Pecora=Sheep in Italian
Pecorino=is the masculine diminutive of sheep, and refers to cheese, generally such as Pecorino Romano,Pecorino di Pienza.
Pecorina=the feminine dimunitive of sheep refers to a certain sexual position most often associated with prison sex.
why do I tell you this? a lesson in etymology? No, my friends,it is a cautionary tale.
Picture this...yours truly drinking wine, eating buffalo mozzerella drizzled in honey, with my girls, at a hole in the wall restaurant in Calabria, that doubles as a gas station.
the owner, wanting to be hospitable to all people, but being extra hospitable to the American, being in an area that rarely sees an American, is cooking up all kinds of food, pouring me glasses of wine etc.
now let me interject that all products that come from the sheep, have a distinct smell. If you ever had contact with lanolino puro, you understand.
I am an american from California, i didn't grow up eating sheep. My mother would make lamb every so often, but lamb doesn't stink like ewe. So I associate that distinct odor with Calabrian cuisine.
Now let's go back to the scene of the crime...I had been drinking wine, my italian was getting lazy and the owner brings out this rice dish...it hit my mouth and I knew there was something sheep in there.
I asked him about it, but I chose the wrong words. Instead of realizing my gaff right away, I read his face wrong and thought that he thought that I said pecorina( prison sex) instead of cheese (pecorino).So instead of letting it be, I said
" you know I said the rice smells like cheese not prison sex"
at that point I had really outdone myself.
he filled my wine glass and instructed my girls to toast me.
It is amazing how I can trash up a place.