I recently picked up a new cookbook: specifically this cookbook. There are lots of staple “all-the-time” foods you can get in New York City, but near the top of my list are the hand pulled noodles at Xi’an Famous Foods (extra spicy).
It’s a comfort food. Everyone needs at least one — that meal you get when the day has been a day. The meal you eat in the restaurant, staring out the window at the world, wondering what the hell happened. A meal that is 50% reward, 50% antidepressant. That is, as the kids would say, self-care.
…this feels like it’s getting pretty far away from cookbooks? Is that still part of this or was that just an in to talk about noodles?
I have had lots of comfort foods, but the best way to organize them is probably geographically.
In NYC, it’s handpulled noodles.
Previously in NYC it was popping into a very small bar-only Japanese place for some ramen. Which is… also noodles, just from a different country.
In LA it was sushi. You thought it was going to be noodles again! Don’t you look silly, it’s something totally different!1
In Chicago it was an Italian Beef dipped with hot peppers.
In Chicago it was also two char dogs with the full Chicago set of toppings.
In New Orleans it was 3 pounds crawfish, 2 pounds shrimp, 1 pound corn/potatoes.
In Phoenix it was a green chile burrito, a side of rice, and a horchata.
And that list raises two questions: (A) Do you have a cardiologist? and (B) Does your cardiologist have a therapist?
I do have one healthy comfort food. Not technically a food — it’s juice. Cold-pressed juice. The ones you pass in the grocery store saying “who the hell wants to drink kale?” Me. I am that guy. It’s a long story that involves me, beets, and the 2023 Writers’ Guild strike, and that’s too much story to break open right now.
So I bought the cookbook. [Finally, back to the cookbook. That’s the whole reason I’m still reading! It’s the ‘Rosebud’ of this piece!] Because I love these noodles and I wanted to make them at home. I wanted that comfort food on-demand. I’m sure at some level I want to feel the satisfaction of making something great in my kitchen — a space that’s mostly used in a tornadic frenzy to spit out something that’ll make my kids stop passive-aggressively saying “oooh my stomach is GROWLING” for 90 more minutes.
And buying a cookbook with your comfort food in it could be seen as a cry for help. An attempt to skip the middleman and go straight to the guys unloading that pure stuff direct from Colombia. A way to eat an amount of noodles that would incur shame and possibly criminal charges were it done in public.
It probably is a few of those things.
But there’s also a joy in the mastery of something. Of making a noodle, or a candle, or sweater. Creating the thing that brings you joy, on your own terms, in your own time. And getting better at it every time.
I loved sushi in LA. But I couldn’t always afford sushi in LA, because I was newly married, broke as hell, and could not convince anyone in Los Angeles to pay me to do political comedy that clearly belonged in New York. We were poor. Actually poor, not “let’s cancel one of our streaming services” poor. We had to work with what we had, and thankfully one of the things we had in our odd little East Hollywood apartment was a 1950s oven that had a stovetop with a griddle and an oven with a fully motorized rotating rotisserie. So I started making rotisserie chickens, because you could buy one cheap at the grocery store and it could stretch into a ton of recipes.
Making the same thing — a roast chicken — week after week after week, the basic stuff like “is it cooked all the way through” or “is it good” become a given and you start diving into the details. What goes under the skin, do you marinate it, do you dry rub, how do you get the skin crispy… a million things that create experience, create expertise.
I am excited to do that with noodles… but I’m excited to do that because that is how human beings work. Experts are made through passion and love2 and hard work and time, every day. You’ve got to find a thing you care about, fail at it a zillion times, get good enough to consistently do a not-crappy version, and then make it your own.
And that.
Is why.
These AI bros.
Are incomprehensible to me.
“You can be a singer, a painter, a coder, an actor, with zero work! Zero skill! Zero experience! Zero effort!”
Even if all of those vaporware lies weren’t built on an architecture of stealing from human beings who actually do those things… it’s such an incredibly shitty way to do anything you purportedly love.
If you’re an “artist” who types prompts into AI to create images… I just don’t believe you. I don’t believe making art brings you joy, or comfort, or any kind of growth as a person. Because if it did, you’d love it enough to make it yourself. Make it your own. Own your own joy. Relish in gaining expertise.
We have a swath of people out there calling themselves chefs when they’re just ordering takeout. Allergic to cookbooks but obsessed with dinner parties, like a plantation owner pretending they laid out the cotillion spread.
The good news is they’ll never amount to anything. The bad news is you’re gonna have to spend hours of your life hearing them explain the secret of a perfect rotisserie chicken.
-Greg
1 From the same restaurant.
2 This sounds hornier than it is, chill out dude.
