What is your favorite comfort food?

What is your favorite soul food or comfort food and why? Does it remind you of childhood? Family? What memories does it invoke?

My mum used to cook a recipe with left over roast lamb, you make a pastry with cold mashed up potato (no butter) and flour, roll it out slice up your lamb, tomato and onion lots of black pepper fold in half and press the sides over (so it is like a semicircle) and then shallow fry each side till golden brown.

Reminds me of my childhood and my grandparents, this recipe has been handed down from generation to generation it was a really filling recipe in times when money was tight and you might only have a small amount of meat left over, so simple but yummy, all crispy on the outside and soft and gooeyish on the inside, so yummy, you could do what ever you wanted I suppose, roast beef, Jarlsberg and mustard??? List could be endless.

Now I am starving and will have to cook a roast on the weekend!!!

Meagan

Flapjack

6oz butter
1tbspn honey
4oz sugar
8oz porridge oats
(optional - chopped nuts and orange rind)

grease a 20cmx20cm baking tin or 8x11 swiss roll tin
melt the butter, honey and sugar in a saucepan
take off the heat and mix in oats (and optional tasty bits)
use a fork to spread the mixture into the tin
bake at gas mark 4-5 (about 180) until golden brown
allow to cool before cutting into squares and eating.

mmmm chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate for me - no memories - just the chocolate drug!

For a main i guess bangers and mash and onion gravy for me as it was nice on cold days and used to cook it lots with DH when we were skint students.

Your lamb thing sounds nice Meagan and i do love flapjacks too Ryn.

Julie x

Summer - ice cream
Any ice-cream in a cone
Reminds me of my childhood and make me feel young and "silly"

Winter - Potato Soup
Hot and spicy - loads of crushed black pepper
Just makes me feel warm and full and sleepy

~Potatoes - Scallopped Potatoes, Mashed Pototo (especially champ), Baked Potatoes, Irish Potato Cakes/Bread, Potato Salad...
~Trifle
~Roast Pork
~Shepherds Pie

Not sure what else LOL! For some reason those foods remind me of my childhood...

mine is Roast Chicken and Roast Veg
Shepherds Pie
Crumbed Chicken
Crumbed Chops....

yummy now I am hungry

i cant remember any comfort foods from child hood , mine wasnt very comforting ...

BUT i looove DH's corned beef and white sauce .... when i eat it i feel so nourised and that dh put effort in to making it .... happy memories with corned beef .... :)

Roast chicken lunches with all the trimmings and gravy and mint sauce on the peas. Sometimes when I get keen now I make little mini Yorkshire puddings too although these weren't made when I was young.

Pikelets with lots of strawberry jam and cream.

Golden syrup dumplings (my Nana made this a few times and it really stuck in my memory).

I love old fashioned cookbooks and love knowing that I am making something the same way as it was made generations ago.

mmmmmmmm, hungry!!!!!!

Anything crumbed is good!!! My hubby is a chef and you would think he is all fancy, but his favorite meal on earth is crumbed lamb cutlets and mashed potato with heaps of gravy, mmmmmm.

Cailin, what do you put in your irish potato cakes/bread? I haven't had that for years.

I am making an apple pie for my brother's birthday this weekend, haven't made on in forever, soooooo goooood!!!!! I am not really a sweets person but I love apple pie!!! But it can't be hot or even warm must be room temperature, and cream, oh so good!!!!

I think I have gained three kilos just reading your responses!!!

Meagan

Apple crumble & as I type I am eating some right now!! ooooh with lots of cream too, I always eat when depressed which unfortunately I am at the moment. DH went out & bought some for me before going to work as he knew I wasn't happy. Not really making me feel better, but I still love it.

I don't have exact measurements (well I do but its in the kitchen and thats too far away as I'm tucked up in bed). You make a big batch up and freeze it then just fry up the portions as you need it. Its just mashed potato, flour, baking powder, salt, butter mix together make round discs on a floured board/bench then cut into triangles. They have to be fried dry to start with, so you put a bit of flour in a dry pan before cooking them. And they taste best double cooked. So you cook them dry first till they rise and brown. Then when you want to eat them you cook them in butter or bacon fat (after cooking bacon for breaky). In my family it was always called Fadge :) Some people do put baking powder in it some don't it depends on how dense you like your fadge :) Its really a recipe you play with till you get it right, my granny's fadge was to die for.

Its funny though when I think about my kids comfort food, for Paris it will be Yum Cha, my french toast, and my smoked salmon & cucumber & cream cheese sandwiches. Seth so far loves pancakes, anything I bake in the oven (one of his first words was cake) and my shepherds pie. Oh and both my kids LOVE my pizza. Paris is an embarressment... she tells people she only likes my cooking, and no pizza tastes as good as my pizza. I don't know how but it even got around school (thanks to Paris I'm sure although she vehemently denies it) that "Paris' mum cooks really good stuff!" Which is worth all the comfort food to me in the whole world. As a kid I loved my granny's cooking and always dreamed of being a good cook like my granny. And I love the happiness and excitement on my husbands face too :)

I am in the same boat as nixonsmamma but my fav food in the WHOLE WORLD is spagetti bog MMMMMM Yummy!!!
I can eat plate fulls of it and then go back for more!! he he he

Oh thanks Cailin, I am so going to cook that on the weekend!!!

Kitty and Nixonsmamma that is the beautiful thing about having your own family you can build your own memories, start your own comfort food list like you have and your children will have their favorite comfort food from childhood, so get cooking beautiful mummies!!

i love cheese twisties...always turn to them in times of need....and vegemite toast with lots of butter

My mum's trifle....it has to be my mum's, it's quite different to traditional trifle. My mum's apple pie, just warm, with ice cream and cream. Lasagne. Roast at my ILs (they are poms and do a great roast!). Strawberries with icing sugar, makes me think of when I was sick as a kid.

For me comfort food is all about family. I don't get a great deal of comfort out of my own food (it's just not the same), but my husband does, and I hope my kids do too. Like Cailin, I love the excitement on my DHs face! That gives me all the comfort I need :)

sezjm I totally agree! Comfort food is totally about family!!!! I swear you can taste the love in good food ;)

I just ate my comfort food - pumpkin soup!

My comfort food has always just been chocolate... but then pregnancy turned me off it!! :(
I really have quite a liking for my pancakes, and because when in need of comfort food, i normally can't be bothered cooking it, we take a trip to pancake parlour. Mmmm Yummy :)

I have just made apple pie.... soooooo goooooooooooooood!!!!! A little tart not to sweet, just perfect!!

For some reason I loooovee jam and cream doughnuts as a comfort food... you know the long ones with the jam down the centre lightly sprinkled with icing sugar. Funny enough I don't really like them at other times, just when I feel like a little comforting (wierd!)

my ultimate comfort food is my mum's macaroni cheese. it doesn't seem to make any difference if i use her recipe for the cheese sauce, finish it under the grill or anything...it just never tastes quite like hers.

dry pan-fried medium rare scotch fillet. really.