Comfort Foods and Indulgences

I'm spending a few days in what I'm told is the Mid-West of America (albeit the Northern Mid-West), a place I've never been to before.  It's a land of lakes and fir trees and glittering silver birches, and flying in I was startled (and a little homesick) by the landscape's resemblance to Norway.  Of course everyone who lives here is either Norwegian or Swedish.

My Minnesota hostess (who is also one of my best girlfriends) adapted a corn pudding from the book Local Flavors by Deborah Madison.  Don't be put off by the name. The recipe is delicate and delicious. I've found that using a mellifluous deep-South accent – as in "coooorrn puddin'" – assures its proper status in culinary Americana. 

This is an American staple, transformed and updated by the use of fresh herbs and goat cheese.  Up here, there is a farmer's market three times a week, and she used fresh corn as well as fresh parsley and chives cut from the selection of clay pots outside her kitchen door.

I just can’t forget the truffle pasta we enjoyed at the American Embassy residence in Rome accompanied by homemade Limoncello served by Ambassador John Phillips himself. We walked the catacombs under the Embassy to get to the wine cellar where just the three of us including my husband Mike ate the best Limoncello and pasta in the world. It was simple with butter and truffle, just pure food magic.
Our best meal in Paris was at L’Amis Louis. Their fois gras, escargot and scallops are always crazy good…but the potatoes and garlic with butter and fries can't be beat…and this new place, also in Paris, served us the tiny best appetizer in world of mushrooms, figs, cheese and proscuitto.
  Irena Medavoy

The best thing I ate last year was on Thursday, December 24th at E. Baldi in Beverly Hills - Chef Edoardo makes an amazing antipasti of Deep fried Shiitake Mushrooms with sea salt & truffled pecorino cheese ... What a taste treat!!!
  Wendy Howard Goldberg

The best thing I ate last year was a chicken schnitzel sandwich at Falafel Hakosem on King George Street in Tel Aviv, an hour before going to dinner at my grandmother's house. Never go to my grandmother's house hungry. 
  Anna Harari

Hot fluffy biscuits right out of the oven from Good Enough to Eat on Columbus Avenue in New York City.  I had many delicious foods in 2015 but seemed to only crave, and adore, those biscuits with their luscious strawberry butter. Mmmmm. Is it morning yet?
  Diane Sokolow

Last May, when my wife and I vacationed in Anguila, I ate a nectarine that I can taste to this very day. New Year's resolution - the moment that taste disappears, we'll head back to Anguila for another nectarine.
   Alan Zweibel 

Cheese, how much do I love thee? Forget it, I'm not going to count the ways. I know you, my sweetest of readers, have not the time nor the patience for me to even begin to tell you how cheese runs through my veins.  But believe me, it does.

My pal Matt from 1000 Markets told me about a vendor on his site. The company, Mt. Townsend Creamery, had a unique story and a delicious product. I must've dozed off when he began telling me the company history because all I could do was daydream about little wedges of cheeses from the Pacific Northwest. A few days later I was able to understand his excitement and sat down to a small little cheese tasting at home. And then my little cheesetasting turned into a full-on pig out moment until most of my cheese was gone.

Mt. Townsend Creamery began three years ago when partners Matt Day, Will O'Donnell and Ryan Trail decided to create artisan cheeses using fresh local milk from Washington dairies. Located in Port Townsend, Washington, the creamery is housed in a fifty year old building that has been home to boat builders, glass repair companies, a radical fringe book publisher (why not?) and most recently the local Department of Licensing. The three cheese fellas, along with the help of friends and local contractors, created a modern facility that produces traditional European-style handmade cheeses that are pretty damn special and delicious.

A couple years back i reported about a prize-winning, record-setting burger that weighed in at over 210 pounds. Well, apparently that record has been obliterated, shattered, knuckle-dropped, air-popped, heel-stomped and other synonyms for royally busted. A burger in Minnesota weighed in at just north of one ton. (It’s 2014 pounds.) Not just your basic lazy cook’s plain burger, this one featured 60 pounds of bacon, 40 pounds each of pickles and cheese and 50 pounds of lettuce.

I, or one, would never make such a burger. First of all, they needed a crane to flip it, and my kitchen will not accommodate a vehicle larger than a bicycle. Also, I would be much to irritable to fry all that bacon. And as much as I would love to eat this monster, I’m not sure there is enough Pepto-Bismol in the world to calm the post-prandial abdominal pushback. I will therefore stick to cooking that burger’s diminutive cousin, the slider.

This little guy weighs in at only a few ounces, but I’m guessing that, flavor-wise, it is David to the Ton One’s Goliath. Only a couple of inches in diameter (vs. gonzo-burger’s ten feet), it packs a killer punch with it’s dab of chipotle mayonnaise.