I made myself a nice salad for lunch today. (When you’re done reading this post, you can look back at that sentence and laugh.)
I had some leftover carnitas and green cabbage, but no tortillas, because the tortillas I bought at the supermarket had gone bad. Why I keep buying corn tortillas at the supermarket I don’t know, because even when they’re not spoiled, they’re not good.
So here’s what I did. I heated a nonstick skillet over medium-high and added the carnitas to heat and crisp them up. When they were done, I transferred them to a bowl and added shredded cabbage to the pan. I sauteed it for a couple of minutes to brown and soften it just a bit. Then I tossed the pork and cabbage together in a bowl and added hot sauce (Frank’s RedHot) and kaffir lime juice. So it was basically a lard-lime vinaigrette. I’m sure this will be sweeping the nation.
Why do I have kaffir limes in the house? Last weekend we were at [Lara Ferroni](http://www.cookandeat.com/)’s house, and she had a bunch of citrus fruits from [Rising C](http://www.ripetoyou.com/) in California. She does their photography, including the lovely yuzu and calamondin shots on the front page.
We didn’t get any yuzu, but Lara sent us home with variegated pink lemons and kaffir limes. Laurie made delightful lemon shortbread with the pink lemons, and I started in on the limes today. I’ve never used a fresh kaffir lime before–only the leaves–and I’d heard that the juice was useless. They’re grown for the leaves and the very thick, wrinkly zest, which is used most famously in Thai curry pastes.
But the limes had plenty of juice for my salad. The juice is more sour than Persian lime juice, and it’s an immediate, jolting reminder of Thailand. And the limes are one of the least expensive items from Rising C.
##### Digression
I have to note that I find the name “kaffir lime” very frustrating. It’s undisputed that “kaffir” is a racial slur in South Africa and other countries and that the name of the lime comes from the epithet, though no one knows why. There are other terms in use for the fruit, such as “wild lime” and “magrood,” the latter being an anglicization of the Thai word. (The actual Thai pronunciation uses a consonant not found in English, plus an unvoiced final consonant, so it’s not possible to borrow it precisely.) The problem with these terms is that they’re extremely poorly recognized compared to “kaffir lime.”
It’s not enough to note that “kaffir” is not a common racial slur in the US, because I have readers all over the world, or at least I’d like to believe so. Since I intend to use and discuss this ingredient in the future, maybe the best thing to do is to say “wild lime” or “magrood” and make it a link to the [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_lime) to clear up what the term actually means. I don’t find this solution very satisfying, either. As Wikipedia says:
> The Oxford Companion to Food recommends that the name kaffir lime should be avoided in favor of makrut lime because Kaffir is an offensive term in some cultures, and also has no clear reason for being attached to this plant. However, kaffir lime appears to be much more common.
But I’m not sure how you’re supposed to pronounce “makrut.” MACK-rut?
i’m no kind of citrus expert, but my year and a half of linguistics learnin’ might suggest that “magrood” and “makrut” are pronounced kind of similarly to each other, yes? harder or softer on respective consonants, but…ish. i would guess.
my linguistics professor DID get chicken pox, and WAS out for nearly a whole semester, making a good chunk of my linguistics learnin’ independent study. much of which was spent dissecting my study partner’s upcoming honeymoon in branson, missouri. so if i’m ALL wrong, i… well, i just own it. whatev.
do you make your own carrrrrnitas? has this been discussed and i just wasn’t paying attention? i like grocery store (corn) torillas a’ight for making tortilla chips, suitable for scooping roasted green chile queso (wooo for marrying a new mexican!).
mah(g)-KRU(d)T is a close approximation how I pronounce it, and we spell it ‘makrut’ on our blog. But when it’s just the two of us in the garden, we always call it ‘the kaffir lime tree’, because old habits die hard.
I suppose there’s a tiny sliver of not wishing to cause offense in our public usage. Mostly, though, we use ‘makrut’ because that’s as close as our farang mouths can get to the Thai word for it, and it seems to be the way usage is heading (see also: Oxford citation, above).
There’s a defiant part of me that wants everyone to understand my intentions and let me call the damn thing what I want. But then I realize that although I can call someone f****t in England and that just means they’re a meatball, I sure wouldn’t use it on my blog. :D
If you want more makruts, I’d be happy to send some your way. We have more fruit this year than we could use in a decade of sai oa and red-curry making. (Ours aren’t juicy, though.)
heather, I totally make my own carnitas. Click the word “carnitas” in the post for details. I know how to say “makrut” the Thai way; I meant that if people started using it in print, everyone who read it would pronounce it differently.
What about “makrut lime”?
The lemon cookies are Molly’s recipe.
http://orangette.blogspot.com/2006/12/hop-to-it.html Iris rolled them in colored sugar. She LOVES them and I do, too.
Thanks for educating us about “kaffir” limes. Although, by offending a large chunk of Africa, perhaps we can put ourselves in the same Nobel-prize winning category as James Watson….
(see http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/19/uk.race/index.html?iref=newssearch)
Sorry for the long link, I’m sure Matthew can fix it.
I’m trying out the lemon cookies this weekend!
Watson is not the first certifiable genius to both win a well-deserved Nobel and be a Grade A dickhead. (William Shockley comes to mind.)
“Kaffir” is also a pejorative term for non-Muslims. How about “African Lime,” or “South African Lime”?
Phil, the limes are from Southeast Asia. “Thai lime” would be okay, except that Thailand also grows and uses tons of Persian limes.