What kind of ethnic background do you have [if you're willing to share]? Do
you do any kind of 'ethnic' cooking?  Some people's families who have been
in this country since way back when, may 'just' consider themselves American
and that's fine, too. What kinds of ethnic or traditional foods do you like
to cook [or eat out]?
e

29 responses total.

On my Mom's side of the family, I'm 2nd generation Irish and on my Dad's side
I'm mostly German.  Though I'm not a real experienced cooked, it's always cool
to get some new ideas.  

My Irish grandmother often fixed lamb, pot roast, or roast beef. And this
really wonderful brown bread that was a bit on the sweet side and had raisins
in it. I've never found this kind of bread anywhere. In her later years, I
did ask her for the recipe but she said she didn't have it written down, it
was one of those things that she just new from experience. But this was at
a time where she wasn't doing as much cooking any more so I never got to watch
her bake it and write it down as she was doing it.  

My german grandmother loved to cook plus do a lot of canning, pickling, and
making various kinds of wine.  One of the traditional german foods is
sauerkraut [sp?] which I don't like at all. Except for hers. One day, we were
over there for dinner and was made to take a tiny helping... I liked it so
well that I went back for 2nds. But I won't eat it anywhere else nor fix it
myself even if I did have her recipe.

I'm Indian - so a lot of Indian food gets cooked at home. Especially since
its the cuisine the hubby prefers. And mostly vegetarian - because he's
vegetarian.

If left to him, we'd been eating dal-chaval (literla transaltion lentils and
rice - more like lentil soup and rice) every day. I try to mix it up when we
have the time.

If we want to go a little further  - I'm Sindhi (from the province of  Sindh,
now in Pakistan, but I'm Indian - ancestors migrated over), and I found a
Sindhi cookbook all the way out in Vancouver of all places. (This surprises
me because I've never been able ot find a Sindhi cookbook anywhere else, even
in India). I've made a few dishes off there - but they are again essentially
Indian.

What kinds of cooking/food do they Sindhi cook? Is it very different from
Indian cuisine?  I do enjoy Indian food [just had some Indian food for lunch
today with a few other Grexers]--as long as its not too hot. I haven't tried
fixing any Indian stuff on my own, though [but I did buy some curry powder
recently; does that count? :-)  ]

Oh, and I forgot to add that on the Irish side, potatoes fixed in a variety
of ways is a big thing, too.

Curry powder isn't really very Indian :)

I think the spicing in Sindhi cooking is different from Indian cooking.
Actually I'm not sure if there is just "Indian" cooking - all Indian food is
actually some sort of sub-genre of Indian cooking - though what is usually
served in North America is Northern Indian cuisine with a sort of Mughlai
twist.

Hmm, I guess I just assumed that curry was Indian because several of the
dishes I've had at Indian restaurants had curry in it. Though come to think
about it, a friend's mom used to use curry and she wasn't Indian.

Our public library has a good book on the history of 'curry' - how Indian
cooking interacted with British cooking, etc.

One of my grandmothers came to Oklahoma in the 1890s in a covered wagon, from
North Carolina.  In her kitchen, I learned to cook a lot of southern food that
relied on inexpensive ingredients.  Soulfood cookbooks have a lot of similar
recipes, because poor blacks and poor whites essentially had access to the
same foodstuffs.

A lot of those foods are still popular/common in the south, from what I could
tell from living in NC.

Denise, taking a wild stab at it, I would say that your Grandmother's bread
is probably Irish Soda Bread.  There are a lot of recipes for it on the web,
just google for it.  Some are white, some are brown, some have raisins and
some don't.

My wife is from Romania and so is my mother-in-law(lives with us.)  So 90%
of the cooking at home is Romanian.  My wife also has alot of recipes from
my step-mom(from Italy.)  So, there is a 5% Italian cuisine blended in and
the the other 5% which is my cooking from various travels and influences
(Thai, Creole, etc.)  My dad's mom was line order cook for half her life (my
grandfolks owned a bar) so I know alot of basic American food too.

So what kind of things do Romanians like to cook?

Glenda, I do have a couple recipes for Irish Soda Bread; my Mom used to make
it and it was always good. But this brown bread was really dark in color
[maybe it molasses or something in it, I'm not sure] and it was a LOT more
moist then any soad bread that I've had; the bread is almost like a cake in
a bread pan sort of thing while still being a bread.

re #11
I can't speak for all Romanians.  There are Greek, German, Hungarian, Italian,
and Middle Eastern influences all around.  Sunday is usually the busy day
when we make a bunch of food for the week.  We re-heat stuff for dinner
weeknights usually.  Right now, there's moussaka in the fridge and a few
different pots of soups.  One soup is a "sour soup" with meatballs, veggies,
and rice.  The other soup is a tomato based soup with carne asada beef sirloin
tip and garlic.  There are sarmales(ground beef&lamb rolled in grape leaves)
in a big pot soaking in tomato sauce; what we call "oriental" salad (middle
eastern) comprised of olives, tomatoes, bell pepper, and onion mixed with
vinegar & olive oil; and a few different types of bread.
The sarmale is eaten with sour cream or plain yogurt (though I tend to skip
the dairy and just add some salt.)  You basically never see butter put on
anything.  With bread slices, we'll put some sour cream on it and sprinkle
salt on that or else put a marmelade or roe/caviar spread(tarama salata.)
Its customary for every meal to start with a soup and apertif(usually a shot
of plum brandy.)  Then the meal is some sort of meat and always plenty of
bread on the side.  Breakfast usually consists of tomato slices, olives, some
farmer's cheese (brinza), and bread slices..and sometimes a softboiled egg.
If you wanted to go on the South Beach Diet, all you'd have to do is move to
Romania or at least with with one who likes to cook.  My achilles heel is cola
and snacking at night on bad stuff.  Everytime I go to Romania, I lose weight
(in a healty way) from walking and eating Romanian food til I'm ready to
burst - all of which is healthy in their proportions.

