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Divorced kid comfort food
Mar. 5th, 2002 02:05 pmI wonder if anyone in China has ever heard of egg foo yung?
I don't know what they do everywhere else, but in Manhattan divorced kids eat out a lot, and we mostly went to Chinatown (although brick oven eggplant calzone has a fairly major node in my Proust center). I was using chopsticks when I was six or so. I can, if pressed, make a reasonable emulsified vinaigrette out of the things on the table in a decent checked-tablecloth italian restaurant.
I'm always surprised when I eat comfort food at my husband's folks' house, because they eat midwestern comfort food - lots of pork, soft bread with minimal crust, mashed potatoes, salty cheese dips - and it's very nice, but it's not comfort food. Comfort food is cantonese. Actually, comfort food is unimaginative cantonese.
Comfort food is covered with sauce, and it's all a variation on the same sturdy cornstarchy brown sauce. It's not spicy. It doesn't have celery in it. It probably does have a lot of mung bean sprouts, onions and bell peppers. It comes with big heaping bowls of sticky white rice. There is nothing in the world quite as white as the white rice that comes with comfort food, or as starchy.
The ur-comfort food is, of course, egg foo yung. For those of you who are bad cantonese restaurant impaired (the easiest way to tell is the canned pineapple chunks on toothpicks that come with the check, but of course by then it's too late. Look for fake red lacquer dragons), egg foo yung is sort of a drained chop suey omelette with brown sauce on top. They come three to a leaky waxed posterboard container, which is translucent where the sauce leaks. Your meal comes with stale greasy fried noodles, but nobody eats them, really, although they're not bad dipped in chinese mustard and fluorescent duck sauce.
Comfort food makes me feel safe. There's a time when you're a kid and you still have the feeling that everything is OK when your tummy is full and you've had a hot bath and it's bedtime and you're in your pyjamas and there's someone there to tell you to turn off the tv. Bad cantonese food makes me feel that way. So does bad southern italian food. Good cantonese food and good southern italian food, while they're good in their own ways, just aren't right.
I had egg foo yung for lunch. With an egg roll. And a stale fortune cookie ("Money is not the most important asset you have," and a damn good thing, too). It's inauthentic and it's heavy and probably loaded with fat and salt and MSG and every foodie instinct reels in horror at the very idea, but I needed it. I feel better now.
I don't know what they do everywhere else, but in Manhattan divorced kids eat out a lot, and we mostly went to Chinatown (although brick oven eggplant calzone has a fairly major node in my Proust center). I was using chopsticks when I was six or so. I can, if pressed, make a reasonable emulsified vinaigrette out of the things on the table in a decent checked-tablecloth italian restaurant.
I'm always surprised when I eat comfort food at my husband's folks' house, because they eat midwestern comfort food - lots of pork, soft bread with minimal crust, mashed potatoes, salty cheese dips - and it's very nice, but it's not comfort food. Comfort food is cantonese. Actually, comfort food is unimaginative cantonese.
Comfort food is covered with sauce, and it's all a variation on the same sturdy cornstarchy brown sauce. It's not spicy. It doesn't have celery in it. It probably does have a lot of mung bean sprouts, onions and bell peppers. It comes with big heaping bowls of sticky white rice. There is nothing in the world quite as white as the white rice that comes with comfort food, or as starchy.
The ur-comfort food is, of course, egg foo yung. For those of you who are bad cantonese restaurant impaired (the easiest way to tell is the canned pineapple chunks on toothpicks that come with the check, but of course by then it's too late. Look for fake red lacquer dragons), egg foo yung is sort of a drained chop suey omelette with brown sauce on top. They come three to a leaky waxed posterboard container, which is translucent where the sauce leaks. Your meal comes with stale greasy fried noodles, but nobody eats them, really, although they're not bad dipped in chinese mustard and fluorescent duck sauce.
Comfort food makes me feel safe. There's a time when you're a kid and you still have the feeling that everything is OK when your tummy is full and you've had a hot bath and it's bedtime and you're in your pyjamas and there's someone there to tell you to turn off the tv. Bad cantonese food makes me feel that way. So does bad southern italian food. Good cantonese food and good southern italian food, while they're good in their own ways, just aren't right.
I had egg foo yung for lunch. With an egg roll. And a stale fortune cookie ("Money is not the most important asset you have," and a damn good thing, too). It's inauthentic and it's heavy and probably loaded with fat and salt and MSG and every foodie instinct reels in horror at the very idea, but I needed it. I feel better now.
