Category: Uncategorized
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Aiguillette
Aiguillette is French and the word literally means ‘little needle’. In culinary terms it refers to a long, thin sliver of the choicest, most tender meat from either side of the breastbone of a duck or other fowl. It’s sometimes used to describe any thin strip of meat taken from a premium cut, such as…
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Celeriac
What is it? Celeriac is a relative of celery, cultivated for its edible roots. It’s often described as being ugly and sometimes as the unsung hero of the vegetable world. It’s an oddly-shaped, knobbly, root vegetable which has a subtle, celery-like flavour, with nutty overtones. It’s available all year round but best in the colder…
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Advocaat
Advocaat is a Dutch eggnog, made from egg yolks, sugar and brandy. It’s a rich and creamy drink with a custard-like flavour. The drink has a low alcohol content, typically between 14% and 20% ABV. In Dutch its name is short for advocaatenborrel, the ‘lawyer’s drink’, from advocaat, ‘advocate, lawyer’, and borrel, ‘drink’. Advocaat was…
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Soda bread
Soda bread is a variety of quick bread traditionally made in a variety of cuisines in which sodium bicarbonate is used as a leavening agent instead of yeast. Irish soda bread in particular is very popular in Britain as well as Ireland. It also uses very few ingredients, ie flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda, and…
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Brussels sprouts
What are they? Brussels sprouts are like miniature cabbages which grow in multiple rows on a thick central stalk. The sprout is obviously a brassica, but it’s anybody’s guess when somebody mutated it from its original cabbage. I believe sprouts originated in Belgium, where they were sold in markets as early as the 13th century…
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Broccoli
What is it? Broccoli is a brassica, part of the cabbage family, as is it’s close relative the cauliflower. There are three types of broccoli: Calabrese This is the one with the thick stem and big clustery heads (pictured above). Calabrese is named after the Italian region it originates from, Calabria. It’s the most commonly…
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Bulgogi
Bulgogi is a classic Korean dish made from strips of meat – usually beef or pork – marinated in a spicy sauce and then cooked on a special ridged grill plate. This is probably one of the most well-known Korean meat dishes outside Korea. It literally means ‘fire’ (bul) and ‘meat’ (gogi) and these are marinated…
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Aubergine (Eggplant)
What is it? It’s a fruit which is used as a vegetable. It comes in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colours, ranging from the large, glossy, almost-black purple example above to the ‘pea aubergine’ which is popular in Thailand. The pea aubergine looks like a green pea, which in Britain is sometimes used…
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Ackee
Ackee, sometimes called ‘akee’, is the red, pear-shaped fruit of a tropical African tree. It’s related to the lychee and the longan. The fruit is very popular in Caribbean cuisine – it’s the national fruit of Jamaica – and is thought to have first arrived from Africa via a slave ship. It was later imported to…