Devika Brendon
Food which brings us consolation need not be full of sugar and carbohydrates. It can nurture us in a more subtle and long-term way.
Apricot Chicken
This is something rare in my experience: a recipe that cannot fail. So few ingredients, it is perfect in its minimalism and essential self-containment.
Chicken pieces.
Onions and garlic (optional).
Apricot jam and apricot pieces.
French Onion soup mix.
Chutney or sweet pickles.
Chicken stock.
You boil some rice. And while it is boiling, you make the chicken. When the rice is ready, the chicken is ready. You put the rice in a bowl and ladle the chicken on top of it. You eat.
On a cold and overcast winter day, the colours of the sun contained in this dish cheer you.
But back to the beginning. Before you put the rice on, fry the chicken pieces lightly until they are brown in colour. Then set them aside and — in the oil in which you cooked the chicken — lightly fry some onions and garlic until everything is soft. Then add French Onion soup mix and apricot jam. I sometimes add pickles or chutney to make the texture and flavour more complex. You can add apricot pieces too, to add colour and happiness.
Cook these ingredients until they thicken into a sauce. Then add the chicken pieces. While they are cooking further in the sauce, add chicken stock and some butter to the boiling rice.
This recipe was a Women’s Weekly standby recipe in the 1970s and 80s in Australia. It represents to me all the innocence and sunshine of those days. While preparing the ingredients, I find myself smiling.
Before you sit down to eat, put on some joyful music. It’s a fiesta in a plate!
Baked fish parcels.
Just wrap fish fillets in baking paper and aluminium foil.
Add salt and pepper to each fillet and add onion slices and garlic pieces and tomato slices (and ginger if you like the taste, or soy sauce if you prefer a more Asian flavour) and add olive oil or butter, and wrap each fillet in baking paper and aluminium foil.
Bake for half an hour in a moderately hot oven. Serve with salad or baked/roasted vegetables.
The Pot Roast
Line a roasting pan with a piece of beef, salted and peppered. Add sliced onions, carrots and potatoes, each piece cut into roughly the same size. This will ensure that the pieces all cook at the same rate.
Pour beef stock over the meat and vegetables. Cook for 3-4 hours on low heat.
The beauty of this dish is that all the time taken is in the cooking which is done by the oven, and not the preparation, which is done by you! And while it is cooking the house smells so wonderful. Anticipation and convenience are part of the comfort of preparing these oven-baked dishes.
Classic fish or prawn curry, coconut sambol and roasted bread.
Seafood is delicate in texture, and cooks more quickly than meat. A good idea is to prepare seafood frozen in packets in advance. Then on a day when you are stressed, or in a hurry, just defrost the fish or pre-cleaned prawns, or even use tinned fish.
Just fry onions and garlic in ghee or butter or oil, add curry powder and turmeric and paprika to taste, add the fish or prawns and stir well, until the fish is cooked through – about 15 to 20 minutes. Add some coconut milk to thicken the sauce.
Coconut sambol is easy to make: use fresh shredded coconut, salt, paprika and lime juice, chillies to taste and chopped tomato. Mix with your hands, but use gloves to avoid staining from the chillies and paprika.
Toast or fry some bread to mop up the sauce from the curry gravy.
Macaroni Cheese.
Boil macaroni. Make a simple cheese sauce by slowly stirring finely sliced onions in butter, and adding chopped cheese and cream with salt and pepper until it makes a thick sauce. Pour the sauce over the macaroni in a baking dish, add grated cheese and bake for 30 minutes in a moderately hot oven.
The 30 minutes gives you time to get your plates out, toast garlic bread or make a fresh salad to accompany it. (Note: This dish is just as good eaten cold from the fridge the next day.)
Note that most of these dishes are oven-baked. That is no coincidence. The oven represents hearth and home, and even in a small oven, you can cook a comfort food feast that soothes the souls of those who eat it.
There are perpetual crises, upheaval both natural and political, and daily furores in the world today. Food which reminds us of our childhood days, and which is made of simple and everyday ingredients, is powerfully comforting.
