Japanese Mochi (sweet rice) Cakes for New Year’s

Mochi (Sweet Rice) Blondie 

In looking through notes I took years ago on special occasion foods, I came across an interesting Japanese tradition. Japanese Americans make mochi (sweet rice) cakes for New Year’s. The rice made me think about the historical links in which Asian traders introduced new species of rice to Africa long before the start of the African slave trade. As mentioned in earlier post, for U.S. Southerners, especially Carolinians, there is no New Year’s celebration without rice based hoppin John (and rice pudding). Likewise Mochi cakes, made from layers of sweet rice steamed and shaped into cakes and seasoned, sometimes with coconut, represents the yearly culinary high point for Japanese Americans.

Sweet Rice-Flour and Coconut Mochi Cake Recipe (and many other mochi recipes):
http://www.grouprecipes.com/sr/14086/mochi-cake/recipe/

New Year’s Traditions in and out of the Kitchen

Photo: homemade cranberry sauce; it’s really easy to make.

I am fascinated with the traditions that develop around holidays like New Year’s. I wrote about how In Guatemala City locals set off fire crackers on Christmas. Well they also set them off on New Year's. I found a source that talked about similar traditions in the Mississippi Delta. On New Year’s Day black families would eat a traditional dinner including black-eyed peas and shoot out the old year and shoot in the New Year with their guns. “All over you could hear guns going off,” says one Delta native. Then on New Year’s Day black folks would eat right at twelve noon insuring a favorable new year. The men might go hunting while the women folk stayed in the kitchen making deserts, candied yams, and homemade cranberry sauce. My friend Bryant Terry, author of Vegan Soul, http://basicbooks.com/perseus/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0738212288, insists that making homemade cranberry sauce is very easy. Here are recipes you can use for your New Year’s feast:

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/cranberry_sauce/

http://www.vegfamily.com/vegan-recipes/sides/cranberry-sauce.htm

Pork and New' Year's Day Culinary Traditions

North Carolinian Reginald Ward said, “I don’t care where you are, in New York” black folk on New Year’s Day are going to eat “strictly pork.” Tradition calls for cooking “black-eyed peas, hog head, a whole hog head now, pig tails, pigs feet.” He goes on to say, “You can go just about anywhere, and people who were born in the South, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee,” cook pork on New Year’s Day. Having lived in California in the 1960s, Ward noticed that, “everybody born in the South was looking for pork” on New Year’s. As a result, the price of smoked and pickled pork parts like pigs’ feet and hog maws in California supermarkets became expensive around New Year’s. Historically this how southerners both black and white ate on New Year’s; and this tradition has caused a lot of serious health problems because folks ate a lot of pork on other days of the year too. Dr. Elijah Saunders, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center who specializes in hypertension and coronary disease in black populations, insists that “pork organs and extremities” such as chitlin’s and pigs’ feet are also very high in saturated fat and increase one’s risk factors for an aneurysm or heart attack. Thus my message based on Dr. Saunders’s findings is ease up on the pork this New Year’s day and for the coming year. Over the next couple of days I hope to show that we can celebrate the New Year and eat healthy good tasting soul food too.

Hoppin’ John and New Year’s Food Tradition

When they relocated to places like New York, St. Louis, and Chicago, Southern migrants brought with them a tradition of church membership and Watch Night services (see yesterdays post for the etymology of this term) which was a well-attended service where down-home southern cooking was available in abundance for free. Southern superstition established the tradition of serving hoppin’ John, black-eyed peas (cowpeas common to Igboland in West Africa) and rice, in addition to other traditional dishes depending on where the southern migrant community was from. Hoppin’ John was black-eyed peas and rice, beans, red peppers, and salt pork cooked to a stewlike consistency. It is probable that hoppin’ John evolved out of the rice and bean mixtures such as dab-a-dab (the rice, beans, vegetables, meat, palm oil, and pepper dish) that West African slaves survived on during the middle passage. Many southerners believed that the black-eyed peas symbolized coins and eating them insured economic prosperity for the coming year. Here are two recipes for Hoppin’ John one traditional and one vegan.

Traditional hoppin’ John recipe: http://dining.discoversouthcarolina.com/famous-flavors/hoppin-john.aspx

Vegan hoppin’ John recipe: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipeId=406

New Year’s, Watch Night Service, and the Emancipation Proclamation

“Watch Night,” or New Year’s Eve service, is another African-American southern religious tradition that I talk about in my book Hog and Hominy: Soul Food From Africa to America http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/webFeatures. Watch Night dates back to the end of the Civil War. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln declared his famous Emancipation Proclamation, which set slaves in Confederate territories free as of January 1, 1863. As a result, African Americans across much of the South held religious services, many of them secretly, in which they praised and worshiped God as they watched the New Year and freedom arrive. Thus, after 1863, African Americans regularly celebrated Watch Night and New Year’s Eve in honor of Emancipation Day. Southerners carried their religious traditions with them when they migrated north. Over the next couple of days I will be sharing the food that African Americans have traditionally cooked and served at home for New Year's and at church as part of Watch Night services.

Fish and Christmas Feast

This semester one of my Italian American students who knows I am a foodie shared with me his grandfather’s seven fishes family tradition. I grew up with Italians here in the Hudson Valley, put never heard the term before. So I did some research on this Italian culinary tradition. It's difficult to precisely pin down the origins put it apparently comes from southern Italy and calls for serving seven different fish dishes on Christmas Eve. There are three popular theories about why serve seven fishes: the Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church—baptism, penance, Holy Eucharist, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, and the sacrament of the sick; the seven deadly sins—pride, envy, anger, gluttony, sloth, lust and greed; the seven days it took Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem where the baby Jesus was born. The fish feast on Christmas Eve can include among other dishes Lobster Ravioli, Tuna Fish and Cannellini Beans, Salmon and Chick Peas, Mussels Marinara, Fried Flounder Filet, Fried Calamari, and Baccalà (bacalao in Spanish) served stewed, in a salad, or deep-fried. Various nationalities besides Italians enjoy baccalà/bacalao (dried salted cod), including the people of Brazil and the Caribbean. Tomorrow I will talk about one of my favorite cod fish recipes from the Caribbean. Below are some traditional seven fish recipes for Christmas Eve.

Video recipes: http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/holidays/christmas/batalisevenfishes

Photo and recipes: http://www.stephencooks.com/2005/12/christmas_eve_m.html