Being from the south originally, We cook mostly southern favorites, we don't have any recipes for asian or indian, or european, but we do some simple mexican stuff since moving to Texas last year. My family and my wife's have been in America so long(since colonial days) that neither of us have any any ethnic recipes brought from the "old country" Some of the dishes posted here we have never heard or and some have ingrediants that we have never heard of. Like the 3 grain rice pilaf, we looked all through the grocery to find pearl barley and bulger wheat to try that recipe. After about 20 minutes of searching every possible isle, we gave it up. We had to search online just to find out what they were.
We are are always looking to try new things, but sometimes get tripped up on what to try or where to get things. Life is an adventure.
Barley should be near the split peas or lentils or bags of beans/legumes. Bulghur, I get mine at the health food store, its cheaper than the grocery store but that should be in the baking aisle. Look for Bob’s Red Mill. Little bags, usually by the fancy flours like spelt, potato starch, potato flour, gluten etc.
We all definitely are influenced by our family background. I too have family roots that go all the way back to the early days of this country. One ancestor even came to the U.S. in the 1500’s. I guess that is why most of the cooking I grew up with was pretty much every day American style cooking just like you, only mine had a Northern influence instead of a Southern influence. I didn’t have any ethnic or “old country” recipes I learned to make either.
Pearl Barley and Bulgar Wheat are not really new to the American diet. I have found barley mentioned in historical records I have run across in my genealogy research during the covered wagon days, so it clearly isn’t new to the American scene. It may be something that was eaten more in the Northern States since it lends itself to cold weather dishes like stews and soups. I think people just moved away from many grains, since so many families don’t cook much from scratch any more and canned soups you buy at the store became the norm. Many of these grains are not even available in quick cooking preparations now like they were when I was growing up.
I remember eating Campbell’s beef barley soup every once in a while in my youth, and my mother also made home made beef barley soup from scratch. It is one of those soups that you don’t see very often any more, but it is hearty and delicious, especially the homemade kind.
There was also a product that was popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s called “Ala Pilaf” that came in a box and was readily found mixed in with the rice mixes. I think they advertized it on TV a lot then too. My mother of course tried it and my father loved it, so we started having it fairly often. That is the earliest I remember eating Bulgar Wheat, but I suspect that Bulgar is another one of those grains that just lost popularity for a while.
My mother of course preferred cooking from scratch, so she read the list of ingredients on the box and found out it was made with bulgar wheat. She then found out where to buy it cheaper without the fancy box and came up with her own version of the “Ala Pilaf” my dad loved.
Both grains should be available on the same aisle of your grocery store as the rice products, or in the bulk foods aisle. If you can’t find it in your area in regular grocery stores, try bulk food stores or health food stores. Both these types of stores have carried both of these items through out my life, even when it wasn’t readily available (or at least noticable) on the regular grocery store shelves. Both are becoming much more readily available again now because so many people are now turning to a vegan diet and they are higher in protein than many other grains.
My husband was born in Missouri, so he is a Southerner like you and we are really just beginning to trace his ancestry, but his family has been around the U.S. at least back to the 1800’s and I am almost certain even further, since we are fairly certain we just uncovered some Cherokee Indian ancestry, we just can’t quite document it all yet.
He was used to eating things like pinto beans, black eyed peas and grits. I think my first experience with pinto beans was stopping in at a Taco Bell for the first time in the 1960’s and I had never even tried black eye’d peas or grits until the mid 1990’s after I married my husband. I taught myself how to cook them.
The closest to ethnic cooking I came to as a child was learning how to cook spaghetti and I have no idea why, since I have absolutely no Italian blood in me whatsoever. I guess it was just something that rose to popularity during my childhood. My cooking in my adult life has been influenced a lot by my family’s travel experiences as well as the influx of immigrants and subsequent increase in ethnic restaurants in the United States.
Life certainly is an adventure. I am pretty adventurous when it comes to trying new foods and if I like something enough I will learn how to make it myself. Through the years I have either taught myself how to make ethnic dishes I liked or gotten recipes from people I have encountered in my life. While I have a limited repetoire, I have learned to cook stir frys quite well, a lot of Mexican, Latin American, Spanish and Italian dishes, and even some Indian and Thai dishes. Lately I have even tried learning to make some Korean dishes.