Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

By Marcy Nathan, Creative Director

The dish on our cover is pronounced pohr-KEHT-tah. I have been mispronouncing it pohr-CHET-tah, like fuh-GET her. Our marketing and advertising director, Tim Acosta, has given up correcting me. I assumed I was right, and he was wrong, so I ignored him the first 100 times he told me I was wrong. In fairness to me, Tim constantly mispronounces and makes up his own words. Tim once sent me into a store to get a “loge” skillet for a photo shoot. The guy in the hardware store was completely confused until I pointed to a display of brand-new cast-irons. “You mean Lodge?”

Porchettas are usually stuffed with garlic and herbs. For the one gracing our cover, we used our Rouses Italian Olive Salad, which is made with a giardiniera (prounounced jar-deen-YAIR-uh of pickled cauliflower, carrots and celery, to make a modern muffaletta. Or muffuletta. Pronounced muf-fah-letta, moo-fah-letta or muff-a-lotta, depending on where you grew up. We used mortadella, a cured Italian cold cut, but our chef (and store director) Marc Ardoin said you can substitute Chisesi ham. Don’t worry, if you aren’t from here, I don’t expect you to know how to pronounce Chisesi. Here it’s Ch-SAY-see, which is not the same as the Italian pronunciation, kee-SAY-zee.

Last issue, we argued over whether or not you’re allowed to put tomatoes in your gumbo (for the record, we did a poll, and the majority of you thought it was OK; yes, we were surprised).

This issue, it was over how to pronounce mirliton.

I don’t care if you say MUR-li-ton or MEERlee-tawn or MEL-lee-tawn, or if you stuff it or

make a casserole out of it. Honestly, I swap back and forth between pronunciations and preparations. And it’s OK by me if you confuse a sweet potato for a yam, or vice versa, even though they are different root vegetables.

But I draw the line at PEE-can. A PEE can is a port-a-let. It’s where you pee on Mardi Gras Day (if you can find a place to pee on Mardi Gras Day). It’s pronounced peek-KAHN or pick-AHN. Like gone pecan.

People who say PEE-can live on the East Coast and call New Orleans, N’Awlins. (Only Frank Davis was allowed to do that without sounding like a tourist.) For the record, I say New OR-lins. But my favorite pronunciation is New AHL-lee-ins.

It’s a given that if you say PEE-can, you probably say PRAY-leen or PRAY-line instead of PRAAH-leen…or maybe you are just from Georgia.

At Rouses, we spell turduchen with an h, for hen. But other places spell it turducken with a k for duck, and no h. Let them have their spelling. Their turducken doesn’t taste as good as ours. But then, we’ve been making our turduchens a lot longer. We also make a fresh turduchen sausage. And for our Year of Gumbo that we’re observing, we have a recipe for a turduchen Christmas gumbo you can make at home (see page 66).

And in the end, just because you say toe-MAY-toe, and I say toe-MAH-toe, there’s no reason to call off the holidays. Unless those tomatoes are in my gumbo.