Tag Archives: food

Egusi Soup

TEXT:

EI: “So basically, in my family but I feel like Nigerian culture in general, there’s this one dish… It’s a soup, it’s called egusi soup. I don’t know all that goes into it. I know egusi is a melon, but you eat the seeds, so the soup is made by grinding up the seeds and mixing it with vegetables. It kind of smells… It makes the house smell bad. Not necessarily bad, but you know when egusi soup is being made in the house. It’s just a dish for whenever, but there is a process of making it, so you have to plan in advance. Finding the different ingredients is hard because you have to go to a specific Nigerian grocery store, and there aren’t that many of those, so you have to make the trek to go to the grocery store and make it which is a full day kind of thing. It’s more difficult, but it’s not for, like, special occasions.”

CONTEXT: EI is a black freshman at USC studying business. She grew up in the Bay area in California, but her family is Nigerian.

EI: “My family, we don’t make it very much, but it’s basically when my mom or my grandma comes and she and makes it. It makes me feel like oh wow, it’s a part of Nigerian culture, like immersed. I feel like that was always fun because my sister and I would come home and we’d smell the smell and get so excited. We’d be like “oh my gosh, yay! Egusi!” Because before we’d have it once in every like five years. We’ve been having it more recently which is cool, but now, we have it and it’s that same excitement of ‘Oh, I haven’t had this in a while’ even if it was the other day.”


ANALYSIS: I’ve never heard of egusi soup before, but a quick google search reveals that it’s a fairly common dish associated with Nigerian heritage. While the dish is not eaten at a specific time in EI’s family, it definitely has a purpose: for EI, it’s a means to connect her to her culture. She stated that it makes her feel immersed in Nigerian culture. Nigerian culture is not super common in the Bay area, and based on EI’s comments, it takes effort to express that identity. After all, she stated that Nigerian grocery stores are far away—in order to acquire the ingredients to make egusi soup, it takes a lot of effort. The making of egusi soup becomes very deliberate. Not only that, it’s acquired an association with the women in her family as her mother and grandmother are the people who make it. On the topic of ingredients, it’s interesting that the egusi hasn’t been replaced. Often, people replace certain materials if they’re hard to get. However, because the egusi itself is the main part of the soup, it can’t be replaced without losing the egusi-ness that makes it egusi soup. It makes the trek to the Nigerian grocery store is entirely necessary.

Poffertjies

TEXT:

  • 1 cup flour
  • 4 Tbls sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup hot water
  • 3 eggs
  • 4 Tbls vegetable oil
  • Butter
  • Powdered sugar

Mix flour, sugar, and salt. Add water, eggs, and oil. Stir until lumps are gone. Fry on a poffertjies pan or fry silver-dollar sized pancakes in a frying pan. To serve, spread with butter and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

CONTEXT: EC is a white graduate student at USC studying linguistics. Up until attending USC, she lived in Pasadena, California. That being said, her dad is from Iowa, and her mom is from Indiana.

The recipe itself was typed and printed on a piece of printer paper.

EC: I learned it from my dad. He makes poffertjies for us. We make it for Easter and Christmas brunch. It’s very much a brunch, a breakfast. It’s a Dutch recipe, you need a special pan to make it in: a round pan. All the ones I’ve seen are cast-iron, although I would imagine that you can make them in a non cast-iron, but it has little divots in them that are less than an inch in diameter, and there are about 15-20 of them. It’s like pouring batter into  a mold, and then you use a special two-tined fork to flip them and get them out, so it’s kind of a process. My dad probably learned it from… There’s a town in Iowa where he met my mom and he got married called Orange City Iowa, and it’s one of the most Dutch towns in America. They had a saying. I don’t know if this was a Dutch saying or the non-Dutch people that said it, my dad was mostly Swedish and Irish, and it’s: “If you ain’t Dutch, you ain’t much.” So I’m sure he learned it from living in that town. My dad typed out the recipe for Christmas: he gave my brother and I poffertjie pans for Christmas, and then he also gave us the recipe.


