The students in Lowell High School teacher Jessica Lander’s class may be from 17 very different nations around the globe, but if there is one universal truth it is this – regardless of culture, language, religion, or starch of choice – grandmas absolutely do not want to give up their secret recipes. That fact ranked as the top challenge the students faced when gathering family recipes from their homelands for the sixth edition of “Tasting History,” a cookbook created annually by the immigrant and refugee students in Lander’s U.S.
History II Seminar. This year’s edition includes 99 recipes from 17 countries. Emanuel Sanchez, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 2019, contributed his family’s recipe for “Habichuelas con Dulce,” a dessert made with red beans, sweet potato, raisins, coconut milk and spices.
He said it was the first dish to come to mind because it reminds him of his neighbors and community in the Dominican Republic and how everyone would share food. Just don’t ask Emanuel what is in it or how to make it. “I don’t know a lot about the recipe,” he admitted.
“My grandma told me I’m not going to find out the recipe. My grandma was the one who wrote the ingredients in the book. I haven’t checked it out because she told me not to look at it, but sometime I peek.
” In front of a packed room at a book party and signing at Lala Books downtown on April 29, Lander and five of her students spoke about the book project.