Monday, December 7, 2009

Bet you don't know what "girini" means


I was reading a book review today at The Australian on a book called Why Italians Love to Talk About Food. The headline drew me because I've been experimenting with Italian cooking ever since we got back from Cinque Terre.

I was especially interested by this passage:

"Yet even the culinary passion is a union based on a wealth of diversity, as the variety of pasta types reveals, all of which, of course, should be matched with particular sauces. Take the following selection, whose names come from the realm of zoology: farfalle (butterflies), conchiglie (shells), lumache (snails), creste di gallo (cock's comb), code di rondine (swallowtails), occhi di bove (ox eyes), occhi di elefanti (elephants eyes), occhi di lupo rigati (ribbed wolf eyes), occhi di passero (sparrow eyes), girini (tadpoles), vermicelli (worms), linguine (little tongues), and orecchiette (little ears)."

Crazy, eh? But cool.

Read the whole review for this book written about Italian food by a Russian ex-pat here. So just to be clear, that makes me an American ex-pat in Bulgaria writing on an Australian paper about a Russian ex-pat in Italy. I love it.


Both Images borrowed from Google Images.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like your enthusiasm for yet another way to think globally. I wish I could sample your recent experiments!