Food choices are influenced by many factors, where we live, friends, family, cultural background. Although the purpose of food is to nourish us, food means far more than that to many people. People bond and foster relationships around the dinner table and at celebrations with special meals and foods, such as a birthday cake or even family dinners. Some people express their creative side by serving dinner guests, as well as expressing their awareness and appreciation for others. Overall, what we eat can reveal much about whom and what we are.
For example, Sunday dinner is one of the most honored traditions in my Jamaican family. Sunday is like a holiday and the dinner has to be different from that of the weekdays. As I child and even now, I look forward to Sunday because that is when I get to eat my favorite meal. A Jamaican Sunday dinner is made up of rice and peas cooked to perfection with the sweet aroma of coconut milk, served with fried/baked or BBQ chicken. However, sometimes my family may choose to cook curry goat, oxtail with beans, or fish as the meat of choice. A great side dish, to go along with the meat of your choice and rice and peas, is fried ripe plantains. With so many variations to the main course, dinner is a guaranteed treat.
How to prepare Rice and Peas:
Red beans will need to be cooked based on the directions on the package. Put cooked beans into a large saucepan or pot. Add chopped garlic. Measure all liquids, including reserved bean liquid, coconut milk and water enough to make 2 1/4 cups. Add the 2 1/4 cups of liquid to the beans and garlic in the pot. Add rice, crushed green onion, thyme, salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed.
How to prepare Fried Plantains:
Peel plantain by making 2 incisions on opposite sides of the plantain skin and then peel. Slice the plantains into 2 in the middle. Cut up both pieces of plantains into 1/4 inch slices lengthwise. Heat skillet filled with just enough oil to cover the 1/4 inch slices. Fry plantain slices until golden brown on each side. Cook each slice for about 45 seconds. Place cooked plantain in a dish layered with napkins so as to drain/soak up the oil. Sprinkle with salt to taste.
Looks yummy! 😉
Dumplings:
For most Cantonese families, Sunday is reserved to be a “family day”. To start this day off, Zhen Huang’s family would wake up at around 9am so the may hold seats at the local Chinese restaurant to “yum cha” or drink tea and have dim sum. This fast paced and loud restaurant setting is unorthodox in the American culture because ready-to-serve food is pushed around in dim sum carts and customers yelling out orders in no particular order. Dim sum consists of small side dishes that are shared among the rest of the people at on your table or in your party. Some examples of dim sums include beef stew with carrots, shrimp noodles, pork noodles, chicken feet and sesame rolls. Among the large varieties of dim sums, my favorite dim sum is the pork dumpling.
How to make pork dumpling (Zhen Huang’s homemade recipe):
1) Gather the following ingredients from the local Chinese grocery; dumpling skin, eggs, pork meat, sesame oil, parsley and soy sauce.
2) Mix and ground the pork meat, sesame oil and parsley together. Sesame oil should be a third of a spoon per a bowl of ground pork meat.
3) Scoop a spoonful of the mixed pork meat onto one dumpling skin. (Refer to image above).
4) Beat the eggs and brush on a thin layer of eggs onto the edges of the dumpling skin to prevent the pork meat fillings from falling out when it is getting cooked.
5) Carefully fold the skin into a sphere shape.
6) Gently place the dumplings into a bowl of boil water and let it sit for at least 10 minutes (time will vary depending on the amount of dumplings).
7) Take out the dumplings and drain out any excessive water before serving the dumplings.
8) Pour a small plate of soy sauce to be used for additional flavoring, if needed.
Pepper Pot
In Guyana the holiday season is usually a perfect time to enjoy traditional dishes you won’t usually prepare every day of the year. You will know it’s the holidays when you can smell Poonam Mohan’s family pepper pot from a mile away. Some of her family’s favorite dishes and occasional cooking consist of rum cake aka black cake, chicken souse, fried rice, chowmein, chicken curry, roti, egg ball, cookup and the famous pork/beef or chicken pepper pot base on your personal preference.
