So this is just kind of a fun topic, but when I was in class yesterday and Carolyn was talking about her cooking (which btw I'm really glad you brought!! It was yummy! :) ) I thought of a kind of interesting blog topic. I know it may sound stereotypical but I feel like some family member is always trying to teach me a family recipe of one kind or another, regardless of what time of year it is, and it made me wonder what kind of experiences you guys had with that! Like what kind of food has your family tried to teach you how to make, or a favorite family recipe that you have? Or maybe it's not necessarily a recipe, but just a certain kind of food that your family is famous for loving or eating?
Hope you guys have a great weekend!! :)
13 comments:
I personally have been hounded to learn our family eggnog recipe for years and years. My great gramma wrote the recipe down, and I remember the last part of the recipe goes, "and add a cup of whiskey and keep tasting and adding until you get a sparkle in your eye". I always thought that was funny. Cooking was always something that my family did together, particularly around the holidays, and it was always special somehow to sit down and eat a meal that we had all made together. Although I have to admit, the eggnog was never my favorite thing to make :). I think that cooking can somehow be a bonding experience, especially between women. I know that when my mom or my gramma has taught me to cook something, it has always been a special experience.
My grandma is always trying to convince me that I need to learn all the family recipes. Well not even just the recipes, but how to cook really good food in general. She insists that it's a necessary thing for a girl to know. I however personally don't think it's that important. Yes, it's nice to know how to cook. Especially now in college, that has definitely come in handy, but i don't think it should be required of every girl. As long as you can cook something I think thats ok. My family on the other hand disagrees, they hound me all the time about learning the traditional mexican recipes. However, there are a few recipes that I would love to learn. Both of which are from my aunt who lives in mexico. One of them is this ice cream desert. She makes strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla and I have yet to ask how to make them. My favorite part about it is that she freezes it in individual baggies. Another one is a recipe for these mexican cookies. They're tiny cookies and I know they have cinnamon and sugar on top but I'm not sure how she makes the cookie dough. She usually makes them around Christmas time too so it makes me look forward to the holidays even more.
There is really no recipe in my family that anyone has been pressuring me to learn to make, but in thinking about the holidays, there is one food that pops into my head. Posole. The funny thing is that this dish is practically the star of holiday meals on BOTH sides of my family. My cousin has an annual holiday party usually on December 23rd for my mom's side to get together and celebrate the holidays. My aunt always makes a ton of wonderful food, but the most delicious is her posole! Then my parents, my sister, and I usually goes over to my aunt and uncle's house on Christmas Eve for a little holiday get together on my dad's side. Traditionally, we enjoy bowls of posole this evening as well! I just find it interesting that this is such a traditional meal on both sides of my family for the holidays! This meal always fills me with happiness and amazing memories of both sides of my family, but since we eat it so much, it's a good thing I love posole :)
A lot of recipes my family uses comes from my great grandma, who was fortunately in my life until I was ten. She had the best cinnamon roll and biscochito recipes! I actually found a recipe of hers recently for cranberry sorbet, which I want to make.
Anyway, my grandma makes delicious bread, and I always watch her trying to learn. Unfortunately, there is no documented recipe. The woman just throws in pinches and handfuls of things! I always loom around when she makes bread trying to figure out the measurements she puts in ha ha. One thing she does though that I think is pretty cool, is that when she leaves the dough to rise, she uses a knife to carve a cross in the dough. She said her mother (my aforementioned great grandmother) told her to always do that so God would help her bread to come out right.
Sybelle, I think you're thinking of Biscochitos! They're my favorite around the holidays! My mom's side has always included me during holidays for cooking, especially when I was little. We'd make home made tortillas, biscochitos, sopapillas, and sweet rice. All delicious but I haven't made anything recently. This post makes me want to though haha food!!!
Aw thank you :) I was super worried! I guess that it's partially due to the fact that food is such a big part of Thai culture that it's disappointing if you're a bad cook. Food is seriously a HUGE part of the culture. You use it to not only bring your family together, but as a way to show your guests your hospitality. We seriously find any reason to eat! My mom hasn't really taught me much. I know how to make fried rice, curry, papaya salad, and her famous egg rolls, but that's extremely little compared to the amounts of food my relatives can make. I'm sure at some point I will have to take a least a month to learn everything! Which is also extremely hard because my family doesn't believe in recipes or measured amounts!
I don't think my family has a dish that we have passed down; however, Thai desserts have always been a business that my family has worked with. My favorite Thai dessert is probably roti which is the Thai version of an Indian dessert that involved spun sugar that you wrap in a flat bread. It usually comes in green or pink! It's seriously amazing! :)
It's a really hard thing to live in my family without knowing how to cook. Funnily enough, neither of my sisters can cook worth beans. There are so many family recipes, most stolen, borrowed or modified, that come from both sides of my family and I find myself pressuring other people in my family to try to learn these recipes. Teaching Zoe, my older sister, to make Aunt Emily's carrot cake is like trying to teach a cat to sit on command, so it's basically become a sport for me at this point. My family never really saw it as a woman's job to know any of the family recipes or secrets, so my cooking knowledge is mostly self-imposed, but I don't really see it as that big of an imposition. My family cooks uncharacteristically (for big families) healthily and it's always delicious, so I think it's really important to pass these things along.
