Tag Archives: Recipe

Cold Noodles for Christmas Dinner (Evan Fu)

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General Information About Item:

  • Material Lore, Christmas Food Recipe
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Bing Hai
  • Date Collected: 10-24-2021

Informant Data:

  • Bing Hai is a 50-year old woman of Chinese descent living in Palo Alto, California. She is also the mother of the collector. Bing was born in Shenyang, China and immigrated to the United States upon finishing college in Beijing. She works on the patent counsel for Bristol Myers Squibb and has two college-aged children.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Bing learned to cook Chinese food at a very young age – she has a large repertoire of Chinese recipes that she can make at a moment’s notice. However, having lived in the United States for three decades, she has become skilled at cooking various American foods as well. Bing has celebrated most popular American holidays, including Christmas. Moreover, in Chinese culture, simple noodle dishes are considered a staple. Historically, many areas of China are relatively poor and live off of grains and rice. Throughout thousands of years, generations of Chinese people have depended on and passed down simple food recipes such as the cold noodle dish outlined here.
  • Social Context: This food recipe was shared when the interviewee was asked about the specific foods she makes for Christmas dinner. As the primary chef in the household, Bing has a lot of experience preparing large amounts of food for various family dinners.

Item:

  • Cold noodles (and other simple noodle dishes) are a notoriously easy dish to prepare in Chinese culture. For this recipe, you boil noodles until cooked and immediately place them in ice water to cool them down. Then, you prepare a sauce mixture with soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and scallions. Simply toss the cold noodles with the sauce mixture, and finish with sliced cucumbers and more scallions. The noodles are filling, easy to make, and can be prepared quickly in large quantities.

Transcript:

  • “The dish I most enjoy making on Christmas is 凉面 (cold noodles). They are so easy to make, and I can make an enormous amount for the 10+ people who we invite on Christmas. You boil the noodles in water, take them out, and rest them in ice water. Your sauce is simply soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and scallions. Then you just mix the noodles and sauce, and slice some cucumbers and more scallions to put on top.”

Informant’s Comments:

  • “The kids especially love this dish since it’s so pleasing to the palette, and the noodles really serve as the main carbs for the dinner.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • I chose to ask my own mother about her Christmas food preparations, given that we come from a Chinese background and our Christmas dinner tends not to include traditionally American foods. As America becomes a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, I found it useful to examine how minorities celebrate Christmas from the perspective of food. My mother echoed the overarching theme from my interviews – families tend to invite a lot of folks to Christmas dinner and choose to prepare whatever dishes are easiest to make in large quantities. This cold noodles recipe is many Chinese families’ go-to dish for large family dinners and therefore for Christmas dinner – it is folkloric in nature as many in the Chinese-American folk group will create this dish for large meals.

Collected By:

Evan Fu, 21

Palo Alto, CA

Hanover, NH

Dartmouth College

RUSS013

Fall 2021

Entrée: Braised Pork and Gold Ingot Egg

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish, recipe; Customary Lore – celebration, family tradition, superstition, historical story
  • Language: Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Country of Origin: China
  • Informant: Y.Z.
  • Date Collected: November 7, 2020

Informant Data:

  • Y.Z. is about ~50 years old, and she currently resides in Shanghai, China. She was born in Beijing, China during the Cultural Revolution and grew up in relative poverty, as was the case with most Chinese families back then. After attending university in Beijing, she pursued her graduate studies in the US. She learned many traditional Chinese dishes from her mother and enjoys cooking for her family.

Contextual Data:

Historical & Cultural Context

  • During the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368) in China, the main currency was gold and silver ingots shaped like tiny boats called “yuán bǎo” (元宝). Many traditional Chinese New Year dishes such as dumplings are prepared in the shape of these ingots as a symbol for wealth and prosperity.
  • In the 1960s and 1970s, China’s economy was in a terrible state. Meat, eggs, and sugar were heavily rationed. As a result, most families could not prepare meat dishes and desserts for their daily meals. During Chinese New Year, the rations were temporarily increased, so families would celebrate by making large meat dishes and fancy desserts.

Social Context

  • Chinese New Year meals are always eaten as family. Most of the dishes have auspicious names, colors, or shapes that symbolize longevity, wealth, or good fortune. By eating these dishes, families express their hope for more prosperity and blessings in the coming year.

