I found a recipe in English that mentions a "pinch" of something. English is not my first language, and Google shows that "pinch" has many meanings. Do I have to pinch it with my fingers, or can i find a suitable amount of milliliters to use?
A 'pinch' is the amount of powder/whatever that can be trapped between one's thumb and fore finger.
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A family member recently inherited a recipe for some simple but delicious crumbly cookies from her grandmother. They consist of flour, sugar, and canola oil with cinnamon on top.
The grandmother in question calls them "monte cows". No one knows the correct pronunciation, meaning or origin of the name. Does something by a similar name exist? What is it really called and why?
The way my French boyfriend and French roommate (both with Spanish grandmothers) pronounce the name, it does sound like "Monte Cows," or "monte cailloux." As far as I have been explained this cookie have resulted from a mix ofMuslim/Ottoman cuisine and Spanish cuisine; it's definitely not French. It is also affectionately referred to as a "poor person's cookie" because of its super-simple ingredients.
The recipe is a simple ratio of 3:2:1 -- 3 parts flour, two parts sugar, one part oil (we've used canola or peanut, both work well). We've used measuring cups or just regular mugs or even small bowls and it has worked every time. If they're a tiny bit dry and crumble too easily when you're shaping them, adding a tiny bit more oil helps keep everything together. Cinnamon sprinkled on top is great, and I tried adding a tiny half-teaspoon of almond extract once.
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Do they refer to the same kind? Or is there a subtle difference?
And what essentially encapsulates the concept of a sausage being sweet? Is it typical sucrose driven sweetness inherent to the product...or the resultant chemical aftertaste on consuming it?
Cooking geeks unite! We have a problem.
Both sweet and mild refers to the sausages without hot red pepper flakes. The fact they are called sweet Italian sausages doesn't mean they contain sugar.
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A friend and I have been doing research on a recipe and he encountered a statement to the effect that the result should be around "6% acidity." I am not familiar with what this would mean in the context of food, and need help parsing what this phrase means and how to tell when a resource is using the taste sensation, as opposed to the pH, sense of the word.
To my understanding, acidity in coffee (as an example) is not actual acidity; "acidity" refers to [the] flavor note, not to the actual acid content; coffee is relatively low in acid. Its pH averages around 5.0 - 5.1(src).
That said, pH:dilution of vinegar is directly regulated based on it's percent acidity.
In wine-making, at least, acidity is a function of three different types of acid. Because those types of acid matter to the final product, wine making supply stores and websites provide several inexpensive ways of determining acidity. Two described here are an acid titration kit and a pH meter. When making wine last year I used an acid titration kit and it couldn't have been simpler. You take a sample of your liquid, the indicator solution, and a reactor solution. Based on how much of the reactor you have to add to change the color of the original sample you can get your acidity in a percent.
In my experience with the wine we noticed the acidity in our grape juice (that was on its way to becoming wine) more by the burning sensation on our hands where we touched the grapes as we crushed them or in our mouths when we drank - our solution started out seriously acidic. It was hard to taste a difference between too acidic and just right.
If you have a liquid recipe and want to get the acidity exactly right, consider using acid titration.
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If I can't find anything named "scallions" at the store, what else can I look for?
According to Wikipedia:
Scallions (also known as green onions, spring onions, salad onions, green shallots, onion sticks, or syboes), are the edible plants of various Allium species, all of which are "onion-like", having hollow green leaves and lacking a fully developed root bulb.
In the grocery stores I've been to most (east cost of US), if they aren't called scallions, they're called green onions. I've never seen grocery stores label them with any of those other names from Wikipedia (though I've seen recipes calling for syboes).
Then of course there are stores / vegetable stands where nothing is labelled, in which case knowing what they look like is the most helpful ;) (Google image search yields plenty of decent results.)
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I would like to know what the long hat that chef's wear is called.
Toque is what Google/Wikipedia proffer but is it really that?
Yes, it is called a toque. I don't have a copy of CIA Pro Chef handy at the moment, but it was in the first chapter IIRC. Wikipedia and a casual googling will confirm this.
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A famed physicist Murray Gell-Mann compared a theoretical machinery in high energy physics theory to a technique in French cuisine, which he described thus:
... a method sometimes employed in French cuisine: a piece of pheasant meat is cooked between two slices of veal, which are then discarded
This phrase is very often quoted in the high-energy physics literature. You can for example read the Nobel lecture by David Gross (a laureate in 2004) here, in which he quotes this sentence.
I always wondered how this particular piece of French cuisine would taste, but I could never order it in French restaurants so far because I don't even know how this is called!
So please, good people at cooking.stackexchange, inform me how it is called and how it tastes!
I am quite sure that it 1. doesn't have a name, and 2. is obsolete.
I read of this technique in a book on traditional English cooking (turns out that it was very similar to French cooking some centuries ago). Back then, meat was always roasted over an open fire. The fire is a hot and uneven source of heat, and they always had huge pieces of meat in a castle kitchen, so it was normal for the inside of the roast to be underdone, while the outside was practically ruined. So they used the good and tried technique of wrapping the roast, cooking for longer time than it would have been possible with unwrapped meat (which helped the raw core), then discarding the ruined wrapper. As the most plentiful ingredient in a noble's kitchen used to be meat (at least in England - maybe the French got the recipe for them despite the better availability of vegetables?) it was just a convenient tool to do the job.
Nowadays, we don't need to do this. A modern oven roasts much better. There are other, cheaper wrapper materials available for whoever wants to use one. I guess that some chefs may be reviving it because it sounds so unusual, it is guaranteed to attract attention. It could be worth eating, but frankly, if I wanted to know how pheasant cooked together with veal tastes, I would choose a recipe which doesn't discard the veal.
