Amazing Food Masala

At the risk of appearing to be obsessed with food, I have another food post, inspired by something I saw at lunch today.

The weather’s been unseasonably warm, so I walked around for a bit and then, needing a dollar in order to participate in my office's lottery ticket pool, went into the snack shop at a downtown bank to break a twenty. Because truly, I'd feel silly if I missed out on being in the group that bought a winning $173 million dollar ticket.

So I bought myself a moderately healthy snack and a soda, and on my way out, I saw this:

One of the most American of foods: deep-fried pork skin. One of the most British of flavorings: salt & vinegar. A most unexpected and arresting masala. I stopped. I stared. No, I did not buy them. I’m not at all averse to the delights of pig fat, but eating fried skin is just not my thing.

Incidentally, the process by which packaged fried foods are flavored was developed by an Irish potato chip (crisp) company, Tayto, which does not credit itself with the innovation at their site.

But maybe they have no need to toot their own horn: Tayto is the generic term for crisps in Ireland, and their mascot, Mr. Tayto, has a Facebook page with 7,530 fans.

More fun with Pączki

Yesterday's post hopefully gave you an insight into the affection and passion Poles have for pączki. But since I probably did not adequately convey the contempt with which my people hold ersatz Polish food, I submit the following two items:

From an aunt, who stood in the rain for half an hour last year while waiting for fresh pączki in Hamtramck:
"Lots of fun conversation with strangers, and the custard filled are still the very, very best. Prune come in a close second for me followed by strawberry. You can only get the real thing in Hamtramck. The large grocery stores just make regular jelly rolls and try to fob them off as pączki. They chintz on the fat."

From a cousin, in an e-mail entitled "Stupid poser pączki":
"And of course our work cafeteria has pathetic powdered sugar covered oversized jelly donuts today that they're trying to pass off as pączkis. Lame."

I am now seriously considering road tripping to Hamtramck for next year's Countdown to Pączki Day. Maybe I'll bring back some good kielbasa, too. I'm certainly not going to bother with the mass-produced stuff; I don't even think they use real garlic.

You Say Fat Tuesday, I Say Pączki Day

Pączki Pals hover above the real deal.

This is going to be a longish post because it’s about food, and I am Polish, and Polish people do not mess around when it comes to food. We know that butter makes it better and the flavor’s in the fat. Case in point: Pączki (POONCH-key), heavy balls of delightfully rich, deep-fried egg dough filled with fruit or custard, traditionally made in the weeks leading up to Lent.

Pączki originated as the answer to the question, “Whatever shall we do with all the sugar, eggs and fruit in the house, for alas, we cannot have any of that yummy stuff between Ash Wednesday and Easter.” If you happen to live in Detroit, or any another heavily Polish area, you can probably find them in grocery stores, though I have it on good authority that those are really just larger versions of ordinary jelly donuts and therefore not worth eating. According to one of my cousins, the time-honored practice of frying pączki in lard imparts “a crisp outer texture with a cakey interior until you get to the filling goodness.” (She is an engineer, and as you can see, her precision extends to food.)

I was born in Motown, and my family lived for a time in Hamtramck, the originally German, then heavily Polish, and now amazingly ethnically diverse community north of downtown Detroit. But since my family moved to another state before I was two, and my husband Mowgli (not his real name) did his graduate work at Wayne State University, he has waited for pączki, whereas I, an actual Detroit Pole, am sad to say I have not.

That’s right, I said, “waited for pączki.” The lure of tradition and confection is such that people wait as long as 24 hours, in the middle of winter, in numbers topping out in the thousands in some communities. Hamtramck holds an annual Countdown to Pączki Day, which involves a pączki cook-off, a pączki toss game (oh, the humanity!), polka music, a bus tour of participating bakeries, and wonder of wonders, free pączki. I'm already hatching a plot to drive up for that next year; it’s only nine hours away, and I’d really like to add that T-shirt to my collection.

A few days ago, I put out a call for pączki memories, and my family responded with food-fueled passion. The funniest item is this: One of my cousins ate 12 pąckzi in one day when he was a junior in high school. He chose his time well; young arteries can handle that kind of assault.

An aunt who now lives in northern Michigan and raised 10 kids still makes them from scratch after starting the tradition 5 or 6 years into her marriage. “I found a Pączki recipe in the Detroit News. From then on, we made Pączki every year without fail - we double the recipe (with so many famished young 'uns, it was a must), so we usually made about 100! Hubby kneaded the dough, someone cut it into rounds, someone fried all 100 (tho we took turns as that is an onerous job). When cooled, someone slit a small opening and someone stuffed it with apricot, raspberry, grape jam. Powdered sugar was lavishly sprinkled on each yummy just before serving.

“Hubby and I still make them. I do manage to freeze as many as I can squirrel away, so that we can serve them to whoever comes up that spring. They go fast. Last year, we didn't fill them until just before we enjoyed munching them. Saved us mucho time! (Never too old to learn new tricks!)”

