Nov

In the Kitchen with OIC: “Pan” Cultural Cuisine!

by Joyce McGreevy on November 23, 2020

In lockdown? Don’t flip out—flip a pancake instead!
Gilaxia/ iStock

Easy Pancakes from Around the World

Rembrandt sketched them. Shakespeare wrote them into his plays. Sweden established an academy in their honor. They’ve starred in ancient tales and modern movies, inspired mad dashes and dashes of spice and color.

They are pancakes. For many of us, that means a common breakfast food that takes minutes to cook, seconds to eat, and hours to walk off. In fact, that little circle on your plate connects to a multitude of ingredients, shapes, languages, and traditions. Oh, I see: Known by hundreds of names and varieties around the world, this food encompasses a rich “pan” cultural cuisine.

Let’s explore this sisterhood of the traveling pancakes. Along the way, we’ll see how different kinds of pancakes stack up. On your return, peruse our menu of online classes to cook easy pancakes from around the world.

Palatschinke are among the most popular of easy pancakes from around the world. (Image by MariaPolna and Pxhere)

Popular in Slavic culture, palatschinke are Greco-Roman in origin.
MariaPolna/ Pxhere

Breakfast of Ancient Champions

For many culinary historians, all foods lead to ancient Rome. The Romans spiced their pancakes and dubbed them Alita Dolcia. Lyrical but lazy, it simply means “another sweet.” In the second century, Greek physician Galen saw fit to provide a detailed recipe for them in his medical tome. Still popular today, traditional teganitai are sizzled in olive oil and topped with honey.

But did the Greeks invent pancakes as is often claimed? It’s true that many forms of pancake developed throughout Europe, became popular in the Middle Ages, and later crossed the Atlantic. However, archaeological evidence shows that indigenous peoples of the Americas had been making cachapas, arepas, and other corn-based pancakes since early pre-Columbian times.

A cachapa, a Venezuelan pancake, is among the easy pancakes around the world made with corn. (Image by nehopelon and iStock)

Starchier than tortillas, Venezuelan cachapas are filled with creamy cheese
and eaten hot off the griddle.
nehopelon/ iStock

Early on, almost every culture improvised griddles from hot stones. At food festivals in Lucca, Italy, a few chefs still rock this method. To make necci, they pour batter onto hot, flat stones, cover them with chestnut leaves, and stack them on top of each other. The choice of leaves is apt, because necci are made with chestnut flour, milled from the harvest of local forests.

Flour Power

Chestnuts, corn—these are just two items on a long list of pancake possibilities, as well as reminders that “gluten-free” pancakes are nothing new. The flours that power a culture’s popular pancakes include:

rice: India’s dosa and malpua, Korea’s jeon
chickpeas: Southern France’s socca
beans: Nigeria’s akara, Japan’s dorayaki
potatoes: Ireland’s boxty, Ecuador’s llapingachos
buckwheat (which isn’t a wheat at all): New Brunswick’s ploye, Nepal’s phapar ko roti)

Add wheat, and suddenly the globe is paved in pancakes from Samoa (panikeke) to Morocco (beghrir) to New Zealand (pikelets).

A dish of malpua pancakes from India shows why some easy pancakes from around the world have been popular for thousands of years. (Image by Kailash Kumar and iStock)

India’s malpua has sweetened palates for 3,000 years.
Kailash Kumar/ iStock

**What’s in Your Pancake?**

The variety of flours is matched by what different cultures put on, and in, their pancakes. The world beyond maple syrup extends to condensed milk (Thailand), sour cream (Russia), shredded coconut (Brazil), pork fat with lingonberries (Sweden), bonito fish flakes (Japan), and edible flowers (Korea).

The look varies widely, too. Italy’s borlenghi are so big they’re also known as cartwheel pancakes. By contrast, Dutch poffertjes are teensy—they originated in a church as an improved form of communion host. Amen!

