MORE PLEASE - SICKNESS FOOD

Spicy-creamy Chickpeas and Squash, Rigatoni with Mortadella, Mascarpone and Sage, and Buttered Egg on Rice - low-effort, high reward for when you are run down as hell.

Hello darlings. It’s been a rough old week.

The winter sickness is just so bloody boring isn’t it, especially when the weather is also diabolical. As I write this I am happy to say I have recovered, thanks in part to medicine but also to my sickness cooking. I really just needed a rest, which I couldn’t truthfully do as this time of year is so busy for me. So I turned to some comfort foods which help me get through these sore-throaty, coldy, grim nights. Each one is lush, cosy and utterly delicious and I hope that if you are reading this whilst sick, you can make one too and show yourself a bit of care.

A necessary caveat here is that these are not necessarily “healthy” options. The idea here more than anything is soothing comfort, a bit of a running theme in my cooking I am sure you will agree. There are certainly opportunities in each recipe to add some nutritious bits (please see the substitutions section) but truly this is just stuff I crave when I am burning the candle at both ends, healthy or not.

First up is a Spicy-creamy broth with roasted squash and chickpeas. I often find myself leaning towards creamy, rich flavours that are spiked with heat when I am in the trenches of illness. This broth is actually inspired on one of my most popular instagram recipes - Spicy Sausage Stew, but here in veggie form with divine chunks of roasted, sweet squash, rosemary and soft chickpeas. It’s a great batch cook, too.

Then we have a real Rosie special - Buttered Egg on Rice. Eggs and rice have to be up there in my top 5 comfort foods and I eat them in varying forms pretty much constantly. But there’s something so nostalgic about buttery scrambled eggs for me - my mum used to make them for me with toast when I was ill home from school. Egg on rice is unbeatable too of course and after my time in Japan I’ve been craving the soft, tender scrambles that are so incredibly light thanks to a pass through a sieve, on top of perfectly cooked rice, with a miso soup on the side. It’s kind of a very poor man’s Omurice without most of the ingredients or skill.

Finally we have a pasta because we all know that is my number 1 comfort food. A classic “sauce made while the pasta cooks” situation, theres a bit of a creamy-spicy hit again from chilli and mascarpone, along with meaty richness from chopped mortadella. Using a cured meat in pasta sauces is a great way to get a quick hit of intense flavour, and mortadella is something I often have in my fridge. Balanced with fragrant nuttiness from sage - you will be making this again and again.

SPICY-CREAMY CHICKPEAS AND SQUASH

Soup is a fairly obvious sickness cure, but this is not one of those claiming to have magical properties. Honestly it’s just bloody lovely, comforting stuff with a great flavour base and plenty of softly cooked veg. It looks almost curried but it is more Italian in style, except for the addition of cream which is very much a Rosie-ism. There’s lots of breadth for adding more veg, too. Eat this by itself or with pasta, rice, or lots of oily garlicky toast.