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Grandma's cooking: is there anything more evocative of our first experiences with food than a page from grandma's cookbook? Not for me. My grandma's cooking might not have been the most sophisticated or worldly, but nothing said Home like a slice of her black raspberry pie with homemade ice cream on top. For me, cooking has always been a family affair; my mother learned from her mother, and I learned from both of them. Our family recipes - primarily German in origin and restricted to ingredients that could be bought or grown in 19th-20th century rural Iowa - give a glimpse into the family history and provide a sense of continuity that is missing in much of modern life. This is one of the reasons I've enjoyed Mr. Wiggles's excellent but too-rarely-updated thread, My Grandmother's Cookbook. But I want more. More recipes, more grandmas, more of that special, food-based nostalgia I feel when I think of my departed ancestors and the little index card filled box that contains the remains of their culinary legacy. And since I'm chairing this ICSA, I'm hoping you all want the same. Your task, should you choose to undertake it, is to prepare one or more dishes you remember from your childhood. Maybe it wasn't your grandmother's cooking, but your auntie's, or your father's, or someone else who helped define what food is to you. That's fine, we're not gender- or age-biased here. Optionally, in addition to the usual cooking and plating that comes with ICSAs, introduce us to the person(s) responsible for the recipe(s) you prepare. Bring us into your family for a moment or two and let us sit down at your table. After the contest is over, like usual we'll take a vote and award a few prizes. First Place: A $25 gift certificate to Amazon, Penzey's, or another online retailer of your choice. Second Place: A $15 gift certificate to Amazon, Penzey's, or another online retailer of your choice. Third Place: A forums upgrade of your choice. Chairman's Prize for Most Awesome Ancestor - In addition to the above prizes, I'll be awarding a little something to the grandma/auntie/father/fairy godmother/whatever whose background, history, or wisdom as related by you most impresses me. The winner of this prize will receive a recipe book containing every recipe prepared for this contest, edited, formatted and printed by me. I'll probably throw in a couple of my own grandmother's recipes as well. Maybe some other stuff. I don't know, I'm gonna try to get creative on this one. In order to not get in the way of holiday goody making and general end-of-year madness, submissions for this ICSA will close at 11:59pm on Sunday, November 16th. Voting will start the following day and conclude on 11/23. As an added note, I am the final person in the queue to run an ICSA. If you'd like to continue this fine tradition, please consider signing up to host one in the ICSA thread.
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Oct 9, 2014 17:03
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 19:47 |
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What if my ancestors were terrible cooks? 
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Oct 9, 2014 18:16
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Lie
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Oct 9, 2014 18:20
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No. I'm proud of my ancestry. Every Bergérking family meal is an unforgettable event.
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Oct 9, 2014 18:23
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Drink and Fight posted:What if my ancestors were terrible cooks? That was my first thought too. Then I remembered my grandma could make fudge. Sooo can I make fudge? If it has to be savory, I'm afraid my best option is "dry overcooked hamburger patty." Seriously, that's the best thing my mom ever made.
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Oct 9, 2014 19:30
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Drink and Fight posted:What if my ancestors were terrible cooks? Who got you into good cooking? Julia Child would be a fine fairy godmother; so would Alton Brown. Some time during your life, somebody made the light go on and you realized cooking was something worth spending time doing. Otherwise I doubt you'd be spending much time reading an internet food forum. While I've played up the filial piety angle due to my own background, that shouldn't be seen as a limitation. Hawkgirl posted:That was my first thought too. Then I remembered my grandma could make fudge. Sooo can I make fudge? If it has to be savory, I'm afraid my best option is "dry overcooked hamburger patty." Seriously, that's the best thing my mom ever made.
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Oct 9, 2014 20:11
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bartolimu posted:Who got you into good cooking? Julia Child would be a fine fairy godmother; so would Alton Brown. Some time during your life, somebody made the light go on and you realized cooking was something worth spending time doing. Otherwise I doubt you'd be spending much time reading an internet food forum. While I've played up the filial piety angle due to my own background, that shouldn't be seen as a limitation. Haha ok I will absolutely claim Julia as my inspiration then.
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Oct 9, 2014 20:18
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Oh poo poo, I may have to get into this one. I've got a perfect recipe and a pretty great story.
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Oct 9, 2014 21:42
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Drink and Fight posted:Haha ok I will absolutely claim Julia as my inspiration then. Calling Eugenie Brazier.
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Oct 9, 2014 22:06
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This might be my first ICSA! Perfect season, and I just went over how she did it with my mom and uncle.
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Oct 9, 2014 22:18
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Thanks, bart now you got me thinking of my grandpa, and that always makes me cry, because he's dead and nobody will ever be as wonderful as him. Let me see if I can knock up a batch of chakli or something.