Item:

  • Braised Pork and Gold Ingot Egg, or “hóng shāo ròu yuán bǎo dàn” (红烧肉元宝蛋) in Chinese, is a popular meat dish eaten for Chinese New Year, both in the northern and southern provinces. Diced pork belly is braised in a broth consisting of soy sauce, sugar, star anise, ginger, and garlic. Boiled eggs are then flavored using the remaining meat stock. Afterwards, the top half of the egg whites are removed to give the eggs a distinctive “yuán bǎo” (元宝) shape. Finally, the eggs are plated on top of the pork belly, and the family shares the dish together to express their wishes for the new year. There are several variations of this dish according to regional preferences. For example, in Shanghai, families tend to add much more sugar to the dish to give it a sweeter taste.

Image File:

image file

The completed dish (Photo was taken by Y.Z. on November 7, 2020; she prepared the dish using a recipe from her mother.)

Translation of Interview Clip:

Y.Z. (informant): The dish I’m introducing is called “hóng shāo ròu yuán bǎo dàn” (红烧肉元宝蛋). Um, this dish, we always had it for Chinese New Year when I was a child. So, when I grew up in the 60s and 70s, China’s economy was pretty behind. Ingredients like pork and eggs were scarce resources, rationed every month by the government. For each person, every month, um, there was about one pound of meat and eggs in total. So, usually, we rarely had a chance to eat meat. That’s why during Chinese New Year, when the rations are slightly increased, we would use, um, pork and eggs to make the dish. One reason why this dish is so popular is because the meat is braised in soy sauce and other condiments, including star anise, scallion, ginger, and garlic… uh, the remaining meat stock is used to flavor the eggs and can also be saved for other dishes. The reason why the eggs are called ” yuán bǎo dàn ” (元宝蛋), is like this. “Yuán bǎo” (元宝), they are Chinese ingots, the shape is like a boat. During the Yuan Dynasty, gold and silver were used as currency, and they were molded into such a shape. ” Yuán” (元) refers to the Yuan Dynasty, and ” bǎo” (宝) means treasure. So in this dish, you can make the eggs resemble “yuán bǎo” (元宝) by removing part of the egg white. I guess this is a nice wish, the hope that, next year, life will be bountiful, the family income will increase, so people make this dish “hóng shāo ròu yuán bǎo dàn” (红烧肉元宝蛋). That’s about it. Are there any parts that you are not clear about?

W.W. (collector): Great, thanks for sharing. So I wanted to ask, is this dish a Beijing specialty or eaten widely across China?

Y.Z.: Uh, this is great question. This dish, I think it is eaten in many places, by many people. For Chinese New Year, both in the north and in the south, it is one of the most common dishes on the dinner table, suitable for young and old alike. Everyone likes it very much and eats the dish to show their wishes. Even though, the standards of living are higher now, and the dish can be made any time of the year, but as a tradition, many families still prepare it as a festival dish for Chinese New Year.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I remember eating “hóng shāo ròu” (红烧肉), or braised pork, as a child, but this is my first time hearing about “yuán bǎo dàn” (元宝蛋). I am impressed by the level of creativity in the preparation of the eggs.
  • Homeopathic magic is present in the superstitions related to the informant’s dish: eating the ingot-shaped eggs brings wealth and good fortune.

Collector’s Name: Winston Wang

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Entrée: Tamales

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – traditional dish; Customary Lore – celebration
  • Language: Spanish
  • Country of Origin: Mexico
  • Informant: G.P.
  • Date Collected: November 7, 2020

Informant Data:

  • G.P. is a ~60 year old woman living in New Jersey. She was born in Tlaxcala, Mexico and has spent over 20 years in the United States, where she lives with two of her siblings and, up until they started university, her two nephews and niece. In the US, her family usually celebrates Christmas by inviting over more family members, preparing food, and partaking in some traditions with respect to her religion.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: You will most likely find tamales anytime you go to a Mexican restaurant, but when a family makes them at home, the dish has more meaning. Tamales are more of a work of art, and the process is very special. There is a general belief that emotions tied to cooking are passed on to the resulting dish, which is an example of the law of similarity, like produces like. This is doubly so for tamales. The process involves washing one of your hands and arm and mixing the batter until everything is well integrated. This direct physical contact with the ingredients makes it really important for the chef to remain happy and excited. To remedy the annoyance of beating the mixture for long periods of time, people switch places.
  • Social Context: Eating and making tamales is something that’s usually done as a group due to the grueling work that goes into it. The easier parts are prepping the salsas, meats and/or cheese, and chile pepper slices. The hard part is beating the batter and making the tamales, so usually family and friends gather to form them in the leaves.

