Spaghetti with (Giant!) Meatballs

This is a dish my son and I love to make together. It's simple, comfort food made from scratch. Nothing fancy, just pure, simple, fresh Italian flavours.

My son had fun mixing and making the meatballs, and we made too much, but I figured we'd eat the meatballs for breakfast this week too. You can also serve them with mushroom sauce (see post on My Mom's Hamburger recipe for the sauce here).

Don't let the picture deceive you. Those meatballs are huge; 2" in diameter!

Beef Stew

Beef Stew---the perfect comfort food, especially on rainy days or nights, or just when you're famished! This is a modification of my Mom's own recipe. It takes hours to soften the beef (you could use a pressure cooker to shortcut this), but the rich, full flavour after that more than makes up for the wait!

Thai Spicy Beef & Whole Peppercorn Pasta

Whenever I visit Bangkok, one of my favourite dishes to eat there is a Thai-Italian fusion pasta at The Greyhound Cafe. It is a pasta with Thai ingredients like raw, green, whole peppercorns and Thai basil.  Whole green peppercorn is the dried, unripe fruit of the pepper plant.  It has an interesting, fresh taste and is not THAT spicy.

See more here on the different kinds of pepper:

Peppers - black, green, white and pink....

I buy the green, whole peppercorn and the Thai basil (which is different from Italian basil and more pungent) from Golden Mile Complex in Singapore, the frequent habitué of Thai workers here. I have tried looking for these in the neighbourhood wet market or supermarket, but have not seen any. Lots of authentic Thai ingredients at Golden Mile, including Sriracha sauce!

Here's my take on this Thai-Italian dish.

My Mom's Hamburger Recipe

There are some dishes from my childhood that I have never forgotten because they evoke such warm memories. They're comfort food, the type you'd like to eat on a rainy day, or when you're tired, or very hungry, or you simply want simple food that satisfies.

One of these dishes is my Mom's hamburger. The patties are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, flavourful and above all, moist. The ingredients are very simple and the magic ingredient, I believe, is that dollop of mayonnaise. When I was a child, we used to eat this with a sauce of native toyo (soy sauce) and calamansi (a small, native Philippine lime).

Now I serve it to my kids at breakfast, lunch or dinner, sans the toyo and calamansi. My children also take it to school for lunch.

I've dolled up the recipe a bit by making a mushroom cream sauce to drizzle on top or serve on the side. But most of the time, we just eat it "naked," and even without this fancy Western sauce, it tastes soooo GOOD!

Baked Cheesy Rigatoni with Spicy Sausage

This is like Mac & Cheese but only better. The rigatoni pasta is much bigger than macaroni, and holds more of the cheesy sauce, and the spicy sausage adds a flavour contrast to an otherwise rich dish. It's baked with flavoured breadcrumbs which makes the top crispy. Mmmmm!

Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf with Gravy

Here's another ultimate comfort food: Meatloaf! This is my Mom's recipe and I just modified it over the years. We usually eat this with Macaroni Salad with Celery and Pineapple (that's another recipe altogether; another blogpost.)

This is just everyday, comfort food for us, but I sometimes serve this at parties, and it's always a hit. My guests really love the moist, flavourful meat and the gravy that comes with it. I think it has something to do with the mix of beef, pork, Vienna sausage and chopped bacon in the mix itself. And of course, there's that glorious bacon wrapped around it.

My Mom's Chili con Carne

Mommy's Chili con Carne: the ultimate comfort food!

Whenever my family craves for comfort food, I always think of my Mom's Chili con Carne which I ate many a rainy day while I was growing up. I've modified the recipe and now serve it to my family.  They love it! It's spicy, hearty, cheesy.