Tag: Food

Russian-Soviet-Jewish-New-Yorkian-American-Parisian Tea Culture

Every night after dinner, my mom asks me a one-word question: “Tea?” After I nod my answer, she pulls out two teacups, two saucers, and a teapot from the cabinet behind her. In the teapot, she prepares zavarka, a concentrated form of tea, using black tea, named Paris, which I bought from a company based in SoHo. Over tea, she tells stories about her home country, Moldova, and adjustment to NYC. In 1993, my mom and her family immigrated to NYC from Moldova, along with the 35,900 other Jews emigrating from the former Soviet Union. After 1970, the largest wave of Jewish immigration since the 1920s occurred, and one of the largest locations of settlement was NYC. Migration was influenced in part by war breaking out when Transdniestria, now considered a region in Moldova, declared independence from Moldova. This region was composed mostly of the minorities of Moldova’s population, and Moldova refused to recognize it. When she escaped this situation as a refugee to NYC, my mom was one of many Soviet-Jewish women married early. She received one of the most common Soviet wedding gifts: a tea set. This set now stands in a cabinet in my mom’s kitchen, displayed as a reminder of her Soviet roots, but when used with American tea and her American daughter, the tea set reminds my mom of her adjustment to a new home.

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Central Asian Manti

Manti are steamed dumplings that are common in many Asian cuisines including Uzbek, Turkish, and Afghan. In central Asia, they are usually made from thin dough filled with finely minced beef or lamb, onions, and spices. The dumplings are folded using special techniques and cooked in steamers. In different cultures, they have different wrapping techniques, but the basic idea is the same: A dumpling that brings people together around a table.

In my family, Manti represent a connection to my background. Preparing them takes time and is usually done together with my family. My sister makes the dough from scratch while my dad minces the meat and onions. Later, my mom rolls the dough, I fill them, and my dad wraps them. Because the process is slow and requires many hands, cooking Manti becomes a social activity where we talk, share stories, and spend time together. For me, Manti are more than just food. They remind me of where my family comes from and the traditions that have been passed down across generations even though we live in New York today.

Many immigrant families in the United States maintain traditions through food by making them with their families at home or opening restaurants. Dishes like Manti show how cultural identity can continue even after people move to new places, becoming part of the diverse food culture of cities like New York.

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The Greatest Fast-Food: Turkish Döner

Gyros, shawarmas, and al pastor tacos. Besides being delicious, what do they all have in common? They are all different variations of the same food: the Turkish döner kebab. The dish consists of seasoned meat in the form of beef/lamb mix or chicken, roasted on a vertical rotating spit device. Döner can be eaten as a sandwich or alongside rice. My parents both ate döners often as children when growing up in Turkey during the 80s and 90s, whether it was a cheap version from a shop off the streets, or a better quality and more expensive version in Turkish restaurants.

My Dad, pictured above in the year 1998 next to a döner device in a Turkish restaurant in Brooklyn, described döner as a “comfort food.” When they immigrated here in the late 1990s, döner became a bridge to Turkish culture for them despite being abroad. For me, growing up in NYC meant eating many different versions of döner: whether it was from an authentic Turkish restaurant in Astoria, a gyro from a Greek food cart, a Berlin-style döner with fresh vegetables and tasty sauces, or as a home-made Iskender kebab (a different Turkish dish with döner meat). All of these foods, while delicious to eat, provide a special connection to me through döner being a cross-cultural food, allowing me to connect my childhood and the döner I eat/ate here to what my parents ate in Turkey.

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Kibbe Hamdah

Kibbe Hamdah, also known as Hamid has been a staple dish on my dinner table almost every Friday night for as long as I can remember. It is a Syrian-Jewish dish that my grandma taught my mom to make. The base of the dish is a lemony soup with chopped carrots and celery. Inside the soup there are meatballs stuffed with another type of meat inside. It is often served with white rice. This dish is a staple in almost everyone’s home in my Syrian-Jewish community, and some people even add potatoes or tomato sauce to their soup. It is customary to eat Kibbe Hamdah on the Jewish Sabbath, which begins on Friday, 18 minutes after sunset. Kibbe Hamdah is not just a type of food, it also represents culture and religion. The traditional recipes in my community are very sacred, and they represent who we are. Eating Kibbe Hamdah with my family every week helps me recognize how far my community has come, and appreciate our rich history and culture. When I’m cooking for my family in the future, I know that Kibbe Hamdah will be a weekly staple in my house as well. My mother will pass down the recipe to me, and I will carry out the traditions of my community with pride and excitement. It is very special that even with everyone’s unique recipes, you will almost always find Kibbe Hamdah on their dinner table for the Jewish Sabbath and holidays.

