Food by Any Other Name…

Italy, for me, is a wonderful country for many reasons:
The language. The food. The people. My friends. My family in Florence.

Italy, for my sister, means one thing:
The birthplace of tiramisu.

On vacation there last week, she first checked the back of the menu in the restaurants to check. Phew! We could stay. She ate it every day…as in every single day. The day she didn’t, she compensated by eating tiramisu gelato.

And she thinks I am über-addicted to stuff.

Don’t get me wrong – I love it as well, but not as much as I love the meaning. From tira + mi + su = pick me up or draw me up. Reference being to the sponge cake sucking up the rum, the coffee giving one a little pick-me-up or the best one yet – eat it and you are transported straight up to heaven. Surely my sister will agree - though it would’ve been better to pull her back down to earth to try something else for a change.

The Turkish people have their own version of a dish purported to send you straight to heaven, or at least faint, presumably from sheer gastronomic delight: Imam Byildi - the Imam fainted. While it didn’t exactly have me keeling over, I do admit to it being on par with melanzana parmigiana. (Hopefully this will not get me into trouble with my Italian friends). They are pretty creative with names in that country. While I was there, I decided to stay away from the kadinbudu kofte, not exactly thrilled with the idea of biting into something that translated as ‘woman’s thighs’. Gives ladies’ fingers (okra) a run for their name.

Back in Italy, given the recent abuses of the church, it was with pleasure that I ordered strozzaprete or priest stranglers. Years ago, it was common practice to let priests eat for free in restaurants and homes.

According to the story, some restaurateurs wished that the “freeloaders” would choke on the pasta course before they could get to the more expensive meat and fish courses and so they rolled the pasta into a shape that might get lodged in the priest’s throat. Hmmm… too bad I am a pacifist - would’ve dearly loved to invite some of the folks down at Channel 11 to come over for dinner, temporarily forgetting how to carry out the Heimlich Maneuver.

Italians of course have always been creative (and prolific) with their pasta names - all 600 of them. Identifying them is fun. I love ‘radiatore’ (radiators) and ‘mostiaccioli’ (little mustaches) and gemelli (little twins) and torchietti (little torches). Someone had a lot of time on their hands.

The names are one thing. Try identifying them. Any idiot can tell the difference between fusilli and rotini. And just when you can tell spaghetti from bucatini (the latter is hollow), along comes perciatelli. Before you start scoffing, try telling agnoloti apart from mezzelune, or cavatelli from orecchiette. I made a fool out of myself when I pointed to a dish and asked for the penne. Turned out to be garganelli. Duh! They could’ve fooled me. Of course, if it does turn out to be penne, you have to be careful they are not pennette (small penne) or pennoni (big penne) – the same with spaghetti/spaghettini/spaghettoni.

I also make ‘confusione’ with farfallini and tripolini or “little bows”. One is little butterflies and the other was named to honor the Italian conquest of Tripoli in Libya.

Talking about conquests, there is the historical apocryphal story of the croissant roll being made in the shape of the crescent of the Turkish flag, after the defeat of the Turks in the Siege of Vienna in 1683. Recipes for croissants do not appear in recipe books until the early 1900s and the earliest French reference is in 1853.

Some words are unfortunate enough to just sound disgusting. Take ‘barfi’ for example. To Indians it connotes a wonderful milky dessert. My kids refused to touch it – saying they felt like adding an ‘ng’ behind the word. My husband begs to disagree, and given half the chance (which he isn’t, thanks to the statin he has to slug every day) would eat gobs of the stuff, which is sweet enough to curdle your teeth. The Asian dish ‘lumpia’ is another word that has you imagining a clump of unappetizing goo staring back you at from a plate with a disconsolate “Are you going to eat me or what?”

And how would you like to eat razor clams? Arrghh! I clutch my throat in pain.

Go down the alphabet and you have a veritable salmagundi of unappetizing-sounding names: scrod and sprat and squab – the first two being fish and the last one being ‘young pigeon’ – who could be so heartless as to eat a baby bird that hasn’t even been given a chance to fly? Probably the same swines who eat shark fin soup.

If you are not already on your way to heave, allow me to continue. Raise your hand if you love eating a goblin’s fart…that’s pumpernickel for you. How about devil’s dung (duivelsdrek in Afrikaans) – that’s the name for asafetida ('hing' in Indian English) because that’s what it smells like.

Ok. I will stop now. I could go on, but I have to go get me some of that Trader Joe’s tiramisu from the freezer. In honor of my sister.