Culinary Terminology
I cannot count the number of times that my friends and family rang me to ask what means a particular word used in a recipe that they found in a cooking book. This apply too, to restaurant menus. It is true that chefs use professional terminology without thinking that they are not talking to one of his/her colleague.
So there is a list of culinary terms and their definitions. This list is a work in progress, so keep checking as I will be adding terms as they come to my attention.
- To arrange: Aesthetically place meat and garnish on the serving dish.
- To bard: Wrap in a thin layer or sheet of bacon or fatback bacon.
- To bind: Enhance the consistency of a soup, sauce or gravy by the addition of egg yolks, cream, flour, starch or blood.
- To blanch: Immerse certain foods in boiling water, either to part-cook them or to clean them. Either they are dropped into boiling water or put into cold water that is then brought to a boil.
- Bouquet garni: Choice of aromatic plants tied with some kitchen string. It usualy consists of 2-3 sprigs of parsley, a sprig of thyme, 1 or 2 bay leaves, some sage, celery or rosemay can also be used. The lot is wrapped in a couple of leaves of leek before tying it.
- To braise: Slowly cook meats or vegetables in a small quantity of aromatic liquid in a closed utensil.
- To bread: Roll in bread crumb.
- To brown in butter: Cook in butter until lightly colored.
- To brown on the top or gratiner: Put a dish, sauced or not, but often sprinkled with grated cheese, into the oven or under a broiler to obtain a light coloring and sometimes a crispy surface.
- A brunoise: very fine dices of vegetables or cooked meats.
- To butter: Grease a mold, a baking sheet, baking paper. Also means to finish a sauce by whisking in some fresh butter.
- Chaud-froid: means hot-cold, dish that has been prepared hot and served cold.
- Chinois: A fine-meshed cone-shaped strainer.(Fig 1)
- Clarified butter: melted butter in which the whey and all the solid elements have been discarded to only leave the oil (pure fat). Such butter will resist better to high heat. It is used to prepare sauces such as the bearnaise sauce and hollandaise sauce.
- To coat: Cover with sauce. In confectionery, cover with icing or meringue.
- To color: Get a light golden color on all the faces of meats or vegetables in some fat.
- Compote: preparation of fresh or dried fruits slowly cooked in a light sweet stock. It also means vegetables (such has onions, red onions, etc) that are slowly cooked with stock and sugar.
- Confit: Slowly and gently cooked in fat. I'd like to make a point here, as at least 90% of my customers will ask for their duck confit crispy. It is not a roast but a parent cooking process to braising, therefor it cannot and should not be served crispy.
- To cook in a blanc: Cook vegetables (such as artichoke, Jerusalem artichokes, button mushrooms) or some offal (such as veal head, tongue or lamb feet) that are subjected to oxidation , in a water base in which lemon juice or vinegar and flour have been added. Note that the vegetables or meat are left to cool down in the cooking liquid. The proportion for a litre of cooking liquid is 25g flour, 1/2 lemon or 1 tablespoon of vinegar and 6g of salt.
- Cooking liquid: Any liquid that has been rendered after cooking food. For example, the liquid resulting from cooking mushrooms.
- Duxelle: Minced button mushrooms, shallots and onions sauteed in butter and slowly cooked until all the cooking liquid has evaporated. It is usually used as part of stuffings or dishes called "a la duxelle". The origin of the word seems to either come from a little village of Uzel in the Cotes d'Armor county of Brittany in France or La Varenne chef of the marquis of Uxelles.
- Emulsion: Mixture of two incompatible liquids with droplets of one liquid dispersed in a continuous phase of the other. Oil and vinegar in a dressing for example. The term comes from the Latin word for milk, which is just such a mixture.
- To Decoct: Extract the essence of something by boiling it. Be cooked until very little is left; as of sauces " The sauce should reduce to one cup". Steep in hot water
- To deglaze: Dissolve, by moistening with little liquid, the caramelized juice at the bottom of a saucepan or roasting tray.
- To degrease: Remove all excess fat from stocks, cooking liquids, sauces, etc.
- To dilute: Add a liquid to thin out a sauce or a puree that is too thick; adjust consistency.
- Double-boiler or bain-marie: A bain-marie can be any set-up of utensils where the lower part is filled with simmering water and the upper part, which can be a pan or a bowl, is placed on the top. Allow 2 cm (3/4 inch) space between the two utensils.