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Red Lees Duck

Red lees duck always means the same thing in the family: everyone is home. Whenever this dish appears on the table, it’s a signal of a family gathering. It’s enjoyed by everyone while we catch up on life.
Red lees, known as hongzao in Chinese, is a product of fermenting glutinous rice with red yeast rice to make red rice wine. The bright red paste has a slight sweet, savory flavor that pairs super well with rice. It’s a common well loved condiment in many Fujianese households.
At every big holiday, my grandma would make this dish. It’s a dish that she learned from her older sister back in China, long before our family ever imagined life in America. Now it has become almost automatic: Chinese New Year, reunions, birthdays; there’s always a pot of red lees duck simmering on the stove.
Through this dish, I get a glimpse into the life that my grandma left behind. When she came to the U.S. in 2015, she didn’t bring much with her, but she brought her recipes and culture. Red lees duck was one of them. My grandma is the main reason why I’m so in touch with my culture despite us having little to no relatives in the U.S.

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“Habichuela con Dulce”

Have you ever eaten a dish that reminds you of your childhood? For me, it would be eating habichuela con dulce, a sweet bean dessert that reminds me of my ethnicity. It isn’t just a dish to eat; it represents the history, culture, and the strength it took to make it with a variety of infused cultures. This dish, originally from the Dominican Republic, is a part of who I am as a person. When I was younger, my mother always made habichuela con dulce during a specific time, which was Holy Week. The tradition that was introduced to me was that this dish had to specifically be eaten on Good Friday to give thanks for Jesus Christ sacrificing himself for us and also to bring blessings to the house. At first, I never believed in that tradition, but as I got older, I started to realize the true significance of this dish and also the happiness that it brings around. The specific recipe that my mom uses was passed down through generations, where she was taught by my great-grandmother. Every time this dish is made, it brings me great comfort because of the smell that enters my house, as well as joy because of the flavor. This dish often gathers my family, no matter what may be going on in their lives, because it’s tradition to eat together during Easter. It is a time to relax and enjoy the gift of life that is given to us.

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Family Cookbook

This is a photo of a page from a cookbook my mother has had all my life. The notebook is old and clearly well used, with wrinkled pages, faded ink, and small stains from ingredients that were probably spilled while cooking. My parents’ main language is Arabic, which makes sense for the recipes to be written in Arabic as well. Typically, Arabs don’t follow recipes. If you asked an Arab mother how to make a dish she would tell you, “Just add a little bit of this and all the spices you have in your cabinet” (safe to say Arab food is never under seasoned). But my mother made this cookbook specifically for desserts. She’s not much of a baker as it requires precise measurements, so to make it easier for herself she wrote the recipes down. If anyone can read Arabic, they can tell that this recipe isn’t exactly as specific as a recipe written in English, but it’s specific enough that any Arabic speaking person will understand it. This book is important because it carries the different desserts the represent the culture my parents left behind when they came to the United States from Palestine. It was a way for them to bring with them a piece of home where they started their new lives.

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The Tawa

The tawa is a flat metal pan found in kitchens of many Pakistani households. The pan can be completely flat or concave, and is typically made of cast iron, aluminum, or carbon steel. Its origins trace back to the Indus River Valley civilization, where flat clay discs were used to cook flatbreads over open fires. These early versions were designed to distribute heat evenly, cooking unleavened bread without burning it. As metallurgy advanced, clay gave way to metal. Cast iron tawas remain the most popular due to their improved heat retention, ideal for rotis and parathas, while carbon steel versions are lighter and more modern, suited for everyday cooking and quickly heating packaged flatbreads.
For my family, the tawa is how we hold onto our Pakistani culture. We own both a convex cast iron tawa and a flat carbon steel one. My mother uses the flat tawa to make rotis and parathas for my grandparents and I, while the convex one is reserved for frying puri and daal puri. The tawa instantly brings to mind Sunday morning breakfasts — daal puri or parathas with chickpea curry and a tall cup of chai. Our household makes many kinds of flatbread on it, including chapati, naan, roti, and dhalpuri. Less conventionally, my siblings and I also use it to fry eggs and make veggie omelets.
An archaeologist studying my family’s history would find the tawa invaluable: it is the foundational instrument behind the flatbreads that form the bedrock of Pakistani diet and culture.

