| The Melting Pot was on the Stove |
August 26, 2010
97 Orchard Street by Jane Ziegelman, subtitled "An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement" made me realize, all over again, just how much I love food, not only for its qualities of nourishment and enjoyment, but for its history and cultural associations, and for the social relationships we build around food. We are what we eat, and we have been since the very first bite was taken. Why we were thrown out of Eden? For eating an irresistible apple? The families of Ziegelman's history, who made their way across the Atlantic and to the Lower East Side, found a new kind of Eden, gritty and crowded, and yet offering a cornucopia of food choices that surpassed anything they had known before. They brought with them their own deeply-held food traditions, and they tried new ones, adapting their own recipes and newly-found foods to create an original and varied American cuisine. The food of the United States is the true -- literally -- melting pot of cultures.
The five chapters of 97 Orchard Street are each centered on one family of the tenement at 97 Orchard, which is a real building, and the location of today's wonderful Tenement Museum. Ziegelman explores the particular cultural and food traditions of each family, supplementing their individual story with richly researched background and scattering in mouth-watering (and not so mouth-watering) recipes of their contemporary meals. Reading through the book, I grew successively more and more hungry, my mouth watering for dishes such as cranberry strudel, eggplants in the oven, and veal with dried pear (although I'll substitute another meat and spare the baby calf).
Ziegelman describes the huge markets found in late 1800s New York, offering more meats, fowls, seafood, shellfish, vegetables, and fruits than I can find in any Whole Foods today. In addition to the markets, the pushcarts offered a wide range of foodstuffs, literally right outside the front stoop of 97 Orchard Street. Although the poorest of the poor survived on scraps of old bread, moldy vegetables, and gristle of long-passed animals, the tenement families seemed to have found their basic food needs met, and their cultural traditions, whether it be Friday night Sabbath supper or Christmas Eve feast or Sunday dinner in the Beer Hall, satisfied. Ziegelman paints a picture of immigrant life that, while very tough, included a lively family and/or social life, largely focused on food.
By building her book around what these five families ate, which traditions they brought from their homeland, and what modifications they made upon arriving in the United States, as well as on where they procured their foodstuffs and how they prepared their meals, Ziegelman paints a more buoyant and animated picture of tenement life than most histories, one that shows the hardships but also the satisfactions offered by life as an immigrant on New York's Lower East Side. No matter how trying the cooking conditions of the immigrants' daily life -- dragging water up flights of stairs to apartments without plumbing, tiny kitchens without windows, no refrigeration -- food was prepared and eaten and enjoyed. I was happy to note that foods prepared by others were also enjoyed by the immigrants. Meals and snacks were bought from delis or pushcarts, or enjoyed out at restaurants and cafes catering to the poorer but still demanding immigrant clientele. I'm not the only mother who needs a night out, although with the amenities I enjoy, I should never complain again.
Ziegelman also illuminates the huge contributions to the New York City food scene made by immigrants' food traditions, everything from delis to cafes, from spaghetti and meat balls to coffee cake, and from hot dogs to pickles (to name just a few). So many of the foods loved today in New York City (and throughout the United States) were brought over by the immigrants of the 19th and early 20th centuries. New Yorkers might not have always opened their hearts to immigrants but they certainly opened their mouths to the foods they brought. And with the enjoyment of the foods, came a gradual integration of newcomers into the fabric of New York City, and the United States beyond. It is a reversal of the Eden story, a happier one, where one bite brings entry into a new world full of possibility and enjoyment.
I could go on and on about 97 Orchard Street, how it is full of fascinating facts, moving personal histories, funny stories, interesting recipes, and touching old photos, but I'm hungry. Time for lunch. Read 97 Orchard Street, visit 97 Orchard Street (The Tenement Museum of New York, www. tenement.org), and fall in love with food (and your modern kitchen) all over again.
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