Tag Archives: food

Food in New Zealand

Nationality: New Zealand
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/16
Primary Language: English

Piece:

“So what do you eat normally in New Zealand?”

“We eat a lot of lamb. There are 13 sheep for every person in New Zealand. I guess… mince (minced meat) and cheese pies. We eat that a lot. It’s like a normal lunch or dinner food. But it’s like too normal to be our cultural food…”

“So what’s your cultural food?”

“Well there’s a lot of dessert. Do you know Pavlova? It’s like a meringue cake. Oh and there’s Hangi. It’s like the traditional form of cooking in New Zealand. Meat gets buried underground for like 8 hours. It’s this real smokey flavor. ”

Informant & Context:

My informant for this piece is a USC student from New Zealand who lived in Auckland for 18 years. She is speaking about cultural food in both senses: the first being food she commonly eats, and the second being historical or traditional food.

Regarding Hangi: it is a traditional Maori method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit oven. It is still used in special occasions. (Wikipedia)

Thoughts:

These items of food don’t seem especially odd by western standards. Presumably this is because they take a lot of influence from English culture and English food—where a lot of American culture is rooted as well. It was slightly odd to me that my informant cited a Maori tradition as the cultural food of New Zealand—considering that in the USA, we don’t define traditional American culture as Native American culture.

Gross Norwegian Food

Nationality: Norwegian
Age: 20
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/10/16
Primary Language: Norwegian
Language: English

“So we have this little tradition in Norway where we eat lye fish. Do you know lye? Do you know what lye is? So lye is a liquid obtained by leeching ashes or strong alkali. So you literally put a fish in ash and you let it rot. Then you leave it in the ash or lye until it becomes so fermented that all that’s left is the part of the fish that doesn’t serve any function, the jello that’s only there to make sure that the rest of the body stays where it should be. And that’s what you eat. Once a year. For Christmas, primarily. And you eat it with so many things on the side that you disguise the taste of the fish. So like, the whole point is you use as many small dishes as you can. You can’t just eat the fish because the fish tastes horrible. And we all agree that it tastes terrible, but we all keep eating it because it’s tradition. It comes from Lofoten. It comes from way up north. It comes from a way of preservation. So it was back in the day when we didn’t have refrigerators or anything like that. They could put the fish on lye. And then that would… You know, it rots, but you can still eat it. It’s like, yeah, it works. It’s called lutefisk.”

 

Lutefisk sounds like an absolutely awful dish. It seems the source felt that way about it anyway. He recalls eating it every Christmas ever since he was little. No one enjoys it, his family merely does it out of tradition. The tradition, like he said, stems from old times when fish couldn’t be preserved in refrigerators and whatnot. So instead, people would preserve fish by keeping it in ash.

It sounds like this dish wasn’t invented intentionally. Ash was probably used to preserve other things, and they had no idea the effect it would have on fish. They probably preserved the fish in ash or lye for a couple of days, came back, and seen a whole different product than they were expecting. I’m surprised it’s still around though, considering the method of making it and what it actually is. Must be a very strong tradition for people to still be eating it today.

People probably hated it back then, too, but like the source said, with enough side dishes, the fish could be forgotten. It probably allowed ancient Norwegian peoples to still take in some kind of protein during the heavy winter months, along with whatever nutrients they got from the harvest.

 

For more on this recipe:

Legwold, Gary. The Last Word on Lutefisk: True Tales of Cod and Tradition. Minneapolis: Conrad Henry, 1996. Print.

Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner with Mac and Cheese

Nationality: Half Japanese, Half Chinese
Age: 20
Occupation: College Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/17/16
Primary Language: English

Tradition: An adult male, half Chinese half Texan, brings mac and cheese to his family Thanksgiving dinner every year. The family is a mix of ethnicities: Japanese, Chinese, and Caucasian.

The informant is a half Japanese half Chinese female, age 20.

Informant: For Thanksgiving, we have one cousin (Eric) whose sole responsibility is to bring the mac and cheese. And every year, our aunt asks everyone what they want to bring, and on the list, she’ll write “Eric-Mac and Cheese.” Apparently it’s the best mac and cheese.

Collector: Do you like it? Does your family like it?

