Well, it must be January, and it must be cold outside because I find myself thinking about comfort food again. Nothing like a little snow and ice and post-holiday doldrums to whet the appetite. If you find yourself lingering around the meat and potatoes at the grocery store, or watching reruns of the television show “Blue Bloods” so you can indulge in each episode’s requisite family dinner scene, it might be time to go to the kitchen and get cooking.
Even if you’ve never watched “Blue Bloods,” you can still eat like a member of the Reagan family (the main characters of this popular police procedural drama series). There are very few surprises in this recipe collection; in fact, if adventurous cooking is more to your liking, this probably isn’t the cookbook for you. But if mac and cheese, corned beef and cabbage, and Irish stew suit you just fine, grab a pot and get ready to savor the smells of family-style cooking.
The book’s introduction explains why Bridget Moynahan, the actress who plays assistant D.A., Erin Reagan on the show, and Wendy Goldberg, wife of the executive producer of “Blue Bloods,” created their cookbook. “Delicious, filling, soul-satisfying, loosen-your-belt food is the main attraction of any family dinner. People can wear jeans. The house can be a mess … but the food has to be special.”
Cooking up special food will be a cinch for anyone who decides to dip into this television-inspired recipe guide. Under “Soups” you can stir up a perfect batch Manhattan clam chowder or a tasty bowl of Yankee Bean Soup. Hungry for a classic, just-like-Grandma-used-to-make main course? Try out the recipes for chicken and dumplings, roasted pork loin, a glazed ham, or pot roast (my mouth is watering already!). A family dinner isn’t complete without a dessert, so bake your way to a pecan pie, a New York-style cheesecake, or, my favorite, the Drugstore Chocolate Cake. It’s named this because when lunch counters were a common sight in American drugstores, the dessert menu often included a simple layer cake. This particular recipe includes brewed espresso in the cake mix, so it steps it up a bit from your standard Betty Crocker fare.
