Somewhere, Each of Us Remembers a Memorable Meal

Somewhere in the memory banks of our taste buds resides the recollection of our most unforgettable meal — the perfect combination of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. It doesn’t require a great degree of effort to conjure up those tastes, even today.

In my case, it was my mother’s homemade chicken and noodles. I can still remember sitting at my white children’s table under the old Western Electric Tiger wall telephone while the adults ate at the kitchen table. My plate was piled high with thick egg noodles and the stringy meat of a fat laying hen. It was pure heaven. Years later, I can still taste those thick chewy noodles layered with the fat-laden broth.

True farm to table

The meal was a treat. Because of work involved, chicken and noodles was a special-occasion dish. It was also the reality of true farm-to-table because it was created in a 1950s farmhouse on a 400-acre Corn-Belt spread that specialized in fattening 150 head of beef and an equal number of hogs. Given the farm’s output, it is remarkable that chicken was the core of my favorite meal.

Preparation was a major production. A day or two prior, it was my duty to select the hen for the feast. Armed with a flashlight and a special tool – a pole with a protruding, long, stiff wire hook at the end, I proceeded just past dusk to the chicken house to select the best bird. Shining the light on the roosting hens, I chose a nice, fat specimen and placed it in a coop for the night. The next morning in the yard, my father severed the head. Later, my mother would bring out a pail of boiling water to douse the hen to aid in removing the feathers. It was a laborious and smelly process.

Finally, in the early afternoon, it was time to add the carcass into a boiling stew pot with some onion, celery, carrots, and spices. My mother simmered that wonderful concoction for two to three hours, sometimes longer. It all depended on how tough the old bird was. While it boiled on the stove, she prepared the egg noodles – beating eggs in water and salt and slowly adding the flour, then rolling the dough out in big sheets on the counter in the kitchen before cutting the flattened dough into wide noodles. Later, she plopped them into the broth. The result was my fondest culinary memory. The chicken was O.K., but the important element was the fat and taste that it provided to those wonderful thick noodles. I packed them away until my stomach hurt.

What else makes a memory

Of course, there were other great meals. More recently, it was a cassoulet in a small restaurant outside the walls of Carcassonne, France: luscious flageolet beans expertly mixed with a lovingly created duck confit. It is the flavor of the beans that lodges in my taste-bud neurons. Another fond memory is a Spanish dish I made: Pado con Peras, duck with pears.  It’s simple, but delicious. Like my mother’s chicken and noodles, it takes some preparation and long roasting. But it’s worth every minute.

We all have those memories. They are a combination of something different – a surprise to the tastebuds: the memory of the bites themselves that rewarded those neurons with a surprise and satisfaction that resonated and engaged every part of the digestive system. For me, it’s all about the memory of the food and nothing else.

Of course, sometimes the memories involve other elements – the location, the view, the company, the zeitgeist, the sounds and smells of the setting, or just your attitude at the time. My memory of the cassoulet was probably aided by having just completed a lengthy historical tour of the medieval walled city that was a center for courtly love in the 12^th-century and home to the Albigensian Heresy.

But it is the plate piled high with stewed chicken and steaming, thick yellow egg noodles that ranks the highest. If I were to choose a last meal, that would be it. Thanks, Mom.

What’s your favorite food memory to share? Please comment below!