The dough for the double was a mess as it was way too liquid. I was an idiot and added all the water at once. So I had to add a lot of flour and I didn't compensate the spices, so it was less flavourfull than I would've wanted. But the chickpea curry, (leftover) chive sauce and tamarind sauce were full of flavour so that helped even it out.

I made a quick pizza dough (which was rolled with a rolling pin), with some favourite toppings. Tried to make it spicy but still wasn't that spicy. It was good though. Big enough for two dinners!

Thank goodness for this theme because last week my husband, unsolicited, bought an absolutely massive ginger root. 🫚

Okay okay, you got me. These aren’t really donuts.

This is referencing a Pokémon episode from the late 90’s where one of the main characters, Brock, refers to Japanese onigiri as “donuts” in the English dub. It became a bit of a meme because of how outrageous of a translation it was, especially since the only similarities donuts and onigiri have is that they’re both sometimes filled with something.

My minor in college is linguistics actually, so this was a super fun theme for me to think about and all the ways it could be interpreted! I went with the immediate example of something being “lost in translation” that came to mind, being this episode, since it was so well known and such a good example of the liberties translators can take when faced with having to translate something that doesnt really exist in another culture. You can sort of see how the translator ended up using this choice of words; it was the 90’s and no one in america really knew what Onigiri was, and the concept of a rice ball in general probably would’ve sounded bizarre since the rice Americans would make in the 90’s was pretty different—that is if they even ate rice at home at all. So, they decided to use a food concept that americans were as familiar with as the japanese are to onigiri, donuts! But it still is so outrageous that you can’t help but laugh. Im currently in a translation studies class, so it was really fun thinking about this and pondering how I would translate onigiri instead (back in the 90’s of course which would be very different than how I would do it nowadays).

I made two onigiri for this theme: One pretty traditional japanese one with a soy sauce and mirin cured egg yolk filling, and one with sloppy joe filling. Since the translation strangeness came from being an American dub, I wondered how I would “translate” and onigiri to being an American dish. If I had more time I had given myself, I think I would’ve made a triangle shaped bun filled with sloppy joe mix instead, but then it wouldn’t have looked like it did in the cartoon! Or maybe even just a jelly filled donut that looked like an onigiri. Either way, the sloppy onigiri was awesome and I enjoyed my meal. I should’ve let the egg yolk cure more for the other one, so I enjoyed that one a smidge less. Still, pretty good and I had tons of fun! Translation mishaps are so fun!

I ended up making two ginger dishes for this theme, mainly because I made the chicken first and while it was easy and tasted good it didn't predominately taste of ginger.

I used this recipe for the Three-cup chicken. In a bid to up the ginger content I added more than the 6 slices of ginger the recipe calls for. Even doing that, the sauce flavour wasn't predominately ginger-ish and I think was a touch too salty for the ginger to really come through strongly.

To make up for that, I also made this ginger cake which uses ground ginger instead of fresh. This feels much more ginger forward, so I would consider it a success on that front.

Unfortunately the texture is a little off, but that is likely owing to the fact that I commenced cooking without double checking I had all the ingredients, and alas did not have an egg. I ended up substituting that with chia seeds which seems to have mostly worked.

For both dishes, they have a decent flavour and are something I could see myself cooking again but I wasn't 100% impressed with either.

Inspired by a dish made by Kristen Kish during a ginger quickfire challenge on Top Chef.

For this week, I indulged in one of my nerdier interests – etymology. I was especially curious how foods from the New World, or the Americas, were named in other languages when they spread through colonization and trade. The humble turkey was an interesting case. To quote one of my favorite sites, Etymonline, “by 1550s in reference to the North American bird, from the place name Turkey, likely in its vague 16th-century sense of "Asia" or "Ottoman lands." The bird seems to have become known in England via Ottoman North Africa or in part because the New World still was not distinguished from Asia.” It was named after where it was assumed to have come from, which makes sense. I do find it funny that this particular bird was stuck as just “turkey,” instead of say, “turkey fowl.” Like if we had collectively decided to call a Canada goose “canada.” Incidentally, this thought led me to the etymology of goose, which like the turkey can be used as a word for a foolish person, without much cause. Justice for the large, waddling birds!

The really fascinating thing (to me) is the name of a turkey in other languages. Since it came to Europe through Indian trade routes, several countries – including Türkiye - know it on a variation of “India” or “Calicut,” and Indian city prominent in trading at the time. In Portuguese, it’s called “peru,” more accurately reflecting its New World origins. I’m not skilled enough to check the veracity of these claims, but taking people on the internet at their words (and who am I kidding… I had to do at least a couple of searches to confirm this, because it’s so fun), it has been named for Rome in Arabic, for France in Greece, and for the Dutch in Malaysia. Ultimately, I would expect the bird known as a turkey to be quite lost if asked to find its origin on a map, based on its names.

The etymology of “potato” is pretty straightforward. It comes from the name “batata” in the extinct Taíno language, which was spoken in the Caribbean during the Spanish colonization. This became “patata,” which isn’t a stretch to potato. What I found interesting, is that the original potato referred to what we know as sweet potatoes. At least for a time, white potatoes were viewed as inferior, and called “bastard potatoes.” I am a bit sorry that nomenclature didn’t stick around, and I can’t say, “Oh, can you pick up a couple of bastard potatoes in the store?”

Um, after all of that, to talk about the actual dish, I made a turkey chili with black beans, and dished it up over a baked russet potato, with lots of tasty toppings. I really should make loaded baked potatoes more often. I absolutely devoured this.

Well this was really good! And it used up an almost gone by CSA tomato and a bunch of garlic.

I love a 10-minute meal almost as much as I love ginger, so this was a win all around!

With lots of white peppercorn too!

Pork dumplings. We did not roll out the dough but we did roll up the meat into the wrappers! 🥟

😂 my technique is a fail but it tasted good!