There’s a lot of talk about “emotional eating”, but when food is good – and I mean really tasty and really good – it’s nearly impossible not to have warm and fuzzy feelings about it. Sure, it’s a bad idea to eat too much of the wrong foods too often when you’re sad or angry about something, but there are also a lot of positive feelings that go with eating great food.
There are many chefs out there who trade – rightly – on the ability of good food to make us feel excited, thrilled, tantalised, healthier, stronger, more energised and, on rare occasions, surprised. Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater, for example, see food as a kind of time machine that wraps you in a blanket of nostalgia and transports you back in time with just a sniff or taste of something, often from our childhood.
As long as it’s not bordering on the pathological, then, I’m all in favour of great comfort food – because deep down, it’s what we really crave. I don’t think any of us ever crave fine-dining dishes, the same way we might crave a delicious stew or roast chicken supper. Have you ever heard anyone saying they’d kill for a bowl of “Cured squab legs with liquorice syrup and watermelon cubes”? I didn’t think so.
One master at this is Tom Kerridge, the hardy West Country chef whose gastro pub Hand & Flowers has won him two Michelin stars. Kerridge’s best-ever potato skins, laden with salad and cheese, are the culinary equivalent of a bloody Mary – a hit of flavour that can’t fail to shake you up just a little and keep you coming back for more.
And I love potato skins. When I was a teenager, I couldn’t get enough of them – eating them, making them and foisting them on family and friends. They’re decadent but simple, and that’s always a winner. And it’s this love of them – and Kerridge’s ideas – that were the inspiration for the second recipe – crisp skins filled with a tangy, seductively moreish filling of bacon, blue cheese, celery and baby gem lettuce with a hit of horseradish, mustard and Tabasco.
The second recipe is my version of a classic: sausages with Puy lentils. Use the best sausages you can buy – I used Toulouse – and adjust the recipe depending on the size. I was happy to eat one sausage, but others may like at least two. It’s important to soak the lentils beforehand to maximise their nutritional goodness. This is the ultimate in winter comfort food. And that’s just fine with me.
HISTORY ON A PLATE: BARM BRACK
Tonight on RTÉ Radio 1 at 7.30pm the first of six new episodes of History on a Plate airs. Every Saturday hear how a historical recipe turns out as I taste the results with Irish Times colleague Catherine Cleary and historian Juliana Adelman. This week’s recipe, with thanks to the National Library of Ireland, is barm brack with homemade barm.
Original recipe to make barm:
Take 1 quart beer, 1 pint flour, 3 tablespoons of brown sugar. Blend them together. Put them in a jar and shake them three times a day. This composition will be fit for use on the fourth day and will be sufficient for two stone of flour. NB: must remain four hours before it is put into oven. A day before you want to make your bracks mix the yeast into the beer and then stir in the flour and sugar to make the barm. Put it in a large jar and give it a shake occasionally. It should look like milky coffee.
Take butter out of the fridge to soften. Sieve the flour, salt and spice into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour the barm in. Gently mix in the flour. Knead into a ball and turn out on a floured surface. Knead it until it stops feeling sticky.
Return the dough to a clean oiled bowl. Cover and leave somewhere warm until it doubles in size. Then turn onto a floured board, flatten into a large round and put the butter, sugar and fruit in the middle. Work these ingredients into the dough until they are evenly incorporated. (Use more flour if it gets sticky.)
Return this dough to the greased bowl, cover and leave it to rise again for 30 minutes. Divide it between two baking tins. Leave the dough to rise a third time in the tins. Brush the tops with milk. Bake in a hot oven (240C) for about 50 minutes reducing the heat to 230C for the last 15 minutes.
Tweaked recipe to make barm
450ml beer
Two tablespoons of plain flour
1 tablespoon of sugar
Two teaspoons of dried yeast For the brack (makes two large bracks) 750 g plain flour
60g sugar
60g butter
350g sultanas/currants/raisins or mix of all
1 tsp mixed spice
This recipe combines Maura Laverty’s brack recipe from Full and Plenty (subst- ituting butter for margarine) and our 19th century recipe for barm (with added yeast).
