Home-written cookbook, with English titles and numbers on right, with matching Arabic titles with same number on left
I was lucky enough to have one maid who spoke French, who could read and write (in Arabic), and who stuck with me for six years. After she was with me for a few months, I began to teach her to cook some of the recipes my family enjoys.
Since she didn’t know how to cook at all when she came to me, first I taught her how to measure using American measures (European recipes are completely different in that all ingredients are measured by weight, not by volume, and you have to have a metric scale to weigh everything). I taught her our American ways to measure cold butter by displacement of water, to measure sugar packed down, while measuring flour fluffed up or sifted.
Next, I had to read recipe books in English, and explain in French, a second language for me. Neither of us spoke French very well, but we had to use it as our only lingua franca. So she would listen in French, write it in Arabic, and read back to me what she had written by speaking in French. Then I would teach her each recipe which generally took about three times or more to get right. Over a period of years, we wrote several cookbooks like this, with English titles by number on the right-hand side, and corresponding Arabic titles by same number on the left. (Books in Arabic start at what is the back in English, and go the opposite direction, so that what would be the beginning of our books is the end of Arabic books.)
So, before leaving the house, eventually I could tell her, “Please make sixteen, twenty-seven, and eight for tonight.” Then I’d come home to find everything prepared at dinner time. The recipes included Thai, Mexican, Chinese, European, and standard American cuisine.
English recipies explained to a maid in French, and translated from French into Arabic by the maid
Inside the books, the recipes are marked with a number and title, in the same order they are written in the table of contents.
My recent maids I can’t even communicate with, as I don’t speak Arabic (except for a few words, and yes, I have tried to learn many times), and they don’t speak French.
Comments?
Eileen
Tags: American methods of measuring flour, Arabic-English cookbook, differences between European and American recipes, explaining recipes to maids, French as a lingua franca, having a maid, learning Arabic, learning French, measuring cold butter by displacement of water, measuring ingredients by weight, sifted flour, teaching a maid to cook
May 20, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Have you considered sharing some of these recipes on a food blog;)
May 30, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Well, they are mostly American or European recipies, with a few Indian and Chinese thrown in, but were mostly taken from either cookbooks, or old family recipes.