Tuesday, October 09, 2012



As an Argentine, when I was young, an unusual meal was either chicken or pork chops. Beef was the daily dish most of the time. It was only until we moved to Mexico in 1955 that I was exposed to guajolote which is Mexican for the Spanish word pavo or turkey.

Lauren Stewart October 6, 2012

In Argentina a pava is not only a female turkey but also a kettle with which you boil water. It is easy to see the resemblance of a turkey’s neck with the long spout of classic kettles. Furthermore in Argentine Spanish pavadas is a soft word for balderdash. Pavadas are never any reason to worry about or prevent one from having a good night’s sleep.


Mexicans with their guajolotes have no pavas. They call a kettle in which you may boil water to make tea a cafetera. We Argentines do not see the logic of boiling water in a coffee pot to brew tea. But then it was in Mexico where I went to a fine Jewish café and ordered a “té con leche”. I was served a cup of very hot boiled milk in which a tea bag was floating incongrously.

Mexicans are not only missing kettle from their Spanish. An apple pie in my Argentina is “un pastel de manzana”. An apple cake would be a “una torta de manzana”. In Mexico a torta is not a cake but a sandwich made from a special scarab (or turtle)-shaped loaf of bread called a telera. Neither Argentines nor Mexicans have ever felt comfortable with the Spanish from Spain emparedado (from the verb to wall up). We call sandwiches just that, sandwiches. Spelling fluctuates wildly. A Mexican sandwich is never made from a telera. That would make it a torta. For it to be Sandwich is has to be made from pan Bimbo. I am sure that most who are reading this know what that is.

Since Mexicans do not have the Argentine torta for cake they call cakes pastel (Argentine Spanish for pie). But if you want to find a word in Mexican Spanish to order a slice of apple pie you will be forced to ask for a pay de manzana (pronounced pie as in English). It cannot be written pie in Mexican Spanish as pie is foot. Foot in mouth, even apple flavoured, is no good.


Now in Argentina a zapallo is what here in Canada you would see as a classic Halloween type of pumpkin. In my youth, Mercedes our housekeeper/cook liked to mix either carrots or zapallo with our mashed potatoes. I could never put pumpkin or any kind of squash or sweet potato here in my Vancouver home as Rosemary will only eat pumpkin pie and none of those gourds can ever be used in any other recipes.

Calabaza is the classic Spanish word for pumpkins and their cousins. But calabazas is what you get when your would-be lover rejects you. This term is alien outside of Cervantes’s homeland. I was given calabazas, over the phone, one very cold dreary Buenos Aires.

For the many years I lived in Mexico I tolerated a particular Mexican squash called a chayote. It is similar to the zucchini but if I understand well they are only related but not first cousins. A squash in the fabulous chain of Mexican (but almost American-style) drugstore/café/restaurant called Sanborn’s is a fizzy, non alcoholic drink made with cut up strawberries, and pineapple and of course with that wonderful maraschino cherry.

I love maraschino cherries because in Mexico, I could never indulge in fresh cherries. The hot climate prevents the cultivation of cherry trees. There is a terrible substitute called a capulín which resembles my favourite fruit but the taste is bland.


The above is but an overture explanation as to why last Saturday, when we had our Thanksgiving dinner , it did not feature a turkey. For rosemary and me, a turkey brings us fond memories of many years back when our friend, the travel writer Gary Marchant
came for a post Christmas dinner. We had (unaccountably) a turkey for our Christmas Eve dinner so Rosemary concocted from a Vancouver Sun recipe something called turkey enchiladas. They were wonderful with melted cheese and hot sauce over the baked dish.
There is no way that we could have served turkey enchiladas for our Thanksgiving dinner because Hilary (Lauren and Rebecca’s mother) loves Yorkshire pudding. Rosemary makes the best Yorkshire pudding in the world. Hilary used to have it for breakfast with honey! But here on Athlone Street Yorkshire pudding is a much desired dished as I am in charge of the gravy. Good Yorkshire pudding requires drippings from a roast beef. I would have to stick my neck out if I were to serve turkey gravy on Rosemary’s pudding. The other ingredients of my gravy are shallots, white wine, a pinch of sugar, chopped parsley and cream.


So I was dispatched to Safeway to secure a Thanksgiving roast. But this proved to be a difficult task. Because of the massive recall of tainted beef all Safeway had available was prime rib. I had never ever cooked this expensive cut. I paid a fortune for it and I was lambasted with calabazas by my wife. Dinner was a success. We had barbecued corn on the cob liberally spread with very hot piri-piri sauce from Nando’s. Rosemary insisted I make a batch (the last of the year until next late spring) of my iced tea. This time around I dispensed with the fresh orange juice and opted for mandarin oranges. We went to the Richmond Farm by Fantasy Garden in Richmond to buy the corn, the mandarin oranges and the fresh cranberries (I make the cranberry sauce that Rebecca always expects for Thanksgiving and Christmas). It was there that I went nuts taking pictures with my 3G iPhone of all the many bins full of pumpkins and their derivatives. I longed to buy a few and bake them in the oven. But I would have eaten all by myself - not a happy thought.

Casi-Casi, October 6, 2012