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The Dao – An Exploration of Bangladeshi Culture and the Immigrant Experience – Tajrian Jahan

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An icon of the Bengali kitchen, the dao, a sharp, machete-sized seated blade commonly used by rural housewives to cut vegetables and fish, is an important symbol of Bengali village culture and a part of Bangladesh that my parents did not leave behind when they arrived here some 20 years ago.

The dao is a long, curved iron blade seated on a flat plank of wood or short iron tripod, used by squatting behind it and driving meat or vegetables into the blade. Its use dates back nearly 1,300 years to the Pala Dynasty in Bengal, a Buddhist kingdom in which early Bengali culture emerged; since the dawn of Bengali culture, the dao has been associated with the woman’s role as the nourisher and sustainer of the household.

The dao is also evidence of the sacredness of the bare earth in early Bengali culture. Toiling behind a dao, sharing a meal, and sleeping were all practices performed on the ground because the Earth and its soil were sacred. With the arrival of British colonialists, furniture and stovetops began to gain popularity and we lifted ourselves off these sacred grounds; using a dao became a symbol of rural meekness against Western culture. My mother came from a riverside village in Sylhet, and I remember watching her cut the same hyacinth beans she had once watched her own mother cut; she embodied the motherly spirit of the dao, and brought the essence of Bangladesh to our small apartment in the Bronx.

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Persian Kabab

Kabab is a Persian dish eaten in Persian households and restaurants, as well as at family gatherings and celebrations. It has been a central Persian dish for almost 2,000 years, made with ground beef, grated onions, and turmeric placed on skewers and grilled. The dish is commonly accompanied with basmati rice and sumac and a grilled tomato. Kabab is unique as its preparation is communal; in family barbecues, we each work together to get the ground meat, onions, and spices ready, to put beef on the skewers, and to grill. Making cultural dishes is one of the central ways that my family and other Persian immigrant families keep our cultures and traditions alive in our new homes. For American immigrants as a whole, making traditional foods is one of the key ways of maintaining a tangible hold on our cultures and heritages, even when we are not in our homelands. Persian immigration to the United States has dramatically increased following regime change in Iran, with my parents leaving Iran in the late 1980s, and these cultural traditions and dishes always remind us of our family members still in Iran and all we had left behind. Our hearts are in Iran and the war brings pain and sadness to us constantly. We hope that the people of Iran will soon live in freedom and that the people of Iran will continue to flourish as they have for millennia.

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Calabash

A calabash used as a bowl

The calabash is a versatile and culturally significant plant that has been cultivated for thousands of years across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Belonging to the gourd family, the calabash plant produces large, hard-shelled fruits that can be used both as food and as containers. When young, the fruit is edible and often cooked like a vegetable, providing a source of nutrition in many traditional diets. Once matured and dried, the hard shell becomes a durable material that has been used for centuries to make bowls, cups, musical instruments, and even utensils. This dual-purpose nature of the calabash has made it an essential part of daily life in many cultures.

In addition to its practical uses, the calabash carries symbolic and cultural meaning. In West Africa, calabash gourds are often intricately decorated and used in ceremonies or as gifts. Musicians in various African and Caribbean communities use calabash shells to create instruments such as the shekere, which produces rhythmic sounds essential to traditional music. In Latin American cultures, the dried calabash is used to make containers for mate tea, highlighting its continued role in everyday life. The plant also appears in folklore and storytelling, often representing abundance, creativity, and resourcefulness.

Calabash also has a personal significance in my family. My dad is from Jamaica, and when I was born, my grandmother, his mother sent up a bowl made from a dried calabash and told my dad to feed me from it, with porridge, cereal, or fruits. She said it was so I could learn to talk faster. Once I learned how to speak, I didn’t use it anymore, but that wasn’t the end of the story. My younger sister later began using the calabash, and, as you might expect, she learned to speak faster than I did. This family tradition shows how the calabash is not only a practical object but also a symbol of heritage and cultural continuity.

