Tempura is not made with lutefisk.
The thought of sipping a bit of sake —just a skosh—with my tempura tickles me. Not the thought of the sake, for the moment, anyway (far be it from me to deny enjoying that warm rice wine, and I look forward to my next splash or two). What instead tickles me is using skosh and tempura in the same sentence, a real East/West fusion, that. Tempura is from the East . . . well, if you start in Japan and keep heading eastward across the Pacific, the Americas, and the Atlantic to Portugal. And skosh is from the West, if you retrace your steps westward all the way back to Japan.
Portuguese missionaries came to Japan in 1542, bringing with them Christianity, gunpowder, and a method of cooking fish by deep-frying it (not using gunpowder, mind you). The Oxford English Dictionary notes that tempura is probably adapted from Portuguese tempero, meaning “seasoning, flavoring, sauce, condiment,” though it’s also been suggested that it’s related to temporal, “for a short time.” Temporary? A short time? The thought’s intriguing, because tempura is cooked quickly—for a short time—and was perhaps cooked by the missionaries during temporary periods without meat.
Now, if you haven’t caught on that the Scandinavian-sounding skosh is ultimately of Japanese origin (despite the seeming Norsk monopoly on words with S and K in them), you’ve had a skosh too much sake. Or, more specifically, a sukoshi (“few”) too much sake, slurring the word sukoshi into skosh —which is maybe how the word was slangishly borrowed back in the 1950s by English-speaking soldiers. Interestingly, the U is not voiced in the original version—
12
Bill Brohaugh
an unneeded letter contradictorily appearing in a word meaning “few.” 5
But back to the sake. I say, drink up! A skosh more! And skoal! (But drive responsibly between Japan and Portugal. . . )