Flavors from Home: Refugees in Kentucky Share Their Stories and Comfort Foods

Preface

Growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1970s and 1980s, I had few opportunities to interact with people from other cultures in my largely white, middle-class, suburban community. Sure, the city had its established immigrant neighborhoods—most notably, German and Irish— but I never saw the range of diversity that exists today: African women wrapped from head to toe in colorful kangas waiting for buses, Muslim mothers in hijabs dropping their children off at school, Bhutanese men strolling down the street wearing flat-topped topis on their heads. As a child, the only time I caught a glimpse of someone ostensibly foreign was on TV (for those old enough to remember, think Zsa Zsa Gábor and Ricardo Montalbán).

Despite this lack of early contact, or perhaps because of it, I have always had a genuine interest in cultures different from my own. So when I boarded a bus in the spring of 2008 to tour my hometown as part of a Leadership Louisville Center program, I was thrilled to share a seat with a dark-haired, friendly faced Bosnian native. Zeljana Javorek spoke so enthusiastically about her job as an English language trainer (ELT) manager at Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services that it reignited my old desire to work with people from other countries—in particular, to teach them English, the language I love, in the city and state I love even more. Zeljana invited me to visit her school, which I did. And the rest, as they say, is history.

At the schools where I have had the pleasure of teaching English to foreign-born students, we occasionally hosted potlucks, giving students the opportunity to share the exotic flavors and cuisines of their homelands: savory sambusas from Somalia; tender, succulent pulled pork and frijoles negros from Cuba; juicy, vegetable-stuffed momos from Bhutan. At these potlucks, it made no difference that we didn’t all share the same language, customs, faith, economic status, education level, or skin color. We were simply a group of hungry, adventurous, appreciative souls, chewing and smiling from ear to ear like happy Buddhas. As Franz Kafka wrote, So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

These potlucks inspired this book. At first, I planned to collect only recipes, hoping to preserve them while they were still close to their native sources and before they became altered or Americanized. Soon, however, it became apparent that to present these dishes without telling the stories of the refugees who lovingly prepared them would be like forgetting the saffron in the Persian rice dish tachin or omitting the hot chili peppers in the Bhutanese stew ema datshi. What eventually emerged, and what the contributors of the recipes and I offer you now, is a collection of oral histories representing some of the diverse refugee populations that have resettled in the commonwealth of Kentucky in the last half century, as explored through their foodways.

Food and culinary traditions are like the Cliffs Notes to a culture. One dish can encapsulate the history, topography, climate, and even religious practices of a people and place. As my Burmese friend Mya Zaw says, If you want to know about our culture, look to the food.

In visiting these refugees’ homes and kitchens, listening to their courageous stories, and sharing meals with them, I began to rediscover and appreciate my own cultural heritage, my own personal narrative. As I saw my refugee friends redefining their lives and re-creating their homes during a time of major transition in my own life, I took heart that I, too, could—and would—do the same.

I hope these stories and recipes feed your body, mind, and spirit as much as they have mine. As my Iranian friends say before a meal, Nooshe jan (may your soul be nourished).

Introduction

Something curious happens when you talk to people from other countries about their native foods. I once told a Pakistani student in my English as a second language (ESL) class that I liked boorani, a layered eggplant and yogurt dish from her region of the world. Her eyes widened beneath the hood of her hijab as she gasped with delight, How do you know about boorani? I received a similar reaction while shopping at an ethnic grocery store one day for the ingredients I needed to test a recipe. An African customer at the counter, noting my purchases, raised his eyebrows in shock. How do you know about cassava leaves? he asked. Are you married to an African?

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela said, If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. I have always believed that food—like a smile, a painting, a piece of music, or a dance—is a kind of universal language—a heart language. And I have found that to be true while working on this project.

Over the years, through my involvement with Kentucky’s refugee resettlement agencies and as an ESL teacher, and particularly while writing this book, I have made many friends from countries as close to our shores as Cuba and as far away as Vietnam. I’ve had the honor and privilege of being invited into my new friends’ homes. I’ve laughed with them, grieved with them, celebrated births and weddings with them. I’ve even cried tears of joy with them as they’ve been sworn in as US citizens. And I’ve eaten with them. And eaten. And eaten some more.

If death is the great equalizer, I’m convinced that food is the great unifier. Some of the stories told to me and recorded in this book (with their tellers’ permission) might never have been shared if not for the social, pleasurable, nourishing, comforting, healing, and even sacred attributes of preparing and eating a meal together. The kitchen was our safe place, and food was our common ground. What came out of these kitchen visits appears in these pages—forty-two recipes and twenty-three stories of courage, perseverance, and reinvention. Flavors from Home spotlights not only the foodways but also the day-to-day struggles, hopes, dreams, fears, and successes of the refugee communities that are changing the face—and flavors—of Kentucky.

