River Cottage Good Comfort Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

975 Pages·2022·12.812 MB·English

by  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

For Guy and Stewart
Thanks for being there, and here

Introduction
Breakfast and Brunch
Soups
Pasta and Rice
Stews, Hotpots and Curries
Pies and Tarts
Pan and Griddle
Bakes and Roasts
Leftovers
Puddings
Teatime Treats
Ingredients
Index
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Bangers and mash, macaroni cheese, roast chicken dinner, hot
buttered crumpets, steamed sponge with custard… I’m betting that
some of these (perhaps all of them) make your tummy rumble and your
mouth water. But perhaps they also make your heart sink a bit, as you
contemplate the ‘not so good for you’ reputation of such lavish and
comforting food. There’s a general perception that the food we crave
and love is one thing, while the food that’s actually good for us is
another, and never the twain shall meet. I promise you, it doesn’t have
to be that way.
I have produced my fair share of rib-sticking comfort recipes down
the years. More recently I have been giving a lot of attention to the
foods, and combinations of ingredients, that help to keep us well. And
far from thinking that these approaches run on parallel tracks, I’m
convinced they can, and should, happily come together.
And so I’m setting out to show you how our most beloved dishes –
including those I’ve just mentioned – can be gently tweaked to be not
only wholeheartedly delicious, but also wonderfully nutritious. I’ve
taken the classics of the comfort canon – the pies and crumbles, stews
and curries, puds and cakes – and reworked them for you, sometimes
just a little, sometimes quite a lot. So next time you’re craving a plate of
spag bol or a chunk of very chocolatey brownie, you’ve got a brand new
go-to version that will absolutely hit the treaty spot – but in a better,
healthier way.
Of course, comfort food means different things to each of us – the
point of our very favourite dishes is that they are our favourites, and not
necessarily everyone else’s. But here are a few comforting qualities I bet
most of us can sign up to: the tender texture of a much-loved cake,
contrasted with a fruity jammy filling; the crisply browned ridged
topping of a mash-covered pie (with the filling bubbling up at the
edges); the rich sweet-savoury sauciness of a favourite stew or curry;
the contrasting layers of well-seasoned burger and tangy salsa, trapped
within a yielding bap. We might each rank these lovely qualities slightly
differently, but surely most of us can get pretty enthusiastic about them!
Perhaps one thing we can all agree on is how comfort food makes us
feel. Comforted, obviously! But it’s also about the anticipation of that
feeling: a meal that you can look forward to knowing that, if nothing
else, everything in life will seem just a little bit better once you tuck into
it. For that to be true, the dish has to be delicious, of course, but also
generous in the deepest sense – heart-warming if not actively stomach-
warming (though often that too).