It reminds me a lot of A Homemade Life. It's a beautiful book about this woman's relationship with her family through food. It's basically my life.
My family makes what we call Syrian cookies and it's a tradition from my dad's side of the family. Also my mom has taught me to make the famous Haverly Banana Cake (her maiden name). Both are extremely delicious, by the way. My dad has tried a couple times to teach us how to make the cookies but you have to get up really early to make the dough so it hasn't happened. My dad also from time to time makes certain Lebanese dishes or just dishes made from his imagination. I remember telling him that he should have bought the building the Seferino's had been in and started his own restaurant, but he never did.
My family never really pushes me to learn any recipes, which is a gigantic relief to me and leaves my holidays much more open. My dad's side of the family is full of really fantastic chefs but they're just not really particularly urgent to pass on their famous ones. haha.
My mom on the other hand is pretty famous among our family friends for her green chile stew - it's basically amazing. (And I'm probably a little biased but I have to say that it's the best green chile stew I've ever had. haha) She asks me every now and then if I want to learn it but she's basically given up on my culinary talents to be perfectly honest haha.
My family is definitely the biggest food junkies that I know of! On my mom side of the family there's GrandBob, who started his own restaurant, you might of heard of it, Bumble Bee's Baja Grill. It was his life long dream and after he 'retired' he went for it. He would always come over for the holidays and help us cook. There was no pressure in learning recipes, but we would be very pressured to help out in cooking everything. My most traditional family recipe is our christmas cookies! I know it came from our great grandmother, but no one has told me the name of them. Basically it is a lot of butter and a lot of sugar! And you sprinkle more sugar on top as well as almonds. They are amazing! And there would be no way that anyone would be left out in helping bake these! On my dad's side, his whole family cooks! And when I mean whole family I mean everyone! Half of his family is in Hong Kong and the other half is Canada and they love cooking chinese food! When I was younger, my mom would only cook us stir fry; just plain rice, beef, and broccoli, or rice, chicken and celery. And it's really good, but man! I got so sick of it so fast! I think I complained so much that mom stopped cooking it all together. Now that I thnk of it, it's a loong time, since she has. haha!
Another thing that this reminds me of is every saturday morning, my little sister and I would always make chocolate chip pancakes. And we did it so much, that soon the recipe can transcribed onto this goofy post it note shaped as a Hawaiian T shirt. I'm pretty sure that note is still around somewhere and everytime I find it, it always brings back lots of good memories! :)
Wow, Seemay, I can't believe your GrandBob owns Bumble Bee's! That place is so yummy! I've also enjoyed reading about everyone else's recipes! They all sound heavenly--I want to taste them all!
Food is a pretty big tradition in my family, but maybe not as much as the next family. Interestingly enough, my dad was the cook in ours. And boy, did he cook well! I remember coming home from soccer practice or something and having delicious smells overwhelm me when I would walk in the front door. Yum! Unfortunately my mom doesn't have any recipes that she's taught me yet--but this makes me want to ask her for some! She is actually known in our family for a ketchup pizza she attempted for my dad one one of their first dates--let's just say that that's when my dad decided he would be the cook in the family. Haha. My mom has since taught herself how to cook, but with her busy schedule she only does it a couple of times a week.
Anyhow, one thing I always hear about from my mom's side is my Grandma's meatballs! It's weird, because my maternal grandmother was from Puerto Rico, and (as far as I know, at least) meatballs aren't really a traditional food there, but I've heard she made some amazing ones! I'll have to ask my mom for the recipe.
A couple of things that my dad passed down to me are his recipes for cranberry relish, homemade rolls and "Grandmother Crookshank's Pumpkin Pie." Perhaps Mrs. Crookshank was his grandmother. Anyhow, it wasn't so much the recipes I learned from him but the techniques that made them so special: how to scald and cool milk for the rolls, and things like that.
Whew, apparently I love talking about food! This topic is making me hungry! :)
Well I'm not much of a cook. The cook in my family, besides my mom of course, is my sister. I really am more of the cleaner upper haha that is I'm better at doing the after dinner dishes. I really like the certain recipes my family does have though. My mom learned to make my grandpa's famous green chile stew, she also makes sugar cookies every year on my birthday because that is our Christmas Eve tradition. This holiday season when I go back home, I want to participate in the cooking because in about 6 months I will be living in an aapartment and my roommates and I will be having to make meals. I'll have to learn a few of my mom's other great dishes!
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