05 Jul 2011, Posted by admin in EAT + DRINK, 1 Comments

Cookbook Shelf: Saveur, The “New” Comfort Food

Really good comfort food is both nostalgic *and* tastes great. Not so great (anymore) comfort food gets points on the nostalgia side — mom’s lasagna at your first slumber party, the sweet potato casserole at grandmom’s every Thanksgiving — but falls short on the still-really-great-tasting aspect today. It should be an easy tweak here and there kind of fix, right?

If you’ve ever worked in a professional test kitchen, or simply tried to tame your great aunt’s gloppy gravy on your own, you know that getting to the tasty side of nostalgic foods can often involve a lot more than merely debating that dried vs. fresh parsley dilemma.

The easy part is excavating those comfort food recipes.

From there, it also helps to have a lot of time. You know, the sort of time folks have when they are paid to give that corn chowder recipe a  fresh produce-driven flair without losing any of those hearty memories along the way. An expense account for ingredients sure wouldn’t hurt, either.

Enter Saveur magazine’s recently released The New Comfort Food cookbook. Yeah, it was pretty great. Get my full review here.