Comfort Food - Past, Present and Future

What is that? you ask. And I don't blame you. It's Diana Heath's egg sauce - straight from a time honored family recipe. More to follow.

We were down in Provence again. Dear reader, are you sensing a theme? Am I, like Bullwinkle, hatching a plan?

We stayed at La Belle Cour again – Augustin was quite happy to revisit his bed in the dresser drawer. On Friday evening, Angela announced that she was roasting a chicken for dinner. Her husband Rod immediately piped up: “with egg sauce?” - his eyes as wide as any 9 year-old asking for another dip into the bag of Halloween candy. Apparently, whenever his mum, Diana, roasted a chicken, she made a side of white sauce draped over a layer of hard-boiled eggs. Angela remained unconvinced. A few weeks earlier, she had served us a scrumptuous roast leg of lamb with traditional English mint sauce. I love mint sauce, but the French tend to wrinkle their noses. Perhaps fearing for the health of the culinary detente cordiale, Angela thought that egg sauce might be a step too far. But after some further pleading from Rod – and a gentle nudge from me – (I’m always keen to try someone else’s family heirloom), it was decided: roast chicken with egg sauce.

I wish I could say the egg sauce was a revelation –it was a bit like roast chicken with a side of egg salad - but it was enough to see the contented look on Rod’s face. And It did turn the discussion to old family recipes. "I wonder what foods Augustin will remember fondly from his childhood?" I thought to myself. What I actually said aloud (according to G) was “I wonder what recipe can I invent that Augustin will annoy his future wife with 30 years from now.” Apparently (also according to G.) this is not at all the same thing. I don’t see it. Goes to show you, the kid’s not even three months old, and already my objectivity on the subject is shot to hell.

Though Augustin is not yet old enough to hold a spoon – he’s not even found his thumb - I’ve decided that one of his favorite foods should be rice pudding – because it’s one of my favorite foods. (Oops. There’s that objectivity buzzer going off again.) Side-stepping the psychoanalytic implications of my choosing my son's favorite dish – I do think of rice pudding as highly recommended comfort food: sweet, creamy, and overwhelmingly beige. (I guess I should apologize for the quality of the pictures in this post – comfort food is almost never photogenic.)

Instead of my standard recipe, I decided to try one with soy milk that I found in Food & Wine magazine. It was from an article about Joe Bastianich, a restaurateur (and Batali wingman) who runs marathons. This is his morning carb/protein fix. I don’t run marathons (I don’t run anywhere), so perhaps I should eat this less often that he does…but it turned out so well that it might become a hard habit to break. Bastianich poaches fresh figs in his recipe – I used dried, soaked in Calvados for an extra kick.




If I were making this for dinner guests, I think I’d use the creamier Arborio rice – but for breakfast or a midnight snack – my favorite rice pudding moments – I think I’d use the heartier brown rice. I’ve never cooked with soy milk before – I was expecting something a bit sour – too hippy happy granola crunchy to be really good – but I was surprised at the extra depth it gave the pudding. A perfect set up for the bass note of the marinated figs.

When Augustin gets off the all milk diet, he can pick his own favorite food. For now, this is at the top of my/his/our list.

Soy Milk Rice Pudding with Drunken Figs

(adapted from Food and Wine, October 2009 - here's the original recipe)

1 cup boiling water
Pinch of sea salt
½ cup Arborio rice (or if you are feeling granola crunchy hippy happy, use round brown rice – to be found at a health food store)
2 cups plain soy milk
3 tablespoons Demerara or Turbinado sugar
8 small dried figs, quartered
2 tablespoons of Calvados (or Applejack)

In a small saucepan, bring water to a boil, add rice, lower heat, and simmer over until most of the water has been absorbed (about 10-12 minutes). In the meantime, combine figs, sugar and Calvados in a small bowl, set aside.

Keeping the heat low, add 1/3 cup soy milk, stir constantly until almost absorbed. Continue adding the soy milk, 1/3 cup at a time, and stirring constantly until it is absorbed between additions. This is basically a risotto technique – be prepared for a half hour of constant stirring. I find it very zen-like. Relaxing. Add the fig mixture at the 20 minute mark. The pudding is done when the rice is tender and you still have a very loose but creamy liquid in the pot (if you let too much milk evaporate, the pudding will dry out when cooled.)

Spoon into 4 small ovenproof ramekins and serve hot or cold. I like my rice pudding from the fridge – but no matter what you do, an ugly skin forms on top. My solution – add an extra sprinkle of Demerara sugar to the top, and broil it for a minute like a crème brulée – you get a great contrast between creamy cold and crackling hot!

Makes 4 very polite portions – or 3 heartier ones