Springtime in a bowl, folks; a good Thai soup burnishes the stomach with warmth and makes you not mind the wind and the intermittent rain and hail. Plus, it’s stuffed chock full of veg. We started this soup with a pair of Thai bird chillies, a thick slice of galangal root (or you can use ginger), a half stalk of lemon grass and a handful of bruised makrut lime leaves (they’re sold as kaffir lime leaves. Kaffir is a racial slur in South Africa, so we say makrut… {ETYMOLOGICAL DIGRESSION #1} *Oddly kafir in Arabic, which is the words origin language, merely means infidel or unbeliever – which is an insult to a Muslim; no idea how it got so twisted with apartheid and such), and simmered them in three cups of water for about a half hour. We then added a can of coconut milk, a container of firm tofu which had been frozen and thawed (accidentally), roughly chopped onions, a cup of button mushrooms, a random amount of fresh green beans, broccolini, a sliced zucchini (or, if you’re from here, a courgette) and a couple of carrots we had sitting. A quick ten minutes, and we added some pre-cooked udon noodles, two tablespoons of mae ploy, which is a sweet pepper sauce, a tablespoon of soy sauce, and a dash of lemon juice. It. Was. Amazing. You’ll note that the veg was barely cooked, and the aromatics were left in — that’s always tricky. Note: don’t eat the lemon grass. It’s just not that tasty. If you’re concerned about your veg being too raw with such a short cooking time, you can always give a three minute blanch to everything except for the zucchini/courgette.
{ETYMOLOGICAL DIGRESSION #2 BEGINS HERE} Hey, by the way, we found out why the Scots use the French word for all of their veg like aubergine instead of eggplant and courgettes instead of zucchini, as Americans who lived with Italian immigrants do. It’s because the Scots are French. (Just don’t tell them.) A brief history lesson for you:
Henry the Eighth kinda hated Scotland, and figured they were überreligious annoyances, despite marrying off his sister Mags to King James IV in 1503. Realizing they were going to get messed about, the Scots cozied up to the French, and renewed an “auld” acquaintance. And it was old — it was from all the way in the 1200’s! In 1295, the Scots signed what is termed “The Auld Alliance” with the French, against the English. They’ve had bad cess between them for ages and ages and ages, apparently. History records that they were even on hand to fight with Joan D’Arc, were the doughty Scotsmen. Scottish mercenaries were paid in French wine, which was a pretty sweet deal to them. (Perhaps that was pre-whisky?)
Well, on to more recent times (Recent, hah! But, recall, the Battle of Bannockburn (Blàr Allt a’ Bhonnaich) is still discussed here in strong terms, and that was in 1314): in 1538, James Four married his son James Five to Mary, daughter of Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, who was super rich and somewhat royal. They pushed their children, as one does, and encouraged their daughter to be queen when she was but four days old. The poor dear’s name was Mary, because they didn’t have a Baby Names book, and they went with what worked for her mother, apparently. (Oh, all right – her other name was Mary Queen of Scots, and she was either a beloved saint, or a vicious harpy, depending on who you ask around here.) Mary wed the eldest son of the king of France (aka the Dauphin), and the English went ballistic, because suddenly they realized that, Oh, ignoring Scotland is probably one of those Bad Ideas, and now they were going to gain a better organized set of enemies. They revived their feudal claims of ownership, and started Yet Another War, which ended up pitting Mary against her half-sister, Elizabeth, and you know how that ended. (What? YES, you do know how that ended. Oh, for shame! Go look it up right now.)
The point of all of this for our purposes is that the alliance between France and Scotland was never rescinded. They agreed, in that Auld Alliance, to a common language and a common purpose. Scots spoke Gaelic and French, as a matter of course… thus the inclusion of French words in Scottish conversation. Neat, huh? We learned all this at Stirling Castle our last visit.
Meanwhile, it’s interesting that French words in American Vernacular English tend to be specialized. We have “loan words” like ballet, bouillabaise, cabernet, cachet, chaise longue, champagne, chic, cognac, corsage, faux pas, nom de plume, quiche, rouge, roulet, sachet, salon, saloon, sang froid, and savoir faire — but if you’ll note, the words aren’t …common, really. While they’re well-known, they’re not easily used by most of the population; they’re all sort of upper crust-y kinds of words. (With the exception of more pedestrian French loan words like denim, garage and bigot – but the plain words from the French are few and far in between.) Conversely, Italian loan words are as common as — well, Italian Americans. Think of words like alto, arsenal, balcony, broccoli, cameo, casino, cupola, duo, fresco, fugue, ghetto, macaroni, madrigal, motto, piano, opera, prima donna, regatta, sequin, soprano, opera, stanza, stucco, studio, tempo, torso, umbrella, viola, violin, cappuccino, espresso, linguini, mafioso (mafia!), pasta, pizza, ravioli, spaghetti, spumante, and zucchini. These all (with the exception of spumante, possibly) are well-used and robust parts of the American language, and not special or fiddly words at all. We find that fascinating. Guess we Americans like our music and our moods and our food, eh?
{THUS ENDS OUR DIGRESSION}
For good or for ill, this tom kha taohu soup was the last really amazing, fresh-tasting, veglicious dish we made ’round these parts, and that was about, oh, two weeks ago. Since then, the Work Fairy has come and smacked us in the head with her pointy little wand. D’s dissertation deadline is looming, his work project deadline loomed, and T’s got an editorial letter at last and another manuscript revision ahead of her — plus her end-of-April freelance revision. Erg.
Our house looks like the scene of a crime. The piles of laundry – nicely separated, not yet put into the microscopic machine – have become ambulatory and are congregating in corners, plotting. The bathroom is routinely disinfected and the dishes get done — simply because we have a limited amount of them, and T. has Issues With Germs — but the vacuuming isn’t done and the dust is collecting in drifts, which is sort of hard to avoid this time of year. The occasional sunshine has at last provoked the trees into bloom — and the grass, trees, flowers and nasty Scotch broom manages to send commando pollen dust into any little crack or crevice on the wind, which blows and blows and blows. Allergies go hand-in-hand with the Spring, alas. But, we aren’t complaining. (We don’t have time).
Along with our regularly scheduled work, we’ve had extra rehearsal for our Spring concert, which is going to be awesome, by the way. It’s a Vaughn Williams/William Walton retrospective, which will be delightful for our English audience members, and a bit stressful for the rest of us, but things are coming together and we’re finally getting to where we can look forward to the orchestra bits of the piece. Aside from our single choir, which has been split into two parts singing away at different bits, the score calls for two flutes, a piccolo, two oboes, something called a cor anglais or a sax, three clarinets in B-flat an alto saxophone in E-flat, 2 bassoons, and a contrabassoon. We’ll have four horns in F: three trumpets, two tenor trombones, a bass trombone, a tuba; timpani, and three or four percussionists playing a side drum, a tenor drum, a triangle, a tambourine, castanets, a silvery shimmer of cymbals, a bass drum, a huge solemn-sounding gong, which is going to sound like the tolling of a bell, a xylophone, a glockenspiel, a wood block, slapsticks, and an anvil. (YES. An. ANVIL. As in, blacksmiths.) Finally, there will be two harps, a piano, an organ, and a full complement of strings.
We’re beginning to wonder how we’ll all fit on the stage.
Despite our amusing tone, we are both kind of out of our minds with stress, and it is beginning to show. We ask you to think of us from time to time, as we stagger through. Please keep in touch.
*RE: the etymological asides. Sorry! This has turned into the etymology blog today, and we’re not sure why! Oh, well. Just another sampling of the random things which cross our minds. Take care of yourselves.
