Favourite comfort foods and why

Long and Short Reviews have a great topic this week – comfort foods. I am not a cook, so recipes are not my forte (if it’s more complicated than “put it in the oven” it tends not to happen) but I’m as fond of comfort food as the next person, and the advantage is that it’s usually straightforward and easy to make.

My favourite comfort food is mashed potato. Possibly this stems from many a happy Saturday evening meal of my mother’s cottage pie, which I still say is the best cottage pie ever invented. I make it with a small amount of milk and lots of butter, and mash it just enough to remove the lumps while still giving it texture – I know MasterChef likes you to whip it, but I don’t like it too smooth.

As a Brit, I also love to sit down to a fish and chip dinner. I like the chips greasy, with plenty of vinegar and mushy peas over the top, and the batter needs to be crunchy – far too often I end up with soggy batter. I’ve just moved house so haven’t yet found out if the nearest chippy is decent, but I’ll be rectifying that shortly.

And to finish off, I love honeycomb cheesecake. The English Cheesecake Company do an amazing one which is also big enough to fill an entire shelf of the fridge. Chocolate-coated honeycomb and creamy cheesecake – what more could you ask for?

So what are your favourite comfort foods?