Item:

The recipe is somewhat complex, so it’ll be split into several parts

  • The sauce:
    • Tomatillo Sauce (Green): Peel tomatillos and keep the peels for the batter. Grill tomatillos and green chile peppers (jalapeños or chile de arbol), then peel the scorched parts off, and blend with water, garlic and onion. Afterwards, heat up some oil in a pot, then fry the sauce in it, and leave to boil.
    • Tomato Sauce (Red): Wash, cut, and deseed a lot of tomatoes, then blend. Slice some onion and fry until it becomes clear but before it starts browning. Add the sauce and water, so it isn’t too viscous. Add about two stems of epazote and salt to taste, then leave to boil.
  • The batter requires a very large pot. You’ll have to boil tomatillo peels with some anise. Then, you’ll need to mix flour for tamales, salt, a bit of baking soda and baking powder, about a liter of oil per bag of flour, chicken stock, and the stock from the tomatillo peels after being strained through a colander. Then, you must mix everything by hand, add salt, mix again, and let the contents sit for an hour.
  • Once the sauce and batter are done you can begin forming tamales by using corn husk leaves or banana leaves. Add batter, your choice of salsa, raw chicken pieces, cheese, and/or green chile pepper slices. Wrap them up so they don’t leak, and continue. Once you have a good bit of tamales, you’ll need a special pot with two sections separated by a metal plate with holes for steam since tamales are vapor-cooked. The bottom section is filled with water, and the top section is stacked with tamales until the top of the pot is reached. Then, cover everything with a moist cloth, plastic bag, and pot top. Let the contents slow cook for 2.5 hours, and they’re done, becoming more solid as they coo).

Translation:

C.Y. (collector): Wow tamales take a while to make, why do you choose to make them?

G.P. (informant): Well I don’t make them for fun let me tell you that. I usually only make them when I can get help from my nephews and nieces, because it takes a long time, and as you probably know, getting angry is only going to make the process longer.

C.Y.: Oooh yea, I know about that. I remember my uncle threw away a whole meal because I was really angry as I helped him. Man, I was so disappointed in myself after that.

G.P.: Yea it’s really important. It helps in adding a bit of the human spirit into the mix, otherwise you’d just be able to use a machine, but I don’t think they come out as well.

Collector’s Comments:

  • Tamales are really something else in the food world. When I was younger, I used to get mad at being woken up at 6am to beat the batter, but, as I got older, I realized the payoff was worth it and was much happier to help. To date, the longest I’ve gone only having tamales for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was around a week.

Collector’s Name: Carlos Yepes

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Entrée: Menudo

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration, quick fix
  • Language: Spanish
  • Country of Origin: Mexico
  • Informant: I.P.
  • Date Collected: November 7, 2020

Informant Data:

  • I.P. is a ~55 year old man living in New Jersey. He was born in Tlaxcala, Mexico and has spent over 20 years in the United States, where he lives with two of his siblings and, up until they started university, his two nephews and niece. In the US, his family usually celebrates Christmas by inviting over more family members, preparing food, and partaking in some traditions with respect to his religion.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Unlike the American culture of viewing soup as an appetizer, the Mexican culture views it as a full meal, leading to the creation of many soups such as “Caldo de Res”, “Caldo de Pollo,” “Pozole,” and “Menudo.” Menudo was created due to not wanting to waste any parts of an animal. That is why the honeycomb cow tripe is frequently used for this dish.
  • Social Context: Menudo can be eaten at any time, but due to its status as a hangover cure, it is very common during celebratory events. Due to this, it is often seen as a breakfast or lunch meal during Christmas Day, as a quick fix to all the relatives who drank a little too much.