- Drum sieve: A sieve whose screen is stretched across a circular band of wood or metal, resembling a drum. (Fig. 2)
- To glaze or glacer: In addition to the literal meaning of the word, this term applies to; first of all basting a cut of meat or other preparation with its own reduced juice and returning it to the oven to give it a glaze. Second meaning to this term is the formation on a sauced dish of a light, shining skin. Finally, in pastry making it means a layer of sugar spread over a pastry.
- A Julienne: Very thin batons of vegetables or cooked meat.
- To knead: to work a dough into a uniform mixture by pressing, folding, and stretching.
- To lard: Thread strips, lardons, of fatback bacon or bacon into a cut of meat with a larding needle (fig. 3).
- Lardon: Small dice of smoked or unsmoked pork belly.
- Liaison: French word meaning close connection, bond. It refers to the act of theckening and the agents of thickening. It was borrowed from the French by the English in the 17th only for its culinary meaning. It is only in the 19th century that the military and romantic liaison came to the English language.
- To line: Arrange slices of bacon, onion, carrot on the bottom and sides of a utensil. Also means, line a mold with dough.
- To line with aspic: Coat the insides of a mold with melted savoury jelly and allow it to harden before filling with the required ingredients.
- To marinate: Soak meat, game or fish in an acidic liquid either to flavor or to tenderize it.
- To melt: Cook thinly sliced, minced, julienned or diced vegetables gently in butter until they become translucent.
- A mirepoix: Rough dice of vegetables added to stocks or bouillon to flavor it.
- To moisten: Add the necessary cooking liquid.
- Oven temperatures: Every oven has its own characteristics and experimentation is the only way to truly comprehend your oven, but there is a general guide:
-Very low 225-275 F or 107-135 C
- Low 285-325 F or 140-163 C
- Medium 350-400 F or 177-205 C
- High 410-450 F or 210-232 C
- Very hot 475-550 F or 246-288 C
- To poach: Simmer in a liquid kept just below point.
- Poaching liquid or bouillon: The liquid in which meat or poultry has been cooked.
- Pre-cooking rice: Put the rice you need in boiling salted-water for a few seconds; then drain in thoroughly and moisten it with milk.
- To purge: Put certain foods, such as brains, sweetbreads, kidneys, offal in general into cold water or milk to flush out impurities and traces of blood. Snails, cucumbers, gherkins, etc are purged with a coating of sea salt.
- To reduce: Simmer a liquid or sauce down to decrease its quantity and make it more concentrated. Be aware: Do not add any salt in this liquid before reducing it as the salt will concentrate thus making the final preparation too salty.
- To refresh: Blanched food is immediately plunged into ice-cold water to remove any foam and fix the chlorophyll in green vegetables.
- Ribbon (to make a.. ) : Consistency required in the making of sponge cake or sabayon sauce. It is obtained by long whisking of an egg and sugar mixture over low heat. The ribbon can be seen by lifting some of the mix and observe its behaviour when it falls on the rest of the mixture in the bowl. It should keep its shape while staying on the top of the rest of the mix see (fig.5).
- Roux: A mixture of flour and butter cooked more or less completely (white, golden or Dark) according to requirements. The usual proportion of flour to fat is 1/1 or 50g of flour for 50g of fat for a liter of liquid.
- To sauté: To fry quickly in a little hot fat. Sauté(adj) Quickly fried in a little hot fat.
- Salpicon: A mixture of several ingredients, cut to the same shape, generally in cubes, to garnish savory pastry shells, interiors of croquettes, rissoles, etc.
- Scant: Falling short of a specific measure: a scant cup of sugar.
- To score: Make some small incisions on the skin of meat or fish to help it to cook.
- To Seethe: Also written seeth. To decoct or prepare for food in hot liquid; to boil; as, to seethe flesh.
- To shrink: When cooking ingredients, having sweat off their moisture and juices, start to contract, they are said to shrink.
- To simmer: Boil very gently and regularly over low heat.
- To skim: Purify a sauce or soup over a very gentle heat, by removing the scum from the top.
- To soak: Applied to bread that must be soaked in soup for an extended period of time and reheated before serving.
- To stew: Cook almost without liquid or without liquid in a closed container.
- To strain: Cook in butter, then strain through a chinois, sieve, cloth or strainer stock, cooking liquid, sauces or force through a drum sieve purees, stuffing, etc. Consomme, syrups and fruit juices are strained through a muslin cloth.
