Basque Cuisine plus recipes and vocabulary words

A week ago, I bought two cookbooks on Basque cuisine: The Basque Table by Teresa Barrenechea and the bilingual Cocina Vasca/Basque Cookery by Juan de Echevarria. I'm quite fascinated by Basque cooking, even more so after having two fantastic lunches at a Basque restaurant in Chino Hills called Centro Basco, so I've decided that I want to try and learn to cook as many Basque dishes as I can. I've already made quite a few (some have been a part of my family's staples for so long that I was surprised to find out they were traditional Basque! And here I thought my family made those recipes up...)

Aside from using food to learn more about Basque culture, it has also helped me learn and memorise words. This is why it's easy for me to recall that in Euskara an onion is kipula, water is ura, and salt cod is bakailaoa. Sometimes, this is easier to do than flash cards although I use both.

A few months ago, one of my friends from the Basque Country sent me a recipe for Intxaursaltsa (also: Intxaursalsa) which in English is sometimes known as Walnut Cream or Walnut Purée. Through that, I was not only able to add more words to my vocabulary but it was also very much appreciated in my family, especially by my Pops who loves sweet things and nuts.

Seeing as I haven't asked her permission to share the recipe, I won't be posting it here. Instead, I will give you guys the recipes found in the two books I mentioned earlier. There is a slight difference in each but both remain quite simple.

The first is from Cocina Vasca/Basque Cookery:

Intxaursaltsa

500 gms walnuts (crush with a mortar and pestle until it has become a paste)
2 litres full-cream milk
4 eggs (beaten)
450 gms sugar
1 stick of cinnamon

- Put the milk to boil with the sugar and stick of cinnamon and when it boils, take the cinnamon stick out.
- Remove the milk from the stove and when it has cooled a little add, the walnut paste and the beaten eggs.
- Put the mixture on low flame and constantly mix for about 20 minutes. (If you stop mixing it will start to boil and separate).
- Transfer the intxaursaltsa into a serving dish. It will thicken as it cools. Eat alone or serve with ice cream.

This next one is from The Basque Table:

Creamy Walnut Purée

1/2 lb walnuts
4 cups water
1 cinnamon stick
4 cups whole milk
1 cup sugar

- Using a mortar and pestle, crush the walnuts until they are ground fine but not quite a paste. (You can use a food processor for this if you take great care not to overprocess the nuts.)
- In a large saucepan, combine the water and cinnamon stick. Bring water to a boil over high heat. Add the walnuts, reduce the heat to medium and cook for about 20 minutes, until the water is almost completely evaporated and the ground nuts are very thick. Discard the cinnamon stick.
- Add the milk and sugar to the saucepan, and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes, until the mixture is slightly thickened. If you'd like a thicker mixture, cook it for 5-10 minutes more, or even longer. Let the purée cook in the pan, then cover and chill the purée for at least 2 hours.
- Spoon the purée into small bowls, and top each serving with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Serve immediately.

The great thing about Intxaursaltsa is that you can eat it cold or warm and by itself or topped with ice cream or whipped cream. I usually prefer it at room temperature and by itself.

Although both recipes posted here are in English, here are some vocabulary words you can use if you try the recipe out:

• intxaurra - walnut (intxaurrak - walnuts)
  
• esnea - milk
• ura - water
• kanela - cinnamon
• azukre - sugar
• arrautza - egg (arrautzak - eggs)
  

My next Basque cooking project will be either chicken or Gateau Basque so hopefully I'll be able to post pictures next time!

BONUS: While watching one of my new favourite shows on EiTB, Objetivo Euskadi, I noticed that this week's episode which deals with traditional Basque dishes includes intxaursaltsa. In the show, the couple who make the intxaursaltsa add the crumbs of 5-day old bread. It looked pretty interesting! Leer más...

Euskara and Català: Disparities in Language Promotion

These past few days, I have been going through my online resources for Euskara and Català as I previously mentioned doing a master list so anyone reading this blog can look through and select what can be of use. As I was doing this, I realized that resources in Català dominate in quantity, quality and availability. I then started to wonder, "What can the Basque Country learn from Catalunya when it comes to promoting their language?"

Before I go on, I would first like to make it clear that my goal in all this is to share my observations and maybe inspire people (as well as myself) to help make a change. The last thing I would want is for anyone involved in creating the resources in Euskara to feel that I am in any way putting them down or belittling the hard work that they put into it. Far from it! I have made use of and benefited from a lot of resources but I feel that there is still room for improvement especially when it comes to making these resources available for the use of people who would can only learn it through English and not Spanish or French.

In order try and find solutions to the language promotion problems in Euskara we must first find out what is not quite working or what needs to be improved upon. As I was forming my list, I kept in mind that I needed to look at it from the perspective of my target audience: English-speaking language-learners who do not live in the Basque Country.

1. There are not enough resources in English - When I first started looking for materials I could use to learn a bit more about Euskara, I wanted something light, something that would give me a bit of an idea about how the language works without doing my head in with all the complex grammar rules (i.e. textbooks). I was only able to find one book that met those requirements: Beginner's Basque by Wim Jansen.
   
   
2. There are few quality online courses/programs - One of the reasons I ended up using the BOGA program is because it was the only choice that would meet my requirements: good quality and low cost. The other program I was looking into, UNR's Basque Studies course, failed on the low cost department. I think that there are a lot of other study guides for Euskara online but only a few actual structured programs that will take a person through all necessary levels.
   