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Oct 10, 2014 14:50
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What if my ancestors never judged the last ISCA? So now I've got to find the Yulekaga recipe and Krumkaga iron out. Santa Lucia will be thoroughly ruined. Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 06:03
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Burnt pizza and dry lentil burgers it is.
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Oct 11, 2014 13:05
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My grandmother is Dutch-Indonesian so our food was never quite authentically Dutch or Indonesian, but a peculiar mix of Indonesian spices (and whatever real ingredients we could get before Asian supermarkets started opening nearby), cooked in European styles or for European tastes. A bit like how British-Indian food isn't one or the other but it's a beast all of its own. The first thing that springs to mind is the bubur ayam she used to make for us when we were sick, or "chicken splodge" as we called it because none of us could say "bubur ayam" properly when we were little. It was like a lightly spiced chicken and leek stew with lots of garlic, onion and ginger, and whatever other stew veggies were in the fridge, on top of a rice porridge made with stock. Unfortunately, these days I make it with stronger spices and Quorn and, much as I like it, fakey branded vegetarian meat has no place in an ICSA!
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Oct 12, 2014 16:10
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Stottie Kyek posted:My grandmother is Dutch-Indonesian Cool, in Holland, here food would be served in Chinese restaurants
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Oct 12, 2014 19:11
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I forget the exact circumstances of this but I once made Charmmi make a 60's yum-yum salad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2TnlO38KYM
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Oct 14, 2014 07:20
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angerbot posted:I forget the exact circumstances of this but I once made Charmmi make a 60's yum-yum salad The sad thing is, with the cheese part changed into cream cheese, mixed with sugar and put over a gram cracker crust in a pan (or just straight up replaced with no bake cheesecake mix), then the pinaple jello put in a layer, then the marshmallows and whip on top, you have something I used to eat quite happily at church gatherings.
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Oct 14, 2014 21:24
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Man, I wish I still had a decent camera because this is an awesome challenge 
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Oct 15, 2014 02:17
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I love the idea, sadly I can't participate. I am in the middle of moving right now. Fortunate for you though. My granny on my mum's side was a sweet person but horrible cook. The only dish I remember is her signature beef roast. She served it with astonishing consistency every christmas until she was not able to cook any more. It was always dry as the desert and black as coal. I hated it but I loved my granny, so I ate it anyway. And my dad's grandma? Well I recently asked her for her awesome spaghetti bolognaise sauce. Turns out it was 2/3s of a bottle of Maggi (MSG like flavour enhancer)...welp I will instead shamelessly "inherit" the recipes of this thread's grannys'.
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Oct 15, 2014 10:46
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gamingCaffeinator posted:Man, I wish I still had a decent camera because this is an awesome challenge You should still participate. Bad phone camera photos are still better than none at all. (assuming you're not one of those weirdos with a flip phone from 2002)
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Oct 15, 2014 15:28
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My grandma is a terrible cook who has been cooking the same Australian staple of meat and three veg every night of her life but my mum was, um, not necessarily good at cooking but very enthusiastic and always trying new things and she taught me how to cook and instilled in me a love of food and cooking so I will go through her old cookbook and try to make a worthy ICSA entry out of the food of my childhood.
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Oct 15, 2014 23:43
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Made my oma's bubur ayam tonight (well, bubur Quorn). The boyfriend has flu and I think I'm getting it too, so it was much needed! Shortgrain rice porridge topped with (clockwise from left) Quorn and leek stew (made with loads of garlic and ginger, and a bit of turmeric and soy sauce); quick apple and carrot pickle/salad; crispy fried onions; and a dollop of sambal ulek for blasting our sinuses open. Oma uses apples as a vegetable or a side dish a lot, homemade appelmoes or a jar of apple sauce of some kind shows up at most meals when I visit, so apples had to be in this. The carrots and onions are there in the spirit of "look in the fridge for whatever needs using up and put it in the dinner somehow" - both my grandparents had very different but very difficult times in WWII (granddad was a soldier at some horrendous battles including Monte Cassino, grandma was in a Japanese-run forced labour camp), so both of them made sure all the grandchildren learnt three things: oppose fascism, always be peaceful, and never waste food. That's partly why I'm not entering this one, the "recipe" is really just a vague guideline and you add whatever's in the fridge that will taste good. That and the Quorn chunks are neither authentic nor proper cooking. 
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Oct 17, 2014 20:18
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Hell, I'm in for some over-cooked cardboard Northcountry fare. But I didn't get recipes, I got stories and will try to re-make one.
