A Vegetable in Any Other Language Would Taste as Sweet 

 

When I first heard the song Why This Kolaveri Di, I had to ask the person who'd introduced me to it what "kolaveri" means. Rage, he explained; it's a Tamil word.That made sense to me. I know what "di" means, and felt I had a reasonable grasp of the song's meaning: why this black rage (sung to or about a love interest).

Not quite. I do know what "di" means, except not in Tamil--not in any language even remotely related to Tamil. "Di," spelled variously but pronounced the same as it is in "Why This Kolaveri Di," means "black" in Celtic languages like Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. In Tamil, it means "girl." That lyric is actually "why this murderous rage, girl?"

My mix-up comes from having learned too many languages; sometimes my brain just gets confused. The song itself is a very different kind of mixed up--no random or confused mixing, here.  It's an addictive mix of a traditional rhythm and newer sampling and music mixing techniques, for one thing.* For another, it's in a portmanteau language, Tamlish (a mix of Tamil and English).

In thinking about the idea of "portmanteau," I began to wonder if it isn't like "culture": all over the place and hard to define or delineate, exactly. It involves mixing, but only partial blending. Each element of the mix retains some of its identity. We see it often at the word level: alphabet (alpha+beta), manscaping (man+landscaping), but words are far from its limit. The concept works with food--brilliantly, here:

Quebexican food

Please, all you punny readers, help me come up with portmanteau recipes like the Quebexican ones. I wasn't quite up to that level this week. But, while making kichdi, I thought of...something.

Kichdi is a very flexible recipe of rice, dal and whatever vegetables and spices you like (or happen to have on hand), cooked together. In some ways, it's like my brain and the "di" mix-up; if you randomly switch out one ingredient for another, the kichdi will still taste pretty much like kichdi. But like "Why This Kolavery Di," kichdi is also mixed more intentionally.  We could say it mixes traditional cooking rhythms with non-traditional ingredients, or that it has, in its nature, the ability to incorporate other mixes and less-traditional elements. In fact mine was a remix. I had an entire pint of leftover rice (an unexpected accompaniment to a take-out dinner) to use up.

kichery (kichdi made with celery) 

 

1/4 cup hulled and split mung beans
1/4 cup red lentils
1 cup rice (if you're using cooked rice, use two cups and add it later in the recipe, with the vegetables)
1-inch piece fresh turmeric, peeled and grated (or use dried, powdered turmeric)
1 medium-sized potato, diced
1-2 tomatoes (or, if you're like me and you forgot to buy tomatoes, about 1/2 cup tomato puree or unflavored canned diced tomatoes)
about 3/4 small head cauliflower, cut into bite-sized pieces (or, in this case, half cauliflower, half celery, also cut into bite-sized pieces) (or other vegetables)
generous tablespoon mustard or other vegetable oil
1/4-1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 green chili pepper (from an Indian grocery store, or use a serrano chili)
1/4-1/2-inch piece fresh ginger, grated

Assess your green chili pepper. If you have a very hot variety, split it lengthwise but, otherwise, leave it whole. You'll use it for flavoring but perhaps not eat the whole thing (or even part of it--just remove it from teh finished dish). I happened to have only Korean green chilies, which are on the mild side. I decided to slice mine thinly and leave all of it in the kichdi.

Pick over the mung beans and lentils, wash them and put them, with the rice and turmeric, in a heavy-bottomed pot. Add water to cover them by about an inch and a half. Bring to a boil, then simmer for about ten minutes.

Add the potato and tomato. Simmer for ten more minutes.

Add the cauliflower and celery, and about a half cup of hot water. Cook ten more minutes. Check periodically during the cooking time to make sure there's enough liquid; you don't want the dal to catch on the bottom of the pot. This kichdi has a porridge-like consistency.

While the cauliflower and celery cook, heat the oil in a small pan over medium heat. If you've never tempered spices in hot oil before, make sure the pan has a lid, and make sure you're holding the pan's lid in one hand. The lid isn't necessary for this process, but the hot oil may spatter, so you want to be sure you can put a lid on the pan to protect yourself. Test the oil by putting a drop of water in it. The oil is hot enough when the water sputters immediately. At this point, drop the cumin, chili pepper and ginger into the hot oil. Let the spice mixture sizzle for about a minute, then remove it from the heat and add it to the pot of kichdi. Add salt to taste.

My kichdi is undercooked, by traditional standards, especially the vegetables. Such is the delight of a flexible recipe; we can add or adjust to make it a better fit. I would like to think that language is similar. Those who know me have heard me say (more than once, no doubt) that language is an inexact form of communication. I might change "inexact" to "flexible," now that I think about it. Whether through random mix-up or calculated mixing, there's more than one way to say something. And, of course, when it comes to expression, words are far from the limit.






*We'll come back to this particular mix another week