#ThatTranslatorCanCook Week Eleven: Stoemp

Did you guess from my post last week what I chose for this week? Well…I chose stoemp! Wikipedia defines this is as ‘the richer Brussels variant of the stamppot dish in the cuisine of Belgium and the Netherlands’. Let’s dive into the translation!

Translation
Stoemp!
My first issue (like last week) was how to translate the name of the dish. As the recipe was originally in French and ‘stoemp’ (I believe) is a Dutch/Flemish term, and the recipe title was followed by a subtitle, I opted for keeping ‘stoemp’ in the original and adding ‘or carrot and fennel purée’. This seemed to cover all my bases and after a quick google search, it appeared that stoemp was a relatively well-known term in English too. I also have no idea how to pronounce this dish and entertained my husband with my attempts!

Multiple Terms
Just like English, French often has multiple terms for the same thing. In this instance, I discovered a new term for icing sugar (which in US English is also known as confectioner’s sugar or powdered sugar): sucre impalpable as opposed to sucre glace or sucre poudre. According to Wikipedia, sucre impalpable is a specifically Belgian term for icing sugar! I find it absolutely fascinating when one language has such different regional terms (for example, in Belgium and Canada they use ‘septante’ and ‘octante/huitante’ for eighty, which is famous for being the super baffling ‘quatre vingt’ in standard French).

Cooking
Just like the turkey blanquette I made last week, this recipe was reasonably simple to make.

It was an easy, one-pot recipe, where you put all the ingreidents (carrot, potato, fennel, thyme and bay leaves) in one pot, boiled them until soft and then mashed them. My only slight concern was that, as the recipe called for using a pressurce cooker (which I do not possess), I was using an ordinary pan and was therefore unsure how much of the water would boil off in a pressure cooker. I just sort of eyeballed it and thought that the end result was tasty, but could have done with being a little less liquid-y. However, my husband declared that it was perfect! My only substitution this week was dried thyme as I forgot that our thyme bush is currently dormant as it’s winter (I’m not one for gardening…)

Special thanks to my husband for replating my dinner, as I’d put it on an old chipped plate that wasn’t very photo-worthy! Here is the end result of the stoemp and the turkey blanquette. I thought the two paired very well and made a delicious meal!

Next week: At the time of writing, I’m not sure what I will cook next time. Possibly some more baking, as I’ve just bought an electric hand mixer! As always, if you have any suggestions, find me on social media, comment on the blog or contact me here!