Oshie Peozie
Across the New York area, I cooked with a series of people from immigrant backgrounds. During our time together in their kitchens I would archive their recipes and hear their stories of migration some generations in the making, decoveing how their family recipes have adapted and changed over time absorbing influence of regions past though along the way. The final presentation of this work was a painted series of portraits and still lives of the dishes, displayed alongside the stories of their family’s journeys.
On a leisurely Sunday afternoon at her home deep in Queens, Channah Levy and taught me how to cook the family favorite Oshie Peozie, a tomato based stew with meat stuffed onions, chickpeas, and prunes. Born to Russian immigrants, Channah spent her childhood in the Jewish suburbs Kabul, Afghanistan before the family moved into Israel in 1948, then the United Stated a decade later. While her family is originally from Russia and did spend a significant portion of their time in Israel, the food they consider their own is Afghan. Since they are Jewish, their food must be Kosher and unintentionally, the Levy family cooking has evolved into their own unique cuisines. Still almost 70 years later after leaving Afghanistan their family is still cooking these dishes they learned and adapted.
The Bujno’s immigrated to New York City with their three children from Blatysiok, Poland in 1994. Barbara, the matriarch of the family, won the visa lottery and with hopes to give her children an American college education, left Poland and her upper-middle class job. I meet Barbara at her home on Roosevelt Island, where the Bujno’s have lived since their move to the US, to learn how to cook a traditional Polish meal. On the menu was nalesniki (Polish crepes) and the classic pierogi. When I arrived the entire dinner table was already packed with a multi-course Polish feast including grochowa (a ham heavy polish version of split pea soup) , kopytka (potato dumplings with bacon and caramelized onions) , buraczki (shredded beet salad), and kotlety (pork meat balls). After starting the cooking lesson with a small feast, we started to prepare the pierogies and nalesniki. One moment that stood out during this session was when Barbara threw a splash of Sprite, which she referred to as “bubbly water”, in with the batter for the nalesniki. During the course of these cooking sessions, I’ve began noticing the addition non-traditional products into the recipes explore how and why these recipes evolve and change.
Cooking a Shabbat dinner is an all-day adventure, I found out while helping Miriam Abrahams cook her family’s Friday meal on Long Island. It was my first time cooking a Shabbat meal and it was far from traditional. Alongside the challah were frijoles negros, pastel de guayaba, and South African seed bread, also know as cape seed loaf. Miriam, born in Cuba, met her husband David on a hike in Israel in 1984. At the time David was living in Durban, South Africa where his parent, originally from Lithuania, had escaped to right before WWII. Similarly, Miriam’s parents left Europe around the same time but instead ended up in Havana, Cuba. In the wake of the 1959 Cuban revolution, her family fled for the United States. At this one table, between the beans and the bread, the vastness of the post-WWII Jewish diaspora can be seen. The story of the Abraham’s family and their food is an approachable way to explore the forced and voluntary migration on populations and its effect on our food systems. During our marathon day of cooking Miriam and I sat down for a break and to chat. The currently politics around immigration naturally came up. In reflection of her life history as an immigrant Miriam said, “I hear the news. I see those people. And I think to myself: That was me, I just look different.”
