Sunday 5 November 2017

Pumpkin Recipe for Guernsey-French Class: Part One

Recently I've been taking Guernsey-French classes. Our teacher, Yan, suggested that before the next class we prepare recipes to discuss in Guernsey-French. Notwithstanding my lack of cooking vocabulary, I need to get the process of making something straight in my mind before I can describe it in any language. Hence my need to make a blogpost about what I did with a pumpkin this evening.

The pumpkin (now I do know that one: pang-pang, though that's almost certainly not best to spell it that way) seems an obvious choice at this time of year.

By the way, I'd welcome any suggestions from anyone on how to describe the following recipe in Guernsey-French.

I cut the pumpkin in half and scooped out the seeds.

I removed the skin from the pumpkin and cut it into cubes.

I rinsed the seeds in a colander, removing any pieces of pumpkin flesh. Then I placed the seeds in a bowl with a generous spoonful of olive oil and a teaspoon of baharat seasoning. After stirring thoroughly, I spread the seeds on greaseproof paper in a baking tray. I then put them in the oven (at 150°) for 45 minutes.
While the seeds were roasting, I heated some oil in a saucepan and added in some crushed and chopped garlic. Once this started to sizzle I added chopped onions, some grated ginger, a teaspoon of turmeric and a little water.
I added my pumpkin to the pan. After stirring up the mixture and adding a little more water, I brought it all to the boil, turned down the heat and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.


Now it's all been served and eaten, I have to work out how to describe the process in Guernsey-French.
I mean, I know that seeds are groins in Guernsey-French. Could roasted pumpkin seeds be roti groins de pang-pang? I doubt it's that easy. Wish me luck, anyway.

2 comments:

  1. Hard work that is! Although I was born in Nomandy, I do not speak any local patois (just a few phrases) and can't be helpful really. It seems to me that, whatever the words, the syntactic order of your "rotis groins de pang-pang" cannot be right. You would have "groins de pang-pang rotis" instead.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Jacques. I reckon you're right about the syntax there. I'll post an update once I've seen my teacher again.

    ReplyDelete