Immigrant foods intrigue me. Time seems to stop for people with regard to their cooking when they leave their homelands. The Norwegians around here make a huge deal out of their annual lutefisk and lefse suppers. I thought these foods were huge in Norway as well when I was growing up, but I came to learn that more lutefisk is consumed in North America than in Norway. The immigrants in the nineteenth century preserved this food as a part of their heritage while the people in Norway moved on to more modern methods of food preservation, reducing the popularity of lye-soaked cod over there.

I was thinking about this again last night while rereading one of my cookbooks (Memories of a Cuban Kitchen). Until I read this book the first time, I had been perplexed by some of my mother in law's cooking techniques. Canned peas as a garnish? Use of canned asparagus instead of fresh? I had always thought of these and some of her other cooking habits as completely bizarre. I realized upon reading this book, though, that it was immigrant cooking at it's finest. Her homeland cooking is frozen in the 1960s.

So that leaves me wondering if I can substitute fresh peas for the canned peas used to accent the arroz amarillo con pollo. Do I need to keep the recipes she brought with her from her homeland as they were back in the mid-'60s or can I update them for the modern era and palate?