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What does comfort food mean to you? We tend to equate the term with something savory and perhaps even indulgent, but comfort can come in all shapes and sizes. One person’s lasagna bolognese is another’s mushroom taco, and another’s polenta with chickpeas is another’s Spam musubi.
What gives you comfort depends on why you need comfort in the first place.
When I lost my mother two years ago, I was comforted by the flavors of my youth, like the “Texas salad” she made (and which I later reinvented) and the broccoli cream cheese casserole, which I haven’t written about yet (but will write soon). or later). Since one of my closest friends, Karin, died of cancer this summer, I’ve been thinking about all the foods we’ve eaten together in four decades of friendship, a menu full of chips and salsa, margaritas—and all sorts of vegetables.
Get the recipe: Cacio e Pepe Soup with Chickpeas and Kale
We shared a passion for food, even as her need for a weapon (and a sense of control) against a devastating disease led her to make much more careful dietary decisions than I ever did. She was a vegetarian long before me and showed me that satisfaction can be sought and found in seemingly endless combinations of produce, beans and grains, occasionally seasoned with sometimes inappropriate amounts of butter and cheese. I’ve eaten less and less of the latter over the years, but this week, after returning from her memorial service emotionally shaken, they were one of my cravings.
Coincidentally, I was cooking from a book whose title speaks so clearly to me: Comfort & Joy by London-based restaurateur and writer Ravinder Bhogal. It’s one of those books where I immediately marked more than a dozen recipes to try, and the first on my list surprised me with its brilliance.
It seemed like such a humble proposal: a soup of chickpeas, orzo, and kale seasoned with a combination of ingredients made famous by a classic pasta dish. And it came together like so many soups before it – at least at first. I lightly fried onions, stirred in garlic and lemon zest, then brought the broth to a boil and cooked the kale, chickpeas and orzo until it swelled. Quite nice, if a bit spartan. Then in went a pile of loosely grated Pecorino Romano and cubes of butter, and as I stirred the broth went from cloudy to rich, from dull to shiny, from a little thin to a little thick. It was magical. And after a few turns of the pepper mill, I could see and smell it: Cacio e Pepe.
I took a sip straight from the pot, then scooped out a bowlful, topped it with more cacio and more pepe, and sat down in silence to finish the lunch for lunch. The teenager was at school, the man upstairs had the flu. I thought about Karin, who I’d met when I was 18 and she was 20, looking at pictures from our last trip to a spa in Mexico and reading through all the text messages we’d exchanged since her full-blown cancer a year ago force had returned. I’ve been thinking about how, when you get to know someone so well while also just getting to know yourself, the identities seem almost inseparable, much like the cheese and butter melting together in my bowl.
Would Karin have loved this soup as much as I did? No doubt. I so wish I could share the recipe with her. And I so wish the bowl could last forever, but nothing – and no one – lasts.
I plan on trying a lot more of Bhogal’s book, but before I do, I know I’ll make this soup at least a few more times in my grief until I need a little less comfort and can feel a little more joy. Soon.
Get the recipe: Cacio e Pepe Soup with Chickpeas and Kale