COMING TO AMERICA

As of this writing, there are approximately 15.4 million refugees in the world, but on average, only about 1 percent of refugees are resettled into the two dozen or so industrialized nations that are willing to accept them, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The Refugee Act of 1980 defines a refugee as someone who is outside his or her country of nationality and is unable or unwilling to return to that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

Actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie has been quoted as saying, In my experience, going home is the deepest wish of most refugees. But for many refugees, going home is not an option. Economic migrants choose to move to another country to improve their lives, and they can return home if they choose. Refugees, in contrast, are either forced to flee or driven from their homelands and generally cannot return safely.

In the United States, refugees are resettled in hundreds of cities and communities. In the early years of refugee resettlement, the largest percentage of refugees came from Indochina and the former Soviet Union. In the last couple of decades, however, refugees have been arriving from all over the world, especially war-torn areas of Africa, Europe, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East.

The commonwealth of Kentucky is home to several official refugee resettlement agencies that work closely with the US Department of State and the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). At this time, Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services (MRS), Kentucky Refugee Ministries (KRM), and the International Center of Kentucky are the major players in the state’s refugee resettlement efforts, and they are mentioned frequently throughout this book. These agencies currently resettle an average of 2,500 refugees a year, with approximately 70 percent of them going to metropolitan Louisville, according to the Kentucky Office for Refugees (KOR).

Exactly how many refugees are currently living in Kentucky is hard to ascertain. Official records weren’t kept until the early 1990s, and they don’t include refugees who haven’t registered with or received assistance from a resettlement agency. Many of these uncounted refugees are secondary migrants—that is, refugees who relocate from their initial resettlement site in the United States to another location. But it is safe to say that in the past two decades, Kentucky agencies have resettled tens of thousands of refugees representing more than forty different nationalities and ethnic groups. (See the appendix, Fast Facts about Refugees.)

Refugees are asked to adapt to American ways from the moment they are accepted for resettlement in the United States. They come to America with little more than the clothes on their backs, often knowing little to no English, and they are expected to be well on their way to self-sufficiency within months of their arrival. But one thing they don’t have to adapt to, especially with the widespread availability of international ingredients, is American foodways. In fact, the majority of refugees I know still cook only their native foods at home. As Naomi Duguid writes in Burma: Rivers of Flavor, for many refugees, food is the last refuge.

KITCHEN AS REFUGE

When refugees prepare their native dishes in their American kitchens, it’s like a lifeline to their home countries, a way for them to find solace in an unfamiliar land, retain their customs, reconnect with their personal past and heritage, and preserve a sense of identity. For new refugees in particular, the kitchen is also a place where they can produce a sense of normalcy and stability in an otherwise strange and sometimes scary new world. It is a place where they can serve rather than be served, a place where they can express themselves and exercise some degree of control in a land where they often feel powerless and unheard.

To give you an idea of how important native foods are to new refugees, Bosnian native Mirzet Mustafić, who resettled in Kentucky in 1994, drove more than 100 miles to Lexington once a month to shop at a store that carried eastern European items for the growing Bosnian refugee community in Bowling Green. That said, I found that refugees who have been in the United States the longest, such as Mirzet and Irene Finley from Hungary (1957), do not prepare their native dishes as often as they used to. It will be interesting to see if new refugees’ culinary habits follow the same pattern.

"I WAS A REFUGEE"

The first time I spoke to one of my contributors, Rwandan native and restaurateur Nicolas Kiza, I asked if he was a refugee, a prerequisite for inclusion in the book. He said yes and then corrected himself: "I mean I was a refugee." That’s an important distinction. For simplicity’s sake, I often use the word refugee to refer to the contributors of this book and all immigrants who come to the United States as refugees, victims of human trafficking, asylum seekers, and others with a similar status. However, refugee is a temporary status. Refugees are required by law to apply for a green card (permanent residence) after being in the country for one full year, and most of the refugees I know can’t wait for the day they become US citizens and can declare America their new home country.

I narrowed the focus of this book to refugees because the refugee experience is unique and because I found few books that featured stories about refugees and the cuisines of their home countries. Next, I looked for people with powerful stories (which describes just about every refugee I know) who enjoy cooking their native foods and were willing to share both their stories and their recipes.

