Tag Archives: Dessert

Entrée/Dessert: Glutinous Rice Cake

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration, superstition, family tradition; Verbal Lore – saying
  • Language: English with some Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Country of Origin: China
  • Informant: W.W.
  • Date Collected: November 15, 2020

Informant Data:

  • W.W. is a 22-year-old senior studying Mathematics and Computer Science at Dartmouth. He was born in Boulder, Colorado, but his family moved to Shanghai, China when he was 9 years old. Every summer vacation and Chinese New Year while in China, W.W. would visit his maternal relatives in Beijing with his parents and little sister. To celebrate the reunion of the extended family, his grandma would host a large dinner celebration at home with all the relatives invited, including all the uncles, aunts, cousins, and even the family pets.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context

  • “Nián gāo” (年糕) refers to Glutinous Rice Cake, but it can also be translated literally as “New Year Cake.” The name is auspicious because it sounds similar to the popular Chinese New Year’s saying “nián nián gāo” (年年高), which means “higher every year.” It is often used as a toast at the dinner table to wish good health for elders, successful careers for working adults, and stellar grades for children.

Social Context

  • Glutinous Rice Cake is always served for the traditional feast on Chinese New Year’s Eve. The extended family reunites to celebrate this special occasion. After the feast, the family watches fireworks and a special show on TV called “chūn wǎn” (春晚), which features singing, dancing, and traditional performances.

Item:

  • “Nián gāo” (年糕), or Glutinous Rice Cake, comes in two varieties: savory and sweet. The preparation process is straightforward but time consuming. First, boiled sticky rice is pounded into a paste and molded into dough. The dough is then cooked again, usually by steaming. Savory Glutinous Rice Cake dishes are usually served as entrées. The rice dough is cooked plain, typically in the shape of cylinders or flat slices, and subsequently stir fried with other ingredients or used in hotpot. For example, in Shanghai, Glutinous Rice Cake is often stir fried with cabbage and shredded pork. Sweet Glutinous Rice Cake dishes, on the other hand, are served as desserts. Sugar, assorted nuts, and dried fruits are added to the dough before cooking or mixed in afterwards. When purchased at the store, sweet Glutinous Rice Cake dishes are often packed in more elaborate shapes such as fish, which symbolizes surplus and unity.

Image Files:

Sweet Glutinous Rice Cake in elaborate packaging (Photo was taken by W.W.’s family members on November 7, 2020; it was ordered online.)

Sweet Glutinous Rice Cake being steamed (Photo was taken by W.W.’s family members on November 7, 2020; unfortunately the end product is not as beautiful as the packaging.)

Transcript of Interview Clip:

W.W. (collector and informant): When I was a child, um, I remember that my favorite dessert for Chinese New Year was sweet Glutinous Rice Cake shaped like koi. Since I was allergic to tree nuts, my parents and grandparents always bought it plain. The packaging was super elaborate, so I was always, um, a little, very disappointed actually, to discover that the rice cake itself was plain white. My family would steam the plain rice cake and serve it with nuts and other toppings placed separately on the side. I always struggled to eat it because it was very sticky. Apparently, the right technique is to stick your chopsticks into the rice cake and swirl them around until a decent sized blob forms. After eating the rice cake, we would cast lots to see who would clean the dishes because it was always a tedious chore to clean off the sticky remains.

Collector’s Comments:

  • Talking about Glutinous Rice Cake brings back happy childhood memories and evokes a strong feeling of nostalgia. I always preferred the sweet type instead of the savory type. My parents did not have the time to make rice dough themselves, so they bought it pre-packaged from the store, usually weeks in advance. I would always beg them to let me eat it before Chinese New Year, but my efforts were never successful.

Collector’s Name: Winston Wang

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Dessert: Pandoro

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration, family tradition
  • Language: English with some Italian
  • Country of Origin: Italy
  • Informant: M.P.S.
  • Date Collected: November 19, 2020

Informant Data:

  • M.P.S. is a 22-year-old senior studying Mathematics and Computer Science at Dartmouth College. She is half Canadian and half Italian, but she spent most of her life in England. As a young child, she spent some time living with her relatives in Italy, where she learned to speak basic Italian and became accustomed to many local traditions, especially ones related to food. She is non-religious but enjoys celebrating Christmas with her family.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context

  • In Italy, Christmas cakes, more accurately described as sweet breads, are traditional desserts eaten for Christmas celebrations. During the Middle Ages, only rich people could afford to eat white bread, and sweet bread was considered a luxury reserved for the nobility. Nowadays, they are much more affordable and extremely popular among Italian households. Most families purchase them at the store days or even weeks in advance, though some choose to bake their own at home.