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Oct 23, 2014 19:46
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Manuel Calavera posted:Oh poo poo, I may have to get into this one. I've got a perfect recipe and a pretty great story. Ditto. Perogis ahoy!
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Oct 24, 2014 15:41
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German or Pittsburgh gramma? Mine is Pittsburgh, second-gen German. I think.
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Oct 24, 2014 23:53
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Manuel Calavera posted:German or Pittsburgh gramma? Mine is Pittsburgh, second-gen German. I think. Ukranian immigrant grandma who fled the nazis to raise a family in buffalo NY.
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Oct 25, 2014 05:38
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Oh, right. I forgot pierogis are Ukranian and Polish too. I am the smartest. 
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Oct 25, 2014 08:59
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Might as well throw my hat into the ring. For dinner tonight, I had ginger chicken served over rice, with broccoli on the side.  I learned the recipe from my father, who learnt it from his mother, who learnt it from an Indian(?) family she was a live-in nurse for. It's quite popular because it's easy to make and delicious. It is, after all, just 8 pounds of chicken simmered in 1 of butter, with 4 tbsp each of freshly chopped ginger and garlic and 1-2 tsp salt for flavor, served over a generous portion of rice. The sauce on the rice is every bit as delicious as the chicken. Zero points for style, perhaps, and the crappy phone camera does it no favors, but it does exemplify the sort of good, simple, filling foods that our grandmamas used to make. It's somewhat unfortunate that I didn't know my father's mother better, because she was exactly the kind of person you'd want for a contest like this. She was a dairy farmer's wife and would regularly bring home blue ribbons at the county fair, even going up against other farmer's wives. Her recipe for bread started with "Chop one armload of kindling", and she taught my father that same kind of thorough preparation, though he has been less successful teaching me that value. For dessert, we had slice of lemon pie from my mother's side of the family, being a favorite of her father's and a recipe from her mother, along with piecrust cookie made from the excess crust.   Again, sorry for the poor picture quality. This is slightly more complicated than the chicken, being a custard made with freshly-sliced lemon. My mother's mother was a Southern lady, from a time and place where pies such as this were a staple and a delicacy. Supposedly this recipe comes from the Shakers, and it does show up in another cookbook we have as Shaker Lemon Pie. Again, I never knew my mother's mother that well, because she died when I was very young, but her daughters collected her recipes and printed them in a cookbook of their own, so while I never knew her, I did grow up with her cooking, and it will always be an influence on me. Alternatively: My da taught me to make the sort of simple bachelor food he survived on when he was living in a 16 foot shack by the river, the virtues of rice and simple staples. My ma taught me to make meals fit for a church potluck; you make twice as much as everybody can eat, and get mortally offended if you have to bring any home.
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Oct 27, 2014 19:18
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Wait, sorry, are we posting our individual entries here or are we making separate threads like usual?
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Oct 27, 2014 23:52
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I think he is a person interested in the theme of the competition but not entering. The lemon pie makes me think of the lemon sponge pudding my mother (and my grandmother) make/made - there is a specific dish used for it, with a specific filigree metal holder for the dish.
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Oct 29, 2014 04:29
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Actually I did mean to enter, but neglected to read all the way down the Rules for Newbies in ICSA thread. Shameful. I assume I should just copy'n'paste all that into a new thread/the wiki, or should I make the meal all over again and get some more pictures of how to prepare the chicken? Really, you only need one picture of how to prepare it: If your pot looks like this, it's good.
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Oct 30, 2014 01:40
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Go ahead and make a new thread with the pictures you have, and a bit of story behind it, and we'll be good to go.
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Oct 30, 2014 02:29
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Hi There, longtime lurker first time poster. I have been wanting to try my hand at one of these ICSA thingies. Maybe this is the one. No promises though, I'm just a beginner.
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Oct 30, 2014 19:04
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I am in. Couscous ahoy.
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Oct 30, 2014 21:58
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Could not find the krumkake iron at my grandmas house. I need to contact a local lutheran church now. Seriously. I refuse to buy one.
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Oct 31, 2014 14:22
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I'm in. This time of year is when I start busting out all my old family recipes anyway, because we are a cold weather people, and if I cooked like this all year I'd be even fatter than I am.
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Nov 1, 2014 14:02
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yay finished! http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3678208
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Nov 1, 2014 22:38
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dino. posted:Go ahead and make a new thread with the pictures you have, and a bit of story behind it, and we'll be good to go. It is done. Also added recipe for grandmother's slice of lemon pie.
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Nov 2, 2014 04:12
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ICSA 64: Mostly Stereotypical Puerto Rican Food
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Nov 9, 2014 04:31
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Nov 10, 2014 11:18
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