Tag Archives: cooking

Recipe – General European

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 33
Occupation: IT Manager
Residence: Westlake, Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Conversational French

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

Age: 40
Occupation: Preschool Teacher
Residence: Redmond, WA
Performance Date: March 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Sourashtra, Tamil

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).