Category Archives: Foodways

年年有余: A Fish for the New Year, and Not to Flip It

Text: On Chinese New Year eve my family eats a whole fish for dinner. The rule, as enforced by my mother IW, is that we must eat the fish from the top down. We never flip the fish over. To flip the fish, 翻 (fān), invokes 翻船 (fānchuán), to capsize a boat. If you flip the fish, you’re putting yourself at increased risk of capsizing your boat in the following year (valid for car analog also). Halfway through the meal, once the top side has been eaten down to the bone, we carefully lift out the spine in one piece and lay it aside, exposing the meat of the underside. The fish doubles as a pun in Chinese: 年年有余 (nián nián yǒu yú), translating to “may every year have surplus,” works because 余 (yú, surplus) sounds like 鱼(yú, fish). Hence “may every year have fish”. The fish must remain partially uneaten at the end of the meal, leaving leftovers for the next day (the first day of the new year) to literalize the surplus. 

Context: My mother, IW, grew up in a suburb of Beijing and has not deviated from the tradition since. She has done it every Lunar New Year I can remember. We typically have two fish over the holiday: one served on New Year’s Eve and another on New Year’s Day, we call the second fish leftovers even though I’m not sure that’s how it works traditionally. The fish at our table is most often halibut, this is tangential to the tradition and just a habit my family has fallen into (I think Costco has a good deal on halibut around that time), the strict tradition would call for carp or sea bass. 

Analysis: Two folkloric mechanisms run in parallel inside one piece of food. The first is homophonic word-magic: 鱼sounds like 余, so the fish itself becomes a small, uttered wish for surplus, and the requirement that some of it remain for the next day extends the wish across the new-year boundary. Homophonic mechanisms like this are common in Chinese culture, an artifact of the language’s limited distinct syllables that lend to a high density of homophones. The second: flipping the fish, enacts, in miniature, the boat-capsizing it warns against, and the taboo presumes the small gesture is continuous with the larger outcome. The careful spine-lift halfway through dinner is the practical accommodation of the rule, with the skeleton removed in one piece so every side of the fish can be reached without ever turning it over. The capsizing prohibition is, in origin, a coastal-fisherman’s taboo that has been carried into Lunar New Year practice throughout China, and in our household, a boat-less one, it has been extended to cars. Strict tradition can involve carp (鲤 puns with 利, profit), the species drift to halibut in my family is folkloric variation. 

Reuben Sandwich

Text

J: So, in my family, um, my grandmother says — told me that uh, that her uncle invented the Reuben sandwich before it was called the Reuben sandwich. It didn’t have a name. And-but she would eat the same sandwich when she was a kid… at the– at her uncle’s deli a- in New York City and, uh, after school she would go and he would make her the sandwich and um, and that she claimed that Aurther Reuben worked at this deli when he was young and that then, when he went off and made his own deli, that he took… that sandwich and then put his name on it and made the Reuben… as we know it. But it was really not called that before when– so the-the family, you know my-my grandmother believes that our family invented the Reuben sandwich.

Interviewer: What’s in the Reuben sandwich?

J: I don’t even know. *laughs* no, no it’s something with Russian dressing… I can’t remember actually what’s in the Reuben sandwich so I feel a-very ashamed that I don’t even know my family’s sandwich. But — and I’ve never had a Reuben sandwich… obviously.

Context

J: I just remember when [informant’s grandmother] was telling me that story and then I — you know, there’s no way to actually to you know, to actually find evidence of this, but… my grandma tends to be… on the money with most things, so I — all of her stories that I have been able to confirm have checked out pretty much to the t, so I’m inclined to believe it, but I have no evidence to actually believe that it all actually was true. But we like to go with it because it’s a fun story to tell and, you know, it’s-to me it’s become some family, you know, it’s our- you know, it’s part of our family folklore I guess you could say.

The informant and his family have been New York City residents for many generations.

Analysis

This story is much less about the food itself, and more about the legend that surrounds it. In fact, the informant has never made a Reuben sandwich, much less eaten one. This suggests that the legend has a deeper purpose than to simply pass on a family recipe. In this case, I suspect that this story serves to connect the informant and his family to the greater history of New York City and the United States.