- To stud: Inserting small pieces of fatback bacon near the surface of different cuts of meat, especially game to avoid that they dry out while cooking.
- To sweat off: To cook an ingredient covered over low heat to make it give up its juices.
- Tablespoon: In French cooking a tablespoon (not level) is equal to a soup spoon that holds about 15g (2/3 ounce) of flour or sugar and about 25% more liquid than the imperial tablespoon measure.
- To trim off: To make an ingredient more attractive by cutting away certain parts. For meat, removing excess fat. For potato, the eyes, etc.
- Trimmings: The off-cuts resulting from trimming an ingredient.
- To truss: To retain the shape of poultry, game, roasts, racks and seafood by tying it up with a fine cord, sometimes using needle (Fig. 4).
- To whisk or whip: Give volume to a substance, such as egg whites, a sauce, cream, a hollandaise, etc.
Fig. 1 
Fig. 2 
Fig. 3 
Fig. 4 
Fig. 5
Cheese and Buckwheat Scones
There is a quick recipe that I improvised from a traditional scones mix that I was use to use in a hotel in Scotland. I was thinking how to make this a bit more interesting and healthier.
This buckwheat scones make a great accompaniment to smoked salmon or delicatessen or even a poached egg.
So, this is how it goes :
- 150g Strong white organic flour.
- 250g Buckwheat flour.
- 4 Teaspoons of baking powder.
- 100g Gratted Parmesan cheese.
- 80g Gruyere cheese cut in small dices.
- 20g Oat flakes.
- 20g Linseed.
- 4 Eggs.
- 250g Melted butter.
- 8 Tablespoons of soy milk.
In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together. Mix in the melted butter and soy milk. Work energetically that dough for about 5 minutes.
Fill up some darioles moulds, previously buttered and floured, 2/3 up.
Bake in a preheated over for 20 to 30 minutes at 180 degres Celsius.
Eat warm.
Suitable for vegetarians, Replace the cheese with some smoked tofu and use margarin instead of the butter to make it suitable for vegans and dairy free.
Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on.
George Bernard Shaw
A Broad Survey of the Beneficial Effects of Chemicals in Fruits and Vegetables
It is well understood that some chemicals in fruits, vegetables, herb and spices can affect various aspects of our health. There is a very broad survey of a very rich and complex subject.
Prevent oxidative damage to important molecules in the body : antioxidants
Eye: slow cataracts and macular degeneration
Kale, many dark green vegetables.
Caroteinoids: lutein.
Citrus fruits, corn.
Carotenoids: zeaxanthin.
Blood lipids: slow the development of heart disease
Grapes, other berries.
Phenolics: anthocyanidins.
Tea.
Phenolics.
General : reduce DNA damage and the development of cancer
Tomatoes.
Carotenoids: lycopene
Carrots, other orange and green vegetables
Carotenoids: Beta-caroten
Tea.
Phenolics.
Green vegetables.
Chlorophyll.
Broccoli, daikon, cabbage familly.
Glucosinates, Thiocyanates.
Moderate the body's inflammatory response
General: slow development of heart disease and cancer.
Raisins, dates, chilis, tomatoes.
Salicylates.
Reduce the body's own production of DNA-damaging chemicals
Many fruits, vegetables
Phenolics: flavonoids.
Broccoli, daikon, cabbage family.
Glucosinolates, thiocyanates.
Citrus fruits.
Terpenes.
Inhibit the growth of cancer cells and tumors
Many fruits, vegetables.
Phenolics: flavonoids.
Soybeans.
Phenolics: isoflavones.
Grapes, berries.
Phenolics: ellagic acid.
Rye, flaxseed
Phenolics: lignans.
Citrus fruits.
Terpenes.
Mushrooms.
Carbohydrates.
Slow the body's removals of calcium from bones
Onions and parsley
Responsible agent not yet identified.
Encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria in the intestine
Onion family, sunchoke.
Inulin
Prevent the adhesion of infectious bacteria to walls of urinary tract
Cranberry, grapes
Phenolics: proanthcyanidins
Cancer and Cooking meat
A report about a technical Food and Agriculture Organization study "World agriculture: towards 2015/2030" published in 2002, shows that meat consumption in developing countries, has risen from only 10 kg per person annually in 1964-66 to 26 kg in 1997-99. It is projected to rise to 37 kg per person per year in 2030. As it seems that we are not going to become a society of vegetarians anywhere soon, let's make sure that we know the danger that a meat rich diet can have.