Informant: It’s pretty good, I’ve eaten it. I assume that my family likes it. Because he’s demanded to bring it every year. I’m just waiting to see what happens when he doesn’t bring it.

Collector: Where did he learn to make it from?

Informant: I asked him about it, and he said he pulled the recipe off the internet. And he proceeded to forward it to me, so I can make it for myself.

Collector: What do you think it means to you or to your family?

Informant: I think it’s funny that my aunt assumes that that’s the only thing he can make and that we can eat. This has been going on for five years now. So whenever it’s Thanksgiving, I know that there’s something that I can eat–there’s gonna be mac and cheese!

Even though the family has a mix of different ethnic backgrounds, it’s interesting to see that every year, they demand and designated for one family member to bring the mac and cheese to Thanksgiving dinner. I think that this family tradition is reflective of the “melting pot” culture of America, where families come together and share their food cultures with one another.

Bolas/Empanadas de Verde

Nationality: Ecuadorian
Age: 19
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/1/16
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

“Okay, so basically, ummm, una bola de verde is a platano ball, but you will put meat or vegetables or chicken or whatever you want inside of it. Ummm you can put, you can make it in like bola form which is, like, you put it in soup, ummmm, or you can, like, fry it, and it’s an empanada de verde. So good. So good.”

This traditional Ecuadorian meal is quite mouthwatering. It translates directly into “Ball of Green” or “Empanada of Green” depending on which form you use. For the bola or ball form, you take a green plantain or platano, as it’s called in Spanish, chop it up, and flatten the pieces. Once they’ve been flattened, you take ground meat or vegetables, put it on top of the flattened plantains, and wrap the plantains around the filling, rolling it into a ball. Then, you deep fry the filled plantain balls until crispy. The other method is to flatten the whole plantain, put the filling on top, and then fold the plantain over itself, creating a whole moon shape. Then, you put this in the oven and bake it, turning it into an empanada.

Plantains are an Ecuadorian staple. Because they grow so easily in Ecuador’s climate, the country has an abundance of them, and they make hundreds of recipes using plantains. However, most people use them when their still green. The greener the plantain, the less sweet. Sometimes, if people want the dish to be sweeter, they’ll wait for the plantain to ripen longer, and they’ll use it once it’s yellow or blackening.

Mexican Stew

Nationality: Mexico
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Brazil
Performance Date: April 24, 2016
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English, Portuguese

Informant was a 19 year old female who was born in Mexico and currently lives in Brazil. She came to visit me.

Informant: Even though we live in Brazil, we always eat Mexican food, my mom always found a way to make it. She made sure that we didn’t lose our Mexican identity through food. It was kinda embarrassing to invite your friends when we had stew.

Collector: Why was it embarrassing?

Informant: Because to people that don’t know it and haven’t tried it before, it doesn’t really smell appealing. Like I once made a friend of mine eat it, and I was so scared that she wouldn’t like it, but she did, thank God.

Collector: What is in this stew?

Informant: Well, there’s different soups, but the one my mom makes the most is this one with pork belly. It has corn, onions, a special pepper, garlic, and green sauce. The ingredients are what make it smell gross, but I’m used to it like I grew up with it. It’s something we also typically eat at Christmas, it’s a Mexican thing.

Collector: Is there any special reason why you eat this at Christmas?

Informant: I mean, it doesn’t mean anything s pecial like it doesn’t represent anything. It’s just because it’s warm and it’s cold outside. It’s funny, if I don’t have anything spicy in a period of a week, I start to lose it. I get mood swings, or I start feeling desperate for it, spicy food can actually be an addiction. I used to bring chili powder to school. (She laughs) I actually have a purse size of the chili powder, so I put it in my purse when I go out.

Collector: Why do you like this particular piece of folklore?

Informant: I like it because my family makes it and I’ve been eating it since I was little so I’m used to it. My first memory of it was when my grandmother made it in Mexico on Christmas. It’s always reminded me of home. It’s like a part of my identity.

I think that my friend’s story about her Mexican stew and how embarrassed she was to show it to others who weren’t Mexican was really interesting. It shows how she has such pride in her culture, that she doesn’t want anyone tearing it down because they don’t understand it. I personally always like to show people my Brazilian food, and I get upset when they don’t like it. I found it really interesting and enlightening how food can be a big part of our cultural identity.