Folklore is a way to communicate identity, and since the informant does not claim Russian or Irish heritage, the heritage he is identifying with can only be his family’s identity as New Yorkers (even though the region of origin of the Reuben sandwich is generally disputed). Having a story that connects the family to the history of the city through a family deli allows for a greater claim on the place where they have lived for generations.

Buñuelos

Text:

Context: A dessert RF would make with her family during Christmastime, which they call buñuelos. RF recalls the making of this food being an event–her great-grandmother was well-known in the family for making them and would use a specific cooking instrument (a kind of ornamental iron on the end of a long stick) that has since become a family heirloom. The recipe wasn’t written, only in her great-grandmother’s head, but it included some kind of whiskey or bourbon in the batter, and the buñuelos were to be fried in lard. The iron was dipped in the runny batter, then submerged in the hot oil–the batter would instantly begin to fry and fall off of the iron while maintaining shape (usually a snowflake or a pinwheel). Once cooked to a golden brown, the buñuelos would be placed onto a paper towel to drain excess oil, then placed into a large basin of cinnamon sugar. RF recalls being in charge of this step, when she was young, using a fork to roll and coat the buñuelos in the sugar. They would make multiple trays of them for the big family Christmas party, and everyone would take some home at the end of the night–with a reminder to keep them uncovered, as they would get stale otherwise.

Analysis: This is a Latin American dessert that obviously holds significance for this family and their culture. The act of making the food is, in and of itself, a big deal, and it was clearly important that there was more than enough in supply. I see it as a way to provide for the entire family, and a connecting kind of ritual of cooking, especially during the holidays.

Tamales

Text:

RF: The making of the tamales was a big group activity. With everybody, you know, around the table, and the big pots of the masa, and all that stuff. Most of the time we were over at my [aunt]’s house, and my great grandmother was there, and my mom, and–it seems to me like there were so many aunts and uncles around. But, you know, we’d have the big pot with all the masa that they’d mixed, and they’d mixed it up with their hands. We would go to [store name] and get the masa for tortillas, and then we would hand-mix the lard in, and they would do it with their hands and I was always like, “that’s disgusting.”

Interviwer: [laughs]

RF: And then they would have to soak the hojas in water, and you’d have to clean them because there would be like, the strings from the corn, right? And you would have to make sure there were no bugs in there. And then there would be this big spread out on the table and everyone would have a seat, and there would be… the cheese, the grated cheese with the Ortega chilis. And then there would usually be the pork, like shredded red pork. And sometimes there would be the sweet ones, which I didn’t care for–they would put pineapple and cinnamon or raisins, or something, and they would dye the masa different colors. You know, it was just a big deal, very familial. Everyone had the spoons, and spreading out the masa, and then lay the cheese very carefully, and then roll it and tist it and fold it and prop it up, and–it was a big deal. I don’t think it was hours, but it seemed like it did go on all day.

Interviewer: Yeah.

RF: And then they would fill the big pot. And uh, we’d wait and wait for these things to cook, and then we’d have, you know–we’d have dinner the night before, of tamales, and then we would make enough tamales for the party, and then everybody would take home tamales as well.

Context: RF is a woman of mixed Mexican heritage in her mid 50s. She mentions this food being made in her family during Christmastime, and the making and preparation of the tamales being a big event in advance of a large family Christmas party that happened annually. She was born and raised in Southern California, and mentioned the event of going to a very specific store to search for the ingredients for the tamales with her great-grandmother.

Analysis: I think this ritual of food preparation before a big Christmas celebration is a common one, though one as communal and joyous as it is here is not always the case. I think this is a celebration of family, community, and culture, and a way of expressing care for the people around you. This is especially evident in the point made to allow every family member to bring tamales home with them after the event–a show of care and excess made possible only by a festival atmosphere, a way to take care of every member of the family.

Razors in Halloween Candy

Text:

In the 80s, there was a belief and fear that children would unknowingly receive candy at Halloween that had razors or sharp pins in it.

Context:

The informant was a child in the 80s and experienced this fear from their parents firsthand. It was a common fear that children would be injured severely by accidentally swallowing ingesting sharp objects when eating their Halloween Candy.

Analysis:

This fear still prevails today. It is rooted in real events, where parents would find dangerous items and materials in their children’s candy. It shows a belief and a way of thinking that affected parents/guardians mostly.