from the farmers market when I heard that Marcella Hazan had died. I looked over everything that I had bought and in her honor immediately started making dough for fresh pasta. And peeling and seeding tomatoes and turning them into sauce. And making a Parmesan-enriched white sauce. And blanching, chopping and sauteing beet greens. And then putting it all together. All of a sudden it was dinner time.

There's nothing like lasagna from scratch to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon.

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Did you grow up with lots of muffins in your household? I didn’t. In fact, I don’t remember having them around at all. Cakes? Yes. Pies? Yes. Cupcakes? Yes. Muffins…no. Maybe that’s why I love them. I’m making up for lost time.

Now, my favorite muffin is hands down the Peanut Butter-Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffin I make often. It’s more labor intensive and fits the bill when I have ripe bananas available and want some chocolate in my breakfast. It’s really fantastic.

I do have one criteria for breakfast muffins. I don’t want them over the top sweet. These Streuseled Honey-Butter Breakfast Muffins fit that bill perfectly. And the streusel makes the perfect crunchy-crunch. Just look at it. This is so good with my black coffee, it’s “off the chain”…as someone said to me on Facebook the other day. I love that Triple-D saying.

Anyway, these are also one of those exceptional looking muffins. They pop up and rise into a perfect dome shape, don’t brown too much and stay moist. They are keepers forever, I hope you try them soon.