Menu Twenty-Four

Comfort food—food that reassures—is different things to different people. For some, the phrase conjures meat loaf and mashed potatoes, or stuffed cabbage rolls, or just a good roast chicken. For a friend who’s traveled quite a lot in Southeast Asia, Chinese rice porridge, the salty kind, replaced his mother’s oatmeal as a kind of touchstone. For me, comfort is Champagne and oysters, and it’s a chicken stew, perhaps dating back to a childhood hot lunch dish, made by a doting aunt who called it “chicken in sauce.” I called it “goopy chicken,” and I loved it.