Finding your comfort food

Mark Bittman

Monday, Aug. 18, 2014 | 2 a.m.

“What,” people ask me, “do you cook when you’re not working?” The answer is pretty consistent: “pasta and fish and a vegetable, or pasta and salad and a vegetable, or salad and fish and a vegetable, or pasta and salad and fish and a vegetable.” There are exceptions, of course, but there’s a comfort level here and it’s been this way for a long time, through different kitchens and domestic arrangements.

Here’s the thing: In my professional life of finding, replicating, sometimes even “creating” recipes, my palate is up for anything. But when the work hat comes off, I fall into old and completely beloved habits.

The pasta-salad-fish-veg thing began in the ’80s, when I had my first real gardens. In summer and fall, I would make a daily bastardized ratatouille and finish it by putting a piece of fish on top, then steaming that. Sometimes there was pasta underneath. Usually there was a salad. Occasionally there was bread, though now it seems superfluous. That set the pattern.

And I come by the pattern, if not the ingredients, quite honestly. My mother’s comfort zone wasn’t dissimilar while my sister and I were growing up in New York City in the 1950s and ’60s. We usually started with a salad doused with Wish-Bone, though sometimes that was preceded by a slice of melon (often ripe, oddly enough; she has a knack for determining that), a half grapefruit on which sugar was tolerated, or canned fruit packed in sugar syrup. This was followed, almost always, by a piece of broiled meat (or chicken or, very, very rarely, fish), potatoes (most often mashed, though my mother made superior french fries), and a canned vegetable like green peas or (even worse) green beans.

The quality of the ingredients was occasionally better but sometimes worse. Relying on memory is tricky, of course, but when I grew up they were still raising pigs in Secaucus, N.J.; potatoes came from Long Island, onions from the “black dirt” area of upstate New York. There were real bakeries — the kind that are making a comeback — and stores specializing in fruits and vegetables, so in the summer the tomatoes and corn came from New Jersey farms.

That said, the lettuce was almost always iceberg. Romaine was exotic, and kale and arugula were unknown. Ten months of the year, the tomatoes were packed in cellophane, orange and nearly as hard as apples. Most root vegetables were perhaps too reminiscent of our ancestors’ presumed reliance on turnips; all I know is we didn’t eat them. (Now I adore them.)

Really, it wasn’t all that bad; we had fewer choices — not necessarily a negative — and we knew much less. But although olive oil was sold in4-ounce bottles, the hegemony of Big Food was in its infancy; the first time I saw a McDonald’s was in 1967, and that was in Pennsylvania — there were none in New York City — and there were no microwaveable “meals.” TV dinners were a monthly treat.

Our options now are infinite, but they’re healthy only if we steer clear of the processed food aisles. (And you can buy canned fruit salad with no sugar!) Most cooks understand that making a vinaigrette is the work of a moment. Broiling a piece of fish or meat, steaming a vegetable, making a sauce for pasta — these are simple tasks.

Sure, I make adjustments. My pasta sometimes becomes rice (or rarely, if I’m to be honest, a more exotic grain like quinoa or farro) and the fish may be seasoned in a Japanese style: I might lightly salt-cure it, or simmer it in a mixture of soy and mirin and ginger. In this case, the salad dressing might get a touch of sesame oil in it, or even a little soy and ginger. My personal preferences don’t matter much; I just have a comfort zone that’s mine, and it’s neither brilliant nor unusual.

I once asked the food scholar and writer Alan Davidson what he ate on lazy nights, and he said, “A tuna sandwich and a glass of milk.” I have friends who seem to live on homemade pizza, others who top salad with a piece of chicken, those who frequently “dine” on (fresh-popped) popcorn and a big salad with herbs, oil, lemon and salt. Some make stews on Sunday and eat them three times during the week. These are all modest but real options, especially when compared to fast food, takeout and the like.

Everyone can find a cooking comfort zone. An updated version of the one established by my mother, circa 1954, is just fine, especially if you do without the sugary fruit salad and find a real vegetable to plug in for the peas.

Meat and potatoes may not be the ideal dinner from a health or environmental perspective — but there’s a big difference between cooking a broiled chop and mashed potatoes, and burgers and fries from a fast-food place.

Finding a comfort zone in cooking — any comfort zone — is better than not cooking at all.

Mark Bittman is a columnist for The New York Times.