Everyone needs to eat, but beyond basic survival, what directs our food choices?  Americans have more variety than ever before in the foods that are available to them, but many of us stick to our old favorites.  How do certain dishes become “comfort foods” for us?  A comfort food could be anything at all, from peanut butter and banana sandwiches to ham biscuits to strawberry ice cream as long as it makes us feel better. The question is “how do certain tastes and textures get integrated into our psyches and become the culinary equivalent of valium?”

When possible, we choose to cook and eat the foods that evoke good memories, like Proust’s famous madeleine.  While many of us eventually go beyond our childhood food memories, we keep a special place in our hearts and tummies for those foods that evoke comfort and satisfaction.

I thought about this the other night when I decided to try out the little Chinese restaurant that opened recently near my home.  As many restaurants do in my neighborhood, this one stuck a menu in my fence. The descriptions of the dishes were the usual mix of grammatically challenged English and poorly translated Chinese (Doesn’t anyone proofread these things?).  Still, one description stood out from the rest. I’ll explain why.

Growing up in New Jersey, my family often went out for Chinese food on Sunday nights. The dishes were always the same, since my dad ordered for everyone.  I devoured any egg rolls, egg drop soup, and spare ribs that came my way, stuffing my face while waiting for the main event:  Shrimp with Lobster Sauce.  When he fixed my plate, Dad always ladled on a few extra shrimp as well as some of that sauce over a bed of Shrimp Fried Rice.  With a little Pepper Steak by the side, this fat little boy went to food paradise, happy as a clam.

The routine continued until I moved away from home, when I was dismayed to discover that this dish (a variation on the classic Lobster Cantonese) is not the same everywhere.  Even when it was on the menu, it tasted wrong, somehow.  I was bereft.  Part of every trip back home required a visit to the old place, the only time I could get that taste. The rest of my life was a culinary desert, which got worse when I moved to Chapel Hill, NC in 1973.  Chapel Hill was the home of the University of North Carolina, and as such, not completely devoid of civilization, I thought.  But when I arrived, I looked in the phone book to find no Chinese restaurants at all!  None.  Not one.  For me, it was the back of beyond.

This problem had a simple solution, or so I thought:  Learn to cook Chinese food. I had some basic cooking skills, so I began to search for the recipes and techniques that would produce what I wanted.  Thus began my culinary journey as I have taught myself to cook many different kinds of food, usually because I had some in my travels and could not get it where I was living. I am thankful that my search for a specific taste from my childhood forced me to learn to cook, a process in which I am still engaged.  And friends and family got some good, if sometimes unfamiliar, things to eat.

But what about that Shrimp with Lobster Sauce?  Well, in all the years I've been trying, the perfect dish eluded me.  Unfortunately, as I moved around the country as a student and professor, the goal became even harder to reach.  Each new restaurant version seemed to get further from what I ate at the Jade Garden.  My own versions were close, but always seemed to be lacking.

Then this menu was stuck in my wrought-iron fence.  It read in part:

Shrimp with Lobster  - Jumbo shrimp with green onion, egg, stir-fried in out (sic) special black eye bean garlic sauce

Deciphering the code, I realized this could be the Holy Grail of Shrimp with Lobster Sauce! The Seven Cities of Gold!  Atlantis!  Egg based with black bean sauce. Big shrimp. No peas or mushrooms.  Fermented black beans that I now know are a signature taste of the NJ/NY Cantonese food with which I grew up. I have been deceived before, but I had a hunch.

While I am certainly not Proust, but I will say the experience was Proustian.  The flavors and textures were as expected.  I never had had that outside of New Jersey. The dish that began my career as a home cook is also a dish that I have never been able to duplicate.  Now it's one I will never have to master. It’s just a few blocks away.  Now don’t get me started on pizza!