ANALYSIS: Wikipedia shows that the dish is frequently made with yeast and buckwheat, but this is not shown in EC’s recipe. Instead, it uses accessible ingredients: a nonspecific type of flour, vegetable oil, etc. It may simply be because yeast and buckwheat aren’t pantry staples in many American households—since the recipe was a gift to his children, EC’s father may have also wanted to ensure that they could actually make it. The gift of the recipe was almost a rite of passage, given to continue the poffertjie legacy in their family but only once they were old enough and living on their own. There are many nonspecific parts of the recipe. The amount of butter and powdered sugar, for instance, are completely vague. These are the portions of the recipe that don’t concern the actual making of the recipe: they’re additions at the end. That being said, EC would know the general amount that’s required from watching her dad make them over the years, taking down that potential barrier. Any people outside of their family who attempted to make them may struggle with that particular step, but the written recipe becomes more of a reminder than a guide for those who are already familiar.

St. Patrick’s Day – holiday practices

Nationality: Irish, American
Age: 59
Occupation: Office Manager
Residence: California
Language: English

Text:

KT: “So St. Patrick’s Day is definitely a holiday. It’s a pretty popular holiday in the US and think in Ireland now too, but we celebrate it more traditionally American maybe. We [her family] usually try to go to mass. Sometimes it’s hard for you guys [her kids] because of school, but I always try to go if I can. It’s a Holy Day of Obligation, so technically you are required to go to mass. We also always wear green of some kind. I still jokingly pinch people if they aren’t in green, especially if they come to my house for dinner, they know better. St. Patrick’s Day is always during Lent, so when it falls on a Friday in Lent, it’s nice because there is no fasting on St. Patrick’s Day. We usually have dinner with the whole family. As you know, me, your grandmother, and your aunt always make corned beef, cabbage, and boiled potatoes. There’s also usually lots of good drinking going on too.”

Me: “Why do you make those dishes specifically?”

KT: “It’s what my family has always had. I mean even growing up that what’s we had. I know it’s a pretty cheap dish, which my family was pretty poor growing up, so it was kind a cheap meal, but still special. I mean it’s pretty famously what you eat on St. Patrick’s Day, but I think it had something to do with when all the poor Irish immigrants fled to America, it was what they could afford to celebrate with. Your dad and his family never celebrated much when he was little, so it’s pretty much the meal now. I like to keep the traditions the same.”

Me: “Did you ever go to bars to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?”

KT: “Probably when I was younger. When I lived in New York I could barely afford to fly home for Christmas and such, so me and your dad usually celebrated with friends in the city. I’m sure we went out to bars and stuff, as young people do, but it was always more of a religious and family centered holiday when I was growing up. We also watched the parade when we [KT and her husband] lived in the city, but we don’t really do that so much now. I didn’t really do it when I was younger either. As you know, now we obviously celebrate at home with a big family [aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc.] dinner.”

Context:

KT is a 59 year old from California. She is from Irish descent, as well as Catholic. Therefore, for her St. Patrick’s Day is both a cultural holiday practice and a religious holiday practice. I gathered this information in an interview that I recorded and then transcribed.

Analysis:

St. Patrick is an interesting holiday because its many different practices hold many different origins. Most of the practices were popularized by Irish immigrants in the United States, rather than in Ireland. For example, corned beef and cabbage is a distinctly American custom that was started by Irish immigrants, which now serves a traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal. However, some aspects of the holiday practice, especially when religious in nature, stem from Ireland, such as going to mass to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, on his feast day. Feast days celebrates and venerates saints, usually on the day the died. The practice of St. Patrick’s in the United States developed to celebrate Irish culture. It is an interesting case of acculturation, as many traditional ways of celebration have been forgone and the more commercial aspects, such as parades, dyeing the river green, and bar crawls have overtaken to become what the holiday is popularly known for. In many ways, the holiday has become a sort of tourist attraction to Irish culture, one that is usually incorrect, a parody of, or an over exaggeration. Even so, for people from Irish or Catholic cultures, this day is often celebrated differently from the masses in order to give proper fidelity or honor to the cultural/religious holiday. While it is still a day of celebration, it is centered around family and worship, rather than parades or drinking. Therefore, the holiday practice varies widely based on the person who is celebrating because the cultural/religious holiday has become widely popularized and commercialized.

