LOS ANGELES _ Comfort food is wrapped up in nostalgia and memories. From my Monterey Park childhood, it's dim sum on Sundays, black beans at Angela's after school, onigiri rice ball swaps at the lunch tables, tacos after basketball, ensaymada buns for breakfast, ginger-scallion fish for dinner, the perpetual scent of steamed rice hanging in my home.
As I grew up, the list of what constituted comfort food for me grew. My first-ever plate of mujadarra _ rice and lentils with fried onions _ was a revelation. It was when I realized that you don't have to have a personal connection to a dish for it to comfort you. There's something intangible to dishes that make the list, but every culture has them. I think it's rooted in how everyday cooking is a mix of selflessly making food to feed others while also selfishly giving you pleasure in the process. They are honest dishes with simple, satisfying flavors and textures. Because this isn't food that makes you think; it's food that makes you feel.
My favorites will provide the early inspiration for this biweekly column, but I want to hear from you too. Email me your comfort foods at cooking@latimes.com or at the address below.
And so, I will start at the beginning, with the first thing I ever made on my own: peanut butter cookies. In my initial attempt as a 7-year-old, I followed the recipe in my mom's red-checked Better Homes & Gardens binder. But I accidentally swapped the salt for the sugar. Huge mistake, but also motivation to try again.
So I did. Countless batches and decades later, I've landed on this, my ideal version. It delivers the pleasure of eating a spoonful of chunky peanut butter straight out of the jar in a two-bite cookie. (Don't make them bigger or you'll lose the magic ratio of crisp edge to chewy center.) I've streamlined the technique to one bowl and the ingredient list to maximize peanut-buttery goodness. To accentuate the peanuts, I took out flour and added extra salt. Not as much as in my initial fail, but just enough in a crunchy duo of sea salt and chopped salted nuts.
It took years of cooking professionally and growing up to understand that the best dishes aren't ones that show off my skills in the kitchen. They're the ones that make the people I'm feeding happy. And leave me with the fewest dishes to wash. These cookies hit both marks.