Scrambled pancakes, or Kaiserschmarrn, suggest the variety of easy pancakes from around the world. (Image by Pxhere)

Purposely scrambled, Austria’s Kaiserschmarrn means “Emperor’s mess.”
Pxhere

As for color, Indonesia’s kue ape pancakes come by their vibrant green naturally, thanks to pandan. The leaves of this tropical plant are used to make an extract that’s been compared to vanilla. The batter is cooked in woks to create a spongy center and a crispy edge. Home cooks— which is all of us these days—can find pandan flavoring extract for sale online and at our local Asian markets.

Kue ape pancakes from Indonesia are bright green, showing the variety of easy pancakes from around the world. (Image by MielPhotos2008 and iStock)

Kue ape are made with wheat flour, coconut milk, and palm sugar.
MielPhotos2008/ iStock

Not all pancake ingredients catch on, of course. In Miss Parloa’s New Cookbook (Boston, 1881) the pancake mix called for “a bowl of snow.” Seems it met the melts-in-your-mouth test, but was a little too back-to-the-land.

Pancake Planet

The world’s pancakes come with a generous side of fascinating stories.

According to traditional storytellers, it wasn’t the gingerbread man, but the pancake who ran away. Well, rolled. The runaway pancake features in several “fleeing food” tales, including in Norway, Germany, and Russia.
In Japanese legend, a samurai accidentally left his gong at a farmer’s house where he had been hiding. The farmer used it to cook “gong cakes,” the literal meaning of dorayaki. Dorayaki pancakes are also the favorite food of a time-traveling robot cat. Doraemon is the title character of a smash-hit series of manga books and movies.
In Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” the Bard flips pancakes into wordplay. Coincidentally, “as you like it” is the literal meaning of okonomiyaki, another Japanese pancake.
Several countries have religious traditions of eating pancakes the night before Lent. In France during La Chandeleur, the pancake of choice is a crêpe. An old tradition was to place one crêpe into a drawer to attract prosperity. It would certainly have attracted something.

Women running with frying pans in the Pancake Race in Olney, England evoke the fun and history of easy pancakes around the world, (Image by RobinMeyesrcough, licensed by Wikemedia Commons CC BY 2.0)

On hold for now, the Pancake Race in Olney, England was first run in 1445.
Robin Meyerscough/ CC BY 2.0

Coming full circle, the most astonishing thing about pancakes remains their sheer variety, even when considered (or better yet, eaten) within a single country. Italian pancakes alone include crespelle al bitto, ciaffignone, chisciöl, scrippelle ‘mbusse, and several others. In short, we’ve only just scratched the surface of the pancake’s many layers.

That’s all the more reason to get your hands on recipes for easy pancakes from around the world. Check out the menu below this post. We’ve stuffed it like a savory Breton galette with links to virtual cooking classes and entertaining demos. After all, what goes better with pancakes than a side of links?

A chef making dozens of tiny pancakes suggests the popularity and variety of easy pancakes from around the world. (Image by mel_88 and Pxhere)

Have yourself a merry little pancake!
mel_88/ Pixabay

Get cooking! Click on a pancake name to sign up for a live online cooking class: potato pancakes, crêpes, Japanese soufflé pancakes, Bavarian apple pancakes, Osaka style okonomiyaki, and Chinese scallion pancakes.

Can’t wait? Click on a place name for quick how-to videos: Venezuela (cachapas), Nepal (phapar ko roti), Austria (kaiserschmarrn, in German with English captions), Ireland (boxty).

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy 4 Comments

Cultural Diversity/Cultural Heritage & Traditions/The World's Chefs/Worldwide Sites

Nov

You Can’t Just Make Up Words—Oh, Really?

by Joyce McGreevy on November 9, 2020

A woman reading the Oxford English Dictionary, a source of implicit language lessons on how to invent a word. (Image by lilbellule789 and PIxabay)

Spoiler alert: This page turner’s ending is all about the . . . zyzzyva!
lilbellule789/ Pixabay l

Language Lesson: How to Invent a Word

It’s become a sitcom trope: One character’s remark prompts another character to retort, “That’s not even a word!” or “You can’t just make up words!”

But according to the most widespread, time-honored language lore, people have been inventing words ever since the guttural grunts of one human first morphed into vocal patterns that made sense to other humans.

Let’s settle this with the world’s shortest language lesson, here.