As for the name: The book I am referring to ("The cookery of England" by Elisabeth Ayrton) is based on very good research. The author publishes medieval recipes from manuscripts verbatim, etc. She also explains many points, gives some historical background, etc. I am 99% sure that if there was a special name for this technique, she would have known it and mentioned it at the point she describes the practice. For example, she explains "frothing" (pouring batter over the almost cooked joint) in the same paragraph she referrs to wrapping.
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What is this variety of kidney beans called in English? We call them "Chitra Rajmah" in Hindi.
http://www.helloorganic.com/Rajma_chitra.html
Pinto beans. Throw in a few more foods in Hindi, and I'll translate them too, while I'm here; I've got good reference books handy with names in both English and Hindi.
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How hot is "hand hot"?
Should it be about the temperature where you can stand leaving your hand in the water ... but any degree hotter and it wouldn't be tolerable? Or is that way too hot?
For example in a bread recipe which calls for hand hot water.
I don't think I'm asking for a specific C or F, more a rule of thumb.
I don't know the term either. I don't think it is established baking slang, so it is bound to vary between recipes, should you find it in another one at all. But if you got it from a bread recipe, it must be because you need optimal conditions for your yeast. The optimal temperature for yeast rising is 35°C, with rising being too slow below that (but it will still happen, even at 4°C in the fridge!) and not possible at 40°C and above, where leavening action gets too low for practical purposes (and at some point, the yeast dies).
This is a nice representation of the amount of CO2 produced by yeast (which correlates well with leavening) at different temperatures. The difference between the low effective temperature (25°C), the optimal temperature (35°C) and the upper limit of the effective temperature (40°C) is not big, so I don't rely on my imperfect senses and always use a thermometer when making yeast dough.
But you are writing that you want a "rule of thumb", so you probably don't have (or don't want to bother with) a thermometer in your kitchen. In this case, you can still have your bread rise well. The literal thumb is a bad choice, as it is quite insensitive, but the trick our grandmas used to gauge the temperature of infant food is still valid: use your elbow.
The skin of the elbow is very thin, and it will very well notice the difference between a 35°C liquid (which feels roughly the same temperature as the elbow, remember that 37°C are normal inside the body, not on the skin outside) and a 40°C liquid (which feels too warm). If you were to use your fingers or the back of your hand, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference well enough, and will risk overshooting and killing the yeast. There are possibly other body parts which can feel the difference (I'd guess the tongue, if you don't scald it daily with hot drinks), but hygienewise, the elbow is probably better.
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Is there a name for the partial dish where you simmer macaroni in milk for 30-60 minutes?
Any food simmered in milk is referred to as creamed e.g. creamed corn. So I guess this would be creamed macaroni.
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There are white and green Brinjals too. Are the purple ones known by some special name?
In Britain (and France), the large purple varieties are known as aubergines. Other (pale and/or small) varieties aren't usually found outside of Asian supermarkets, where I imagine they are still referred to as brinjal.
The name 'eggplant' is used in the US, Canada, and the Antipodes, mainly because the lighter varieties are more common there, which arguably have the colour of eggshell.
They are, however, all just different varieties of the same plant, like yellow and red tomatoes.
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For example, when making a turkey for Thanksgiving, I generally place it in the oven (covered in foil or a turkey bag), and cook it for many hours at the recommended heat setting.
I can crock-pot a "roast" cut of meat for many hours, or put it in the oven (again covered) for several hours at a low temperature.
How is that different from "baking", other than when baking the top is generally not covered?
Traditionally roasting used radiant heat to cook meat. This would have taken place over an open flame, typically on a rotating spit. In modern times this method is now called Rotisserie. Modern roasting refers to dry heat cooking that takes place in an oven, the food is cooked by convection. Until the late 19th century this method was referred to as baking.
Baking is essentially the same as roasting in modern times. Baking most often refers specifically to the cooking of "baked goods" (breads, pastries, etc.). However, the terms baking and roasting are often used interchangeably (baked chicken, roast chicken). There doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule here as to which term is used. For example, you roast asparagus, turkey, chicken, but bake lasagna, casseroles, and also chicken.
Braising uses a combination of moist and dry heat to cook the food. This is what occurs in a crock pot, or in dutch oven/stock pot in the oven. Your meat will be cooked in an ample amount of seasoned liquid such as wine and/or stock.
Broasting I had never heard of before. According to Wikipedia it's a trademarked method of pressurized deep frying. I doubt this is what you were referring to.
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I have heard this term frequently used, but I haven't been able to find a definition, even in the extensive Wikipedia Article on Schnitzel.
The article you linked to references this dish as "Wiener Schnitzel". That article defines it as veal--pounded, breaded, and fried--garnished with lemon, and served with potatoes.
"Wiener" refers to its Viennese origin, and Schnitzel to the type of preparation (pounded, breaded, and fried). There are many varieties of Schnitzels, made of several different meats, and with various sauces. Jaeger Schnitzel, for examples, is served with a creamy mushroom sauce. The one from Vienna is served with lemon and potatoes.
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I've been told that there are some differences between a "pie" and a "tart". What's the difference, and when do I call it a pie, and when do I call it a tart?
Sorry for my English!
Generally speaking, a pie refers to a pastry covered with a lid, like a typical apple pie. A tart is open topped, like a quiche, or a French tartes aux pommes.
However, there are exceptions to this: many pies will be open topped too. Usually this is a matter of depth: the deeper it is, the more likely it is to be called a pie rather than a tart.
Regional variations also apply.
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