Eating Like an Immigrant, Part III: Economy and Convenience

When we moved, our income changed along with our family size, so that eating out regularly wasn’t a good choice. In Pittsburgh, we had a slew of inexpensive and fun ethnic restaurants we would visit together. Athens, well, it isn’t quite the same. At the same time, I realized that if I cooked more exotic foods at home, it would make it feel more like an adventure than a sacrifice. The two kinds of foods we loved the most were Indian and Thai foods. So I focused on learning to cook Thai and Indian food, and found that there are simple and economical meals for both of those cuisines.

In doing some reading, I realized that most food cuisines are based on what’s locally available. It feels almost redundant to write that, but look at recipes for bouillabaisse, for example. It was originally based on the leftover small fish that got caught in fishermen’s nets. Now, people argue about the authenticity if you don’t use particular kinds of fish, etc. But then, it was a matter of what was there, what was inexpensive, what was not wasteful, what was convenient. It can be easy, again, to get lost in the web of Authenticity, and not use what’s at hand. For immigrants, many didn’t have the luxury of their old local ingredients, and had to adapt to the availability of foods in their new country.

Along this journey, I found a fabulous Thai cookbook, Quick and Easy Thai: 70 Easy Recipes, written by a woman who lived in Thailand, learned to love the food and culture, and then came back to the US where a lot of the more exotic ingredients were hard to come by. The cookbook is written with both common ingredients that can replace the more unusual ingredients, as well as the more authentic option, if you have access to it. For example, she suggests replacing wild lime leaves or lemongrass (common in Thailand) with grated lime or lemon peel and a little extra lime or lemon juice in the recipe.

I haven’t actually used it, but a similar cookbook–but for Indian food–is 5 Spices, 50 Dishes: Simple Indian Recipes Using Five Common Spices. It uses five common spices–cayenne pepper, coriander, cumin, mustard, and turmeric–as the basis for numerous Indian meals.

Recipes

I adapted these basil rolls directly from the Quick and Easy Thai cookbook, as well as the ideas for the zucchini and squash curry that I paired with it that I blogged about in this post.

Cross-posted from In Search of Lost Time.