Oh, I see: Making up words is precisely how language happens. When people invent a word, language grows and goes out into the world, keeping robust pace with ever-changing ideas and events until the time comes to pass the torch to other new language.

A woman binge-watching TV unknowingly embodies a language lesson—how you invent a word is influenced by other inventions, too. (Image by Kali9 and iStock)

As the words turn: The word TV (first known use: 1945) spawned TV dinner (1954),
sitcom (1962), dramedy (1978), channel surf (1988) and binge-watch (2003).
Kali9/ iStock

World of Words

According to Global Language Monitor, English speakers alone generate over 5,000 new words a year. While most “new” words of any era fall out of use—When’s the last time you heard someone say icebox, courting, or dungarees?—about 1,000 new words become so embedded in everyday use that they enter the ultimate word hall of fame—the dictionary.

A dictionary opened to the word dictionary show that people invent a new word or words about language itself. (Image by Pxhere)

Um, has anyone ever used a dictionary to look up the word dictionary?
Pxhere

Between Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary, 2020’s newbie words include social-distance, WFH (working from home), deprioritize, all-dressed, and a slew of medical terms. As in, “Now that we social-distance by WFH, we’ve deprioritized business casual, started wearing athleisure, and mostly live on all-dressed pizza.”

As you can see, some new words are old words that have been given new meanings. These new words not only demonstrate the evolution of language and reflect issues affecting our world today, they also annoy the heck out of purists.

To Verb or Not to Verb

For example, maybe you’ve heard someone rail against the practice of turning nouns into verbs, also known as “verbing.” Like when conference becomes conferencing. Someone may even have told you that this isn’t proper English.

Now if only that purist had been around 400 years ago, they could have delivered their complaints to a champion verber—Shakespeare. He transformed nouns like elbow and gossip into verbs, elbowing out old norms and setting purists gossiping.

An actor in period costume evokes the idea that when you invent a word you it becomes a kind of time capsule or historical language lesson. (Image by Pxhere)

What’s in a name? Richard Burton models Shakespearean jeggings (2009)
—oops, leg warmers (1915)—oops, pantyhose (1959)—oops, hose (1100s).
Pxhere

In fact, Shakespeare’s habit of anthimeria is one you probably share. Anthimeria is the use of one part of speech as another, such as when:

you bookmark a website (noun used as a verb)
you need a good night’s sleep (verb used a noun)
or, as one 60s pop song put it, “you keep samin’ when you oughta be changin'” (adjective used as a verb)

Samin’ is not what words do. You might even say, these words were made for walkin’, because language is constantly on the move, dancing to new tunes, topics, and events to communicate new meanings.

Looking Back-Word

As for where humans’ first words came from, sorry, I wasn’t there or I’d’ve made notes. But what I can tell you are some time-honored ways of making up words that we still use today:

1. Adding Suffixes and Prefixes. Undoubtedly, you already know that historically, many words materialized as humans began affixing adorable word parts onto plain old root words. The transformations were limitless!

Current examples: declutter, preexisting, unplug

2. Clipping. Another way we get new words is to give old words a haircut. That’s how public houses became pubs, pianofortes became pianos, fanatics became fans, and typographical errors became typos.

Current examples: celeb (celebrity), prom (promenade), blog (web log), stats (statistics)

A duck that can quack suggests an instant language lesson in how to invent a word—use onomatopoeia. (Image by Pxhere)

Creating words can be a quack up! Onomatopoeia is forming words that imitate sounds.
Pxhere

3. Blending. If you’ve ever read Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Jabberwocky,” the so-called nonsense words were actually blended words. Carroll called them portmanteau words, after a kind of suitcase that opened into two sections. So slithy actually “packed up” both slimy and lithe, and chortle combined chuckle and snort.

Throughout history, many blended words crossed into mainstream English, such as smog (smoke + fog), motel (motor + hotel), telethon (telephone + marathon), brunch (breakfast + lunch).

Current examples: Brexit (Britain + exit), pixel (picture + element), rom-com (romantic + comedy)

4. Compounding. Similar to blending, compounding coins one new expression from two old words. Backseat driver, bean counter, smiley face, tie dye, and mood ring have been with us since the days of disco inferno, leisure suits, and the floppy disk, but the Bard himself—an avid popularizer of compound words— would have reacted to them with bare-faced, addle-pated confusion.