Item:

  • The traditional procedure involves obtaining dried chili peppers including: 1lb of guajillo, 2-3 chipotle peppers, 3 costeno peppers, then cutting their tail, removing the seeds, and boiling them to soften them up. Afterwards, you blend them all together with a handful of cilantro, some onion, some epazote, salt, and 1-2 garlic cloves. While doing this, blanch the honeycomb tripe, and then boil it once more with epazote. Once the meat softens, add the salsa. It is typically eaten with some lime, chopped cilantro and onions.

Translation of Interview Clip:

C.Y. (collector): So you mentioned it is seen as a sort of cure to hangovers, have you ever had it for that purpose?

I.P. (informant): Well, I mean, yea haha, I can’t say I haven’t tried it. That is, back when I used to drink heavily. It’s been a long time since then, and I’m a new man hahaha. But I have to say it is quite effective, it helps sweat out the ailment.

C.Y.: Aaah, I see I see, did you notice it having any other sort of health benefits?

I.P.: Personally, not really haha. When we ate, we ate a lot. So we’d start feeling tired after eating so much, so it’s pretty hard to know. Just a great meal during any time of the day.

Collector’s Comments:

  • My family doesn’t only eat menudo during celebrations since it is one of my favorite meals. Typically it’s also whenever I can persuade my family we should make it. My family also ties homeopathic magic to certain meals; one of these includes menudo as it is eaten very hot, and very spicy, so as to kind of wake you up and sweat out the ailment.

Collector’s Name: Carlos Yepes

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Salad: Ensalada de Noche Buena

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration
  • Language: Spanish
  • Country of Origin: Mexico
  • Informant: G.P.
  • Date Collected: November 7, 2020

Informant Data:

  • G.P. is a ~60 year old woman living in New Jersey. She was born in Tlaxcala, Mexico and has spent over 20 years in the United States, where she lives with two of her siblings and her two nephews and niece, up until they started university. In the US, her family usually celebrates Christmas by inviting over more family members, preparing food, and partaking in some religious traditions.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Salads in general are popular in Mexico since most of the population cannot afford certain items on a daily basis. This leads to many families depending on their crops and fruit trees for both food and supplemental income. Luckily, since it doesn’t get cold, crops can be grown year round.
  • Social Context: Many families eat this dish during the midnight dinner on Christmas Eve into Christmas day, and, while the orange makes it a bit more tedious to prepare, a sufficient amount is always made. It is mainly eaten after the main dish, almost as a dessert, but with the main purpose to balance the spicy main meal with something cool and sweet.

Item:

  • The “Christmas Eve Salad”, as it would be known in English, is a sweet fruit salad typically composed of beets, bananas, lettuce, and oranges. It is mainly served at Christmas time due to its festive, flashy, purple color, as well as its cool refreshing taste since it is typically served chilled and with peanuts. The most common procedure involves peeling and boiling beets in about a liter and a half of water, then cutting it into cubes and placing back into the water it was boiled in. While it is boiling, you cut bananas in slices, cut lettuce, and peel oranges so only the juice sacs cut into cubes remain. Once the beets are ready, you wait until its room temperature and then add honey and sugar, cool it, then add the rest of the ingredients. It is typically served in clear glass to complement the colors, as well as with optional peanuts.

Translation of Interview Clip:

C.Y.(collector): Do you make this salad every Christmas?

G.P.(informant): Yea when a lot of family comes over. Due to Covid though, I don’t think I’ll be making it this year. It’s only going to be my close family and I, so I think we’ll probably stick to something simpler and smaller.

C.Y.: What about making a smaller portion?

G.P.: Come on, you should know this. We don’t scale things down. Not in this house. If we do it, we go big. So unless you want to drive a two hour round trip to drop some off to your cousins…?

C.Y.: Haha, I’ll err, get back to you on that.

Collector’s Comments:

  • My family tends to eat this both during the holiday and outside the holiday during the warm months. We typically don’t tie much traditional value to it, aside from the light homeopathic magic belief that something cool will also help cool the stomach down to prevent stomachaches and indigestion since, once accustomed to it, its quite easy to go overboard on spicy foods.

Collector’s Name: Carlos Yepes

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