Comfort Food

As a kid, I felt like the term comfort food was frequently misapplied. I found nothing particularly comforting about mashed potatoes. Fried chicken and meatloaf weren't terrible, but the announcement that that was dinner didn't fill me with a sense of well-being or anything. I always thought comfort food should apply solely to Chocolate Cake or Apple Betty or maybe Ice Cream. Perhaps my penchant for chocolate cake and ice cream is the reason that, this New Year's, I've started out on a diet again.

Having recently read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, I am rethinking my approach to this year's gastronomical adventure. I don't want to fill up on low-fat this, and no-carb that. I would like, as he so elegantly puts it, to: "eat food, not too much, mostly plants." So, some of the things I plan to eat hardly look like diet food. They look a lot more like comfort food. I am following Weight Watchers Online, but mostly for how much to eat, not really for what to eat.

Anyhow, all of this brings me to this recipe that I simply must share with the world. Over the holidays, my step-mom gave my sister Shazam and me a stack of old cookbooks. So, I've been perusing them looking for things I'd like to try out. Well, I was paging through one called Italian Cooking Made Easy and I ran across this meatloaf recipe.

This meatloaf is comforting. It's delicious. It's not anything like the meatloaf I grew up eating. And, it's easy. So, without further ado:

Meat Loaf (Polpettone)

Italian Cooking Made Easy - Ted and Jean Kaufman

4 slices Bread, trimmed

1/2 c. Sherry wine

1 1/4 lb. Veal, chopped *

3/4 lb Beef, chopped *

2 Eggs

1 Onion, grated

1 clove Garlic, crushed *

1 Tbsp Parsley, minced

Salt and Pepper to taste

2 Tbsp Tomato Sauce

1 cup Tomato Sauce, seasoned

1. Soften the bread in wine.

2. Mix bread and everything else except for the 1 c. of tomato sauce in a big bowl. Blend well.

3. Grease a loaf pan (I used non-stick spray) and sprinkle it with bread crumbs.

4. Turn in the meat mixture.

5. Bake at 350 for about an hour and a half.

* The original recipe also called for ground pork, but I just couldn't find any. Blame the giant blizzard that hit Brooklyn last week. So I upped the amount of veal and beef. Also, they called for 1/2 a clove of garlic, but I just couldn't waste the other half of the clove! And I served it with oven fries, green beans and salad. They suggested spaghetti, but I'm just not that Italian.

Casserole

Ah.... vacation.

I'm really not very good at being on vacation. I don't know quite what to do with myself. I can't sleep past 8:00 (especially because the Tummy is incapable of leaving for work without waking me to talk to me). I've been reading some, and I've been cleaning. Really, I've been digging out my apartment. Layers of clutter. Gross.

Mostly, though, I've been cooking. I love to cook. And not just because I love to eat. I also happen to love to eat, but I'm just calmer while chopping and mixing and sauteeing. So I've been trying one recipe after another and tonight, I made a casserole.

I have mixed feelings on casseroles. They're like that little girl in the nursery rhyme: when they're good, they're very good, but when they're bad, they're horrid. The word casserole all by itself makes me cringe internally at the thought of a particular awful recurring casserole of my youth. Mary knows which one.

But this casserole is good! Really good! And the Tummy loves it! And it's not that bad for you either. Happy happy happy!

The only downside is that squeezing chicken sausage out of its casing turned my stomach a bit. I'm sure that all of my pioneer-women ancestors are mocking my squeemishness from beyond the grave.

Zucchini, Sausage and Feta Casserole

Lia Huber , Cooking Light, JULY 2007

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups uncooked ziti (short tube-shaped pasta)
8 ounces chicken sausage
Cooking spray
1 teaspoon olive oil
5 cups thinly sliced zucchini (about 1 1/2 pounds)
2 cups vertically sliced onion (about 1)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (2 ounces) crumbled feta cheese
1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400°.

Cook pasta in boiling water 5 minutes, omitting salt and fat; drain.

Remove casings from sausage. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add sausage to pan; cook until browned, stirring to crumble. Remove from pan. Heat oil in pan. Add zucchini, onion, salt, pepper, and garlic. Cook 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender and zucchini begins to brown, stirring occasionally.

Combine broth and flour in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Add broth mixture to pan; cook 1 minute. Combine zucchini mixture, pasta, sausage, and feta cheese in a large bowl; toss well. Spoon pasta mixture into an 11 x 7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle evenly with mozzarella cheese. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes or until bubbly and lightly browned.

Yield

6 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

Nutritional Information

CALORIES 284(27% from fat); FAT 8.6g (sat 4.6g,mono 1.9g,poly 0.6g); IRON 2mg; CHOLESTEROL 35mg; CALCIUM 160mg; CARBOHYDRATE 35.3g; SODIUM 433mg; PROTEIN 16.9g; FIBER 2.6g