Current examples: gig economy, dark web, screen time

A child’s hand taking an orange embodies an language lesson in how to invent a word—borrow from another language, like the Arabic for “orange”, naranj. (Image by JoshMB and Pixabay)

How to make new words? Borrow from another language—like orange,
from the Arabic word nāranj.
JoshMB/ Pixabay

5. Eponyms. What’s in a name? Words we use on a daily basis. OIC Moments readers know such famous examples as:

boycott from Irish land agent Charles C. Boycott
Fahrenheit, from physicist Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit
America, from Italian mapmaker Amerigo Vespucci

But did you know that words like diesel and nicotine are also eponyms? German engineer Rudolf Diesel gave his name to both the engine and the fuel that powered it, while sixteenth century diplomat Jean Nicot de Villemain apparently introduced tobacco to France. Even sideburns, guppy, shrapnel, mesmerize, and leotard are named for real people.

An eponym can be based on fiction. Consider paparazzi. In the 1960s Italian film La Dolce Vita, a photographer named Paparazzo works for gossip magazines. The word paparazzo was used because it sounds like the buzz of an annoying insect.

Where are the women, you may ask? Underrepresented. The most famous is Amelia Bloomer. No, she didn’t create bloomers, but her advocacy for women’s rights inspired the name of this alternative to the heavy dresses that restricted women’s movements.

Current examples: Jacuzzi, Darwinian, Tesla

A tornado symbolizes a surprising language lesson—people sometimes invent a word by mistake. (Image by Pxhere)

Word twist(er)? Mistakes can create new words. English speakers inverted o and r in
the Spanish word for “thunderstorm,” tronada, and then used this to describe
another kind of extreme weather—the tornado.
Pxhere

For-Word into the Future!

These are just a few language lessons in how to invent a word. As each new word emerges, the knowledge it carries adds to the lore—and often the allure—of language. You have my word.

Letter tiles evokea key language lesson—there is always the potential to invent a word. (Image by Pxhere)

What’s the next new word?
Pxhere

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Track the journey of OMG into the Oxford English Dictionary, here.

What words were “invented” during your birth year? Find out here!

Joyce McGreevy 2 Comments

Wordplay

Oct

In the Kitchen with OIC: Peruvian Cuisine

by Joyce McGreevy on October 20, 2020

Chef Rodrigo Fernandini of Chiclayo, Peru, shares his passion for Peruvian cuisine and culture, as featured on “In the Kitchen with OIC.” Image © Rodrigo Fernandini)

Chef Rodrigo Fernandini grew up in Chiclayo, capital of Peruvian gastronomy.
© Rodrigo Fernandini

What’s on Chef Fernandini’s Menu? Peruvian Culture!

In California, the cooking class was starting on Zoom. In Oregon, I hesitated. On the one hand, I was eager to explore Peruvian cuisine for “In the Kitchen with OIC,” our newest recurring feature. On the other hand, I missed travel, open-air markets, rolling up my sleeves in foreign kitchens. I missed food tours, following local experts along unfamiliar streets.

I wanted real.

Peru was on my 2020 itinerary. Instead, I was exploring the culture of my studio apartment. OK, fine. I’d try Chef Fernandini’s online cooking class. As I logged on, I sighed. Would it be just another Zoom meeting?

It . . . was . . . exhilarating! A kinesthetic thrill that had us up and moving, prepping, stirring, tasting, listening, and laughing with fellow classmates. All while the smoky, sweet heat and fragrance of aji panca and rocoto peppers, plantains, avocado oil, and cumin transformed our scattered kitchens into a shared experience of Peru. That was real.

Screen, what screen? It felt like we were in Fernandini’s kitchen. Oh, I see: When you can’t travel to Peru, invite Peruvian food and culture home to you.

Rocoto chile peppers are a staple of Peruvian cuisine and culture, as featured on “In the Kitchen with OIC.” (Image © McKay Savage)

Tree-grown Andean rocoto is gaining popularity with U.S. chile pepper fans.
© McKay Savage, CC BY 2.0 Commons

Home Cooking, Chiclayo Style

His culinary journey began when Fernandini was four years old. This was in Pimentel, the beach district of Chiclayo, northern Peru. He recalls running into the kitchen, drawn by the aromas of garlic, peppers, and onions.

