Favorite recipes from your cultural background?

[Anna Hart]

I love Robbie Burns day because I get to explore Scottish cuisine. Husband is Scottish and it important for him to have an authentic Scottish meal every January 25th. As I was making our steak pie and scones (see blog www.livingwelllivingsimply.blogspot for recipe) I was wondering about other cultures. So the question is what is your favorite recipe from your ethnic background?

[treehugger]

My ethnic background is 100% German Jewish, and I'm not particularly fond of anything traditionally from those cultures. I much prefer to eat typical Sephardic Jewish food rather than Ashkenazi.

Sometimes I think I must have been Greek in a past life. Or Persian. Or Turkish. Or Italian. Or Mexican. :)

Oh, and even though I posted over in your Robbie Burns thread, I don't have a drop of Scots in me, and neither does my husband. We were just seduced by bagpipes and whisky and never looked back.

[Kathy WI]

Hungarian - palacsinta, thin pancakes kind of like crepes. Also chicken paprikash.

[iris lily]

o excellent of you, celebrating Burns Day!

I don't make any ethnic food (I claim the Scots.)

DH cooks likes his mother, an immigrant from Switzerland. But we haven't had that noodle thing (spetzle?) in a while.

[Miss Cellane]

Oh, dear. I'm Scottish and Irish. Oatmeal and potatoes. I've always envied people with a more flavorful culinary ethnic background.

I do make a decent scone though. And Irish soda bread. And I've discovered that the Irish traditionally ate a lot of fish, including salmon, which I love. I had a bite of hagis once, and was underwhelmed.

I started today off with a big bowl of oatmeal and I had roast potatoes for dinner.

I have a Turkish SIL and she is slowly teaching me many of her family's favorite dishes. Much more interesting food.

[puglogic]

Good Italian pasta with good olive oil, San Marzano tomatoes, fresh basil. I love to cook Italian.

[kib]

Dane here. My mom makes a dessert she calls "princess rice" that she swears is a Danish tradition, but damned if I've ever found it outside her dining room. It's basically a rice pudding into which you fold tons and tons of whipped cream til it's fluffy, then add slivered almonds, and serve with a fruit sauce made with cherries and kir.

[Bastelmutti]

Baltic. Don't make much from my own culture, but eat it pretty happily when others make it. My favorite is sauerkraut and potatoes in any form. Sometimes I make a meat patty dish with mushroom sauce or "cheese salad" - basically shredded cheese mixed with mayo and garlic to put on bread (also good with pickles - I make those sometimes, too). I loathe caraway seeds with a passion & those are in a lot of our dishes, so I'm a bit picky, too.

Otherwise our main spices are salt, pepper and dill - maybe that's why my favorite cuisines are Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc.!

[Lizii]

I'm a mix of English/Irish, neither of which inspire me. I do love Northern Italian food and any Asian food except Japanese, but Italian is my favourite mainly because it uses fresh veggies. My mother learned from her English mother, so everything we ate was mushy with no flavour left. I cooked the same as her until I met my Italian lover, who could cook much better than me and soon realized I enjoyed his cooking more than mine, and have been cooking like him ever since. I now save the water my food is cooked in and freeze it until I make a good soup.

I do love potatoes in any form, it must be from my Irish side.

[IshbelRobertson]

I'm Scots. Not even a drop of Irish blood to dilute it (well, not since records have been kept - of course, earlier, who knows?)

Miss Celane - Scots food isn't all oats and potatoes! We had a long history of being very close to France (The Auld Alliance, as it is known) - their cooking was brought to Scotland in the 1400s and later - so many of our dishes have a distinctly French flair! I also suspect it is why we have the reputtion for being wonderful bakers! We have the best beef in the world (bar none, otherwise why would countries like the USA and Australia use our breeds to 'beef' up their fledgling herds in bygone days? Think Aberdeen Angus, Black Galloways, Highland cattle etc). Smoked Scottish salmon, anyone?! Our soups are great - cullen skink, for instance - Scotch lentil broth, Scotch broth are just a few. Our raspberries are wonderful - Cranachan wouldn't be the same without them - neither would our wonderful jams and preserves. Marmalade? The home of which is Dundee! Our fish. Apart from salmon, wonderful cod and haddock. Cakes... Dundee, wonderful shortbread, oatcakes. Oats - yes, we still eat porridge, but use it in crumble toppings, fruit and savoury, oatcakes to eat with our wonderful cheeses. The list is endless!

See? Not so plain, after all!

[Rosemary]

German.
Peasant food: greens, sausage, and potatoes cooked together ("Eintopf")
Fancy, decadent cakes and tortes
Most importantly, a tradition of high-quality, fresh, seasonal food.

[Merski]

Polish Irish & Swedish
Kapusta, guumpkis, mashed turnips & potatoes called "root mousse"

[catherine]

Wow! Seem to be a lot of Scottish folk here--hmm, So could it be true that there IS a connection between Scottish folk and simple, frugal living? :-)

I'm of Scottish/Irish ancestry--but that goes pretty far back, but DH is 100% Scottish. Ishbel, I agree that Scottish food can be totally enjoyable, but the minute you tell someone that you've just had a wonderful dinner of boiled hamburger meat (mince) you might get a funny look!

When I was a meat eater, I LOVED mince (I actually make a veggie version when I make the meat version for the family). Coming from the Irish side as well, I also love corned beef and cabbage (one of my favorites).

[Kat]

I am Dutch and Irish. Dutch cooking, in my opinion, is really rather plain. But it is hearty, and some of the baked goods are amazing. My dad wrote a cookbook when I was little called "The Dutch Chef's Cookbook." I am ashamed to say I haven't tried too many recipes out of it, but maybe I should. On the Irish side, I have made shepherd's pie, Guiness stew, and Irish soda bread.

[Stella]

I am Scottish, Swedish, French Canadian and Jewish. Most of the recipes I have that evoke some kind of childhood memory are Swedish because that's the grandmother I knew best. Rice pudding is probably my favourite. Total comfort food. We ate some German food growing up too because my mom and dad had lived in Germany for a while early in their marriage.

For Christmas I like to have tourtierre once in a while. It's a French Canadian meat pie my French Canadian grandma used to make. The only Scottish recipe anyone regularly made was shortbread. Ishbel, if you ever feel compelled to share some of your recipes I'd be interested in trying some of them.

My Jewish heritage isn't something that's been passed down to me. My grandfather was adopted from Germany by Americans and raised here. That's another area I'd like to explore.

Mostly I consider my heritage to be Upper Midwesterner/ Canadian. We've been here for a while. My first French relative arrived in Canada with Champlain in the 1600s. The Scottish side has been in Cape Breton Nova Scotia for quite a long time and the Swedes have been right here on the Minnesota/Wisconsin border since the 1800s. We have flavours of our heritage for sure, but it's been adapted to suit North America and influenced by other immigrants.

[treehugger]

Dane here. My mom makes a dessert she calls "princess rice" that she swears is a Danish tradition, but damned if I've ever found it outside her dining room. It's basically a rice pudding into which you fold tons and tons of whipped cream til it's fluffy, then add slivered almonds, and serve with a fruit sauce made with cherries and kir.

Wow, traditional or not, Princess Rice sounds delicious!

[daisy]

I'm 50% Scottish/50% Norwegian. I like to bake, so lefse, krumkake, krunsekake, scones, plum pudding all rank high to me. I've liked the savory Scottish foods I've had (aside from black pudding), but the traditional Norwegian fare I've been exposed to has seemed a little bland to me, like the plain boiled potatoes that are served with every meal. And I'm not sure I've been hungry enough to try the more adventurous fare, like lutefisk. :0!