And yet,it's definitely true that places with distinct regional cuisines do tend to evoke a special kind of homesickness that can be mitigated (or exacerbated) by cooking. Certainly Ms. Citizen felt strongly enough about her Pittsburgh connection to make cheesy potatoes and pierogies for the Super Bowl. I tried to marry Brazil and Pittsburgh (an unlikely pairing, but then again, so are we...) through color.
First up, this fantastic beef chili recipe - topped with Brazilian-style black beans and cheddar (for the black and gold effect.)
For most of my childhood, it was a given that there would be a pot of black beans on the stove at all times of the day. And so I was eager to pick up some tricks from my mom on how to make beans in the style of, I suppose, our family. The two most salient points?
1. Skim the initial film of soapy foam that forms when you initially bring the beans to a boil. This film is reputed to be the flatufactory element in beans.
2. When the beans are almost done, melt some butter in a skillet. Add generous amounts of finely chopped onions, garlic, cilantro, or other flavor ingredients you want in your beans. After these are nicely sauteed and aromatic, add one ladle's worth of beans and broth to the mixture. Slowly and methodically mash the beans into the butter, till a thick layer of garlicky/oniony gunk is formed. Salt and pepper to taste. Then, add this delicious mixture back into your big pot of beans - this will flavor the broth in ways I can't even begin to describe.
I also add made brigadeiros for the first time since I was a kid. These are a staple of kids' birthday parties. Most of ate them till our stomaches cramped up and said, "please, no more condensed milk. I beg you." They are as delicious as they are easy to make. We used yellow sprinkles for further black-and-goldness.
Incidentally, condensed milk used to be one of my favorite things to eat. Sometimes for a snack or for dessert, I would just pour a thin layer of condensed milk into a bowl - sometimes I would stuff to it, sometimes I would just scoop it up with a spoon and eat it. Don't judge.
And since I mentioned Lahiri and immigrant fiction earlier, I heartily recommend to anyone with some down time her fantastic short story "The Third and Final Continent." These last few paragraphs of it, excerpted below without any permission whatsoever, are thoroughly heartbreaking. It makes me think of my parents coming to the U.S., and all the things i never imagined they would have to learn or figure out with no guidance or help.
I like to think of that moment in Mrs. Croft's parlor as the moment when the distance between Mala and me began to lessen. Although we were not yet fully in love, I like to think of the months that followed as a honeymoon of sorts. Together we explored the city and met other Bengalis, some of whom are still friends today. We discovered that a man named Bill sold fresh fish on Prospect Street, and that a shop in Harvard Square called Cardullo's sold bay leaves and cloves. In the evenings we walked to the Charles River to watch sailboats drift across the water, or had ice-cream cones in Harvard Yard. We bought a camera with which to document our life together, and I took pictures of her posing in front of the Prudential Building, so that she could send them to her parents. At night we kissed, shy at first but quickly bold, and discovered pleasure and solace in each other's arms. I told her about my voyage on the S.S. Roma, and about Finsbury Park and the Y.M.C.A., and my evenings on the bench with Mrs. Croft. When I told her stories about my mother, she wept. It was Mala who consoled me when, reading the Globe one evening, I came across Mrs. Croft's obituary. I had not thought of her in several months—by then those six weeks of the summer were already a remote interlude in my past—but when I learned of her death I was stricken, so much so that when Mala looked up from her knitting she found me staring at the wall, unable to speak. Mrs. Croft's was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.
As for me, I have not strayed much farther. Mala and I live in a town about twenty miles from Boston, on a tree-lined street much like Mrs. Croft's, in a house we own, with room for guests, and a garden that saves us from buying tomatoes in summer. We are American citizens now, so that we can collect Social Security when it is time. Though we visit Calcutta every few years, we have decided to grow old here. I work in a small college library. We have a son who attends Harvard University. Mala no longer drapes the end of her sari over her head, or weeps at night for her parents, but occasionally she weeps for our son. So we drive to Cambridge to visit him, or bring him home for a weekend, so that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak in Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die.
Whenever we make that drive, I always take Massachusetts Avenue, in spite of the traffic. I barely recognize the buildings now, but each time I am there I return instantly to those six weeks as if they were only the other day, and I slow down and point to Mrs. Croft's street, saying to my son, Here was my first home in America, where I lived with a woman who was a hundred and three. "Remember?" Mala says, and smiles, amazed, as I am, that there was ever a time that we were strangers. My son always expresses his astonishment, not at Mrs.Croft's age but at how little I paid in rent, a fact nearly as inconceivable to him as a flag on the moon was to a woman born in 1866. In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his own way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
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