This post has two problems: first, it is too long for one blog post, but not quite long enough for two. Not only that, but it doesn't split up particularly well. Oh well; such is life. Second, it's all about hummus. This week isn't about hummus, it's about cumin. I mean, the hummus I will wind up giving a recipe for - tomorrow - has a lot of cumin in it, but I'm going to come clean with you - I'm not saying word one about cumin today.
Since I've already gotten that out in the open, I think I'm going to shortchange you today, and give two fifths of the post today, and the rest tomorrow. I present: two short digressions on hummus.
HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE WORD HUMMUS
A guide for the perplexed, with a prologue on spelling
Since we had so much fun talking about pronunciation yesterday
Hummus is an Arabic word. It uses sounds which do not exist in English, and for which English has no proper way to spell. As a result, there is no canonical way to spell it. I’m going to choose hummus out of convenience, but humus, hoummous, humos, hoummos, hoummus, or haminababilazeebalaboubilahaminababilazeebalabop are all equally valid. Ḥummous – the H with a dot under it – seems to be the best option to my ear, assuming you’re willing to go with extended character sets. As for how to say that word…
CHOO-MOOSE. And that’s not choo, as in choo-choo train, neither – that’s the Arabic/Hebrew CHHH, or Ḥ - the guttural sound that leads off channukah. It comes entirely from the back of the throat, without requiring the lips or throat.
CHOO-MOOSE. I will never forget that. Once, while I was living in Israel, a waitress in a Lebanese restaurant I was eating in decided that she had had it up to here with these idiot Americans who didn’t even bother to learn how to pronounce words. I asked for “chuh-miss”, and was rewarded with a blank stare. I had no idea how to react – it’s practically the national dish, it would be like a waitress not knowing what you were talking about if you asked for ketchup. Chuh-miss, I repeated, assuming she had misheard me. “What?” “Chuh-miss! For, you know, pita! Chuh-miss!” My Hebrew is terrible… but this was not exactly something which required advanced communication skills. I ordered hummus almost every day. “Aah!” she said, giving me a smile, triumphant and cutting. “Choo-moose! You mean choo-moose.” “Yes?” I said, suddenly unsure of myself. Her eyes were as nasty as her smile, and were clearly indicating that she had beaten me in some way. I really had no idea what that way was. I just wanted some hummus. “It’s not ‘huh-meees’. It’s CHOO-MOOSE.”
“CHOO-MOOSE!” At this point I realized that I was trapped in a private war, a war that thousands of tourists had started with this woman – and one that she fully intended not just to finish, but to win. The thing is, I was really, really hungry, and fairly confused. So I meekly apologized, eyes low, for my terrible Hebrew, and I thanked her for correcting me. Magnanimous in victory, she walked away, head held as high as any soldier returning from the front. She was back quickly – it is proper to treat a defeated foe with respect – with a plate of perfectly-prepared hummus, and some deliciously fluffy pita. If this was surrender, I decided, I could manage to give up more often.
MYSTIQUE
Have you ever noticed how translating the names of a lot of foreign foods to English totally ruins the mystique? Pita is Greek for bread. That’s it. Just bread. So stop asking for pita bread. When you order maki sushi, you're ordering... rolled sushi. What a surprise. My favorite Thai soup – Thom Kha Gai – is, if I remember correctly, “Coconut milk soup with chicken.” And I’m not even going to start on café con leche.
Well, I hate to be a mystique-ruiner, but hummus simply means chickpeas. That’s it. In fact “hummus” isn’t, technically, even the name of the dish – it’s ḥummus bi taḥina, (On the other hand, tahina – that’s “ta-ḤEE-nah”, with the CHHHH sound, not “ta-hee-knee”, pale face – is from a word meaning “to grind”, so I guess that’s okay.) The taḥina – the sesame paste that binds the dish together – is every bit as important as the chickpeas are to the dish. Still, we call the dish hummus, mostly for the same reason that we don’t call Linux GNU/Linux.[1]
I honestly don't know what I expected. I mean, Chinese restaurants have all these lovely poetic names like Dragon and Phoenix Soup, or Ants Climbing on Trees, or even General Tso's Chicken. So you expect Moo Goo Gai Pan to be something slightly less prosaic than "sliced chicken and button mushrooms." I'm not saying that expecting anything but that is even slightly realistic - after all, how many restaurants offer dishes with names like "Washington DC On A Spring Day"? No, they offer things that people can understand - sauteed shrimp in garlic sauce.
I guess all I'm saying is, don't ever try to translate the names of foreign dishes. I like the mystique - but I'm also incredibly curious, and it's sad to see that curiosity lead to bad ends so often. For every imported food word like penne ("quill"), there are ten like croissant. If you never find out what it means, there's never anything there to disappoint you.
Tomorrow - Digressions Three, Four, and Five
[1] For those of you who are not the particular type of geek to know what I’m talking about… Linux is an operating system – a competitor to Windows or Mac OSX. It’s also open source, which means unlike those two operating systems, the underlying source code (the instructions that tell the computer how to make everything work) is available for anyone to look at and make their own version of, if they like. Linux itself is the “kernel” – the central part of the operating system. If an operating system were a car, the kernel would be the engine.
There are those who would argue – quite loudly – that while the engine is the most important part of a car, it doesn’t constitute a car in and of itself. It was (in their opinions) the addition of the GNU tools – a set of basic software that extends the operating system’s functionality – that made Linux a fully-fledged operating system, as opposed to simply a powerful but ultimately useless engine. They therefore believe that Linux should properly be referred to as GNU/Linux, and they make this point as loudly and as frequently as possible.
Here’s the problem – when everyone else in the world calls something by a simple name, and you insist that it be called by a more complex name which is, despite being technically correct, confusing to everyone else, you are an asshole. Luckily, the world of food, as far as I can tell, isn’t populated by the same sort of socially retarded nerds that comprise the world of Linux. As a result, I’ve never heard anyone make a fuss that hummus should actually be called hummus bi tahini. It’s just what you do – when you ask for a sandwich on “whole wheat” you don’t expect the sandwich to come on unground kernels of wheat. You expect that people will serve you bread. And when you ask for hummus, nobody is ever going to think you’re asking for a plate of chickpeas.
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Also, this rant is much more about the GNU/Linux types… and that fight mostly ended about five years ago. I’m really not sure why I’m ranting about it today.
I hope that it’s because it is a charming thing to do?
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