Where do Romanians in Romania get tomatoes in the winter?  In Macedonia winter
salad was pickled red peppers or pickled beets or maybe sauerkraut.  No
olives.  I was the guest of ethnic Hungarians and ethnic Germans while passing
through Romania on my own as a student.

A lot of the Romanian stuff sounds great [without the olives. :-)]  I bet
having the soup before the meal helps in not eating as much of the other foods
in the main course.

re #13
 Where do Romanians in Romania get tomatoes in the winter?
If you buy your stuff (like 99% of Romanians) at the piata(corner farmer's
market) then you probably will only find potatoes and carrots in Winter. 
Otherwise, you can go to one of those grocers for canned tomatoes if
necessary.  So, in Winter, you find yourself with some different types of
cheese and salami with bread for your breakfast along with some tea made of
dried linden tree blossoms and maybe a lil added honey or sugar.

Yeah, that Romanian food does sound pretty good. 

I keep trying to talk my wife into writing a cookbook(we have several
cookbooks written by relatives in Romanian.)  We've had a few different aunts
live with us for extended periods and each of them had really fabulous dishes
they were good at.  My mother-in-law excels at sauces which she cooks veggies
in.  One in particular is a sort of tomato sauce with french cut green beans
and garlic chunks.  Another is peas with dill in a tomato sauce with
carmelized onion.

YUM!!!  I'd dig the pea recipe for sure.

Peas with dill are awesome. Trust me on that.

I ran across such a dish at a roadside diner, years ago.  I'd never seen 
peas presented in a red sauce before.  It's nice to hear it wasn't a 
kitchen mistake. ;-)

So long as you didn't find peas in ketchup at Bray's or something. 8D

Ewwww; peas-yuck!   
 :-)

Any other ethnic types here? :-)  And how about American? [though I know
there's an 'American Food' item elsewhere in this conference but that one's
from awhile back.  Any new ideas on what constitutes 'American' food? Or how
foods from other countries have been Americanized? [is that a word?]

A little late on this one, but Denise, I suspect that the brown bread 
you are referring to is similar to this recipe (which is pretty close, 
if not identical, to the one my mom used to make):

BOSTON BROWN BREAD   

1 1/4 c. water
1 1/2 c. raisins
1 c. sugar
1 tbsp. shortening or butter
3 tbsp. molasses
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
2 3/4 c. flour
2 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. vegetable oil

Boil and cool raisins and water. Cream sugar and shortening. Add egg, 
molasses, vanilla, raisin mixture and finally remaining ingredients. 
Mix well. Bake about 1 hour at 350 degrees in 3 well greased containers 
(vegetable cans are fine). 

I do this in my crock pot with great results.

Preheat crockpot on low.

Grease 3 #300 cans.  The normal vegetable size one, that hold about
14-16 ounces.  

Pour batter into cans, carefully place cans in crockpot.  My 3 1/2 qt
holds them very nicely.  Pour boiling water into the crockpot until it
comes about halfway up the sides of the cans.  

Cook on low for about 4 hours.  

My ingredients are fairly different, so I'll post another recipe at some
point.

Boston Brown Bread

Rye flour               1/2 C
Cornmeal                1/2 C
Whole Wheat flour       1/2 C
Sugar                    3  Tbsp
Baking soda              1  tsp
Salt                    3/4 tsp
Walnuts                 1/2 C
Raisins                 1/2 C
Molasses                1/3 C
Milk                      1 C
Lemon juice               1 Tbsp

Grease 3 16 ounce vegetable cans, or spray them with nonstick cooking spray.

Preheat crockpot on low or regular oven to 350 F.

Place lemon juice in measuring cup, fill with milk.  Let stand about 10
minutes.  Or just use buttermilk.

Mix rye flour, cornmeal, and whole wheat flour with baking soda and salt. 


Stir in walnuts and raisins.  

Mix in milk, and then molasses.  Stir until well mixed.

Pour into cans, and mold small squares of aluminum foil over the top to close
them.  

Place in crockpot or in deep baking pan.  Pour boiling water halfway up the
sides of the pan.

Cook for 4 hours in crockpot, 1 hour in oven, or until skewer inserted in
center of bread comes out clean.

To remove bread, lay cans on their sides and gently tap until bread releases.
Finish cooling on wire racks.

Serve with cream cheese, and (my favorite) baked beans.  

---------------
I've made this successfully with half cornmeal and half whole wheat flour as
well.  The sour milk/buttermilk substitution is one I use frequently.  As much
as I love buttermilk, I seldom have it on hand.  

This stuff freezes well, and if you use little orange juice can, makes
wonderful small rounds for English high tea.  Use orange or lemon cream cheese
for tea.  

This response has been erased.

Oops, the trick with the milk and lemon juice is to put the lemon juice in
the measuring cup, and then fill the *remaining* space with the
not-quite-a-full-cup of milk.  

Also, if you want to try this with the rye flour, you can buy 1/2 a cup at
the food coop for less than 25 cents.  

Debbi, this sounds at least pretty close to what I'm looking for. I'm going
to have to try it out and let you know.  And colleen, I love the idea of using
the small cans for having the bread for an afternoon or a high tea [I'm a big
tea fan. :-)].   Thanks for the recipes and suggestions!  :-)

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