So, I'm reading Nora Ephron's 1983 novel Heartburn -- I think I'm the last person in America to realize that Ephron was a foodie long before Julie & Julia -- and the book is filled with love and longing and heartbreak and food. Lots of food.

The main character, Rachel, is a cookbook writer who is dealing with the discovery that her husband has been having an affair with a mutual friend. Oh, and Rachel and her husband have a baby together and are expecting another one when the affair comes to light. Oh, and this book is a thinly-veiled portrayal of what happened between Ephron and her ex-husband Carl Bernstein (yes, THAT Bernstein), right down to Ephron being 7 months pregnant when she learned of Bernstein's affair and later going into premature labor.

Anyway, all that horribleness aside, Ephron's funny-sad novel is seeded with a bunch of quick recipes, all of which weave naturally in and out of the plot. Among others, there's Lillian Hellman's pot roast, Rachel's closely guarded vinaigrette recipe, and the Key lime pie Rachel ends up throwing at her husband's cheating face during a dinner party. However, the one I zeroed in on was her mashed potato recipe. It wasn't so much the recipe that resonated with me as it was Ephron's explanation of why mashed potatoes are so necessary to life:

Nothing like mashed potatoes when you're feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you're feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let's face it: the reason you're blue is that there isn't anyone to make them for you. As a result, most people do not have nearly enough mashed potatoes in their lives, and when they do, it's almost always at the wrong time.

That whole bit reminded me of the mashed potato recipe in my Friends cookbook. (Yes, I have the Friends cookbook -- you wanna make something of it?) In that cookbook, the recipe is called "Mashed Potatoes for the Broken Hearted" and carries the note, "These fluffy, smooth potatoes (with plenty of sour cream and butter) have been known to mend even the most fractured heart."

What is it about mashed potatoes and comfort and soothing? Is it that their bland simplicity makes them non-threatening, and therefore calming, to the palate? That they are merely a vehicle for butter, salt, and/or sour cream and we crave fattening foods when at our lowest points? That they remind us of home and childhood when life was easier? I don't think I can answer these questions, but I do know that a big pile of mashed potatoes on my plate never fails to raise my spirits and warm my cockles. And on chilly grey days and dark sharp nights, mashed potatoes are one of those foods that I want to crawl into and pull up around my shoulders.

With mashed potatoes, the prep is so minor and the payoff is so huge that I've never understood why anyone would make mashed potatoes from a box. In fact, since my own mother didn't do that, I never knew they existed until I had them at a friend's house and was totally and horribly scarred by the experience. (That same mother made a kick-ass lemon chicken, so I was able to forgive her. In time.)

My own mashed potatoes are fine. They're basic, easy -- they get the job done. No garlic, no blue cheese, no bacon. I'm perfectly happy with them. However, in my lifetime I've encountered two particular mashed potato presentations so wonderfully rich and heavenly that there are times I consider rethinking my comparatively spartan recipe.

First, there's Fatemeh's "Party Potatoes" that come from her husband's "Irish-ish" grandmother and are known to contain butter, sour cream, AND cream cheese. And then there are the mashed potatoes Kim's husband Keith made for last year's Burns Night. It was my first Burns Night, my first haggis, and my first taste of Keith's potatoes.

Both of those sets of mashed potatoes? Yeah, I've decided that they're God's shaving cream.

After finishing Heartburn well after midnight last night, I went to bed feeling quite melancholy for Rachel. I didn't cheer up until the next morning when I found out that Ephron's been happily married to screenwriter Nick Pileggi for twenty years. I hope he makes her lots of mashed potatoes.

Heartburn Mashed Potatoes

For mashed potatoes: Put 1 large (or 2 small) potatoes in a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for at least 20 minutes, until tender. Drain and place the potatoes back in the pot and shake over low heat to eliminate excess moisture. Peel. Put through a potato ricer and immediately add 1 tablespoon heavy cream and as much melted butter and salt and pepper as you feel like. Eat immediately. Serves one.

Crawfish Po' Boy with Remoulade Sauce (mind you, that's just a half order)

When I first visited New Orleans as a young and adventurous 21-year-old (with nine other young and adventurous 21-year-olds), it was under the incredible hospitality of the generous Miss Dawn. Like a good southern hostess, Miss Dawn kept us well-fed, full of hearty, delicious, filling sustenance that would provide the proper base for a night of revelry.

Two memorable meals from our time there was the epic crawfish boil she set up our first night in, and the constant supply of po' boy makings she kept on hand for 1 pm breakfasts...5 pm snacks...and 4 am nightcaps. Piles of roast beef, fresh French bread, and dressed to the nines.

As soon as I saw the menu at Yats, I was brought back to sultry nights of sucking crawfish out of the shell and feasting on the ubiquitous po' boy.

Yats, San Francisco

In case you're wondering about this order window with the sign "Yats" pointing to it, well, that's it. Yats is actually, brilliantly, located inside Jack's Club, an homage to the divey friendly bars of New Orleans.

