Orange and White

Back before the World Wide Web my dinner parties began with me sitting down on the living room floor, surrounded by cookbooks and back issues of magazines like Gourmet and Bon Appetit to put together a menu. At that time (the late 80′s) my favorite go-to books were the three Silver Palate cookbooks, but I also relied on the magazines as well and I think this recipe came from one of them. As I found interesting recipes I’d jot down the name of the recipe, the book or magazine I found it in, and the page number on a yellow legal pad.

Now days I browse the Internet and copy links into a Word document. It’s far more efficient and I have far more recipes to choose from, but in some ways that old process was more fun and satisfying than what I do now.

< !—-This is best when the first new potatoes appear in the market and you get that incredibly earthy flavor but even in the dead of winter it's a great dish.-->I’ve long since gotten rid of those old back issues, and I doubt I ever wrote down this recipe — I certainly don’t have it now — but I was so pleased with the results and it was so simple that I’ve made it many times since then. It’s best when the first new potatoes appear in the market and you get that incredibly earthy flavor but even in the dead of winter it’s a great dish. Be sure to use small waxy potatoes.

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A Seasonal Treat

Combining clementines and prosciutto is so simple, so obvious, that when I thought of it I almost literally slapped my forehead. In the winter (and now summer thanks to South Africa) we have a brief two month window when that most perfect of citrus fruits is available in little crates – the Clementine. These zesty little morsels are super sweet, almost a natural citrus candy but with juice. Add a bit of salty pork and you have an extraordinarily good little treat

Lynda Balslev at Tastefood developed this recipe for porcini-crusted beef roast and posted it on Food 52 where it was chosen as Best Holiday Roast. The moment I read the recipe I fell in love. Balslev used a beef tenderloin roast, but that was beyond my budget so I went for a smaller, cheaper sirloin roast. It’s not as tender but it often has a beefier flavor than tenderloin. I thought a lot about potatoes to go with this nad although my inclination was for some kind of gratin, I decided the port jus demanded mashed potatoes to soak it up.

Recipe here…

Recipe here…

Colleen is a solid middle-aged mid-westerner of Anglo-Saxon stock who’s favorite comfort food is kimchi. Right, kimchi, the potent fermented Korean vegetable dish. In fact, she makes her own. So how did someone from Kansas end up loving such an exotic dish?

Colleen’s father served in Korea and fell in love with kimchi there. Returning to the states he couldn’t find it and started making it himself. Apparently none of her family will touch it but he got Colleen hooked and the two of them would sit at the kitchen table and eat it on saltine crackers while the rest of the family fled the room. To this day kimchi and soda crackers bring back those special times she and her father shared alone. Comfort.

This is comfort food. It evokes memories: experiential, emotional, and even spiritual. A Swanson’s Chicken Pot Pie reminds me of my mother dressed up, wearing makeup, and smelling wonderful. Those pies were our standard supper when she and my father went out in the evening and I confess I still occasionally buy one in order to relive, if from a great distance, that memory

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