This is from my mother, who is the oldest of nine: “In my very Polish family, Pączki Day was on the many Saturdays my mother went to Hamtramck to the Polish bakery for fresh bread – rye and/or pumpernickel (dependent upon availability) – just out of the oven. When she was early enough (pączki sold quickly in a Polish bakery back in the day), had enough spare cash (needed at least a dozen for her brood) or the spirit moved her, we were the lucky recipients of the best pączki ever – jelly were our favorite (raspberry, as I recall).

"The last time I had any of those carb-filled, lard-fried delights that came even close to arousing my taste buds’ memories from my childhood was at a Polish bakery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. My niece took me there (we liked the ones filled with the prune jam [powidła]), a Polish classic.”

Incidentally, pączkis were traditionally eaten on Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent, but the main day of consumption was shifted with the American influence of Fat Tuesday. This does not, however, stop bakeries, churches and grocery stores from supplying them in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras.

I'll end with some pączki trivia: they go by different names in different countries: gogoşi (Romania); pirashki (Iran); ponchiki (Russia); pampushky (Ukraine); Berliners (Germany and Denmark); bola de berlin (Mexico); krapfen (Austria); spurges (Lithuania); malasada (Portugal); sonho (Brazil); fank (Hungary); and bombolini (Italy).

Ah, just one last thing. If you're local to me, you can find decent ones here, though I doubt they fry them in lard. Pity.

Slumdog Millionaire Top Ten

Two guys who hopped into the frame in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, March 2008. I would love to know their thoughts on Slumdog Millionaire.

People who know I am married to a South Indian tend to ask me about Indian stuff, which is great. I love an opportunity to educate as much as the next person. Here’s a list of the stuff that’s been coming up lately with the success of the film Slumdog Millionaire.

1. There are Hindus and Muslims in India. Also Jews, Christians, Jains, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and lots of other religious orders. It has always been that way.

2. Violence between Hindus and Muslims happens to this day, and sadly, it probably always will. See also: Catholics vs. Protestants, Bosnians vs. Serbs, Hatfields vs. McCoys.

3. Mahatma Gandhi was killed by a Hindu extremist who was upset about Muslims getting too good of a deal with the creation of Pakistan and the subsequent partition of the country.

4. Partition was voluntary. Many millions of people felt compelled to migrate to where they thought they’d be safer, and many millions of people died along the way. But many people stayed where they were, and according to Mowgli, India today has more Muslims than Pakistan.

5. Mowgli and I agree that the battery scene was torture porn. Not that torture doesn’t exist in India, but in that situation, it was gratuitous.

6. Dharavi, where parts of the film were shot, is the largest slum in Asia. It happens to sit on prime real estate, near Mumbai’s financial center, and is the center of Mumbai’s recycling industry, as its people are forced to do what they can with what they can find. To get an idea of the scale, go to this link and zoom in, and then look at the area between 90 Feet Road and Mahatma Gandhi Road.

7. Neither of us viewed the film as poverty porn. Slums are awful places where awful things happen, in addition to being full of vibrant life. The film shows both sides, and perhaps now that the world knows more about Dharavi, more will be done to help the people who live there.

8. The film is based on the book “Q&A” by Vikas Swarup, who is an Indian diplomat serving in South Africa. Interestingly, the hero’s name n the book is Ram Mohammed Thomas, a name that represents Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, respectively.

9. Dev Patel, who played Jamal Malik, was born in London and is Hindu but played a Muslim.

10. The film has had a controversial reception in India, partly because of the term “Slumdog” in the title. During a recent Skype call with my in-laws and a few cousins, I learned that it’s an extremely derogatory term left behind by the British.

Bonus fact from Mowgli, who helped me fact-check this post: Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, was born in Lahore, Pakistan. General Pervez Musharraf, former President of Pakistan, was born in New Delhi, India.

International Word Fest

Yes, that is the cutest whisk in the universe.

There is no way to say this without it oozing geekiness, so I won’t even try to clean it up: I love words. I love finding new-to-me ones (ninebark), rediscovering dusty old ones (groovy) and shoving them back into circulation, and wearing out the ones I’ve loved since forever (fabulous). And this being North America and me being a native English speaker, many of the words that have shaped my language life come from abroad.

When I was growing up, my dad used the word “skosh” to mean “a little,” as in, “I’ll have just a skosh more coffee.” I never knew how to spell it, but when I lived in Japan, I learned where it came from: sukoshi, meaning “a little.” So I wandered around Tokyo and Hokkaido using the parent form of the word my dad used. If I had to guess, I would say the GIs brought it back from WWII after the occupation was over; Merriam-Webster seems to agree.

My first serious boyfriend was from Liverpool, and we used to stage word-battles between the versions of the language we both spoke: pavement vs. sidewalk, elevator vs. lift, car park vs. garage. Neither of us ever conceded defeat as we passionately outlined the ways in which our respective word choices were vastly superior, although now see how “lift” gets to the point faster than the overly formal “elevator.”

A fella from Manchester helped me seduce that same lad by teaching me rude Liverpudlian and Mancunian slang. I shan’t repeat any of it here, as this is a family show, but it is funny to remember that words played a significant part in that portion of my life. Rude words, at that. But then, I was 22, and at the time, rude words worked well in selected situations.