Poonam’s Pepper Pot Recipe
Minutes to Prepare: 45
Minutes to Cook: 75
Number of Servings: 5
Ingredients
2 lbs stewing pork or c chicken
1 cup cassareep (you can find in the Caribbean market)
2 red hot pepper or more depending on how spicy you prefer
1 in x 1 in stick cinnamon
3 heads of clove
2 oz. sugar
1 bunch fine thyme
5 cloves chopped garlic
1 large onion
Oil
Salt to taste
Preparation:
1. Clean the meat thoroughly.
2. Add oil to pan until button is covered.
3. Add meat and sauté for 5 min, add all of the above ingredients.
5. Add Salt to taste and simmer until meat is fully cooked, add water when necessary if meat is tough.
6. Simmer gently for about one hour until meats are tender and sauce is relatively thick.
7. When finish cooking, remove from heat and sit out overnight (this helps with the marinade).
Re-heat, serve with bread and enjoy!! 🙂
Macaroni Au Gratin
Being that Randy has have predominantly Haitian heritage and a lesser degree of Cuban heritage, he was able to share that though both cultures have differences, in terms of cuisine they are quite similar. Sundays, like many other cultures, are treated as family days. The Sunday meal has more meaning than meals during the week because it usually marks that one time during the week the entire family sits down at once. Randy love Sunday dinners and that seems to be a universal feeling within Group C. Below is a recipe for Macaroni Au Gratin, common in both aforementioned cultures.
Ingredients:
1.5 (16 oz) macaroni packages
1 whole onion, diced
2 Maggi® chicken broth cubes
2/3 Velveeta® cheese block, cut into small cubes
1 carnation milk
1/2 cup of butter
1 cup of parmesan cheese
Instructions:
Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat.
Add the macaroni and let it cook until soft yet firm.
Add the onions and Maggi chicken broth.
Reduce heat and keep stirring occasionally.
Stir in the Velveeta cheese, until melted.
Keep stirring constantly to avoid the cheese from sticking to the bottom.
Add butter and parmesan cheese.
Pour in the carnation milk and stir.
Remove from heat and pour into a greased baking sheet.
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Place in oven and bake for an hour and 20mins.
Cooking time: 1 hour 50 minutes
Serves 6 – 8 people
Ackee & Saltfish/Strew Peas
Similar to Rochelle, Petergaye also has a Jamaican heritage. Sunday dinners, much like everyone else, is an important staple in her household. In Petergaye’s household on Sundays, there are two important meals; breakfast and dinner. A usual Sunday morning meal would be ackee and salt fish with fried dumplings and steamed green banana. For dinner, everyone is eager to chow down on jerk chicken with rice and peas, or oxtail with rice and peas with steamed veggies on the side
However, Petergaye’s favorite Sunday meal is strew peas with rice.
Ingredients
1) 1/2 pound of salf beef
2) 1/2 pound stew beef
3) 1/2 pound pigs tail
4) 2 scallion
5) 1 onion
6) 3 cloves of garlic
7) 3 sprigs of thyme
8) 1 scotch bonnet pepper
9) 1 tin of red peas (or two cups of red peas, soaked in water overnight
10) 1 tin of coconut milk
11) 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
12) 1/2 teaspoon of salt
13) 5 pimento seeds
Boil salt beef for 30 minutes then drain off water.
Gently fry the beef to seal it.
Cut the meat into small pieces.
Place the peas meat and three cups of water in a pot, bring to a boil, then let it simmer for one hour.
Chop onions scallion and garlic.
Make dumplings by mixing 2 cups of flour with water. Break off small pieces of dough and roll the into spinners.
After the peas and meat have simmered for about an hour, add a tin of coconut milk, the chopped onions, scallion, garlic, thyme, salt , black pepper, pimento scotch bonnet to the pot, and pinners to the pot.
Let cook for another hour then remove the scotch bonnet pepper.
As for you guys, where are you from? How does your culture impact your food choices? Are there any traditional dishes and practices when it comes to eating? What are your favorite foods from your cultural background? Feel free to share a recipe