Social Context

  • Christmas cake, as the name implies, is eaten on or around Christmas Day. Store-bought Christmas cake is often packaged in a beautiful paper container. Many families have their own rituals when it comes to unpackaging the Christmas cake and sharing the delicious contents within.

Item:

  • Pandoro, which translates to “golden bread,” is a type of traditional Italian Christmas cake that originates from Verona. It is a plain sweetbread dusted with vanilla-scented icing sugar that is well-known for its distinctive golden color, which signifies wealth. When viewed from above, the shape of Pandoro resembles an eight-pointed star, which symbolizes salvation and abundance from a Judeo-Christian perspective. When purchased from the store, Pandoro is nicely packaged with the icing sugar included in a plastic packet. For many families, the preparation of Pandoro is an entertaining ritual that typically takes place early Christmas morning: the whole sweetbread is placed in a plastic bag along with the powdery icing sugar. The plastic bag is then sealed and shaken vigorously until the cake is fully coated in icing sugar. Afterwards, the Pandoro is sliced and shared among the family. Unfortunately, Pandoro is difficult to find in the US. Many Italian American families prefer Panettone, a cupola-shaped Christmas cake from Milan that contains dried or candied fruits.

Image File:

Bauli Pandoro, a popular brand (Photo was taken by M.P.S. on November 30, 2020; she ordered the Pandoro from the store more than a month in advance)

Audio Clip:

 

Transcript:

M.P.S. (informant): So I eat this food, so my food is called a Pandoro. Am I meant to say that now?

W.W. (collector): Yeah, yeah.

M.P.S.: Okay, so my food is called a Pandoro. It’s basically a Italian Christmas bread, cake type food. And it is my favorite food of all time. I love it so much. I’ve eaten it every Christmas since I was a baby. Either if I was in Italy, that Christmas, or if I was in England, which is where I live. And this is basically a type of kind of big, fluffy yellow cake that you can eat around Christmas time. I don’t know if there’s any specific rules. But typically, my family we wait until Christmas day to open it. We buy it from the store, we don’t make them ourselves. And one of the fun-est things about them is that you take the icing sugar, and you mix it into, into this kind of plastic bag, and you put the whole cake in the plastic bag, and you shake it around until the cake is coated and icing sugar. So that’s kind of like the ritualistic element every Christmas morning. So the first thing we do is open the Pandoro and shake it up so that it’s ready to eat at lunchtime.

W.W.: Great. And the tradition that you just mentioned is something that you only do with your family, or is this a common thing for Italian families to do?

M.P.S.: Well, a lot of Italians eat Pandoro at Christmas. And I mean, you typically, when you buy them, they’ll come with a packet of icing sugar and a plastic bag in the box ready for you to do, so I think lots of Italian families do shake it up together. It’s kind of like celebratory, although I don’t know whether or not it’s specifically like on Christmas Day or just around the time. And some people obviously make them themselves. They home-make.

W.W.: So you mentioned Pandoro is Italian Christmas cake. Could you talk a little bit about how it’s, like what’s special about the cake? Um, like for example, like the shape, the way it’s made.

M.P.S.: So it’s kind of shaped like a Christmas tree, and it’s really tall. So like from the top it looks like a star which is really nice and Christmas-y and it’s made it’s pretty simple. The ingredients, I’m pretty sure just butter, sugar, flour, eggs, or I’m not even sure I don’t think there’s eggs actually. Um, and it’s originally like bread. So it’s Pandoro, which means like bread, gold bread, right, “pan” is bread, and “d’oro” is gold. So it’s like meant to be very like yellow, yellowy. So that’s kind of what makes it stand out. There’s another Christmas cake called Panettone which is similar and maybe more commonly found, like in America, or I’ve seen it more often like, in places like Starbucks and things, and this has got fruits and stuff in it. But Pandora is typically like plain, and you’re just eating it with sugar. Some people like prepare it different ways. I like to dip it in milk. I think it’s really delicious.