Russian recipes – Piroshkis, Borscht

Nationality: Russian
Age: 59
Occupation: Office Manager
Residence: California
Language: English

Text:

KT: “There are a couple recipes that I have memorized and these three I learned from my grandmother, so your great-grandmother, who I am almost sure learned them from her mother. Your great-great grandmother came from to America from Russia, so that would make sense.”

Me: “Where did you first learn them?”

KT: “I have memories of learning them from her when I was probably around your age, maybe a little younger, when she lived out in Lancaster. I learned how to make piroshki, and both hot and cold borscht from her. My mother knows how to make them too, so I’m sure I also made them with her, but I distinctly remember make them in my grandmother’s little kitchen with her.”

Me: “What are the traditional dishes called and how do you make them?”

KT: “Well piroshkis are kind of like little loaves of bread that are fried and filled with meat and rice. Your dad likes when I make those the most. My favorite is borscht. I know how to make both hot and cold borscht, which are kind of similar. They are both made with beats and cabbage, just one of them is a cold soup and one is a hot soup.”

Me: “How do have the recipe, is it hand-written or is it in a cookbook?”

KT: “I might have them written down somewhere, but I just have them memorized, so I never need to look up how.”

Context:

KT is a 59 year old woman from California. Her, her mother, and her grandmother have all lived here for most of their lives. Her great-grandmother immigrated from Russia and brought these recipes with her, which have been passed down the generations. She has the recipes memorized, so does her mother and grandmother. Usually, she or the other women in the family make all the meals, traditional or otherwise, for family gatherings. She still makes these recipes regularly. I have eaten all three of these dishes that she has prepared, but I do not know how to make them. She told me this in an in-person interview that I recorded and later transcribed.

Analysis:

These three dishes are traditional recipes from Eastern Europe that have been collected and stored matrilineally. Cooking holds a special significance because it is a way to stay connected to older family members, a person’s culture, or enjoy foods that remind a person of their family/childhood. It is something that is often taught to a younger family member by an older or more experienced family member. Usually, these recipes are shared (especially in the 21st century) when a person is first entering young adulthood. Cooking is often viewed, especially historically, as a part of the domestic sphere which regulated it to a women’s role in the household. This means that much of traditional cooking is preserved through the women in a family line or culture. We can see the structure of domestic ideologies of Eastern Europe through the preservation of cooking as a female role, even into the 21st century. Many of these recipes also have spread and gained popularity. Often, different Eastern European countries will have the same dishes by different names. However, these dishes have also gained popularity in several non-eastern European countries due to Russian diaspora. The countries have collected the dishes as their own, often under a significantly different name, when at various times in history huge swaths of the Russian or Eastern European populations left and settled in new areas, such as is the case with my informant’s great-grandmother in the United States.

Christmas Eve Ritual

text: “Every Christmas eve, on my Italian side, we eat seven kinds of fish. My mom is Italian and her parents came to the U.S. from Italy. They taught her that eating the seven kinds of fish combines their old Italian traditions and unites them with their new ones in America. The fish we eat are, clams, mussels, halibut, shrimp, calamari, etc.” – Informant

context: This is a yearly tradition on Christmas eve done by his entire Italian family. Even when they’re traveling, if they have no access to all of these fish or any of them, they will jokingly buy Swedish fish candy in order kind of fulfill the tradition. The informant learned this from their mother, who is Italian, and she learned it from her parents, who moved to America from Italy.

analysis: This is a holiday ritual but also a cultural food tradition done yearly by Italian people and immigrants. Done by a lot of Italian/Americans, this tradition combines their old culture with a new culture.