NOLA Fries: thick-cut steak fries showered in parmesan cheese, salt and pepper

The humble establishment makes good use of its well-loved deep fryer. Cue specimen A: NOLA Fries. Thick, golden, wedges of starchy goodness, dusted in a snowfall of parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. These huge steak fries are crispy on the outside, nice and soft on the inside.

You may be overwhelmed when you see the lengthy selection of Famous Po' Boys on the menu. I don't mean to be bossy, but get the Crawfish with Remoulade, and ask for extra sauce! Succulent bits of crawfish meat, coated in a crunchy cornmeal crust, and stuffed inside a loaf of fresh French bread with a soft airy center, and crispy flaky crust. And, you should probably get the whole foot-long. Trust me.

Mac-n-Cheese

You will also want to complement your sandwich lovin' with a side of Mac-n-Cheese. Quite possibly the best in SF. Do I have any challengers? This mac-n-cheese is no joke. Creamy and rich with a little coarse-grained mustard thrown in. Pure comfort food.

Yats takes bar food to a whole new level. The only down side is that the hours are a little tricky for a weekday visit unless you work in the neighborhood. Otherwise, your Saturday afternoon may have just found a new best friend.

By the way, if it's an authentic crawfish boil you seek, Yats is celebrating its One Year Anniversary with a Crawfish Boil this Saturday, May 16th, noon - 5 pm.

Yats
(Inside Jack's Club)
2545 24th St
San Francisco, CA 94110
Map
415-282-8906
Open Mon-Thurs, 11 am - 4 pm; Fri, 11 am - 8 pm; Sat, 11 am - 6 pm

Well, now I've seen everything. As it was pointed out to me recently, voting Californians care more for the rights of chickens than they do for those of gay men and women. In my bio-degradable peanut-wrapped little world of well-educated, thoughtful, and admittedly left-leaning friends and co-workers, I had previously thought this was all but impossible.

I believed I didn't know a single person-- especially anyone close to me-- who would, by touching a button or drawing a little black line to connect an arrow in a voting booth, actively raise a finger to institutionalize discrimination against me, or my sister, or my brother who, in a very real sense, died from internalizing all the hate and ignorance, both spoken and unspoken, that surrounds gay men and women and tells us we are not as deserving of happiness as everyone else. The electorate has demanded that a chicken be allowed the freedom to fully spread its wings and, in the same breath, has seen to it that I am not allowed to fully stretch mine.

It's nothing personal against chickens. Honest.

I have been chafing at the logic that homosexuals should somehow be satisfied with domestic partnerships and not get hung up on the word "marriage." And my blood is boiling over the 1,400,000 million-vote difference between those who voted for Barak Obama and those who voted No on Proposition 8. The stench of this hypocritical difference has settled in my nostrils and killed my appetite for the past couple of days. And that's saying something.

Does anyone remember a quaint little Supreme Court decision handed down in 1896? No? Well, I've got three words for you. Since those words are unprintable, I shall give you another three:

Plessy versus Ferguson.

Oh, and here are three more words that came out of that historically painful and embarrassing decision:

Separate but equal.

Image courtesy of Jay Floyd

Yes we can? Not in California, we didn't. Not so much.

Well, I'm getting hungry again. And I need a little bit of comforting. It does help that all my straight friends have been actively giving their support, but I need a little more. I need to fill my belly with something other than burning bile. I will resist the urge to drink the blood of all the innocent children I had planned to corrupt by getting married and go for something a little more low key to satisfy my hunger. Something fried. Something bad for my arteries, but tonic for my soul.

I want Chicken-fried steak.

It strikes me as odd that I should crave something that is the unofficial dish of Texas. Or that, given the chicken's newly-found superior status over me, that I would crave something so transparently pro-poultry-life. It's not as though I'd ever encountered it in my childhood. Of course, that may very well be what makes it such a comfort. It is a dish I discovered in college-- a time when I was busy forging my own identity as an adult.

I first encountered Chicken-fried steak at (foodies, look away) Denny's. A photograph of the dish caught my attention, popping off the image-bloated and ketchup-sticky pages of the menu more dramatically than the competing Moons over My Hammy. It was too late to be up, I'd most likely been out either drinking or dancing or depressed over my not-quite-out-of-the-closet status or some combination of all three, and my body called out for something fried to soak up both my sorrow and my alcohol intake.

I sat there, staring at the menu, trying to make sense of the dish. Chicken-fried Steak. On the one hand, I immediately got it-- pounded beef, served up as one would serve fried chicken. Basically, it's a more aged version of Wienerschnitzel, but served up with biscuits and anemic-looking gravy. On the other, I was caught up in the phrasing. Chicken-fried. The immediate mental image was that of a cartoonish hen, complete with pearls and frilly apron, frying up a piece of beaten-to-death cow. The evil, self-satisfied smile on her face convinced me that this dish was somehow subversive-- that there was some clever, morbid joke behind the creation of this dish. So I ordered it, naturally.