Informant’s Comments:

  • If you haven’t tried Pandoro before, I highly recommend you try it. It’s so good. It doesn’t seem like it should be that good because it’s just bready sponge cake. But it is. There is something about it and the flavor. That makes it my favorite thing about Christmas time. It’s so delicious. And if you try it, you shouldn’t put whipped cream or ice cream or chocolate on top. Just eat it like is meant to be eaten, at least for the first time, so you get the proper experience because I feel like it’s got such a delicate flavor.

Collector’s Comments:

  • Fortunately, I was able to try Pandoro in my freshman year of college. It tastes absolutely amazing, and the experience was one of the highlights of my winter term. I really enjoyed learning about the informant’s lovely family tradition on Christmas morning where they prepare the Pandoro together. I didn’t know food preparation could be so fun!

Collector’s Name: Winston Wang

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Dessert: Kutja; Salad: Salat Olivier

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration, religious custom
  • Language: English with some Russian
  • Country of Origin: Russia
  • Informant: V.A.
  • Date Collected: November 13, 2020

Informant Data:

  • V.A. is ~50 years old, and she is a professor at Dartmouth College. She was born in the Soviet Union, which is now Russia, in the city of Moscow. Currently, she is religious and celebrates Christmas as a religious holiday; however, when she was growing up in the atheist Soviet environment, there was no Christmas whatsoever.

Contextual Data:

Historical & Religious Context

  • After the Russian Revolution, the Communists took the secular traditions of Christmas and passed them onto the New Year, which was celebrated as a secular holiday. Christmas trees, gifts, and food became New Year’s trees, gifts, and food. The religious traditions of Christmas were discontinued, and Christmas dishes associated with religious ceremonies were no longer prepared, at least not openly. After the end of the Communist regime, Christmas returned, but, nowadays, it is solely observed in Russia as a church holiday rather than a commercial holiday like in the US. The gift-giving tradition and original Christmas dishes are still part of New Year’s celebrations.

Cultural Context

  • Russian salads are unlike American salads. They are often warm dishes that feature a rich assortment of ingredients such as meat, seafood, root vegetables, and various types of dressing.

Social Context

  • In Russia, families hold a New Year’s feast as a replacement for the pre-revolution Christmas feast. The family or community gathers for a large meal consisting of mainly secular dishes, many invented during the Soviet era. In addition, the New Year is celebrated by champagne and other revelries.

Item:

  • Kutja (Кутья) is a pudding-like dish made using some variety of grain, typically wheat berries or rice, cooked with honey. Sometimes, other ingredients such as nuts and raisins are also added. Traditionally, before the Soviet era, it was served on Christmas Eve as a celebration for Jesus’s birthday. It was also eaten after funeral ceremonies at the church to commemorate the souls of the departed.
  • Salat Olivier (салат оливьер) is a rich salad consisting of chicken, potatoes, mayonnaise, pickles, carrots, onions, and tinned peas that every Russian family prepares for the New Year. It was invented during the Soviet era and remains a popular salad dish to this day.

Transcript of Interview Clip:

W.W. (collector): Thank you so much. So feel free to go ahead and talk about the item you’re sharing as well as any relevant social or cultural context related to the item.

V.A. (informant): Yeah, I think I want to say that so my own way of celebrating Christmas has changed because when I was a child, and when I was, when I was a young adult, I didn’t… when I was a child, I did not celebrate Christmas, because nobody did. It was the end of the Soviet Union. And during the Soviet times, people did not celebrate Christmas, at least openly. And the whole holiday was replaced by the celebration of the New Year.

After the revolution, yeah, that was a deal of the Communists, they just took the traditions of Christmas and passed them onto the New Year, they kind of made this a non-religious holiday. So the Christmas tree became a New Year tree. Christmas gifts became New Year gifts. And Christmas food became New Year food. So people that before the revolution, they used to think that traditional dishes were making a goose or a duck, roast duck or roast goose, as, because meat were… because, why that? Yes, well, for once, the celebration of Christmas is preceded by Christmas Lent, by a fast, a pretty long, fast like a month long when people don’t eat meat. So eating meat was like a way to celebrate after a very long period of not eating it. So that, that was a traditional dish. And another traditional dish also that that also has religious symbolism was what is called kutja (Кутья). And that was some kind of grain like rice or wheat grains cooked with honey. And that is something that is associated with remembering the dead. So this is a traditional dish, for example, when somebody dies and after you give this religious ceremonial saying goodbye to the person at the church, that is the food that you eat. So it was sometimes served during the Christmas, although it is like a birthday. Yes, a birthday of Jesus, still it, it has this association of paying tribute to the dead people and kind of acknowledging that they’re still there. Yeah. So, but that is that food, because of its very religious association, it was not passed into the celebration of the New Year.

