What comfort food has to be on your holiday table, Kansas City? Share it in our survey | Opinion
I made collard greens recently for a small group meeting. Sadly, my group members did not get to taste them because I timed it wrong (greens take a long time to cook). But that meant my husband and I got to enjoy the whole pot.
While this is a comfort food in my home, it occurred to me that not everyone ate this as a family, or if you did, you might not eat it today. As I thought more about it, I wondered what Kansas Citians consider comfort food, especially as the season of celebrations is here.
What’s that favorite dish that just has to be on your table during the holidays?
Collard greens is that food to me. It’s just not the holidays without it. We want to know what yours is and why. Please tell us about your dish in the survey below, or visit bit.ly/StarComfortFood (capitalization matters in that web address). What counts as comfort food for you? The Opinion team members share their own here.
Back to collards: They often are a winter or celebratory food, and because the holidays are but a few weeks away (Thanksgiving is Thursday, and Christmas is in five weeks), collard greens likely will be included in many American household menus. Especially African Americans.’
The food and pop culture website The Takeout agrees: “For every important celebration throughout the African American diaspora, there will be greens.”
Collards aren’t specific to the Black community, and they didn’t originate in Africa as many believe. But here in Black American kitchens, collards are known as a “soul food,” because the richness of the broth, the spices and the smoked meat within the dish nurture the body and comfort the soul.
The leftover liquid is often referred to as “pot liquor,” and sometimes is used as a restorative and for colds and flu. Does it work? I’m not sure, but I know it makes you feel better as that rich liquid goes down your throat.
Boiled custard
I had one of those Kentucky grandmas who could grow anything, and do anything, too, in my eyes, anyway; she could sew even a lined winter coat, then braid a rug out of the scraps of leftover material. She quilted, canned, pickled, and made a year’s worth of jam from the wild blackberries that grew on the farm every summer. She fished but didn’t hunt, loved Dolly Parton but hated ever dolling herself up, listened more than she talked, fed anyone and everyone “dinner,” which was lunch, and nursed underweight animals with a baby bottle. Some of my best early memories are of the mornings I got to go with her to gather the eggs from the chicken coop and then “helped” her make buttermilk biscuits while “The Porter Wagoner Show” played in the background on her little black-and-white TV.
So of course, every comfort food I know anything about came out of my Grandma Jettie Bleidt Lawrence’s kitchen. These included pork shoulder that had been smoked by my grandpa, greens, cornbread made in the skillet, and do not even think about adding sugar. Or else Mama Bleidt’s yeast rolls — that was her mom, Della Lane Bleidt, for whom my daughter is named — and my dad’s favorite dessert, her boiled custard with the coconut cake that all by itself was a day in the making. Every Christmas, she’d get a whole coconut, hammer it open outside, then peel and grate it for the divinity icing.
Jettie did not really use any recipes, but I did learn from her that all vegetables taste better when cooked with “right smart of lard.” And I learned how to make her boiled custard, which is not boiled, and no matter what anybody tells you, is not just cooked eggnog, either. I only learned when I Googled its history for this piece that it is a “long-lost Appalachian holiday treat.”
It’s also the simplest thing in the world, as long as you don’t get in a hurry and ruin it by letting it come to a boil: Lightly beat four eggs, then add ½ cup of sugar, ⅛ teaspoon of salt and beat a little more. Now heat a quart of whole milk and pour just a little scalded milk in with the eggs. Add the eggs to the hot milk, whisking constantly until the custard thickens. Remove it from the heat, add a teaspoon of vanilla and keep whisking for a couple more minutes. Now thank God, thank Jettie, and taste the love.
Melinda Henneberger, Metro columnist
Gravy on toast
My mother fixed dinner for our family almost every night until I left for college. Looking back, I realize she broadened my palate beyond a lot of my peers’. It was an everyday thing for us to find Swiss chard, jicama or then-remarkable quinoa on our plates, alongside the fresh tomatoes, herbs and sweet corn she grew in our back and side yards during the summer. And because she never made a big deal about those dishes being unusual, my sister and I never thought about objecting to them.
Mom was a good cook, too — so good that her white bean and escarole soup won a big recipe contest in the early 1990s from Excelsior Springs-based American Italian Pasta Co., which came with a high-dollar kitchen makeover. (“I’m so happy to be doing this for someone who actually cooks,” the designer the company hired said. “Most of the time, I finish an expensive installation in a huge house and the family says, ‘Great, now we have a nice stove to warm up the frozen pizza.’”)
But in my book, one of her greatest hits was toast and gravy. Every time I saw her plug in the shiny silver electric skillet on a weeknight, I knew we were probably going to be getting one of my favorite meals. Sometimes the gravy would have hamburger in it. Even better, sometimes breakfast sausage.
Years later, Mom told my sister and me that toast and gravy night meant money a little tight that week. But we had no idea at the time, and wouldn’t have complained anyway. In fact, we’re planning to get together soon to fix the dish together, even though neither of us inherited that electric skillet.
Derek Donovan, Deputy opinion editor
Caramel cake with homemade icing
My grandmother, Delores Porter, is 91. She lives in my hometown of St. Louis. She is still lucid and moves around well.
But years have passed since she last baked one of my favorites: a caramel cake with homemade icing. She uses a yellow cake mix but makes the icing herself. To say Granny’s sweet treat brings me comfort would not be a stretch.
These days, I spend most of the major holidays here. Two years ago, craving one of Granny’s cakes, I called her and asked for the recipe. I was surprised when she offered it up.
I shared the recipe with my longtime friend LaTanya. I bragged to her that nobody makes a better caramel cake than my grandma.
LaTanya showed me.
After she put her own spin on the homemade icing made with condensed milk, sugar, butter and other ingredients she wouldn’t tell, it was a wrap. LaTanya’s moist cake was better. I didn’t have the nerve to tell my grandma this. She may have disowned me if I did.
This holiday season, l may just have to put in a request with LaTanya to bake another caramel cake. I hope she isn’t too busy and declines.
Toriano Porter, Opinion writer
Monkey bread
Growing up, my mom had a routine nearly every Christmas and Thanksgiving. Despite all the cooking she would usually do on those holidays, she would still get up early to make monkey bread for me and my sisters.
The recipe is simple: Take a store-bought can of biscuits, rip all the biscuits into small pieces, cover them in a layer of sugar and cinnamon, then drizzle the doughy mess with melted butter before baking. Is it good for you? Probably not. But it’s wonderful.
The most important thing, though, is the tradition: My mother died 10 years ago, before my son had turned 5. So every Thanksgiving we get up and make monkey bread together, and I tell him about the grandmother who adored him.
Joel Mathis, Opinion correspondent
Pumpkin pie made from the canned stuff with Cool Whip
It doesn’t taste really great, but it is so identical from year to year that it might as well be a time travel device.
I can go to the 1970s version of 1015 Henry Street in St. Joe with Grandpa Ralph and Grandma Elizabeth, flit to Brooklyn, New York with Grandma Rippey and Grandpa Jack then travel to my home in 1980s Omaha with my mom and dad, then forward a decade and a half to the first Thanksgiving with my own child in one fork full.
I love it because I love all the people who shared it with me.
David Mastio, Opinion correspondent