And, oddly, I felt much better for it. And it continues to have this mystifying effect on me. It may be its ability to fill my stomach, thereby draining as much blood as possible from my over-worked brain to aid digestion. It could be the fat and cholesterol that coats and calms me into some false sense of protection. I really don't know. All I know is that, for whatever reason, it works for me and I refuse to give into too much analysis. That would ruin everything.

Chicken-fried steak has lifted me up in some of my lowest of moments. It has comforted me on my journeys home from bank-breaking college trips to Las Vegas when the only money I had left in the world was spent on gas and this menu item. It has been consumed through endless, supportive conversations with friends in times of disease and unavoidable death, and recently it has been there to help salve a mopey, broken heart.

And now, I am calling on it to fortify me through this mess.

I never intend to make it myself. I don't even want to know exactly how it is made, so I will not give a recipe, let alone look at one. It is a dish best served to me, rather than by me. Preferably by a waitress whose shoulders have been slightly hunched by the weight of trouble and too many years of taking the brutal insensitivity and orders of strangers. I need this not to feel superior to someone else in my moment of gloom. I need it because I want to look her straight in the eye as if to say, "Girl, I know exactly how you feel." But I won't say it. She may not want that kind of empathy. Or me calling her "Girl". So instead, I'll just give her everything I have in my wallet and go home, bloated and tired, but somehow fortified enough to carry on.

Until the next time.

Comfort food is different for every person. It might be your mother's meatloaf, a bowl of butter-padded mashed potatoes, or a vat of chicken soup. Personally, I never thought I'd be looking to a New Mexican restaurant as my comfort food source, but that's exact what Green Chile Kitchen has come to mean for me.

Working on a KQED cooking show has meant that my past week was filled with twelve hour days where I rarely sit down, lots of running, and lots of food. The sad thing is, I didn't want to eat that food. It's no reflection on the chef, mind you, but it's long been a foible of mine that if I cook something all day, I completely lose my appetite for it.

There have been two constants of comfort during this past week of twelve hour days: my husband and Green Chile Kitchen. Green Chile Kitchen moved into the vacated Baker/Fulton corner nearly two years ago and while we have been fairly frequent patrons, I have never written about it.

They have a fresh greens salad to which you are allowed to add five additions from all manner of fresh ingredients. You can also choose to add applewood smoked bacon, avocado, and Fulton Valley chicken breast. I've actually developed my own salad mix that I consider to be the ultimate order. Aside from the greens I request walnuts, blue cheese, red onion, corn, and for my fifth choice, I just get more corn. When I'm really hungry, I'll add chicken breast and avocado to the salad.

When it comes to salad dressing, I'm a purist. I make my own and there are only certain restaurants I trust to get it right. Zuni, Suppenkuche, and Chez Panisse get it right, but a lot of other places don't. It's either bottled or delivered on the side, and on the side just doesn't cut it with me. I mean, unless you're going to bring out a big ol' bowl along with the "on the side" that allows me to slap everything with an even, glistening coat, don't bother. Green Chile Kitchen gets it right. Their balsamic vinaigrette, chipotle lime vinaigrette, citrus vinaigrette, and green chile buttermilk are all made from scratch and they toss the dressing for you. There's no need to dump the dressing on, seal up the box, and shake your foodie, praying that oily droplets don't spew everywhere.

So yeah, I love their organic green salad. I also love their burritos, and their guacamole has recently been made amazing by the piquant addition of chiles. Finally, their green chile stew -- veg or fully meaty with slow-roasted Niman Ranch pork -- is something to tuck your body into on a cold autumn night.

But lately, a side order of their rice and pinto beans is all I need to sustain me during these trying weeks, and it's also about all I have time to shove into my mouth before collapsing, insensible, into bed.

Over this past weekend, where I did little else but sleep and brunch with friends, the thought of being back in my kitchen didn't repulse me, as much as it made me narcoleptic every time I set foot in it. Food was needed. Outside food. Comfort food. Once again, Green Chile Kitchen via my husband came to my rescue. 1/4 of a citrus-herb roasted chicken -- all juicy white meat -- some roasted potatoes, a warm, soft, folded tortilla with fire-roasted salsa, and a glass of Geyser Peak Merlot from Trader Joe's was all my exhausted soul needed to regenerate.

A few quibbles: their overly complicated menu, riddled with so many choices of sides and accompaniments, confuses both the order takers and the order fulfillers, not to mention the patrons. They could also do with another register. While you can stake out the dark wood booths and eat in the welcoming cafe area, we're only three blocks away, so we mostly do pick up. Unfortunately, with one line and one register for everyone, it means if you've placed your order over the phone, you are often standing in a long line with people who haven't placed their order, don't know what they want, and waste your already-packed order's precious heat by browsing the menu and asking lots of questions. Not that I begrudge them the time to make up their minds, mind you, it's just that two lines -- one for pick-ups and one for everyone else -- would make so much more sense.

Green Chile Kitchen
601 Baker (at Fulton)
San Francisco, CA 94117

415.614.9411