So when I was growing up, what people would do for the New Year that at that time replaced Christmas would be some kinds of new Soviet dishes like for example, something which we call salat olivier (салат оливьер), a salad, which is not really a salad but like a warm salad, with chicken, with mayonnaise, with potatoes, etc. Like some very rich salad that people traditionally make for the New Year. That’s another, another thing that people always have for the New Year is champagne.

And so Christmas was totally lost. I didn’t celebrate it. And then I became religious at some point in my life and when Christmas was returned, after the Communist regime was over, and now the new Russia actively promotes religion. Yeah, so people started celebrating it again. But it remained where it was. It’s a church holiday. So what I’m trying to say is that people still make ducks and geese for the New Year, they still make the salad with chicken and potatoes, and they still drink some champagne for the New Year. But celebration of the Christmas is limited to religious families. It is nothing whatever like it is in the States, it’s not a commercial holiday. Nobody’s giving gifts. Nobody’s… all the celebration is around the New Year. So in a way, there is no Christmas, traditional Christmas dishes, now.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I enjoyed learning about the history behind the dishes. It is fascinating that many Christmas traditions were passed on to the New Year and continue to live on. During the Cultural Revolution in China, religious practices, especially Buddhist ones, were also labelled as superstition and purged in favor of atheism.

Collector’s Name: Winston Wang

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Dessert: Suman (Sticky Rice)

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration, religious custom
  • Language: Tagalog
  • Country of Origin: Philippines
  • Informant: J.D.
  • Date Collected: November 19, 2020

Informant Data:      

  • J.D. was born in the Philippines in 1963, where he grew up in the Northern region, Ilocos Sur. He grew up in a rural town, where he had helped farm rice as part of his everyday life. During the 1980s, he moved to the capital, Manila, to study engineering, where he would eventually settle to have two kids. He later moved to the United States in 2009 and has since lived in the city with his family. 

Contextual Data:    

  • Cultural Context:  Suman is a traditional Christmas dessert because the Philippines is historically agrarian. Christmas is a time for feasting and represents abundance, so this dessert is made with cheap and accessible ingredients, like rice and coconuts, to be able to serve everyone. However, what sets this apart from a typical dessert is that it is labor intensive, as each suman is wrapped individually, and the coconut milk used for it is traditionally squeezed manually from the coconut meat although more modern takes just use canned coconut milk. 
  • Social Context:  Suman was eaten after morning prayers and masses. Christmas is also similar to the American Thanksgiving, where the celebration is meant to be thankful for everyone and the blessings within your life. It was necessary to pray or go to Church as Filipinos were Catholic, and giving thanks meant being grateful to God. This dish was served after the prayers, as people finish spending a portion of their day with God and are ready to celebrate the rest of the holiday.

Item:

  • The item is a desert called Suman, or Filipino sticky rice. It is made with glutinous (or malagkit) rice, coconut milk, and sugar. It is half-cooked, and then the rice and coconut milk mixture is individually wrapped in either a cylindrical or pyramid shape with banana leaves. Finally, the suman is steamed until the rice is fully cooked and served with sugar. 

Translation of Interview Clip :

X.D. (collector): Hi, please introduce yourself and give a backstory of your life, even when you lived in the Philippines.

J.D. (informant): Ok, my name is J.D. I was born in 1963 and I lived in Santa, Ilocos-Sur. I moved to Manila to study engineering, and I stayed there to raise my family, until around February 2009. Then I came here.

X.D.: Can you give a little backstory on your life in Santa. You’ve mentioned before this interview a little about it.

J.D.: Ok. Santa, when I lived there, was mostly farming. You know, it’s very rural. As a young boy, I would help in the rice fields for some money because we were really poor back then. 

X.D.: So what Christmas dish will you talk about? Please give context to it.

J.D.: Suman, which is a desert, is a Christmas food. They make it with, how do you call it in English? Malagkit?

