New Year’s Day. It’s what you eat. Pork and sauerkraut, that is.
“For luck”, it is said. At least by strict tradition. In my family. And my wife’s family. And among many of the families in most of the places we’ve lived. Though predominantly those of Germanic—and Slovak—ancestry.
You?
I can’t say I have any New Year’s Day traditions, but I wouldn’t complain about some pork and sauerkraut right about now. I asked my Czech partner about it and she doesn’t do the pork and sauerkraut either. But it is traditional for the members of her family to put a carp scale in their wallets. Also for good luck. They have a thing for carp in southern Bohemia.
Southern US: black-eyed peas
Japanese: mochi
Combination meal: black-eyed pea & vegetable stew (with ground cumin and Thai sweet chili sauce), brown rice with chopped collards, spinach, and pesto, with mochi fried in butter and sprinkled with sugar for dessert.
This “haole” method of cooking mochi is rank heresy by Japanese standards, but my daughter and I like it.
Andre: Interesting. I had forgotten the carp lore. My mother’s family were Slovak “peasants” living in Rust Belt Cleveland, and I recall them talking about it once. But I think when they moved to rural Ohio they also had to make allowances for unavailable ingredients. Or maybe they just broke with tradition—we’ll never really know. I do know we have trouble enough finding prune lekvar and poppyseed filling for kolački, even living in fancy-dancy everything-for-sale Ann Arbor.
Karen: Greens-with-pesto is an interesting one; we’ll have to give that a try. Our latest heretical fusion has been chipotle-rosemary-blintzes. Yum.
OK. Hungry now.
I don’t think the pesto worked well. I wanted to jazz up the spinach-collard mixture a little and experimented. My daughter opined that pesto was for bland things, not collard greens.
What I should have done was pull out every dang condiment in the refrigerator (capers? Patak’s lime pickle? oyster sauce?) and conducted a controlled experiment.
I already know that Thai sweet chili sauce goes with just about everything (perhaps not tapioca pudding) and that mango chutney really really perks up khichri.
Karen must be from Hawaii, for not only does she know the word “haole” but also the disturbingly non-traditional way of eating mochi. As for myself, I’m from Chicago yet I still know that the Japanese cherish sweetened black beans for the new year. Don’t know the symbolism there, but I’m sure it exists. And as for Tozier’s pork and sauerkraut, that sounds like the traditional French choucroute. Served with a side of hearty mustard, I presume? Yum!
Outed!
Pork and Sauerkraut is a New Year’s tradition for my family, Pennsylvania Dutch from Dauphin County Pennsylvania. This is served with mashed potatoes and I remember having buttered bread with King Syrup drizzled on it. Great combination, the sweet and sour which is a PA Dutch tradition.
If the pork and sauerkraut is roasted in a covered pan/pot in the oven at 325 to 350 for 2 hrs the tartness of the sauerkraut is lessened and the pork is very tender. I love the aroma coming from this combination, and it is delicious. I use a pork loin which is leaner meat and brown it on the stovetop first, then add the sauerkraut, cover and bake/roast.
I am looking forward to January 1st!.. This dish is supposed to assure good luck throughout the coming year!!
I was raised in Canton, Ohio, and I never attended a New Year’s party there where the host didn’t have pork and sauerkraut baking in the oven, to be eaten at midnight. It’s a German tradition, and you’ll find it wherever there is a community of German immigrants. When I moved to Virginia, I was shocked to learn this is not the tradition all over the United States. Here they eat Hoppin’ John, made with black eyed peas. But I still make pork and sauerkraut, it’s not New Years without it. Happy New Year, all !
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
Pontification without all the gritty gravitas
www.flickr.com
|
Subscribe to posts feed