Saute.... or fricassee?

The title of this blog post comes from some dialogue in an episode of the fourth series of the best TV comedy series ever:  Blackadder.  When Baldrick is cooking his rat, the difference between the two cooking techniques is only the size of the rat involved...  it made me think, do we really need to know the difference between a sauté and a fricassee as long as the result tastes nice?  Probably not. If you ARE wondering, according to "Larousse Gastronomique" - the wonderful 1206 page cookery encylopaedia - sauté means to cook meat, fish or vegetables in fat until brown, using a frying pan, sauté pan or heavy saucepan - and fricassee is a 17th century French term denoting various dishes with chicken, fish or vegetables in brown or white stock ie cooked in a thickened liquid, without browning (and nothing to do with marinating it in a puddle and stretching out under a hot light bulb!!) So now you know!  The photos below are not my cooking but give you an idea.

Saute potatoes

 

Mushroom fricassee

There's a lot I still don't know about cooking, despite what some of my family and friends might think.  The other day someone asked me to define what a thermidor was, and I had no idea and had to resort to Google and Larousse again. I don't think anyone is quite sure but some say the term thermidor was first attributed to the dish lobster thermidor, which was first served in January 1894 in Paris, on the evening of the premiere of a play called Thermidor, which was named after the eleventh month of the French Republican calendar, which in its turn was named after the French word thermal, which comes from the Greek word thermos meaning heat!!!!  What a complicated explanation!  The dish is lobster mixed with a creamy mustard sauce and served in the shell sprinkled with grated cheese and grilled - or variations thereof!

There's a lot of confusing terminology about when it comes to food and I personally would rather understand what I'm getting in a restaurant rather than guess or have to ask and hope the staff know what they're talking about.  Or it would be nice to have an explanation printed on the menu so your meal out could be an educational experience!  For example, what is the difference between "jus" and "gravy"?  Essentially they are the same thing, the cooking juices from a roast or from when a pan has been deglazed, thickened and flavoured.  The French also use jus to mean thickened stock or even freshly squeezed fruit juices.

I asked some of my friends what they find confusing in the culinary world. US terms can be confusing - for example, some people haven't any idea that "broiling" is simply the American term for grilling.  Many found it tricky changing US and Canadian "cups" into g and kg.  And how much is a stick of butter? 125g if you were wondering.  My daughter thinks that the words teaspoon and tablespoon are too similar and easily confused when trying to follow a recipe.  She'd vote for a global change in terminology to "small spoon" and "big spoon".  And talking of equipment, the word potato "ricer" is a bit misleading as you don't do anything to rice with it! It's called a ricer because the diameter of the holes in it through which the potato is forced are about the same diameter as a grain of rice. Most vegetables can be more easily pureed in a blender or processor (see later) but potatoes go glutinous when over processed and are gorgeous when "riced" - there are NEVER lumps.

Another friend was confused as to the differences between a blender, a juicer and a food processor.  You can blend and juice with a processor (depending on model and attachments), but you can't blend or process with a juicer, or juice or process with a blender!!!

However the funniest and stupidest misunderstanding EVER was one of my very own, when I was given a recipe for a boiled cake and the method stated to boil together all the ingredients in the left hand column.....  I asked the person concerned if I could borrow their left hand column, as I didn't have one!  That was a long time ago, mind you.

Thank you for reading, more soon, and feel free to share this blog.

Caroline x

Handy Hints and Good Ideas

A friend recently said "Cooking is like life, you won't know how it turns out if you don't try it."  Wise advice.  I thought I'd write a post about all those tips that have been passed on to me from the older generation, friends, books and from my own experience... so that in the future my children can read this post and pass it all on to their own children. My daughter is already quite good at baking, recently she's made heart shaped iced cookies and a very light and delicious lemon drizzle cake, as well as several chocolate cakes for her school friends and her own birthday cake - and my son is getting seriously handy with a peeler, so this post is for them. It's also for all my friends and family who passed on their tips, including some very wise advice such as: "Keep trying even though it may not turn out right first time" and "Eat the whole tub of Philadelphia before someone else does"!!!

