For this assignment I asked everyone to write about one food they miss, or one food they still make here, and to tell us who made it and when. We wrote these the week before Easter, and by the end of the evening every single one of us was hungry. — R.

Ernesto, from Mexico

In my family in Michoacán, the tamales are for Christmas. On the 24 of December all the women of the family are in the kitchen of my grandmother from the morning. My mother, my aunts, my cousins. They put the corn husks in water so they get soft. They make the masa in a big pot and beat it with the hand until a little ball of it can float in a glass of water. Then everybody sit around the table and spread the masa on the husks with a spoon, and they talk and laugh and fight a little. Some tamales have pork with red chile, some chicken with green salsa, and some are sweet, pink, with raisins, for the children.

The men are not allowed in the kitchen. We wait outside. Then at night we eat tamales until we cannot move.

My first Christmas in Chicago I try to make them with my roommates. It was a disaster. The masa was like cement. Now my sister lives here and she makes them, and I am allowed in the kitchen, but only to wash the pots.

Ernesto was in my fall class too, and brought two dozen of his sister's tamales to our last night before Christmas. There were none left by the break. — R.

Krystyna, from Poland

I write about pierogi. In Poland on Christmas Eve, Wigilia, we eat no meat, twelve dishes, and we leave one empty place at the table for the stranger who maybe come. Always there is pierogi with cabbage and mushroom. My mother make them, then I make them, now my daughter make them with me in Chicago.

The dough must be soft like the ear of a baby. You cut circles with a glass, you put the filling, you close with the fingers, pinch, pinch, pinch. My mother could make one hundred pierogi in one hour and every one the same. My daughter make maybe thirty and every one different.

In the store here you can buy pierogi frozen in a box. I buy one time. This is not pierogi. This is a mistake. On Milwaukee Avenue there is a Polish bakery where the pierogi is almost right. Almost.

"Soft like the ear of a baby." The whole class went quiet when she read that line, and then every mother in the room nodded. — R.

Amra, from Bosnia

In Bosnia we have pita, a pie of very thin dough rolled in a circle like a snake in a round pan. Americans call all of them burek, but this is wrong. For us, burek is only with meat. With cheese it is sirnica, with spinach it is zeljanica, with potato it is krompiruša. My husband likes burek, my daughters like krompiruša, I like zeljanica. So on Sunday I make three.

My mother made the dough by hand on a big cloth on the table. She stretched it with her hands over the backs of her fingers, walking around the table, until it was so thin you could read a newspaper through it. When I was a girl I was not allowed to touch, only to watch. I watched for fifteen years. When she was sick I made it for her the first time, and she said it was too thick. She was right.

I still use her rolling pin. It is the one thing I carried from home that is not a photograph.

Amra read this one aloud, and stopped once in the middle, and we all waited. Then she finished it. — R.

Thanh, from Vietnam

For Tết, the Vietnamese New Year, we make bánh chưng. It is a square cake of sticky rice. Inside is mung beans and pork with black pepper. You wrap it in green leaves and tie with string, and you boil it in a very big pot for ten or twelve hours, all the night.

When I was a boy the whole family stay awake beside the fire to watch the pot and put more water. My grandfather tell stories, about the old times, about ghosts. The children try not to sleep but always we sleep. In the morning the cakes are ready and the house smell like rice and leaves.

In Chicago we buy the leaves on Argyle Street. They are not the right leaves, they are banana leaves, but okay. Now my son and his wife and me and my wife boil the pot in the basement, all the night, and my grandchildren try not to sleep, and always they sleep. And I tell them the same stories.

Thanh says the cake must be perfectly square, because the earth is square. He showed us with his hands. — R.

Oksana, from Ukraine

Every Ukrainian woman will tell you her borscht is the best, and every one of them is correct. My borscht is my grandmother's borscht. Beets, cabbage, potato, carrot, onion, beans, a little tomato, and good meat broth. You cook the beets separately with a little vinegar so the color stays bright red, like rubies. Then you put sour cream on top, and dill. With it we eat pampushky, small soft breads with garlic and oil.

My grandmother lived in a village and grew everything in her garden. The beets came out of the ground and in one hour they were in the pot. In Chicago the beets are very big and very beautiful but they do not taste like her beets. My husband says I am imagining. I am not imagining.

When I make borscht in our apartment, the smell goes in the hallway and the old man next door, he is from Poland, knocks on the door with a bowl. Now every time I make it I make extra.

Oksana and Krystyna have since had a long, friendly argument about whose borscht is better. I have tasted both. I am not getting involved. — R.

Tesfaye, from Ethiopia

In Ethiopia we eat injera every day. It is a big, flat, soft bread, sour, made from a grain called teff. It has many small holes on top, like a sponge. You put it on a big round plate and put the stews on top of it, spicy lentils, chicken, vegetables, and everybody eats together from the same plate with the right hand. You tear a piece of injera and pick up the food with it. No fork, no spoon.

When you love someone, or respect them, you make a bite with your hand and put it in their mouth. This is called gursha. My mother gave me gursha when I left for the airport.

After the meal there is the coffee ceremony. My mother roasted the green coffee beans in a flat pan over the fire and carried the pan around so everybody could smell the smoke. Then she ground them by hand and made the coffee in a clay pot. We drink three small cups, slowly, and talk. One hour, two hours. In America people drink coffee walking. This is very strange for me.

Tesfaye took four of us to an Ethiopian restaurant after our last class in May. We ate from one plate. Nobody used a fork. It was one of the best nights of my year. — R.

Marisol, from Guatemala

I miss the tortillas of my mother. Every morning she wake up at four o'clock, before the sun, and make tortillas for all the day. She grind the corn, she make little balls, she clap the balls between her hands, pat pat pat, and they become round and flat, and she cook them on the comal over the fire. They are thick and small and they taste like corn and smoke. When I was a little girl the sound of her hands was my alarm clock.

In Chicago I buy tortillas in a plastic bag from the store. They are thin and they taste like paper. I try to make them like my mother, but my hands don't know how. My balls of masa crack and break.

For fiestas in my village we make pepián, a stew of chicken with a sauce of roasted seeds and chiles. That I can make. But the tortillas, no. I think you have to make them every morning for thirty years.

Marisol showed us the clapping motion in class, and then all of us tried it with balls of paper. None of us had it. "Thirty years," she said. — R.

Rowena, from the Philippines

Ask any Filipino what is our national dish and most of them will say adobo. It is chicken or pork, or both, cooked slowly in vinegar, soy sauce, lots of garlic, bay leaves and black peppercorns. Every family has its own way. My mother cooks it until the sauce is almost dry and the meat is a little bit crispy. My mother-in-law leaves plenty of sauce to pour on the rice. My husband and I have been married eleven years and we are still arguing about which way is correct.

The secret of adobo is that it is better the next day. And the day after. In the old days before refrigerators people cooked meat this way so it will not spoil, because of the vinegar.

We eat it with rice, of course. Filipinos eat rice three times a day, even for breakfast. When I was in nursing school in Manila, I lived for two years on my mother's adobo that she sent with the bus every week in a plastic container. When I open a jar of vinegar in Chicago, I am home for one second.

Rowena brought adobo to our potluck in May, made her mother's way. Her husband was not there to object. — R.