Food and pleasant thoughts

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LAST week someone posted on the Internet, a photo of what she regarded as her ‘comfort food’. Although I have heard the term, I have never quite worked out what it really means. So I posted the question, “What is comfort food?”

I received scores of comments. There were as many opinions as what constituted ‘comfort food’ as there were responders. Not surprising really, for when it comes to what is the best food, there is truly no right or wrong answer. The definition will be established by whoever is answering the question. This is due to the fact that every single person has his or her own taste in food. It reminds me of the adage, ‘One man’s meat is another’s poison’. Last year I foolhardily posted the question, “Where can you get the best laksa?” and nearly started a war on the Internet.

The preferences of people who responded to my query about comfort food ranged from complicated mum’s traditional cooking to instant mee. Mung San, a friend, must have a bit of a soup fetish. Her comfort food is all kinds of Chinese soups, which must be prepared the way mum made them – “simmered for four solid hours”. At the other end of the spectrum we have Juriah whose favourite is Maggi Kari. Now, that’s a three-minute idiot-proof meal. Well, I suppose, each to his/her own.

The choices may be idiosyncratic but there is a common thread that runs through all of them – nostalgia and association with good times. As Rowena, one of those who commented, wrote, “food that brings happy memories or was eaten during happier times, especially during childhood.”

Of course, as we progress through life, we pick up items that are associated with certain happy occasions to be saved in our happy memory bank. For a long time the food that evoked in me the happy memories of my halcyon childhood days was fried mamak mee with egg and bean sprouts.

My mum and dad loved P Ramlee movies. Well, in the 50s who didn’t? Whenever there was one, the whole family (all seven of us) would pile into a taxi and make our way gleefully to the only cinema in town. After the movie, we would stop by an Indian noodle stall run by a friend of my dad. He would cook up a storm and wrap the fried noodles in big jungle leaves. To this day, I can visualise the scene – there we were, sitting expectantly on the floor with packages of food around. My father would slowly open the leaves and … the aroma would waft up to our senses – sweet! Unfortunately, that scene can only be played out in my mind, not just because three of my family members have passed on but also they don’t use leaves as wrappers any more – it is all in those wretched plastic sheets or oil paper. Ah, sigh.

There is one dish that remains to this day my favourite. Yes, it is readily available. In fact, I can say that it is ubiquitous. It is the humble kam pua mee, which literally means ‘dry plate noodle’. It is an unpretentious, modest and salt of the earth kind of a meal – nothing more than just boiled plain noodles, tossed in oil with a fair helping of MSG (monosodium glutamate – a flavour enhancing food additive). Usually it is garnished with a few slivers of thinly sliced meat.

“That is just plain survival food for the poor farmers who had no time for fanciful cuisine,” said my friend Lim. I suppose he should know, having come from a farming family himself.

Be that as it may, it is still my comfort food. It was what I dreamed about, what I pined for during my long sojourn in Britain, particularly during my boarding school days in ‘ulu’ Scotland. The British were not renowned for their creative cooking. Their food was (I understand things have changed quite a bit these days) either fried or boiled. Being fed with a constant diet of bangers and mash, fish and chips, and the odd haggis or two, I was driven to distraction. (Haggis defies precise description; the best I can muster is to say that it is a kind of sausage stuffed with grain and other spare parts of a sheep).

I used to have dreams (or were they nightmares?) of sitting down to a hefty plate of kam pua mee only to awake to the stark reality of being thousands of miles away from home. In desperation, I took to using spaghetti as noodles and mixing it with olive oil and OXO cube, a popular beef flavoured extract. It must have tasted … yuck! But as the saying goes, ‘Any port in a storm’. It did the job. “For one moment in time” (with apologies to the late Whitney Houston) I was home.

“Home is where the heart is” says a popular song. And my heart as well as, I am sure, those of many readers, is really close to the stomach.