On Comfort Food

What I want to eat when I'm feeling fragile

What I’m reading: Nik Sharma with David Lebovitz on ice-cream

What I’m listening to: a lot of Phoebe Bridgers for some reason, particularly this one. Yeah, I know, it’s sad - but it’s also really nice.

What I’m eating: tacos! Again!! These ones had chorizo, chicharrón espolvoreado and avo and they put a big fat smile on my face.

This week, I found myself in the hospital AGAIN, this time in Cancún, Mexico. It’s a long story that I won’t bore you with (although apologies to the select few family and friends who are up to speed with the entire saga), but the main lessons are:

• the river water in Semuc Champey is not to be trusted

• Mexican hospitals use anaesthetic more liberally than Guatemala (another reason to love Mexico)

• you can get a scary amount of drugs over the counter in El Salvador and Nicaragua

• a university degree in languages does not prepare you for interacting with Guatemalan doctors when in a significant amount of pain

(it’s nothing life-threatening and it’s not an STI, but thank you to all those who asked)

I was lucky enough to be with my adoptive San José crew for the majority of this medical episode, and they provided all the support that I could ask for. Yesterday, however, we parted ways; I came back to Mexico, while they continued on further south.

I’m back to solo travelling for a while, and currently in perhaps my least favourite place I’ve ever been: Cancún. Apologies in advance if you’re from here, but in my limited experience, Cancún is tacky, artificial, overpriced and loud - it has good hospitals, though, so I’m grinning and bearing it until tomorrow when I’ll escape to Isla Holbox. Hospitals are no craic at the best of times, but even less so when you have nobody to hold your hand and the temperature is mid-30s (C) and it’s HUMID.

If you couldn’t already tell, I’m feeling slightly fragile. I love solo travelling, but there’s something about being unwell and very far from home that makes you crave all things comforting - which for me, of course, usually manifests in the form of food. I have a bit of an issue with the term “comfort food” (I put it in the same bracket as the word “foodie”, which for no good reason gives me the ick), but it defines this category fairly accurately: food that feels like an all-encompassing hug from a tall person (at least a head taller than you), or a kiss on the forehead, or taking off your shoes at the end of a long day. Food that gives you the same feeling as when you have a big shower, climb into a bed with fresh sheets and a hot water bottle, and don’t have to set an alarm for the next day. Food that instils the same sense of calm as sitting on the couch in companiable silence with your best friends in the world, eating pizza and sharing blankets.

I love asking people what their go-to comfort food is, and I find it a lot more telling than hearing people’s “death row meals”. While it’s fun to consider what you might want to eat on your last day on this earth, I find that the task is too mammoth: I personally find myself trying to systematically review every delicious thing I’ve ever eaten, before shoe-horning them into a menu that doesn’t particularly make sense thematically - and besides, I doubt I’d have much of an appetite if I knew a certain death awaited me after dinner. Comfort food, on the other hand, tends to provoke a knee-jerk reaction. We all know what we eat when we’re feeling down. We’ve all been there: sad, hungover, heartbroken - whatever the case may be, there is a food that will assuage the feelings if even a little bit. A pint of ice-cream eaten straight from the tub is a stereotypical but completely legitimate choice. It’s normal to crave something your mum used to cook for you in moments when you need your mammy. I won’t even judge if your choice is McDonald’s (my order is a DCB and an apple pie, if you’re wondering).

While I’m at it, I take umbrage with the association of guilt with certain types of food. Growing up in the late 90s/noughties, during “heroin chic”, “nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels” and “a moment on the lips, forever on the hips”, it has taken a considerable amount of effort to detach food from moral values - and to be completely honest, it’s still a work in progress. I have many more thoughts on this (don’t get me started), but when it comes to comfort food especially, I just think that it would be a monumental shame if feelings of guilt detracted from the joy and pleasure that food can bring. I’m no scientist, but I truly think that comfort foods benefit your soul far more than they could ever damage your body (obviously, everything in moderation blah blah blah) - basically, order the takeaway. Bake the freezer stash cookie. Eat the pot noodle.

Fadó pizza

Here’s some of the “comfort foods” that I’ve been craving:

• My mum’s brown bread - with a slab of butter and homemade marmalade (cup of tea optional)

• Lasagne (preferably my BFF Sophie’s mum’s one - full of cheese, perfectly seasoned and exceedingly sloppy)

• Banana bread

• Chocolate chip cookies (I’m biased, but my own recipe - if I was at home, I would have gone through an entire emergency freezer batch by this point)

• Toast. Using Nigella Lawon’s double-buttering method

• Chipper chips: simultaneously crispy and soggy from a heavy dousing of salt and vinegar

• O’Donnell’s hickory smoked crisps

• Diet Coke, ice cold

• Pasta. Cacio e pepe if you’re feeling fancy, but really I just mean pasta with cheese

• Toasted cheese sandwiches. Non-negotiables: inside AND outside of both slices of bread buttered, 2 types of cheese minimum, Ballymaloe relish served alongside

• A Wispa from the fridge or a Kinder Bueno at room temp (I don’t make the rules)

• Anything involving pork belly

• Apple tart. Homemade, preferably made the way Darina Allen does (shortcrust pastry on the bottom, cream pastry/puff on top), served with vanilla ice-cream and no cream, thank you

• Literally anything laminated. I don’t discriminate: pastel de nata, pain au choc, sfogliatelle, sausage rolls, pain aux raisins (always a fave). This is both out of professional curiosity and the sensory delight of biting through hundreds of layers of dough and butter

• Pizza, but specifically the confit garlic one from Fadó

• Butter chicken, basmati rice, saag aloo, peshwari naan (there used to be an Indian place in Ballsbridge called Chandni that nothing will ever beat, but your local Indian is probably grand)

• The fried chicken sandwich my friend Alex makes - it’s objectively perfect (all the way down to the tangzhong he uses for the buns)

Now, I don’t know if everybody is quite as emotional about food as I am, but I do think that it’s crazy the extent to which what you eat affects your mood. How cool is it that I can completely turn around a terrible day by putting two slices of bread in the toaster or taking a cookie dough ball out of the freezer? There will be plenty of time to eat a vegetable and go to the gym tomorrow - go buy yourself an ice-cream x