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From
Generation to Generation: Foods of Our Heritage
by Janet Peterson
My grandparents, Fredrich Gustav and Lily Wolters Fischer, emigrated
from Germany to the United States in the early 1900s and brought
with them many foods from the “old country.” I only
knew them a short time because they died within a year of each other
when I was still in elementary school. However, I still remember
Grandma’s rotkraut, or red cabbage, simmering on
her wood-burning stove. (She never did have an electric stove.)
Rotkraut is part of our Thanksgiving dinner each year, usually made
by my older sister. Since my husband served his mission in Germany
and acquired a love for all foods German, he also welcomes this
dish, which we eat not only at Thanksgiving but whenever I prepare
rouladen, thinly sliced beef rolled with onion and seasonings
made tender by hours of cooking in broth. As I was on the food committee,
our ward family also got a taste of my food heritage this year when
we prepared a German dinner for the Christmas party.
One of our Japanese
friends, Shauna Ushio Frandsen, often cooks foods of her heritage.
Japanese cuisine is such a part of her children’s food memories
that one of her sons asked for a table-top sukiyaki cooker
for Christmas. Another Japanese friend, Chieko Okazaki, served us
teppanyaki, a meal that pleased not only the palate but
also the eye, with her artfully arranged platters of steak, chicken,
asparagus, mushrooms, and of course, rice.
Cooking foods of one’s
family’s heritage connects past to present and provides an
opportunity around the dinner table of remembering ancestors and
telling family stories.
Cookie-Curci
Wright sent me via e-mail her reminiscences about her Italian-American
food heritage, which is so descriptive and delightful that I am
including it in its entirety. I am also inviting readers to submit
their own dinner table reminiscences.
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Cookie
Curci-Wright's Italian grandparents |
Ancestral
Cuisine: An Acquired Taste
Like most people, I love
to eat good food, especially during the holidays when an abundance
of traditional fare is set upon the family table. As an Italian
American, I enjoy the taste, textures, and aromas of the foods of
my heritage. These foods represent a continuity of family and tradition.
For that reason, I like to prepare uniquely traditional foods during
the holiday season.
This past holiday, I
gave a dinner party for friends and family at which I served a variety
of these favorite family foods. To my non-Italian guests, I explained
that some of my dishes were ancestral recipes. The expressions on
the faces of my guests, as they politely declined my more exotic
dishes, gave me pause for thought. I came to realize just how different
my traditional foods are from the average family menu. But, it's
this very difference that makes them unique and special.
Some of these
traditional dishes include: squid, stuffed with bread crumbs and
baked in tomato sauce; sautéed mustard greens in garlic,
olive oil, and red pepper flakes; roasted bell peppers bathed in
garlic, parsley and olive oil; Baccala stew; eggplant parmesan;
and sliced oranges seasoned with olive oil, garlic salt, and black
pepper.
Like most kids,
I wasn't born liking these unique family foods. My fondness for
them developed over the years after sniffing their piquant aromas
drifting in from Grandma's kitchen. Associated with all of these
family dishes is a feeling of togetherness, and a sense of well
being.
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| Photograph
courtesy of Cookie Curci-Wright
Vene,
Mangia: The Curci family waits for Grandma's braciola sauce,
seasoned with wild rosemary and basil, at one of their traditional
Sunday dinners in 1955. |
Grandpa believed, like
many from the old county, that a meal of his favorite foods relieved
the tensions of a stressful day. He also believed that our spirit
sighs after a good meal and that we should spend that time in rest
and reflection.
For me, each taste of
these traditional foods rekindle family customs, memories, and a
sense of legacy. However, to someone who doesn't share my heritage,
and has never come face to face with a casserole of baked squid,
the sight of these small, tentacled relatives of the octopus can
be somewhat unsettling.
To prepare and gather these provincial foods takes extra time and
care. But that's all a part of their charm and tradition. Like my
Mom always says, "Food that is too easily prepared is like
opening a bottle of champagne without the "pop," it would
eliminate half the fun".
Christmas Eve just wouldn't be Christmas Eve without the robust
aroma of Baccala filling the air. This dehydrated salted cod fish
comes from the store dried in salt and is the texture of wood until
it is soaked in water for twenty-four hours, making sure to change
the water every few hours. Then it is simmered in a stew pot of
spicy tomato sauce and served with white spaghetti. This dish recalls
priceless memories for Mom, memories that can't be found in today's
fast foods.
Many of our family recipes
come from the regions of our ancestors: polenta , butter, and flat
noodles from the northern area of Italy, and sea food and tubular
pasta from the south. I'm fortunate to have had grandparents who
came from several regions of Italy.
As a child, Grandma Isolina
worked in her father's semolina mill in the town of Abruzzi, in
the region of Piscarra. This area, close to the Adriatic Sea, has
the best of both worlds and has produced some of the world's finest
chefs. The seafood, vegetation, and olive groves are plentiful,
and today is the only saffron growing region in Italy.
My Grandma Maria came
form the small, hilly town of Tricarico, Italy, where meat was scarce
and tomato sauces were made from sun dried tomatoes. Her people
had to be a lot more creative and resourceful with their menu. Dried
pork sausages, beans, peas, pasta, and wild mustard greens made
up the town’s diet.
There is a sense of family
continuity and memories that comes along with these traditional
foods. Family dishes, like our heritage, are intertwined in our
daily lives. They're what connects us to our past.
To my knowledge, my grandparents
never ate a fast food hamburger. Dining at one of today's modern
nouvelle cuisine restaurants, where the entree is six peas and a
one-inch steak, would have left them hungry and asking: "Where's
the beef, pasta, Chianti, and garlic toast?”
My Italian grandma could
do wonders in the kitchen with a little flour and water. She believed
it was just as important to begin new traditions as it was to uphold
the old ones. The following is a traditional pasta and noodle recipe
handed down through the generations. Why not begin a pasta tradition
of your own?
Italian
Pasta
2 cups of all purpose
flour
1 egg (lightly beaten)
½ teaspoon of salt
water ( enough to fill
the flour well)
Pour flour in mound onto work board; make a cup-like well in the
flour. Add egg, oil, salt and enough water to fill the well. With
a fork, gradually pull in flour from inside edges of the well. Gather
up the flour and begin to knead into dough. After ten minutes of
kneading, the dough should become smooth, shiny, and elastic. Divide
and dust each part with flour.
Roll out into paper thin
sheets. To create fettuccine noodles roll the thin sheets up jelly-roll
fashion and cut into 1/4- inch slices. Quickly unroll after cutting
and sprinkle with flour. Cook in a 6-quart pot of boiling, salted
water for 5 or 8 minutes, or until just tender to taste.
Serve with your favorite
tomato sauce or white sauce made with one-quarter pound butter,
creamed, gradually beat in 1/4 cup heavy cream and 1/2 cup Parmesan
cheese, salt and pepper to taste.
"Bene' appetito,
Bene' Mangiare" (Good appetite, good eating)
Cookie Curci-Wright
lives in San Jose, California, and is a columnist for Far On, an
Italian-American newspaper published from Chicago. For 14 years,
she also wrote a column for her community newspaper, The Willow
Glen Resident, and now writes on a free-lance basis.
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