I'm always happy to listen to advice, but I don't always follow it.  My Mum said to always follow a recipe the first time, before adapting it, and I don't do that.  Ditto the advice about not trying out new recipes on guests! However, here follows just a (slightly random) selection of tips that you might or might not find useful:

• It's ALL in the planning. Prepare ahead whenever possible, do some chopping before work, or make a freezeable pudding a week ahead for a dinner party.
• Trust your instincts.
• Mark your favourite recipes in books and magazines with post-it tabs.
• Don't try to slice lemons when you've had a few glasses of wine, or are crying from onions, while using a blunt knife.
• Don't balance sharp edged baking trays on top of the fridge freezer - I have the scars to prove this one.
• Use oven liner.
• When you're making a roast dinner, don't skimp on the gravy.
• Use good quality stock cubes or concentrate.
• Add fresh herbs at the end of cooking or the flavour will be lost.
• Don't open the oven until at least two thirds of the way through a cake's cooking time, and don't open it until the very end if there's Yorkshire pud in there. I've got an oven without a glass panel in the door on purpose so it doesn't show the dirt but the downside is not being able to monitor whatever's in there.  You can usually tell when baking is done because you start to smell it.
• A lot can be stuck together or covered up with butter icing and lots of sprinkles.
• Pour hot sugar syrup over cupcakes when they come out of the oven to keep them moist, there's nothing worse than a dry cupcake.
• Chill onions before slicing to minimise tears, if you do cry, running your wrists under cold water will make you feel better.
• Use a plastic spatula to scrape out every last scrap of mixture from the bowl.
• Never use "cake covering" - supermarket basic level real chocolate is cheaper and much nicer.
• Choose clever gadgets - like the silicone garlic roll that peels garlic so easily without making your fingers smell.  I've got one of these and several of my friends have too, it really works!

 



• Talking of smells, fishy or other strong smelling packaging should go straight in the outside bin, then you won't have to change the indoor one before it's full due to the whiff.
• Younger children are not always so helpful in the kitchen, so have a stack of DVDs or a playpen to keep them out of the way and save accidents happening.
• If it goes wrong, bluff your way out of it (the story of the "wholemeal" potatoes may be saved for a future post...).

And if all else fails, have a spouse or partner that loves cooking and will do it all for you, including the washing up!

More soon, thank you for reading. There may be a follow up to this post as there are probably loads more tips that I can't think of just now.  What's yours?

Caroline :-)

Food and wine matching - part 2.

This post has been delayed a bit, as I gave up drinking alcohol for the month of January, partly to make sure I could, partly for weight loss and partly to give my liver a break after the excesses of the festive season.  I missed wine, and Bailey's, but didn't find it too hard.  I mostly switched to fizzy water with a slice of lemon, but sometimes had sparkling grape juice or fruit presse out of a wine glass to make it feel a  bit more special.

I had tried two out of the three remaining free Asda wines before the self-imposed drinking ban started, and the first of these was the Pinot Grigio Trentino 2012. I'm not usually a fan of Pinot Grigio and this didn't do anything to convert me. It was nice and fresh and went well with my Italian inspired taleggio cheese omelette with prosciutto crudo and fennel seed salami (plus peas) but I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy more.  It was just a bit, well, watery and boring.

It was to Italy again for wine number five out of the six, and a red, the Barbera 2011.  This won silver at the International wine and Spirit Challenge 2013, and deservedly so. We paired it with Italian fennel and garlic sausages, roasted vegetables and cabbage.  It was very smooth and robust, and a definite thumbs up.

The final wine was a mouthful in more ways than one.  French this time: Viognier Pays d'Oc Indication Geographique Protegee 2012.  A gorgeous, dry, high quality white wine from the Languedoc, the label said it would be good matched with fish dishes, mild curries and chicken.  We had it with a roast tandoori-style chicken and naan bread, accompanied with cucmber and kalonji pickle salad (see below) which is very thinly sliced cucumber, shallots and kalonji (also called black onion seeds or nigella seeds) with lemon juice, mint and pomegranate seeds. The wine was as fresh and delicately flavoured as the salad, but unlike the Pinot Grigio it had character and flavour.

 

Thank you to Asda for the six free wines, Valentine's day will bring the last of my husband's birthday case which he has kindly been saving to share with me :-)

 

I'm not giving up wine again anytime soon, but definitely believe in quality rather than quantity from now on.

 

Thank you for reading, more soon.

Caroline x

 

#asdawine