X.D.: I’m not sure, I’ll research that later for you.

J.D.: Yea, they make it with malagkit rice, coconut milk, and sugar. They pack the rice in a banana leaf, and they steam it. It comes in either the triangular shape or just the regular stick. As a child, I ate it after we all prayed. I’d dipped it in sugar so it was sweeter.

X.D.: Was there a reason why you ate it in Christmas? I know suman is common nowadays.

J.D.: Back then, suman was the only thing that could be made for everyone. The Philippines mostly had farmers, and we only had rice and coconut milk, so suman was the dish that could be eaten. But it was labor intensive! You had to squeeze the milk from the coconut meat and then wrap it. Now it’s easier, but it still takes a lot of time! We ate it after the prayers because usually it was a community prayer, and then after one of the ladies would help pass it around. As a child, I’d be so happy to eat it. 

X.D.: So are the prayers before the dinner? Can you explain more on that?

J.D.: No, going to Church during Christmas is an early morning event. You had to go to Church. Remember, everyone is Catholic, and you have to say thanks to God and your blessings. It’s like Thanksgiving here. After that, people were hungry, which is why Suman is eaten.

Informant’s Comments:

  • There’s different types of suman, depending where you are in the Philippines. In the Ilocos-Sur, suman is popularly in a triangular shape.

Collector: Xenia Dela Cueva

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Dessert: 8 Treasure Rice

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – food, Customary Lore – celebration
  • Language: English, Chinese
  • Country of Origin: China/Canada
  • Informant: A.Z.
  • Date Collected: November 7, 2020

Informant Data:

  • A.Z was born in China and spent half her life there before moving to Canada. As far as she knows, she is full Chinese. She has strong ties to her family as her mother and grandmother have passed down many recipes to her. She always spends Chinese New Year with family. Currently, she is a second year student at Dartmouth College studying computer science.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Rice is a staple food in China as it is an ingredient found in countless dishes. In its purest form, rice can just be steamed and used eaten as a side to other meats and vegetables, rice can be fried, rice can be used in congee or porridge. However, rice can also be used to make noodles and cakes. Because of its versatility, rice can be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and can even be used in various desserts.
  • Social Context: Chinese New Year is a widely celebrated festival by Chinese people around the world, and it typically includes a large meal with family and many other festivities.

Item:

  • 8 treasure rice (八宝饭) is a Chinese New Year dish that dates back 2000 year ago to the Zhou Dynasty and it typically eaten as a dessert. The reason why it is called 8 treasure rice is because it contains 8 fruits that are considered very therapeutic in Chinese Medicine, including Red Dates, Red Bean, Plums, Winter-melons, Nuts, Longan, Lotus Seeds, etc. There are many variations of what ingredients are added depending on who makes it as some form include canned tangerines, winter melons, and more. These “treasures” are considered the toppings to the main component being glutinous rice.

Audio Clip:

 

Transcript:

C.C. (collector): So what is one particular Chinese New Year dish that you would eat and enjoy?

A.Z. (informant):  So one of my favorites is 八宝饭, which translates in English roughly to 8 treasures rice. This is a sweet dessert we usually have during Chinese New Year after our main courses as kind of a finishing plate. And the history behind it is that this dessert has over 2000 years of history dating back to the Zhou dynasty and the reason why its still so popular and has been popular throughout these 2000 years is that it is a very beautiful looking dessert rice dish that contains 8 treasures, that’s the name, 8 treasures rice. And each of these treasures or fruits and vegetables are believed to have medicinal and therapeutic properties according to Chinese medicine. So these fruits usually vary depending on the region of China, but basic and common fruits put into 八宝饭 include red dates, lotus seeds, plums, winter-melons, longan, red bean paste, nuts, and yeah these are the common ones we put.

C.C.: Ok that’s it. Thank you.

A.Z.: You’re welcome.

Informant’s Comments:

  • She would typically eat this dessert at restaurants instead of preparing it at home, and each place she had that dish at, the 8 treasure rice would be made differently with some of the “treasures” varying.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I have never tried this dish or heard of it before this interview, however, I am familiar with rice-based desserts. I think this dish would be similar to the rice desserts I tried in the past.

Collector’s Name: Chris Chao

Tags/Keywords:

  • Chinese New Year
  • Material Lore
  • Customary Lore
  • Food
  • Dessert

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