Posted by The Sacramento Bee, CA on December 23, 2009 at 11:38:37:
Lucky: New Year's food traditions span cultures and continents
By Niesha Lofing
nlofing@sacbee.com
The new year never smelled too promising around my house when I was growing up.
Every New Year's Day of my childhood, my mother would cook corned beef and cabbage.
The "lucky" cabbage had to be eaten to ensure there'd be money all year long, a custom handed down by my great-grandmother.
The tradition wasn't so well-interpreted or so fondly inherited in our household. The cabbage was always overcooked, filling the house with an unworldly stench that was like the love child of Limburger cheese and ginkgo fruit.
Corned beef and cabbage lasted only until my brother and I were old enough to realize what the stink was. We begged our mother to stop, if only for the sake of our friends and their noses.
She conceded, letting us cook appetizers. None had cabbage.
Food traditions abound at New Year's, spanning cultures, religions and continents. But one commonality binds them all: They are considered culinary good luck charms, food eaten to ensure good fortune in the coming year.
Mary Ellen Shay always starts the new year by making a pot of Hoppin' John, a black-eyed pea must-have in many Southern states.
She got the recipe from her mother, a Missouri native, and has cooked it every New Year's since moving to Sacramento in 1976.
Shay said her black-eyed peas are better than her mom's.
"My dad hated onions, so my mom had to bland everything down to accommodate him," she said. "She was a great cook hobbled by a taste bud-challenged husband."
Shay starts her Hoppin' John by cooking ham hocks for about two hours, then adding pre-soaked black-eyed peas, red pepper, onions, celery, carrots and spices. The dish is an annual hit at the New Year's party Shay attends.
"Everybody loves them," she said. "They're good – it's not like swallowing medicine."
Black-eyed peas, meant to represent coins, often are served with collard greens in the South, symbolizing dollars, so the dish is eaten to bring good luck and good fortune in the coming year, said chef Charles Ziccardi, culinary arts program manager at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Legumes are extremely popular when it comes to New Year's good-luck foods and can be spotted in many cultural feasts, he said.
"Legumes in general are major good-luck items because of their shape, and they plump up, sort of fatten up and grow," Ziccardi said. "Growth is also symbolic for the coming year."
In Italy, lentils are eaten with various types of sausage, such as Cotechino Modena, a sausage made from pork, fatback and pork rind, or Zampone Modena, essentially the same filling but stuffed into a pig's foot.
Interesting aside: The sausages date to the 16th century when the Modenesi were besieged during a war and had no food coming in. Cotechino afforded them a way to both preserve meat and use the less-tender cuts.
Pork continues to hog the glory in many New Year's feasts around the globe.
Special breads also are popular good-luck foods.
In Germany, pretzels are a traditional good-luck food. Children even wear them around their necks on New Year's.
In Greek households, the lucky bread is vasilopita, a yeast cake that's associated with St. Basil's Day, also celebrated on Jan. 1.
A coin is inserted into the cake after it's baked and the person who gets the coin will enjoy even more good fortune that year, Ziccardi said.
For some in Spain, it's customary to eat a dozen grapes as the clock strikes midnight.
One of the most concentrated clusters of good-luck food traditions is among the Chinese. Lucky foods abound at Chinese New Year celebrations. Lunar New Year, as it is often called, will fall on Feb. 14.
The first meal eaten on Chinese New Year is usually vegetarian, out of respect for life, said Diana Gin, who was born and reared in Sacramento.
But when family and friends gather for dinner, luck is all around.
Whole fish, to ensure abundance, is typically eaten, as is meat from land – beef or pork – and the air, usually chicken or duck.
The Cantonese eat oysters because their name in that language sounds like the word for "good business."
Noodles represent long life. Lettuce is part of the meal because the Chinese word for lettuce sounds like the word for fortune, Gin said.
Tangerines and oranges also represent luck and wealth.
"These things are mostly eaten on the first day of New Year's," she said. "You want all the good stuff to happen."
Another Asian culture rich in good-luck traditions is the Japanese. One food in particular seems to dominate: mochi.
Mochi is a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice that's pounded into paste and molded into shapes, mostly balls.
Mochi is available year-round, but the week between Christmas and New Year's is when families get together for mochitsuki – the name of the mochi-making ceremony in Japan – or head to local Japanese markets.
"Right after Christmas we get hammered," said Russell Oto, general manager of Oto's Marketplace on Freeport Boulevard in Sacramento.
Oto's gets its mochi from Osaka Ya, a tiny Japanese market that makes fresh mochi, and also imports mochi from Japan.
Some Japanese churches also make mochi and sell it in fundraisers. Judy Ilana, controller for a Japanese food distributor in West Sacramento and member of the Buddhist Church of Sacramento, said the church steamed about 1,200 pounds of sweet rice for its mochi sale.
Ilana grew up eating mochi on New Year's and still gets together with family to make it each year, a process that consumes most of the day but is worth the effort.
"I always like mochi," Ilana said. "We used to toast it. Some people dip it in a mixture of soy sauce and sugar, some wrap seaweed around it, some put peanut butter on the mochi."
Then there's the soup.
Zoni soup features a clear, kelp-type broth, vegetables and mochi, and is meant to bring good health and good fortune, Ilana said.
"We always had to eat that soup," she said.
Just be careful chewing the mochi if you're going to include it in your New Year's feast.
"It's kind of like a blob; you have to be really careful," Ilana cautioned. "In Japan, New Year's time is the time of the year when you have the most choking incidents."
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