ROUSES_Winter2022_Magazine Pages Web

Letter from the Editor By Marcy Nathan, Creative Director

T he dish on our cover is pronounced pohr-KEHT-tah. I have been mispro nouncing 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 MEER lee-tawn or MEL-lee-tawn, or if you stuff it or

make a casserole out of it. Honestly, I swap back and forth between pronun ciations 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.

SCHNECK THE HALLS ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT I wrote about schnecken—the word means snail in German—for our section on cinnamon. These sticky sweet rolls are made with cinnamon, brown sugar, raisins, pecans and so much butter. For the record, it’s pronounced shnek-uhn. See page 58.

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