The majority of refugees featured in Flavors from Home are from Louisville, reflecting Kentucky’s refugee demographics; however, for greater inclusiveness and to more fully capture the diversity of refugees’ experiences in the Bluegrass State, I visited other cities with significant refugee populations, including Bowling Green, Lexington, Owensboro, and areas in northern Kentucky. Including a representative from every refugee population or every country wasn’t feasible, but I made a concerted effort to feature those countries from which the greatest number of refugees have resettled in Kentucky: Bhutan, Bosnia, Burma (now Myanmar), Cuba, Iraq, and Somalia. The four Burmese refugees included in this book reflect the diversity in Myanmar, a country with approximately 135 different ethnic groups. I also included refugees from some of the smallest and most persecuted minority ethnic groups, including a Burmese Rohingya and a Somali Bantu.

Choosing to concentrate on that which unites us rather than divides us, I included little information about politics, war, and other conflicts, unless it was critical to a contributor’s story, provided a historical backdrop, or clarified situations or events. In these stories, you will follow individuals through the jungles of Burma and through the jungles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo—one fighting for his life and the other running for his. You will meet one of the original Vietnamese boat people who spent more than thirty days at sea and later became one of Louisville’s most successful restaurateurs. You will meet highly educated men and women—doctors, lawyers, engineers—who once had thriving careers in their homelands but have struggled to find employment in America or have had to accept low-income jobs well beneath their education and skill levels. You will meet some who are disenchanted with their lives in the United States and others who would bleed red, white, and blue if they could. Some have been able to achieve the American Dream—raising families, buying cars and homes, and even opening their own businesses after years of sweat, sacrifice, and determination.

Some of these refugees have started their own restaurants or catering companies and are having a direct impact on our regional foodways: Huong CoCo Tran (Roots and Heart & Soy), the Akrami family (Ata’s Catering and Shiraz Mediterranean Grill), Dr. Mahn Myint Saing (Simply Thai), and Nicolas Kiza (Kalisimbi Bar and Grill). Many more refugees are working behind the scenes as cooks or other support staff. William Thang has worked in food preparation for restaurants and a grocery store and aspires to open his own restaurant featuring his native Burmese cuisine. Azerbaijani Elmira Tonian once served food from a street cart in Ukraine just to survive; she now uses that cooking expertise and her own creative flair to make original dishes for her friend’s catering company. That friend, Arina Saforova, co-owns an ethnic market to make her native foods more accessible to immigrants and Americans alike.

Some refugees are growing their own vegetables in community gardens and selling their produce at farmers’ markets and restaurants as part of the farm-to-table movement and to supplement their households’ income. Still others share samples of their native cuisines through community festivals and events or simply among their families, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Because money is scarce for many new refugees, food sometimes serves as currency, offered in exchange for other goods and services or as a means of repayment.

MAKE IT YOUR OWN

America has always been a land of immigrants, and what we consider American cuisine is a reflection of that melting pot. Louisville chef and Korean American Edward Lee writes in Smoke and Pickles: Recipes and Stories from a New Southern Kitchen, There is a rich diversity in our cuisine—this thing that, for lack of a better term, we call American Cuisine—that is defined by our never-ending search for reinvention. Just as refugees are reinventing their lives and homes in the United States, they are also contributing to the endless reinvention that is American cuisine.

Foods that are considered southern today were influenced by Native Americans, Spanish explorers, European immigrants (including the Scots-Irish, many of whom settled in Kentucky’s Appalachian region), and African and Caribbean slaves. Waves of immigrants from more diverse regions of the world, especially after the Vietnam War, continued to influence regional American cuisine. Based on my own observations, the foodways among Kentucky’s refugees today tend to mirror the African American soul food tradition of making the most with the ingredients on hand and finding inventive ways to create filling, homemade dishes from scratch.

Each chapter in this collection is followed by one or more recipes from the refugee featured in that section. The only stipulation I gave the cooks was to select recipes that represent their homelands in some way— preferably a dish that comforts them and makes them feel closer to home. By giving them this flexibility, I hoped to gain broader insight into their cultures—and them—through their personal selections.

What dishes would emerge? Main entrees. One-dish meals. Fresh vegetables, grains, and legumes. Bean soups and rice- or potato-based dishes. Dumplings, breads, and plantains. Hmmm. Not so different from the traditional starch-laden comfort foods of the South—and prepared with the same great care. Appetizers and desserts are scarce in these pages; both are considered luxuries in many of the represented countries, whether due to food scarcity in general or the scarcity or cost of ingredients such as fruits, eggs, and sugar. Every country has its sweets, but for many of the contributors, desserts weren’t their go-to comfort food.

