According to Wikipedia, comfort food, or comfort foodSince the concept was born or became popular in the United States, it is called food that brings nostalgic or sentimental value to someone, and that is characterized above all by its simple preparation. Nostalgia can be specific to an individual or it can apply to a culture. Thus, comfort food for an American is going to be very different from that for an Ecuadorian, but the feeling of comfort and nostalgia it will produce is similar. It’s as if they made your soul happy in one bite.
The term apparently came into use in the 1970s, when the Palm Beach Post published an article recounting a study of how stressed-out adults sought out simple food associated with their childhood.
This gastronomic concept is committed to the simple, homemade, that is to say, by traditional recipes that have passed from generation to generation in the family, in the grandmother’s house, those of a lifetime. It is a return to the basics, to its origins. Thus, it recovers the gastronomic identity and the recipe book that is transmitted within each family, for decades.
A study conducted at an American university divided students into four groups, providing them with Comfort Food, convenience food, “conceit food”, high in sugars and fats, and “healthy food”, concluding that the intake of the different foods was a determining factor to modify in some way the state of mind of the same. That’s how important gastronomy is.
For a Spaniard it could be a potato omelette, a garlic soup, a chickpea stew or a puchero. In my case, I must confess that the cheese soup and the egg broth are probably the dishes that comfort me the most. But what will these dishes be for Ecuadorians?
In Mercado del Río a survey was carried out for a week, randomly selecting about a thousand diners. The question they were asked was: what do you think are the three iconic guaiac dishes? Those that the typical Guayaquileño carries in his heart. The survey had a selection of fifteen dishes, of which three had to be marked.
The responses were quite interesting. The results:
The first three were onion, bolón de verde and guatita. What is impressive is not that the encebollado had three times more votes than the second course, but that it was also one of the three always chosen in more than 90% of the survey, thus obtaining an indisputable and sweeping first place.
The first two, undergoing modifications, date back centuries. The encebollado from the Valdivia culture, and the bolón, prior to the colony. It is likely that we inherited the guatita from Spain, where it was prepared six centuries ago. And you, what is your comforting dish?
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
