Chicken Soup for the Weary Soul
The New York Times
After another difficult year, finding joyful moments in cooking can feel impossible. But for our columnist Eric Kim, it’s a worthy resolution for the new year.
The very first time I boiled a whole chicken, nearly 10 years ago, I was overwhelmed by how much it perfumed my apartment with the scent of my mother’s kitchen. I wasn’t trying to recreate her samgyetang, but I did, by accident.
Fortified with ginseng and jujubes, this Korean chicken soup is a garlic lover’s dream. I remember how the sound of the cloves, plunked into the pot, echoed the syllables of the dish’s name: Sam. Gye. Tang.
But it was the smell of my golden broth that transported me. When I inhaled its aroma, the past ran through me like an electric current, and I burst into tears. Sick with nostalgia (and a gnarly cold), I found myself suddenly in two places at once: my kitchenette in New York City and Atlanta, where I was born and raised in a brick house with a peach tree in the front yard and my childhood bedroom lined with Michelle Branch posters.