Beyond its cultural and personal significance, the calabash is environmentally sustainable. It grows quickly, requires minimal care, and can thrive in diverse climates, making it a reliable source of food and material for local communities. Its adaptability and multi-functionality illustrate the ingenuity of human societies in utilizing natural resources. Overall, the calabash is much more than a simple plant; it’s a symbol of tradition, utility, and identity that continues to impact lives worldwide.

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Chai Strainer

This kitchen utensil is used to strain chai, catching tea leaves and spices to produce a smooth drink.

From a small village in India to our home in New York, my family’s chai making tradition tells a story of heritage, migration, and cultural influence. This drink originated in India, where it was consumed for thousands of years as a spiced tea known as “Masala Chai.” Blending traditional black tea with spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, mixed with milk and a sweetener. It became widely popular during British colonial rule when tea production expanded, and Indians adapted it with their own flavors. Later, it became popular in the United States as “Chai Tea”, translating to “Tea Tea”.
In my household, my parents and grandparents make chai at all times of the day. It’s their comfort drink, made for one another with care and for guests who enter their home. Representing hospitality and togetherness. When my grandparents emigrated from Kerala, India, in 1976, they brought with them several sets of strainers from their local appliance store. They firmly believe these are the best strainers and we can’t use any other type. After moving to New York, my family continues to make chai the same way, preserving every detail of the tradition without changing a single thing. My family’s chai, which started as a meaningful tradition, grew into something widely appreciated today in the United States. This illustrates how immigration continuously enriches and reshapes American identity.

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A Vietnamese Family’s Hotpot

My family doesn’t have many grand objects from our Vietnamese heritage. And of those we do own, I don’t have much personal attachment to them. However, something that I’ve grown up with that I do adore is the Hotpot we always use for big dinners. I don’t know when we got it, all I know is that this pot has been in our family for as long as I can remember. Whenever we have a large group of people, usually family from out of state, we always use this for dinner. This picture is actually from Christmas dinner 2024.

The reason this pot means so much to me specifically is because of how many memories of mine revolve around this piece of cookware. Hotpot always leads to lighthearted conversations, a delicious meal, and patiently waiting for our food to finish cooking. The food each person chooses to cook and eat always reflects who they are. I remember that this specific night was when I tried fish roe dumplings for the first time and fell in love. In fact, part of the reason I’m in college is because of this pot as I actually wrote my college essay on it.

Whenever I go into storage to grab the pot, every memory of the fun and laughter it’s brought to my family comes flooding back. It may not be as glamorous as a piece of jewelry or as grandiose as a family heirloom, but our Hotpot has brought my family a sense of joy that just can’t be recreated.

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Bánh bèo & Bánh bột lọc

Bánh bèo & Bánh bột lọc

Bánh bèo and Bánh bột lọc are bite sized, savory Vietnamese dishes from the city in Vietnam that my father is from, Huế. Bánh bèo is uniquely served on small, individual dishes, and my father always told me that stacking the dishes became a competition of who could eat the most. Bánh bột lọc is wrapped, steamed, and served in banana leaves, and perhaps part of how much I love this dish is because of the element of surprise. When we eat these dishes, my father always reminds me to drown my bites in the slightly sweet and spicy Vietnamese dipping sauce served on the side, Nước chấm. I’ve been to many Vietnamese restaurants in New York and these specific dishes are rare to find. Ever since I was young, my family would often make an entire trip to Philadelphia to visit an authentic Vietnamese bakery called Ba Le that has a vast selection of traditional Vietnamese desserts, sauces, and dishes. For gatherings, my family sometimes orders large platters of Bánh bèo and Bánh bột lọc from a local family in Queens. When I visited my family in Huế in the summer of 2023, I was so excited to try Bánh bèo and Bánh bột lọc from my aunt’s neighbors. It was served exactly how I’d always eaten it, but it was even more special now that I was enjoying it with my family in Vietnam. Whenever I think of the taste of Vietnam, the first thing I think of are these two special dishes.

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