20 Comfort Foods From Around The World _ Around The World
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20 Comfort Foods From Around The World _ Around The World _ Food Insider
20 Comfort Foods From Around The World _ Around The World _ Food Insider
Transcript
00:00In these stressful and uncertain times of quarantine, people from all over the world
00:09are seeking comfort in food.
00:12Comfort food can fix any bad day.
00:14It's typically high in sugar, fat, and or salt.
00:18And the beauty of comfort food is that it varies from person to person.
00:21It's rooted in where you're from and who you grew up with.
00:24We asked 20 people from different cultural backgrounds to share what comfort food is
00:28to them.
00:29I'll start with mine.
00:31My favorite comfort food is kimchi jjigae or kimchi stew.
00:36I'm Korean American, and growing up, my mom made kimchi jjigae pretty often for dinner.
00:41My mom's kimchi jjigae has that sonmat.
00:43Sonmat in Korean means like hand taste.
00:47The best way I can describe it is my mom's special touch.
00:51Even if I try to make my mom's kimchi jjigae here in New York City, I can't get that taste
00:55because it lacks my mom's special touch.
00:58So basically, the flavors that you're getting are like spicy, salty, fatty, sour.
01:06It's basically everything that I crave when I'm missing my mom.
01:10I'm Nigerian, and one of my favorite comfort foods has to be amala and okra soup.
01:15To make it, you take some yam flour and you pour it into boiling hot water, stir it up
01:20very quickly, and it gets to this nice thick consistency.
01:23From there, you portion it out to whatever size you'd like for your meal, and then you
01:26can dip it into your soup of choice.
01:28Not only is it a super tasty meal, but after you eat it, it hits you and it puts you in
01:33one of those nice food comas.
01:35I remember sneaking into the kitchen as a toddler and trying to tear off small pieces
01:39of amala or like the irises that they put in the soup and taking it back to my playroom.
01:44So of course now, any time that I have it, I just automatically think of home.
01:49I'm Trinidadian.
01:50My favorite comfort food is bacon saltfish.
01:53Bacon saltfish is a dish comprised of bake, which is dough rolled out, and a fish called
02:02bakalao.
02:03It's a salted cod that we chop up, we boil, and we saute with sweet tomatoes and sweet
02:10onions.
02:11I think it's my favorite comfort food just because it brings back a memory of my grandmother.
02:16She used to own a daycare, and whenever she was making something with dough, like bake,
02:21she would roll up little pieces of the dough and give it to the children to play with,
02:25and we would just go crazy for those little pieces of dough.
02:29My favorite Haitian comfort food is grillo.
02:32Grillo is fried pork shoulder that has a special cut where it has just the right amount of
02:37fat and just the right amount of skin on it.
02:39You would season it well, bake it briefly, and then fry it, so after that it'll get that
02:45nice crispy on the outside, tender on the inside taste.
02:49I remember being, as a child, at every Haitian gathering, family party.
02:55If you had grillo on your plate that night, you knew it was going to be a good night.
03:00My comfort food has always been pastina, which is like a really unhealthy version of Italian
03:05wedding soup.
03:06It has no vegetables, it's really just pasta and meatballs.
03:09So the way that my mom makes her meatballs is really what I always crave.
03:13She does a mix of ground pork, ground beef, and ground veal, and then she adds in just
03:18five ingredients.
03:19So the five ingredients are salt, pepper, garlic powder, parsley, and cheese.
03:25It's not just like Parmesan cheese, it's always Pecorino Romano cheese.
03:28That's the go-to key ingredient.
03:30Whenever I go home or whenever I'm sad or sick or whatever, that's what I want my mom
03:35to make me, or that's what I want to eat.
03:37I'm from New York, and my favorite comfort food is grilled cheese.
03:42Growing up as a picky eater, grilled cheese was the number one thing I could get from
03:46every single family member and every single restaurant, and it'd be almost the exact same
03:52every single time.
03:54So today when I make grilled cheese for myself, I just use white wheat bread, and I use white
04:01American cheese.
