Monthly Archives: August 2009

As members of my family would probably be quick to tell you, the phrase "indifferent cook" pretty well sums up my relationship with food. I'm not indifferent to food, mind you, just to cooking it. Cooking, to me, isn't an art or a passion, it's merely something that has to be done.

So I skim the food section of the newspaper in the same way I do the sports section—with respect for the feats some people achieve, mixed with amazement that it occurs to them to try those things in the first place.

Take the article this week about a chef described as a "French food legend." He was quoted as saying, "In cooking I often identify with the ingredient. I try to understand it, become one with it in order to recreate it."

Okay, maybe that's my problem. Back in the days of trying to put meals on the table that were economical, nutritious, and that at least four of the five kids would eat with minimal complaining, it never occurred to me to try to become one with the meatloaf or the tuna casserole. Which may be just as well. Who, after all, wants to be known as fast, cheap, and easy?

I could identify a little more with another article, which featured the opposite gastronomic extreme—fair food. It went so far as to list the calories and fat content for some of the traditional fair treats like funnel cakes, cotton candy, and several variations of fat-and-sugar-on-a-stick. This was a classic case of giving readers more information than they really want to know. Anyone who read it and could still eat a whole serving of fried Oreos had to have a poor memory for numbers.

There was some good news, however. Alligator on a stick is low in fat and a good source of protein.

We went to the fair that evening, and I wasn't even tempted to try a funnel cake or a cream puff. Maybe it was my unfortunately clear memory of the calorie counts in the article. Maybe it was the fact that I've tried both and didn't really care for them. Or maybe it was the fair aroma—that unique midway blend of hot grease, sugar, engine exhaust, and livestock.

Or possibly it was the quote from the French chef about becoming one with the food. That concept doesn't concern me. What worries me is the food becoming one with me. The alligator can just stay on its stick and away from my skin, thank you very much—and I certainly don't need any funnel cakes or cream puffs becoming one with my hips.

We were browsing through a Mediterranean cookbook one day, looking for a dish of mixed vegetables featuring eggplant. Eggplant isn't your typical South Dakota vegetable, but one of us had just spent six weeks in Turkey. He was trying to duplicate a dish served by the cook who had fed delicious traditional Turkish meals to two dozen American students and professors.

One recipe seemed close. It started out—as, I am informed, all good Turkish recipes do—with "fry onions in butter." The other ingredients included aubergine (that's the eggplant), potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, peppers, parsley, beans, and courgette.

What in the heck was a "courgette?" The word obviously was French, not Turkish. From the matter-of-fact way it was given in the recipe, it was clearly assumed to be a familiar ingredient. Maybe in England, where the cookbook was published. But here in the middle of the United States, we don't just amble over to the produce section and grab a couple of courgettes.

Because of the other ingredients in the recipe, we knew some of the things a courgette wasn't: a potato, tomato, pepper, eggplant, or bean.

A mushroom, maybe? Nope. My co-chef, who is our resident expert in all things French, thanks to two college semesters of the language way back when, thought for a few minutes and came up with the French word for mushroom: champignon.

After he said the word, I remembered that I also had learned "champignon" way back when. I didn't take college French, but I did read (several times) the comic book version of the animated movie "Gay Purr-ee" about runaway cats in early twentieth-century Paris.

Our extensive mutual knowledge of French vegetables thus exhausted, we resorted to the Internet and looked up "courgette."

Courgette—brace yourself—is nothing more or less than zucchini. It's the term used, not only in France, of course, but also in much of Great Britain (where a squash is also called a "marrow." I don't see why English-speaking countries need to resort to French for such an ordinary vegetable. What's wrong with using the good, old-fashioned English term zucchini?

Oh, wait—"zucchini" is Italian. Specifically, it's the masculine diminutive plural of "zucca," the Italian word for squash. I guess, given the typical shape of a zucchini, it makes sense that it would be masculine.

But never mind that. For zucchini-blessed gardeners everywhere, being bilingual in squash could offer great opportunities. Forget begging your friends, "Wouldn't you like to take home some zucchini?" Instead, you can graciously offer, "Have some courgette. It did so well this year." No more zucchini in cheese sauce. You could serve "courgette fromageé." Plain old zucchini bread could become "pan de courgette."

You just sound so much more sophisticated when you can say it in French. And you could easily get rid of most of your surplus zucchini. At least it would work for the first year. After that, all your friends would know what a courgette was, and they'd have learned to say, "Non, non!"