“I would put my whole face beside the pot, take a deep breath, and ask, ‘Oh, Mamá what is that smell? It’s so good!’ ” He also loved home-cooked seafood. Mamá got to the market as the morning’s catch came in.

Reed boats, linked to Chiclayo’s fishing and culinary traditions, evoke Peruvian cuisine and culture. (image © xeni4ka/ iStock)

Traditional fishing boats, caballitos de totora, “little horses made of tortora reed,”
are icons of coastal Peru.
© xeni4ka/ iStock

Regional ingredients whetted Fernandini’s appetite for cooking and stirred pride in his culture. So where is the starting point for an outsider? How to approach the rich context of Peruvian cuisine?

“Begin with ceviche.” So central is this dish to Peru’s culinary culture that it has its own national holiday on June 28.

Some might ask, What’s to explore? It’s marinated fish, you love it or hate it, end of story. In fact, it’s an early chapter in a rich culinary narrative.

Peruvian Fish Tales

Over 2,000 years ago, the indigenous Moche cured fish in tumbo, banana passionfruit juice. Later, the Incas marinated fish in chicha, fermented corn beverage. In the 1500s, the Spanish brought lime—and conquest.

Recipes for ceviche illuminate Peru’s costa, sierra y selva—its coast, mountains, and jungle—where 80 climates support biodiversity. For example, says Fernandini, in the mountains, ceviche is made with trout and rocoto.

Mountain ceviche by Chef Rodrigo Fernandini innovates on the regional culinary traditions and cuisine in Peruvian culture. (Image © Rodrigo Fernandini)

“Peruvian Andes trout and rocoto are inseparable,” says Fernandini.
His mountain ceviche also features chicharrón (fried pork belly) and ginger garlic oil.
© Rodrigo Fernandini

In the jungle, ceviche is made with paiche, an Amazonian fish, prehistoric in origin and weighing up to 400 pounds.

Jungle ceviche with cumu cumu berries, by Chef Rodrigo Fernandini, showcases Peruvian cuisine and culture. (Image © Rodrigo Fernandini)

The Runway or the Rush?

After high school, a lucrative career in modeling beckoned. Fernandini soon garnered international acclaim, including as runner-up in the Mr. World competition. But what he wanted was to cook. Creating an all-new resume that was long on passion and short on skills, he went to restaurant after restaurant offering to work for free.

Eventually, someone said yes.

“Wow! The rush! The adrenaline! I was supposed to be there four hours, but I stayed for eleven.”

Staff dismissed Fernandini’s enthusiasm as first-day excitement, but three months later and on the verge of going broke, he was still saying “I love this. I want to keep going!”

The Sound of One Herb Snapping

Fernandini attained a coveted spot at Le Cordon Bleu in Lima, then the renowned cooking academy’s only location in South America. For three years, he rode a whirlwind of studying, cooking, and staging—working for free—in Lima’s top restaurants.

Then came tests, like identifying ingredients while blindfolded. Could you tell cinnamon by the sound it makes when snapped? Could you distinguish black and green pepper by texture? Chef Fernandini can.

Students were also expected to write monographs—by hand. Never one to resist a challenge, Fernandini researched the influence of Japan on Peruvian cuisine.

This was no mere fusion, a modern term for the intentional layering of unexpected flavors. For 500 years, people had migrated to Peru, from Spain, Africa, China, Japan, Italy and the Middle East, bringing long-standing traditions and slowly learning each other’s culinary language.