04:02It reminds me of being best friends with my mom.
04:06I'm Allison Brown, and today we're going to talk about beef patties, because that's my
04:11favorite Jamaican comfort food.
04:12Growing up, my father used to bring home a box of beef patties, and he used to put them
04:16on the table, and it was first-come, first-served, and if you did not get your beef patty, you'd
04:19be tight.
04:21I love beef patties because of how diverse they are.
04:24You could get a beef patty, a callaloo patty, an ackee patty, any type of patty.
04:27My family is Jamaican.
04:29They're from Jamaica.
04:30I'm American.
04:31I was born here.
04:32But when we go to Jamaica, it's over.
04:34The patties are hot and ready.
04:35They're delicious.
04:36I'm from New York.
04:37I'm Dominican, and my favorite comfort food is mung boo.
04:40Mung boo is basically mashed potatoes, but instead of potatoes, it's plantains, and it's
04:46a breakfast food, so most Dominicans will eat it in the morning.
04:50Mung boo is typically eaten with cebollas on top, which is onions, queso frito on the
04:55side, which is fried cheese, salami, which is a type of meat, and usually some people
05:00will get a fried egg on it.
05:01Personally, I love eggs, so I always get it on it.
05:03The reason why mung boo is my favorite comfort food, besides the fact that it's delicious,
05:07is because it just reminds me of being in the Dominican Republic, and just like being
05:13around great weather, sunny, like just an all-around great vibe.
05:17My comfort food is pepper pot.
05:19It came from Guyana's first people known as the Amerindians.
05:23Pepper pot is a meal that is boiled with casserole and spices and any choice of meat, but my
05:28personal favorite is beef.
05:30It can be eaten with anything, bread, cassava bread, rice, anything you would like.
05:36Pepper pot reminds me of Christmas time and all the family time and all the rich culture
05:41in Guyana.
05:42My favorite comfort food is congee, a type of rice porridge.
05:46It's often eaten with yau za guai, also known as a Chinese donut.
05:51There are also many different types of congee.
05:53I've had it plain, with dried scallops, with preserved egg and salted pork, and just whitefish.
06:02Growing up, my mom would make this for breakfast some days, and she would also make it for
06:06me when I was sick, and I couldn't keep any solid foods down.
06:10My mom passed away in January of 2018, so the process of making congee and eating it
06:18reminds me of her love, her dedication, and her patience as my mother.
06:24I'm Mexican-American, and my favorite comfort food is tamales.
06:28Every year, my grandma and her sisters get together, and they all make tamales for us
06:32to eat on Christmas Eve.
06:34So it really reminds me of home and of Christmas time and of my family, so it's really special.
06:40My family makes the dish with shredded pork and a red chili sauce with green olives.
06:44Basically, right now, only my grandma and my aunts know how to make it, but they've
06:49started to teach me and my mom and my sisters how to do it, so that way we can pass it on
06:53to the next generation.
06:55My favorite comfort food is mamey on toast.
06:57It just has this really rich, really savory, and quite salty flavor, and it's just really
07:01comforting, especially when it's put on some thickly-buttered toast.
07:04I have very vivid memories of eating mamey on toast, particularly when I was feeling
07:08a bit sick.
07:09I had an operation when I was three years old.
07:11I went under general anesthetic.
07:13When I woke up, the nurse said, is there anything we can get you?
07:15And my first request was mamey on toast.
07:17My favorite comfort food is kutio, or Thai noodle soup.
07:20Thai noodle soup is the Thai equivalent of what a deli sandwich is to New Yorkers, and
07:25you can customize each kutio order to be your own.
07:29My go-to order is kutio pet, so duck noodle soup, with sen mee, which are the rice noodles
07:35that are thinner than the ones you have in pho.
07:37I only will eat it in this one noodle shop, and I refuse to have it elsewhere because
07:42they just make it so special, and it sucks because I can't really replicate that experience
07:46in any Thai restaurant here, since they don't really specialize in that.
07:49My favorite comfort food are Colombian arepas.