One thing remained consistent: almost every contributor resisted providing an actual recipe. Translating the ingredients and methods was difficult for many, especially those with poor English skills, but more important, most contributors simply hadn’t learned to cook this way and didn’t want to stifle others’ creativity in the kitchen. They preferred to teach me the way they themselves had learned to cook—and still do: by memory, instinct, taste, observation, imagination. These are the tools of their trade.

Aimee, you have to make it your own! my Iranian friend Arash Taarifi would admonish me whenever I tried to pin down an ingredient or a measurement. Though frustrating at the time, these words eventually became my rallying cry, and now I find myself using recipes and exact measurements less and less in my own cooking.

Whenever possible, I used the recipe’s name in the contributor’s native language, along with an English translation. If the cook didn’t know the name of a recipe or none existed, we made one up that accurately reflected the dish. In the introduction to each recipe, I note any unusual ingredients and where to locate them, helpful tips in preparing the dish, and suggestions for adapting the recipes to American tastes and kitchens. Sidebars sprinkled throughout the chapters provide further information about cultural topics and ingredients.

Recipes were tested more than once in test kitchens by myself and by volunteers. All the contributors reviewed their recipes (and stories) for accuracy. Yet, as we all know, things can get lost in translation. Bear in mind, too, that many factors play a part in the success of a recipe, including stovetop and oven temperatures, cooking equipment and methods, quality of ingredients, and, of course, the cook’s experience and knowledge.

Some of the ingredients in these recipes should be handled with care. For example, turmeric, curry, and saffron can stain skin and fabrics. In addition, some hot chili pepper varieties can cause allergic reactions, skin irritation, or a temporary burning sensation.

Rather than relying heavily on food styling or staging, and for the sake of cultural preservation and authenticity, every effort was made to photograph contributors in their natural environments, and the dishes are shown on the cooks’ own serving pieces.

A NOTE ABOUT CHAPTER ORDER

One of the first questions I asked each refugee was, When did you come to the United States? I did this partly to put them at ease because I knew it would be an easy question to answer. Almost everyone, without hesitation, could tell me the exact date he or she had arrived. One contributor could even pinpoint the exact hour of his arrival. Their date of arrival is something they will never forget—a type of death, but also a rebirth.

Thus, the stories are ordered by date. This helped spotlight trends in Kentucky refugee populations over the past fifty years, as well as how the communities and refugee resettlement agencies have responded and adapted to these immigrant influxes. Of course, you don’t have to read the chapters in sequence. You might prefer to read all the stories from the same country or region, allowing the details and anecdotes of one to enhance and shed light on another. Feel free to create your own journey, or, as my good friend Arash Taarifi would say, Make it your own!

Part of the proceeds from this book will help support the efforts of Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services and Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

1

Hungary

Irene Finley, October 23, 1957

I just realized . . . how will we know each other? Irene Finley asks over the phone in her honey-thick Hungarian accent.

Irene and I have never met, but I feel like I already know her. A friend told her about my project, and the next thing I knew, I had a handwritten recipe for chicken paprikás and a tape entitled Irene’s Testimony.

It is a clear-skied spring morning. The fresh air and blooming flowers are as comforting as the rocking chairs lining Cracker Barrel’s front entrance. I easily find Irene in the restaurant’s gift shop, a brown-eyed blonde wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, just as she described. Irene’s husband Frank, a retired vocational teacher, is joining us. When our breakfast plates arrive, piled high with made-to-order eggs, pancakes, grits, and biscuits and gravy, Irene and Frank bow their heads to pray over their food, and I see how central faith is in the couple’s life. In fact, ever since experiencing a spiritual reawakening in the early years of her marriage, Irene takes every opportunity—from formal speaking engagements at schools and churches to casual conversations with people she has just met—to share the story of how God delivered her family safely out of Hungary decades ago.

On October 23, 1956, a group of peaceful student-led protesters marched through the Hungarian capital of Budapest, protesting the government’s Soviet-backed policies. Although the revolution of 1956 ultimately failed, it paved the way for the democratization that would later come to Hungary and other eastern bloc nations.

Anything could have happened to us, but God had a purpose for my life. —Irene Finley

Irene was only eleven years old at the time, but she recalls those volatile months following the revolt with astounding clarity. She remembers the scarcity of food and standing in line for bread with her older sister; her parents’ overnight decision to take their children and flee with only the clothes on their backs, a small parcel of food, and a small stash of money hidden inside their gloves; walking more than forty miles in the deep snow and bitter January cold