In the middle of the 20th century, medical researchers began to concentrate on the role of nutrition in the two main diseases which can cut our gastronomic life short: heart disease and cancer. It happens that meat and its mouth watering taste, has its downside: a diet high in meat is associated with a greater risk of developing heart disease and cancer. In our post-industrial lifestyle which consists of a lack of physical activity and an unlimited ability to indulge our taste for meat, the high consumption of meat contributes to obesity which increase the risk of various diseases.
The first contribution of meat towards shortening our life of "gastronomes" comes from the meat itself : FATS. To be more precise saturated fats. This type of fat is known to increase our blood cholesterol levels and can contribute to heart disease. And to the extent that meat displaces from our diet the vegetables and fruits that keep heart diseases and cancer at bay, it raises our vulnerability to both.
The second one comes from the way the meat is prepared. I have to say that I was probably like most, apart from the odd cremated steak. I did not suspect that the way I cooked meat could end up creating some potentially dangerous types of carcinogenic by-products. Scientist have identified three families of chemicals created during meat preparation that potentially damage our DNA and that may increase our risk of developing cancer of the large intestine.
Let's start with the Heterocyclic Amines (HCA). They form at high temperature by the reaction of some minor meat components, creatine and creatinine (women may have heard of the first compound as some cosmetics producers advertise its benefits to tackle wrinkles) with amino acids (basic elements of proteins). HCAs are generally greatest at the meat surface where the temperature is the highest and where the meat juices collect. They also appear on meats that are grilled, broiled or fried well done. Oven roast meat surfaces are more or less free of HCAs but the pan drippings can show great amounts. It is relatively easy to reduce the production of HCAs. Acid marinades, for example, decrease the creation of HCAs. Gentle cooking and aiming for a rare or medium doneness would help too. Furthermore, the consumption of vegetables, fruits and acidophilus bacteria seem to bind HCAs in the digestive tract and prevent their absorption.
The second type of carcinogenic chemical that can be created while cooking meat is called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons or PAH. They are created when nearly any organic material, like wood or fat, is heated to their burning point. This is what happens when butter overheats and burns. This is the reason why most food authorities have simply banned the traditional "raie au beurre noir". Back to our meat, PAHs are mainly found on meats that have been cooked over a smoky wood fire that will deposit PAHs on the meat or smokeless charcoal fire which will create PAHs from the fat, if the fat is allowed to fall and burn. Small amounts of PAHs can be produced during high temperature frying. PAHs can be minimized by cooking meats over a wood fire only if it has been reduced to coals, by leaving the grill uncovered, by avoiding fat flareups and by eating smoked meat with moderation. 
Finally, there is our third bad guy. It is known by the name of nitrosamines. They form when nitrogen-containing groups on amino-acids (basic constituents of proteins) and related compounds combine with nitrite, a chemical used for centuries in salt-cured meats and prevent the development of the Clostridium Botulinum responsible for botulism. This reaction happens both in our digestive system and in a hot frying pan. Nitrosamines are well known to be a very powerful DNA- damaging chemicals, despite the lack of evidence that nitrites present in cured meats can increase the risk of developing cancer. Though, it's seems prudent to eat cured meats with moderation and cook them gently. To end this alarmist panflet about meat, I would like to quote Harold McGee in "McGee on food and cooking", Hodder and Stoughton edition, who rightly says : "It's prudent, then to temper our species' infatuation with meat. It helped make us what we are, but now it can help unmake us."
Why do fish stock should not boil?
Fish stock or "fumet", which means aroma in French, is a very simple and quick base for various sauces, cooking liquid to poach fish, aspic or Japanese and Korean consommés. A lot of recipes like the consommés and aspic require a perfectly clear fumet. But, most of the time, even with the best recipe it will turn cloudy, like on that picture below. Why is it happening?
Well, the first cause may be that the fumet has been cooked for a too long period of time (20 minutes is best). The second is that the fish stock was boiled instead of a steady simmering. Boiling or overcooking have basically the same effect on the liquid. They dissolve calcium salt from the fragile fish bones in the stock. These salts will make the final liquid cloudy and give it a chalky taste.Note that these salts cannot be removed at a later stage, when performing the clarification of the fish stock for the purpose of an aspic or fish consommé cooking.
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