   
3. Books in Euskara are hard to come by - I remember early on I wanted to get a children's book in Euskara so I could at least read something basic along with the help of my dictionary. I did find a couple of online bookstores with great books at reasonable prices, except shipping to the US was something to the tune of 27€.
   
   
4. There is a stigma attached to Euskara - There is a website I sometimes visit that has a chat where language learners can meet up for language-exchanges. When I joined the chatroom in Spanish, I met more than a couple of people living in Spain who tried to talk me out of learning Euskara and I got reasons such as: "It is the language that the terrorists use", "It is the language of the radicals", "It's too difficult- you will never be able to learn it", "It's a language of the rural folk" and so on. Now, I personally found some of those reasons to be ignorant and offensive however, that sort of mindset is unfortunately quite common.
   

Now that the problems have been identified it is time to answer (or at least try to) the question: "What can the Basque Country learn from Catalunya when it comes to promoting their language?"

In truth, I don't really know what can be done to improve the quantity and quality of resources for learning Euskara. I would like to say that more funding is necessary however I am not completely sure that lack of funding is indeed the reason behind it. I sometimes think that maybe it's also because the resources created are targeted mainly for a certain audience (the Spanish or French-speaking audience) and because of this, there is a disparity in quantity of resources available. When it comes to finding resources for learning Català on the other hand, I have been able to find a lot of books in English as well as a lot of good quality and low cost online programs and each and every one of those programs is can be accessed in at least three languages (Parla.cat can be accessed in five).

As for finding books written in Euskara, I would really love to find out one day that there is a US-based online bookstore that would meet those needs. One of my main sources for finding books in languages other than English is Bookmooch and it is far easier to find books there in Català (in fact there are a lot of members from Catalunya) than in Euskara. I think that if those books are readily available then the learning process would be much easier.

The last part is the most difficult one of them all. How does one go about changing other people's negative perceptions of their language? How can we go about convincing people that Euskara is a language for everyone and not just for a certain set of people or a certain set of political beliefs? I believe that this is particularly a cause for concern because it could turn off people who want to learn Euskara, people who were searching for support and found nothing but negativity instead.
I believe that more needs to be done to present Euskara (and Basque culture, as a whole) in a more positive light. I think that it would be unrealistic to try and occult the negative aspects but if the positive aspects can be brought to the forefront, then the negative will not be so overwhelming.

When I first thought of writing about this topic in my blog, I didn't want to set out to try and find concrete answers but I felt that if I saw something that needed to change, I should at least try to find a solution. I may not have figured it all out, but I hope I at least got some wheels turning. Maybe this could be the start of great things to come. Leer más...

Parla.cat - THE coolest language-learning resource

A week ago, I finally decided to start studying Català in a more structured way (i.e. joining a program) instead of doing my usual thing of just reading articles and listening to music. I signed up for a course at Parla.cat [parla-pun-cat]- which is a fantastic program that you can access in five languages: English, Spanish, Català, French and German.


Parla.cat offers four learning levels of Català: Basic, Elementary, Intermediate and Sufficiency. Within those four levels are three grades (Basic 1, Basic 2, Basic 3 and so on) and each grade lasts approximately three months and is equivalent to about 45 hours of study.

There are two methods used in Parla.cat: self-managed learning and with a tutor. The former is completely free and you can access all materials in the course while the latter costs 90€ and will give the student access to a tutor who will serve as a guide.

One of the things that first kept me from registering with Parla.cat immediately was because of the registration process. I was asked to put in the numbers for an ID document and I could choose from the ff: NIF, NIE, Passport, and Other. I had to send an email to ask for clarifications and apparently NIF is a number assigned for Spanish citizens and NIE is for non-citizen residents of Spain. I ended up putting my Passport number instead although I was assured that even the number from my ID card in my local university would be accepted.

Read on for some more details on why Parla.cat might just be one of the coolest language-learning programs out there!

Once I had registered, I took what they call a Test of Levels which, given my rudimentary knowledge of the language, was pretty tough! In the program, they allow you take the Test of Levels once every month to assess how you are doing. I was tested at the Elementary 2 level and because of that, the Elementary 2 course was unlocked and I could have started from there but I wanted to be able to start from the very beginning in order to build a firm foundation in the language so I opted to start with Basic 1 instead.

Basic 1 is divided into 7 unitats (units) and one of the great things about each unit is the final task. For example, after the first unit you must be able to complete a card with a persons basic information in it. In the second unit, you must be able to write a little something about your own family.

Another fantastic bit about the program is that there is so much opportunity to hear Català spoken and in a variety of accents. One character has a strong Mallorquín (from Mallorca) accent, another a strong Lleidatà (from Lleida) and yet another a very central accent (from Barcelona). Also the animated letter T (which serves to explain some of the grammatical concepts) speaks in Català but they also provide a transcript which you can toggle between Català to English/Spanish/French/German so you can fully understand what is being said.

My only complaint about the program is that their recording function does not seem to work, at least not for me. In each activity there is usually a function wherein you can use your headset to record the same phrase and it will be compared with the original sentence and the program will give a percentage rating based on how similar your pronunciation is. In my case, the program goes only so far as to recognise my headset but when I record my sentences they do not appear.

Aside from the course programs, Parla.cat also has what they call the Virtual Rambla wherein they have a collection of multi-media resources that will help the student in their studies. The Virtual Rambla is divided into seven sections: to read, to watch, to be informed, to play, to listen, and to communicate. I've discovered so many great things through the Virtual Rambla and was even able to watch an episode of The Adventures of Tintin in Català!

So with all these free resources at your fingertips, there really is no excuse anymore for not being able to learn Català. :)
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