Introduction

In countless interviews for The New York Times over the past thirty years, I have learned that nothing can equal the universal appeal of the food of one’s childhood and early youth. It may be avgolemono, the lemon-and-egg soup, for the exiled Greek. It may be a bowl of soba—buckwheat noodles—in a piping hot broth for a transplanted Japanese; a breakfast dish of congee, a kind of rice porridge with chicken or beef balls, for a displaced resident of Peking or Shanghai; or cha gio, the crisp and tasty spring roll (to be dipped into a fiery fish sauce with hot spices) for a Vietnamese away from the family hearth.