Comfort food 🍽

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the term “comfort food”?

Where I come from, you haven’t eaten unless you had rice. Doesn’t matter if you replace it with healthy or unhealthy items, ভাত is a staple. I was done with eating rice when I initially left home and I used to live on sandwiches, pizza, salads, hakka takeouts, frozen dinners, etc. It was only a matter of time when I got tired of eating all that and started cooking myself the food I grew up eating.

In today’s post, I’ll share some recipes with minimal ingredients that you can use to cook yourself easy, filling meals.

Daal ( yellow lentils)

Once you wash them really well (3 times atleast or till the water is transparent), put the lentils to boil with mustard oil and garlic cloves. Typically a lot of spices can be used as temper but if you want to keep it simple, adding salt, red chilli powder, turmeric powder is good enough. Adding coriander leaves at the end makes it smell really nice but its upto you.

I do make daal with green mangoes or mixed veggies sometimes if I’m feeling enthusiastic. But a simple rice-daal-omelette (with store bought desi pickles) is my go-to meal when I’m sick.

Spaghetti without sauce:

Lots of scrambled eggs, salt, pepper, boiled spaghetti with a generous amount of olive oil tastes really good. (This also works really well with rice)

Another way I recently made spaghetti is to saute onion, garlic, tomatoes, green chillies and blend them to a paste once softened. Add this to boiled pasta/spaghetti, put salt, pepper. If you like feta cheese, crumble that on top once you’re done cooking.

Both these recipes are quick for meal prep and also leave a lot of room to get creative with your choice of veggies or protein.

Baked potatoes:

I personally LOVE potatoes so this is one of my favourites!

Cut yellow potatoes with their peel on, mix them with oil, salt and pepper. Add whole garlic cloves and sprinkle with basil. Mix well and put everything in a baking tray and bake at 350 F for 30-40 mins.

You can replace the regular potatoes with sweet potatoes as well but those are harder to cut so might take longer.

Chicken:

Marinate chicken in yogurt, salt, chilli powder, coriander powder, cumin powder, (ginger-garlic paste if you have it) and garam masala powder. Bake at 400 F for 30- 40 mins.

If you want to cook and not bake, here is another one I like. Make a paste with onion, ginger, garlic and green chilli. Add salt and chilli powder if you want more spice, marinate the chicken in the paste for atleast 30 mins. Heat oil, add garam masala powder and slow cook until done.

None of the recipes I shared above have veggies but can be easily added to the meals. I personally struggle with cooking a variety of vegetables in a healthy way but I mostly use frozen packets to avoid the dread of chopping.

Ending today’s post with a list of items I always like to have stocked in my kitchen. Its not extensive but it can ensure you can prepare and eat something easy and filling anytime at home:

Instant noodles

Pancake mix

Canned chickpeas

Bread/ Tortilla

Eggs

Bananas (and other fruits you like)

Potatoes

Bell peppers

Ground or boneless meat

Prawns

White rice & Lentils (if you’re Bengali like me)