Pastel de acelga, chard tart, exemplifies the Italian influence on Peruvian cuisine and culture. (Image © Luis Felipe Rios/ iStock)

Pastel de acelga (chard tart), a staple of bakeries in Lima, Peru,
originated as erbazzone in Italy.
Luis Felipe Rios/ iStock

Chaufa de mariscos, rice with seafood, is emblematic of widespread Cantonese influence on Peruvian cuisine and culture. (Image © Edgar D. Pons/ iStock)

Chaufa de mariscos, seafood with rice, reflects
Cantonese China’s widespread influence on Peru.
Christian Vinces/iStock

Carapulcra, a hearty stew, combines Spanish, African, and Peruvian cuisine and innovates on Peruvian culture. (Image © Edgar D. Pons/ iStock)

Carapulcra, a hearty stew with dried potatoes and peanuts,
combines indigenous, Spanish, and African traditions.
Edgar D. Pons/iStock

“Land of the Rising Sun” Meets “Land of Abundance”

After Peru won independence from Spain in 1821, Japanese immigrants arrived to work in agriculture, trade, and restaurants. Japanese chefs shared their love of seafood, subtle flavors, and care in handling ingredients.

This changed the way Peruvians ate, including national dishes like ceviche. Marination times shortened, ingredient options expanded. Nikkei, the melding of Japanese and Peruvian ingredients, traditions, and techniques, was born.

“We started to respect and understand the freshness and texture of just-caught fish.” Fernandini’s inspired take on coastal ceviche features halibut, yellow chili, caviar, sweet potato, and “tiger’s milk,” Peru’s classic citrus marinade.

Coastal ceviche by Chef Rodrigo Fernandini, combines traditional and contemporary aspects of Peruvian cuisine and culture. (Image © Rodrigo Fernandini)

Fernandini gives the impression that visiting Peru without eating at a Japanese-influenced restaurant would be tantamount to bypassing Machu Picchu. He cites Maido in Lima, ranked #10 among world’s best restaurants—“utterly splendid!”—and speaks of opening a Peruvian sushi restaurant someday.

Suddenly, my list of future favorite foods is much longer.

A Cultural Mission

Fernandini has been on a mission to delight American palates ever since moving to the USA. Initially, he faced stereotypes about Peruvian food: “It’s so greasy, so heavy!”

This was all the more surprising since Novoandina, New Andean cuisine, had gone global by the 1980s, making grains like quinoa, herbs like huacatay, and a wealth of recipes available to home cooks everywhere.

“I said, we have to do something about this!”

Chef Rodrigo Fernandini, shown in his pop-up restaurant Ayllu, is on a mission to share the wide range of Peruvian cuisine and culture. (Image © Rodrigo Fernandini)

Rodrigo’s pop-up restaurant, Ayllu. Demand turned the monthly event
into sold-out double seatings, week after week, for years.
© Rodrigo Fernandini

By then, he was working at Michelin-starred restaurants and being mentored by chefs like the Four Seasons’ Jayson Poe. During time off, Rodrigo cooked even more, spending months planning a five-course menu for the launch of a pop-up restaurant.

Two people attended.

When a partner suggested canceling, Rodrigo said, “No way. We have to respect those two people and make it happen.”

The two diners hired Rodrigo to cater dinner for 30. Soon he was juggling full-time work with booming demand for the pop-up. After years of slogging and saving, he opened his own restaurant, Jora.

It was a dream come true. It was also December 2019. As Jora was hitting its stride, Covid was shutting down restaurants.

“Hard times, but I’m a warrior,” says Fernandini. “Recently we reopened for outdoor dining, take-out, delivery. I’m also doing the cooking class with ChefsFeed.com. I really like teaching.”

Chef Rodrigo Fernandini shown on a computer screen as he speaks on Zoom about Peruvian cuisine and culture in his online cooking class. (Image © Joyce McGreevy)

“Food brings people to the table to enjoy, and as you’re eating, you’re sharing your culture. Whatever I cook, I want to deliver on the promise of authenticity, originality, and respect for the product, the process, the person, and the moment. Everything I do is based on this. And yeah, I’m having fun in the kitchen. I love it—this is my happy place.”

Thanks to Chef Fernandini’s online class, my apartment kitchen is a happier place, too, a place were Peruvian cuisine and culture will always be welcome.

Until next month, this is “In the Kitchen with OIC” wishing you Buen provecho!

Request news of Chef Fernandini’s classes here. Can’t wait? Start here, then follow Chef Fernandini here.

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Joyce McGreevy 12 Comments

Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Peru/The World's Chefs

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