Tag Archives: cooking

Folk Cooking

How you are supposed to cook a ham.

When a customer was coming over, Cindy bought a ham, cut it in half then put it in the oven. She likes to cook for a hobby so I’m sure she believes this gives it a better flavor or something. One day I asked her why she did that before she cooked it and she said “well, you do, why do you do it?” I told her it was how my mom did it, and even my grandmother. After I had asked her I remembered that I had asked my mother the same thing, she told me it was because when she was little, her mother had to cut the ham in half to cook it because it wouldn’t fit in the small oven any other way.

I had never heard this before until one day in folklore class, many people mentioned knowing that people in their family did this too. When I spoke to my grandmother and she was regailing me with stories, she mentioned this. I laughed because I now recognized it, but I also thought I should add this to my folklore collection because everybody else talking about it used a roast and my grandma specifically said they did this when they cooked hams; a little variation.

“Pizzelle Cookies”: Traditional Italian Recipe

The informant was born in Pennsylvania but her parents immigrated to America from Italy. Despite living in America, my informant has very close ties to her Italian roots, and still cooks many traditional Italian dishes.

The informant has been making traditional Italian waffle cookies, or Pizzelles, for as long as I can remember. I asked her to teach me how to make them this month which removes them somewhat from their normal context. Usually, pizzelles are a holiday treat and my informant makes them only for Christmas. She learned to make these waffle cookies from her mother and they used a special waffle iron that her mother brought over from Italy. What’s really special about this tradition now is that my informant still uses that same waffle iron from Italy to bake these holiday treats. No one else in the family makes pizzelles, but my informant revealed that next Christmas, her daughter will have to take over because it’s getting too hard for her to make them (she’s 91 after all). This means that her daughter will become the active bearer of this tradition and the waffle iron from Italy will be passed into her possession. Eventually, it will make its way down through the family. Below, I have transcribed the interview with my informant that took place while we were cooking.

Me: So your mom taught you to make these?

Informant: Yes. We used to make them together was I was little. But when I got married and had kids, I took over the baking.

Me: And this is the same waffle iron she used to use? In Italy?

Informant: The very same.

Me: Why do you still make them? What’s so important about them?

Informant: It’s a Christmas tradition. It wouldn’t be Christmas without waffle cookies!

Me: But don’t you get tired?

Informant: Yes, it’s hard work making 96 dozen cookies one at a time. Eventually Terry (her daughter) will have to take over. Probably next year. She can have this waffle iron too.

Me: So is it just habit to make these Christmas cookies, or does it mean something more to you?

Informant: Well, the habit is the significant part. It’s a tradition that’s always been a part of my life. It’s always been a part of the rest of the family’s too. Isn’t that enough of a reason to keep making them?

Me: Yeah, but does it like help you feel more Italian or something?

Informant: You could say that. We’re keeping an Italian tradition alive by making cookies every year. It makes me remember my parents, my childhood, even my own kids’ childhood—how I would help my mother, and then later, when Terry would help me.

Me: So that’s why you go through all this trouble every year, making tons of these waffle cookies?

Informant: It’s not trouble…I like making the cookies, I’m just getting older is all. It makes me feel connected to the past, to my parents that died a long, long time ago. And because I know that Terry will keep making these cookies, I feel connected to a future I probably won’t get to experience.

I always understood this baking tradition as a way of connecting to the family’s Italian roots. My informant sees it that way too, but she also thinks of it in a way I never would have considered. She knows that the tradition will last into the future, carried on by her daughter, then probably her daughter’s daughter, and so on, which connects my informant not only to the past, but the present and future as well. Perhaps this is why the women in the family make these cookies: to connect to past, cultural roots but also to those of the future.

Recipe:

½ cup shortening

2/3 cup sugar

3 eggs

13/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. vanilla

Pinch of salt

Mix shortening, sugar, and eggs. Beat until blended and smooth. Add flour, baking powder, and vanilla a little at a time mixing well. The texture should be soft but should not run. The more flour, the thicker the pizzelle will be. Other flavors may be substituted for the vanilla such as: anise seed or oil, lemon juice or grated rind, cocoa, orange juice, chopped nuts (very fine).

Annotation:

A very similar recipe can be found in 1000 Italian Recipes by Michele Scicolone. Unlike my informant’s recipe, this one does not use shortening and adds butter to the cookie mix.

Scicolone, Michele. 1000 Italian Recipes. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2004.

Recipe – General European

The informant learned the following recipe for potato soup from her mother:

The informant briefly summarizes the recipe: “It was just a few, um, ingredients: potatoes and milk and cream, and salt and pepper, and onions, and usually it was in a crockpot, uh, but it made a nice, simple, creamy tom—potato soup . . . a simple potato soup that you’d make for the big family. Um, I’m sure it had some of her European background to it, uh, as well. But just simple.” Her expanded account of the process of making the soup is here: Potato Soup

She describes the recipe as “pretty much something you’d make quite often, but not for any particular occasion . . . just, you know.”

The informant likes the recipe but has given up on making it for the moment due to her frustration over the last time she tried to do so: “I haven’t—I haven’t had very much—the last time I tried to make it I screwed it up and something meant—went wrong with the milk, or either the milk was in there and got scalded, or, uh, it cooked too long with the onions or something, but I screwed it up last time and haven’t tried it since.”

Potatoes are known for being cheap, hearty, and, despite the informant’s difficulties, easy to cook, so it makes sense that the recipe would have been made for a large family, since large amounts of the ingredients could be thrown in a crockpot and left to simmer without effort until the milk and cream were added. The informant didn’t specify what part of Europe her family was from, but at least two cookbooks, The Frittata Affair (134) and Delicious Soup Recipes (36) contain similar recipes under the title “Irish Potato Soup,” which is not surprising given the status of potatoes as a staple in Irish cuisine. Both of those recipes, however, substitute butter for cream.

Sources:

Johnson, F Keith. Delicious Soup Recipes. New York: Ventures, 2010.

Pochini, Judy. The Frittata Affair: Adventures in Four-Star Dining at Home. Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2007.

Song – India

Family Cooking Song

Onte gammum ontay samial kari odia

Tenna onta moorgnokai kali cut karia

Tech chadu howkam kali tarya

Koli kouli techam keri

Ovadu chadu tellate seidi

Aski ya chockate foiyai tora mora karya

In a city there was a cook

The cook took an onion and cut it

She put the onions into the pot

And she mixed it really well

She waited for a while and see if it was done

After that she took it and served for all to eat.

My informant is one of 6 children in her family and as she was growing up she had many chores to do around the house. One of them included helping her older sisters cook on weekends. She told me that her oldest sister told her this song when she was 10 years old. She said that most probably she made it up on the spot but she remembers it really well. She said sometimes when she cooks she unconsciously sings it because it stuck onto her that well.

I feel that when my informant was growing up in India, she did not have many things to do while cooking. For example these days one could watch TV or listen to radio and things like that. Even though my informant had those facilities they didn’t have them in their kitchen, which was separate from their family room. So they instead resorted to singing songs about cooking and enjoying themselves together.

Today while my informant cooks she rarely sings songs. She jut usually just watches TV or doesn’t do anything at all. As for my other relatives that live in India, they still sometimes sing songs. When I went to India last summer, my cousin still sang songs when she cooked. She learnt most of them from her mom (my aunt).