With the economy I find myself cooking more at home - and this is a nice NYTimes article.

For Dinner (and Fast), the Taste of Home

Immigrants in New York City bring with them their daily dishes, meals that could easily make their way into the city?s larger repertory of dinners for busy nights.

Ji Yoon Yoo tasting her vegetable pancakes in Jersey City.

COMFORT FOOD Takla Tashi Lama serves momo in an apartment in Queens.

GLOBAL CUISINE Tzerin Karma makes dough for Tibetan dumplings as Uma watches.

New York Times
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
Published: February 10, 2009

ALTHOUGH Gladys Puglla-Jimenez came to this country from Ecuador 30 years ago, her kitchen on Putnam Avenue in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn is still intimately connected to her homeland, from her stocks of spices like achiote pepper powder to the tropical green of the walls.

She craves guatita, a dish of cow tripe in a sauce thickened by peanut butter that she serves over plantains. And for Sundays, after a night spent entertaining friends at home, she prepares a briny, squid-infused version of encebollado, a soup popular in Ecuador?s coastal regions. ?It is good for a hangover,? she promises. ?It will really revive you.?

When Ms. Jimenez was a child, her grandmother spent all day making the family?s meals. But such a leisurely pace isn?t really practical for daily life in New York. Ms. Jimenez works until 5 p.m. doing billing for the city?s Administration for Children?s Services, commutes from the lower tip of Manhattan and has to finish eating by 7 ? doctor?s orders for losing a little extra weight.

So she has learned to adjust, saving more elaborate meals for weekends, while on weeknights she makes the simplest of Ecuador?s dishes for her husband and three children. This could be as basic as meat cutlets pounded thin, quickly fried and served with white rice, lentils and salad. Or it could be as quick as a potato and cheese soup made with slivers of omelet, a 20-minute meal that her children ask for during the winter.

It is a common story in New York?s harried kitchens. Immigrants in New York ? who come from more than 200 countries and make up 37 percent of the city?s population, according to the New York City Department of City Planning ? have brought with them their daily dishes, delicious meals that are comforting and convenient, and could easily make their way into the city?s larger repertory of dinners for busy nights.

A number of immigrants, representing a range of countries from almost every continent, kindly agreed to my request that I come to their homes for dinner, and as the most demanding of guests: I didn?t want the family?s fanciest; I wanted their go-to staples.

The Tibetans I met were generous in sharing their food, but had a very different sense of what ?in a hurry? meant. Some continue to make momo ? a steamed dumpling traditionally stuffed with yak meat and served in a hot meat broth ? from scratch, although the process can take as long as two hours.

It is not something that one whips up after work.

Most families had been forced by necessity to come up with short versions of their cuisine. Many had settled on bastardizations of American classics. A popular dish, for example, is spaghetti and meatballs, but Koreans served it with kimchi on the side, while some Kenyans cut hot red peppers into theirs.

Just as intriguing are the national staples that have been subtly adapted to American groceries. A Korean family offered a steaming rice bowl with sliced nori (the seaweed paper used in sushi), bologna and a raw egg. Ji Yoon Yoo, who lives in Jersey City and often works late selling real estate, makes an Americanized version of pa jun, the Korean scallion pancake, several nights a week.

When she was growing up, Ms. Yoo?s mother would cook oyster pa jun in the traditional manner: heating the pan until smoking so the batter would crisp quickly, but leaving the oysters damp and plump. Now Ms. Yoo prepares pa jun with whatever is left over in the refrigerator: roast chicken, uncooked vegetables, steak, etc. Her trick is to dice the vegetables finely so they can cook with the pancake. To add variety, she serves the pancakes with a different dipping sauce every night (soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil and peanut butter are common ingredients).

Hers is a modern, highly adaptable version of the immigrant kitchen, easily incorporating American and other influences. Other cooks who move to the city from abroad are purists.

Jennifer Gray-Brumskine, who immigrated from Liberia as a 19-year-old in the 1980s and now lives on Staten Island, does not stray too far from her native cuisine. Every Sunday, her family eats Western foods like corn bread and collard greens, she said, because that was the custom in Liberia, a country founded by freed American slaves.

During the week she hews to African cuisine because, she said, it is healthier than American food. ?My whole family is skinny,? she explained. It?s also because African cuisine is all her husband will eat.

Ms. Gray-Brumskine often makes fufu, a rib-sticking mash of potato starch and mashed potatoes from a box, a common American substitution for roots or yams that are used in Africa. She also makes cassava greens; she washes and grinds the leaves, then boils them in a pot with water and baking soda until they turn olive green ? a process that can take two hours and often isn?t done until 11 at night. Her husband will wait and eat them then.

But when she comes home late ? she works as a community organizer in Stapleton, the Staten Island neighborhood ? and wants fast, satisfying food for herself and her daughter, she often makes fish like red snapper or kingfish. She slices right through the whole fish, bones and all, to make fish steaks. She sprinkles them with garlic powder and black pepper and fries them in oil. When they are browned, she adds sliced hot peppers, tomatoes and water and boils until the sauce thickens, about 20 minutes. Fried red plantains are served on the side.

Likewise Renata Olah, who came from Hungary in 2000 at age 23, cooks only Hungarian food for her husband in their tiny Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, kitchen. Bubbly and outgoing, she is a natural hostess. To start a meal, she insists that guests take a snort of homemade plum brandy, ?to whet your appetite.?

?The Hungarian kitchen is about careful planning and simmering everything,? Ms. Olah said. So she is partial to some of her grandmother?s recipes that can take hours to make, like stuffed cabbage and smoky bean soup.

That?s tough to do because she is juggling three different jobs: housecleaning, decorative housepainting and working as a personal chef to four families (she usually makes Hungarian food). That doesn?t leave a lot of time to make dinner for her husband, a carpenter. (In Hungary, she explains, ?a woman must cook to keep a man.?)

In a rush, Ms. Olah turns to staples like cucumber salad and goulash, but not the creamy version known here. In her hometown, she says, the goulash is more like a soupy stew, and sour cream is served on the side only.

She also makes a tangy lentil dish spiced with mustard and sweetened with brown sugar that she serves with fried eggs. Another staple is lecso, a savory stew of onions, peppers and paprika that she serves over hot dogs or rice.

Like many immigrants, she has secret suppliers. Her paprika is not store-bought, but hand-ground from peppers by her mother-in-law?s aunt in Hungary. It is a rich rust color and smells enticingly smoky.

?Some things you just can?t get in America,? Ms. Olah said.

But being in the United States has some advantages, and one is that immigrants do not necessarily have to specialize in their native cuisines. Jabeen Ahmed, who was born in Pakistan, married a Palestinian man whose family immigrated from the Gaza Strip in 1988. The cooking in her Totowa, N.J., kitchen straddles the two cultures.

?To make up for the tragedy of him not having married someone from his own country,? she said half-jokingly, ?I?ve learned to cook Arabic.? Her mother-in-law taught her dishes like cabbage stuffed with rice and lamb and a layered eggplant dish called makluba. But after 12 years of cooking for him, Ms. Ahmed has developed confidence in her own recipes.

She is proudest of her grape leaves, which she stuffs with lamb, rice and parsley and cooks with concentrate of pomegranate juice to add flavor. The dish simmers on her stove for hours.

But after a long day of work (she is a pharmacist), she often makes something that is much quicker: an all-white dish of chicken with yogurt served over rice. It takes 30 minutes from start to table. In fact, she feels so at home in the cuisine of her husband?s ancestors that she now thinks of it nostalgically as her own comfort food.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/dining/11immi.html