Tokyo was also where I learned about cockney rhyming slang: “apples and pears” for stairs, “dog and bone” for telephone, “plates of meat” for feet. I’m still sad that I don’t live in a country where I can use clever, musical phrases like that and have people understand me.

In my kitchen, there’s a metal sign I picked up at a flea market in LA that says, “tout va bien” (everything is fine, or will be fine). It’s a nod to my 13 years of French class as well as one of my overall philosophies. Call it simplistic, but those three words on that little sign have the power to calm me.

One of the sweetest memories of my childhood is learning the Polish for stock household phrases such as “what a pig,” “good soup” and “give me a kiss.” (Respectively, they are, “taka schvenia,” “dobre zuppa” and “dammi bougie.”)

When I traveled to Poland in 2000 with my mom, I served as the translator, because with two weeks of studying with tapes in the car to and from work, I was better prepared. Also, I am good with languages, and not afraid to make a complete fool of myself to strangers. For all these qualities, and for confidently waving aside the waitress’ concern about our order, we were rewarded with approximately 40 huge pierogies at a restaurant in Krakow. Behold the power of words.

Family Mystery Involving a Captain of Industry

Great-grandpa was always conscious of the camera.

My family is Polish, on both sides, as far back as anyone has researched, though I hesitate to describe myself as 100% Polish because of the fluidity of the country’s borders. One family name is awfully close to that of a Russian statesman, and my maternal grandmother’s lovely olive complexion led to speculation of Romany or Albanian blood. Meanwhile, my features are so solidly Central European that a Bosnian checkout lady once spoke to me in her language; we shared a laugh when I explained why she took me for one of her own.

Poland’s wealth of natural resources and strategic location smack complete with a port on the Baltic Sea conspired to make it the long-suffering scrapper of the region. Its neighbors (Germany, Prussia and Austria) continually angled for control of its lands and resources, resulting at one point in the dissolution of the country in 1795. It returned as a satellite state in 1807 thanks to a deal Napoleon made with the Prussians, and returned to the map in 1918, but for over a hundred years, its main functions were to supply food and soldiers for whatever conflict was being fought by whomever was in control.

When my great-grandfather fled his miserable peasant sharecropping life, the power in charge was Russia. At one point in his journey, he hid in a hay wagon with his boat ticket sewn into the lining of his coat while Russian soldiers poked the hay with pitchforks. If they had found him, he would have been conscripted into the Russian army, or killed, or conscripted and then killed.
He was still a teenager when he arrived in the U.S., and once he was hired onto the Ford line, he worked there until he retired. We don’t know whether he worked on Jeeps or Lincolns, assembled engines or added steering wheels, but we do know he was a huge fan of “Old man Ford” and disliked the younger Ford.

According to family lore, Henry Ford regularly walked the assembly line and knew my great-grandpa and his coworkers by name. In 1919, his son Edsel succeeded him as company president, and again according to faded collective family memory, he was interested primarily in efficiency and profits. His anti-union stance was the chief source of great-grandpa’s ire, although Henry Ford is famously quoted as saying, “The UAW would organize Ford over my dead body.” There is also the very well-documented 1937 Battle of the Overpass, wherein UAW organizers were beaten by factory security forces in broad daylight – in the presence of Detroit Free Press photographers.

I’ve been trying to get my head around this inconsistency; the best theory I have so far, bolstered by an aunt, is that Henry Ford treated his workers well as part of a strategy to keep the unions out. We do know that in 1913, he introduced the $5 a day minimum wage, doubling the going rate of the time, stabilizing his workforce, and rankling his competitors.

The aforementioned aunt shared the following story: Grandpa would spout about what they got from the union, money, blah, blah, their house, and grandma would let him go on until he got to the house. Then she’d interject, “Union, bah!” (or some Polish version of ‘bah’) “Union didn’t give us this house. Gott gave us this house!” End of argument.

My father took an oral history of great-grandpa for a college anthropology class, but sadly, I don’t have a copy of it, and since they’ve both gone to the kielbasa buffet in the sky, it’s lost for now. There may well be a copy in a barn in Phoenix, but that’s definitely fodder for a future post.

Guitar Circle

I've just come home from this guitar circle. I did not want to leave, but since my body wakes up early regardless of what the rest of me wants, I did the sensible thing.

Sitting there, absorbing excellent songs performed by excellent people, I realized I was surrounded by snips of other cultures. In the songs were references to Ireland, lyrics that originiated as Turkish Poetry, and a Middle Eastern-tinged tune called "Minaret." One guy did an astonishing acapella version of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song."

I had to clip my nails with a device made in China before I started playing (it's been a while, and long nails do not make for good chords). The friend I brought with me wore a ring she bought in Ireland; it depicts the archetypal peat cottage of her ancestors.

The host brought out a Kilim rug, thin and beautifully rich in earthy tones, to mellow the garage floor. Judging from the parts on tables and the Sharpie-written label on a box, he's in the process of restoring a Norton motorcycle.

And to round out the international elements, there was homemade absinthe and African moonshine available.

Just another night in the American midwest.