07:54Colombian arepas are cornmeal patties.
07:55They're typically made with salt, water, and masarepa.
07:58This is my favorite comfort food because when I was a kid, my dad and I did not have matching
08:02schedules at all.
08:03So, by the time we would get home, I was already sleeping, and we wouldn't see each other until
08:07the weekend.
08:08And at the weekends, our favorite family time activity was to make arepas.
08:12It was also the first meal I learned how to make.
08:15So we would gather in our tiny kitchen, mold them together, put it on the stovetop, and
08:21then once they were ready and hot, my dad would put butter on top, sprinkle it with
08:25a little bit of cheese, and then it was delicious, and it's still one of my favorite meals.
08:30My favorite comfort food is Puerto Rican pasteles de yuca.
08:34In Spanish, we call it a masa.
08:35It's like a doughy kind of thing that has, like, you can put stuff in it.
08:39So you can put, like, meat, chicken, you can put vegetables, and then they wrap it around
08:44a banana leaf, and then they boil it.
08:46And we make them in bulk, and it takes two to three days to make.
08:50It's my favorite comfort food because my aunts and my mom, they sit around, we talk,
08:57and they're making this dish that is so reminiscent of our Puerto Rican culture.
09:02My comfort food is tlatmachan.
09:05It's a thin flatbread, almost like pizza, that's enjoyed in and around the Middle East.
09:10It's typically made by taking small dough balls and flattening them into really thin
09:14pieces, and then it's topped with beef or lamb, some vegetables and spices, and then
09:20it's cooked in the oven for just a few minutes.
09:23My family and I typically buy a dozen or so of them from Armenian bakeries or grocery
09:28stores here in L.A. because they make them really tasty.
09:31My comfort food is aji de gallina.
09:34It's a spicy chicken mixture that my grandma used to make all the time.
09:38A yellow pepper that's found in Peru, aji amarillo, is mixed with, you sauté some onions.
09:44Then you're going to add some chicken broth, milk, and crackers or bread.
09:49It's a nice little paste sauce.
09:51And then with some boiled chicken that you shredded.
09:54Aji de gallina reminds me of just Peru in general, living there.
09:58My grandfather had 50, 80 chickens, and my grandma would just grab one, and they would be fresh.
10:06I'm British-Pakistani, and my favorite comfort food is a dish called aloo gurdal gari.
10:11The reason I love this dish so much is because it's a curry.
10:14It's very carby, as opposed to one with lots of gravy.
10:17My mum usually adds to it aloo, potatoes, mirch, chilli, namak, salt, haldi, turmeric,
10:25and then she adds something called panch bharan, which is a blend of five spices.
10:29You blend the spices, you fry them, you add your chopped up potatoes, add water, boil
10:33the water off and let the potatoes break up.
10:35It's really heartwarming, very flavoursome, and it also reminds me of coming home from
10:40school and cooking with my mum, learning to cook with my nani, my mum's mum, who passed
10:45away a few years back.
10:46My two favorite Brazilian comfort foods are cheese bread and feijoada.
10:52For cheese bread, there's definitely not an occasion, it's just everywhere, all the time.
10:56You can eat it at any time of the day.
10:58It's without a doubt the food that I miss the most because it's just the perfect snack.
11:03Feijoada is basically a giant black bean soup.
11:07It's definitely something that I grew up eating and it's very iconic in Brazil.
11:13Almost everyone eats it.
11:14My favorite comfort food has to be ful, which is fava beans, and it's usually served hot,
11:22and it's really easy to make, so that's why we make it all the time.
11:25It contains tomatoes, onions, some people put tahina in it, we put in it a lot of spices.
11:32Usually people eat it with peanut bread.
11:35It's my favorite comfort food because over the summer, my grandpa would make it for breakfast
11:39a lot so he'd wake up and it would be there, so it reminds me a lot of home.
11:43As social beings, social distancing may not be easy.
11:46Let's do what we can and make the most of it by enjoying our favorite comfort foods.
11:50Let us know what your favorite comfort food is and why in the comment section below.