Comfort Food

It's been a pretty stressful month for me, and this week is proving to be especially bad. Now, this stress has started to manifest in my food cravings and the meals I have planned for this week. This is the very definition of comfort food: what I want to eat/cook when I'm feeling down.

When I go to the Whole Foods pre-cooked food bar, and they have out "Comfort Food," it's typical American/Southern foods: meatloaf, mac & cheese, casseroles. That's all too heavy to me, and doesn't jive with my palate.

Ideally, I'd have some of my mom's Haitian cooking as my comfort food. I could eat the pants off some braised chicken and rice with red beans, or white rice and black bean sauce, or some bouillon (pronounced boo-yohn). But I'm still working on getting up to my mom's level of Haitian cooking.

Until I get to that level, it seems my tastes tend toward Asian flavors: light, savory, salty, and a little bit sweet. My planned dinners for this week are a couple of good old standbys.

Mapo Tofu

I absolutely love mapo tofu; I sometimes use it as a benchmark for a new Chinese restaurant. It's bold, spicy, and just warms you up inside. The slight numbing sensation and increased salivation caused by the Sichuan peppercorns is just an added bonus :)

Yaki-Udon with Chicken & Veggies

It's super simple, just stir fry the cooked noodles, some broccoli, carrots, baby bok choy, and ginger in the right sauce. It's savory, but has that sweetness from the yaki-soba/yaki-udon sauce, and the bit of spice from the ginger.

Photo from lovehwaseong.kr

Soon Dubu Chigae (Korean soft tofu soup)

This isn't one that I can make myself yet, but sooner or later I will buy a Korean stew pot and try my hand at this. Soon dubu chigae is a hearty, spicy stew made from hot peppers, fish stock, silken tofu, prawns, clams, and a raw egg on top that cooks in the hot broth. Whenever I have a cold that just won't go away, I go to Korea House and order one of these.


I think I've associated Korean food with comfort ever since grad school, when I was commuting from Long Island to UWS Manhattan. My first semester final exams happened to fall on the first day of the NYC transit workers' strike, so none of the subways or city buses were running... and my exam started at 9am. Anticipating the delays on the LIRR, I took the 5am train into the city, and the ride that was typically 1 hour long took at least 2. Then I joined a group of people trying to grab a taxi uptown; easier said than done, when all the cabbies were gouging us.

Luckily we found a really nice van driver who could take us up to around 90th, and I'd have to walk the rest of the way. But I completely forgot to go a few avenues west before getting around 110th, because I ended up on the wrong side of Morningside Park. I backtracked and got to my first exam 35 minutes late. Oh, and the exam was difficult as sh!t.

So I handed in my exam, heart still pounding, feeling like crap, and not looking forward to my next exam in 5 hours. The first thing I wanted to do? Treat myself to a nicer lunch than usual. And so I went to Mill Korean Restaurant on 113th and B'way, and had a pot of soon dubu chigae, and then went to the EE student lounge for a nap.

For a moment, while I was face-deep into that hot stone pot, I didn't hate the world.

What's your go-to comfort food?