| Term | Definition
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|---|
| popover | A quick bread that is baked at relatively high tempeture in a muffin type pan. This produces a hollow, very brown bread, extremely tastey when served hot right out of the oven!
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| pumpkin | A member of the squash family best known for being carved into Halloween jack-o-lanterns or turned into pie filling for Thanksgiving dinner. It also may be boiled, sliced, fried or pureed or used in soups. The French make pumpkin jam and the Italians use it as a filling for sweet ravioli. The seeds are rich in fats and protien and may be roasted and salted, as a snack or garnish.
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| ramp | A wild onion that resembles a scallion with a strong garlic-onion flavor. Found in specialty produce markets from March to June.
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| ricotta cheese | An Italian cheese similar to cottage cheese but slightly grainy and sweet.
Used in dishes such as lasagna and manicotti. Low fat recipes often call for cottage cheese or a combination of cottage and ricotta as a substitute.
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| rose hip | The reddish-orange fruit of the rose (after the petals have fallen).
High in vitamin C, they are used to make jellies and jams, syrup, tea and wine.
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| Rotel Tomatoes | A brand of canned tomatoes preseasoned with chopped green chili peppers, salt and spices.
They now come in a number of variations including Mexican and Extra Spicy. Most common recipe is to mix 1 pound of Velveeta cheese and a can of Rotel tomatoes and some chopped fresh cilantro, heated together and served with tortilla chips. These add zest to any number of recipes.
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| Scald | Plunging foods with skins, such as tomatoes, into
boiling water. This loosens and splits the skin,
so it can be removed easily.
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| Scalding milk | Heat milk to just below the boiling point. This
can slow the souring of the milk.
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| scant | Not quite up to full measure. For example: a scant teaspoon of an ingredient would be less than a teaspoonful as opposed to a level teaspoon, rounded teaspoon or heaping teaspoon.
|
| snow crab | A type of crab found in the North Pacific region, may be cooked by frying or broiling
but the easiest way is to steam them in a large pot with a little boiling water until they turn a nice orangey color. Live crabs
should be cooked the day they are purchased and refrigerated until cooking. Cook raw crabmeat within 24 hours of when the crab dies.
Crab can then be shelled and used in recipes or dipped in drawn butter as with lobster.
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| soft crack stage | In candy making, the test for sugar syrup describing the point at which a drop of boiling syrup dropped in cold water separates into hard though pliable threads. On a candy thermometer, this is between 270 degrees and 290 degrees.
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| stick of butter | one stick or cube of butter equals 1/2 cup.
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| stock | A strained broth made by cooking any vegetable,
meat, seafood, or poultry in water. Used for
soups and sauces.
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| sweat, to | to cook (usually vegetables) over low heat, causing their juices to be released and their sweetness enhanced while becoming translucent rather than colored
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| Tabasco (Sauce) | Sauce made from the tabasco pepper, vinegar and salt and trademarked by the McIlhenny family since the mid-1800s. It's very hot and spicy.
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| tapas | Appetizers popular throughout Spain.
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| Tempe | Fermented soy beans, like tofu. Used in Indonesian cooking. Quite a distinct taste, as opposed to tofu.
Also spelled tempeh.
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| Teppanyaki cooking | Japanese cooking on a grill.
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| tofu | Also know as bean curd, white tofu is made from curdled soy milk. Popular in Asian cooking, tofu itself has a mild nutty flavor but will readily take on the flavor of the food in which it is cooked.
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| tomatillo | Similar to a small green tomato and from the same nightshade family, tomatillos are distinctive in their thin paper like covering. Typically used green they have a lemon herb flavor and are found in Southwestern and Mexican dishes.
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| tournedo | Beefsteak cut from the tenderloin. Because they are very lean it's common to wrap them in bacon or pork fat for cooking.
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| trifle | Sponge cake or ladyfingers soaked with liquor and covered with jam, whipped cream and nuts.
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| tripe | Most often, the lining of beef stomach. Among other things, used in the Spanish soup Menudo.
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| truffle | Fungus that is considered a delicacy. Prized fragrance is earthy and garlicky. Very expensive due to cultivation techniques. Pigs and dogs actually ferret out the fungi which grow several inches below the ground.
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| tube pan | A tube pan is simply an old-fashioned angel food cake pan. A round high sided pan with a hollow center tube.
The tube helps with more even baking in the center of the cake. Another version of this type of pan is the bundt pan.
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| turnover | Sweet or savory filled pastry squares or semi-circles. Sealed with filling inside, they are usally baked or deep fried, they can be bite sized or up to 6 inches across.
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| unleavened | Describes baked goods that do not contain leavening agents such as baking powder, baking soda or yeast.
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| vanilla | Aeromaic bean of one variety of orchid. Bean or extract are used to heighten the flavor of other ingredients. Pure vanilla is relatively expensive due to the culturing process and time consuming extraction process.
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| veal | Meat from a young calf, generally from 1 to 3 months old.
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| vermicelli | Pasta which is shaped in long thin strands. Much thinner that regular spaghetti.
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