Inherited Immigration

Assessing my possibilities, I cracked my neck - first to the right and then to the left. I had brought with me a bag of mixed chicken pieces, the anchor to the meal. In the fridge I’d found a bag of carrots and a half opened jar of olives. From the freezer I’d pulled a cube of sofrito, and from the pantry I was able to scrounge together a few potatoes, a bag of rice, a can of tomato sauce, plantains and an onion. The basics for survival.

These weren’t the staples I was accustomed to for slapping together an American dinner, but this wasn’t my kitchen, nor was this a classic American household.

Ohio had found its way into my grandmother’s life, but only where she had to let it. Her cooking remained untouched by American flavors and processed goods, her palate forever loyal to her homeland in Puerto Rico. Dinner at Mita and Pito’s was always an exciting event as a kid. Mita would spend hours before dinner preparing ham for the rice and beans con habichuelas or boiling plantains and potatoes, a meal she’d been making for decades trying to feed seven growing children on the salary of my grandfather’s electrical work. Now as an adult, her budget meals had become delicacies for the grandkids to look forward to.

When Mita first got sick, the family begged her for her recipes, hoping to carry on her memory through the legendary meals. But there were no recipes to pass on. She whipped up her mouthwatering skirt steak with onions relying on feel and smell alone. No two meals were exactly the same, but they were always incredible.

Looking at the ingredients on the counter, I tried to remember meals I’d had with her using these items. Memories of tender chicken simmered in a tomato base, the aroma of sizzling onion and cilantro filled my present senses. Pollo guisado was a dish you could smell as soon as you walked in the front door, warming your body from the Cleveland cold by wrapping it in garlic, cumin, oregano and peppers. I could remember the exact taste of the Puerto Rican stew, but when it came to making it, I had nothing. No recipe card. No Pinterest blog. Not nearly enough time spent helping my grandmother cook, as I was often guilty of lingering by the cheese and guava paste and bacalaitos, a delicious fried codfish, while all of my aunts, my aunts in-laws and all of their women friends from church all crammed into the kitchen. Every gathering contained seemingly every Puerto Rican in the suburbs of Cleveland.

If only through memory rather than practice, I closed my eyes to channel the Latina side of me, ignoring the German and Polish half telling me to add sour cream and butter to everything. I went first with what I knew was right, hoping my senses would guide me along the way. I found a big stewing pot and dropped in a square of frozen homemade sofrito, along with a drizzle of olive oil so the fat of it would enhance the smell and speed up the thawing process. Once the sofrito was hot enough, I added the pieces of chicken, browning them in the intense heat before adding the tomato sauce and, my favorite, the cilantro. While the sauce came to a boil, I chopped the vegetables, eyeballing how many to add as I was so used to a recipe telling me exactly how many cups of every ingredient was needed. I put a lid on the pot and took a deep breath. The rice was next, my most dreaded part of recreating my grandmother’s meals. In my own apartment, my rice cooker did everything for me, leaving the concept of boiling rice on a stove top without burning it utterly foreign to me, just as these modern cooking contraptions remained utterly foreign to my traditional grandmother.

Even for something as commonplace as making rice, my grandmother was unable to provide her descendants with a physical recipe. My aunts had mostly learned her techniques firsthand, however, that meant that rice cooking would not be something I would inherit from my father. Rather than relying on measuring cups, Mita measured liquids with her majolica patterned cups brought back from trips to visit her sister in Puerto Rico, preferring to connect rather than be correct.

I opened a cupboard to search for a cup, only to find an entire cabinet full of Goya products. Freezing in place for a solid minute, I realized I’d left out the adobo, the characteristic seasoning of all of her meals. I threw in a tablespoon and mixed the pot, hoping I wasn’t too late but already smelling the cilantro releasing its familiar aroma as it cooked. Guessing on the rice, I poured in twice the amount of water as I did grains into the caldero pot Mita always used for rice, put the heat on medium and hoped for the best, deciding against gandules since I had no idea when those went in.

Next on my list was making sides. A dinner at Mita and Pito’s was not complete without tostones, fried plantains always mashed and crisp, never mushy and thick like some restaurants serve. 

To make the plantains, I needed to find the wooden smasher, the tostonera: two pieces of wood connected on a hinge with a circular indent on one side for the plantain to be shaped in. Mita had several, each with its own Taino tribal design. Her original smasher came to America with her when she sailed over with my grandfather, each of them bringing nothing but a suitcase and a tenth grade education.

I found the smasher next to the pasteles materials, piles of twine and parchment paper tucked away from the last pasteles party we had, a few of which were still tucked away in my freezer back home.

Cutting the plantains into one inch thick pieces, I put the first one into the smasher, quickly realizing that this was wrong. Mushy plantain clung to the sides, reminding me they needed to be fried first. Starting over, I heated the oil, fried the plantains, THEN smashed them, and fried them again before adding salt. Taking one to sample, it was just like I remembered. Tostones was one dish I could actually get right. 

Turning around to check on the rice, I saw the jar of olives still sitting on the counter. The olives that should have been simmering in the pollo guisado, deepening the body of the sauce. I rushed over, added in a handful, and stared at the pot a bit longer before deciding to add another handful. 

If I had to guess, which I did, because no online recipe looked at all like what Mita made, dinner would have another 20 minutes to go. I took this time to crack open a Malta Goya, poured it into a Yahoo!, and set the table with multi-colored dishware.

With the last five minutes left in cooking, I went into the back room of the ranch and checked to see if my grandfather was awake from his nap, which he was.

“Dinner is ready, Pito.”

He nodded, able to understand me, but as his old age set in he had begun to speak in different languages, switching between Spanish and English multiple times within the same sentence, not realizing he was doing this. I spoke enough Spanish to get by during these conversations, but those who spoke only English weren’t able to converse as easily. I helped my grandfather out of his reclining chair where he was watching TV and across the house to the table, where we sat down to eat, saying grace before enjoying our meal.

I desperately wanted dinner to be special, to be just like Mita’s. But of course, this was impossible for me, for I was only half Puerto Rican and too Americanized to bring her authentic flavors to life. The tostones had gone soggy, fried too early before serving. The olives were still tough, and there were so many of them. And of course, the bottom of the rice had burned, calling for a good scrubbing later.

But as I watched Pito, sitting in the shade of his thriving, home-grown Avocado tree, he smiled. The food was not just like his wife’s, but no meal was. None of her meals ever tasted like the last time she made it because each one came from scratch and from the heart, from the mood of the room and the energy of the day. I smiled with the corner of one side of my mouth, apologizing for the attempted and botched recreation of Mita’s cooking.

“It tastes just like hers,” Pito said, grabbing the fingers of my left hand next to him. “My granddaughter has inherited my love’s recipes.”

His thick accent brought tears to my eyes, just as his wife’s frozen sofrito turned into pollo guisado brought tears to his.

We ate hand in hand, honoring my grandmother through her legendary flavors in the two months it had been since she passed.