by Tom Stobart
Testing and storage. When bottles are heated, the contents expand a little (in some cases, as with peas and corn, there is also swelling during cooking), and some air is driven out. On cooling, there is contraction, and if the seal is good, a partial vacuum is formed which sucks the lid on tightly. In this condition, no organisms can get in to infect the contents. Jars should be tested, because if the lid is not sucked on properly, air will continually go in and out with the changes in atmospheric pressure, and spoilage organisms may enter. Although we are always told to store bottled fruit in a dry place, anywhere will do, although preferably it should be dark (unless the jar is wrapped). Light promotes bleaching, and after a time the appearance of the product is spoiled. Naturally. the jars should be labelled with contents and date.
BOTULISM. See poisoning.
BOUDIN BLANC. Not like the British white pudding but a delicate, costly, smooth, creamy sausage about 15 cm (6 in) long. It is made of finely-minced white pork with chicken – and sometimes rabbit or other meat – milk or cream, eggs, sometimes a little bland cereal, and a light flavouring of salt, spice and onion. Though poached in the making, they are best brushed with melted butter and grilled. Boudin blanc de Paris contains chicken breasts, and du Mans does not, but the exact make up is local. Boudins blancs do not keep.
BOUDIN NOIR. See black pudding.
BOUFFI. See herring.
BOUILLON. See broth.
BOUQUET GARNI. A bundle or faggot of herbs. The herbs are tied together or enclosed in a muslin bag, so that they can be removed at any time, either at the end of cooking or when they have given sufficient flavour to the dish. The basic bouquet consists of a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme and three sprigs of parsley, but there are endless variants and bouquets may contain marjoram, lemon thyme, basil, chervil, savoury, tarragon, chillies, mace, cinnamon sticks, bitter orange peel and anything else that the cook thinks will improve flavour. The bouquet garni is absolutely essential to good European cooking. It should be kept simple to begin with and elaborated by experience.
BOURGOURI. See burghul.
BOYSENBERRY. See raspberry
BRACKEN. See fern.
BRAIN has a soft and creamy texture when cooked. Although the brains of all the main meat animals are eaten, calf brain is the most used as a dish in its own right. All brains should be soaked in cold water for anything from 1 hour (calf brain) to 4 hours (ox brain).The surrounding membranes are then removed together with any traces of blood that are still visible. The first stage in most recipes for brain is simmering for about 20 minutes in a court bouillon that has been slightly acidified with vinegar. Brain may then, for example, be browned in butter or dipped in batter and deep fried.
[Brain – French: cervelle German: Gehirn Italian: cervelli (pl) Spanish: cerebro]
BRAISING. A combined roasting and stewing technique applied to meat, fish or vegetables. The food is put in a pan with a closely-fitting lid (which stops evaporation and keeps in the aromas) and cooked very slowly on top of the stove or in the oven. Very little liquid is added, and the meat or fish is usually laid on a mirepoix of chopped or diced vegetables, chopped bones, or blanched pork rind to protect it from the hot pan bottom. The correct utensil to use is a braisière, and the best are made of tinned copper.
[Braising – French: braiser German: schmoren Italian: brasare Spanish: cocer en cazuela con poca agua]
BRAMBLE. See blackberry.
BRAN is the fibrous skin of the *wheat grain which is separated in milling. It is mainly used for feeding animals. Bran may be fine or coarse and varies in colour from yellowish to dark reddish brown. When sold as animal feed, it is often known as wheatfeed or middlings.
As bran provides roughage, which is useful in alleviating constipation, it has long been sold as a health food, although not everyone will like the flavour, which in some cases seems to have been developed on the principle that what tastes nasty must do you good. Much bran is therefore toasted and made into breakfast cereals. Bran contains a high proportion of B vitamins as well as about half of the mineral content of the grain. Most of its weight, though, is made up of cellulose, which humans cannot digest. Bran is now valued by many dieticians as a source of fibre in the diet to compensate for the general over-refinement of our food. A diet that is rich in fibre is said to have the result of reducing the cholesterol level in the blood and might thus be a factor in helping to prevent heart disease. The idea that such an inexpensive item as bran might actually be health-giving inevitably excited the food manufacturers, with the result that proprietary brands of bread and crispbread are now promoted in bran-enriched versions.
During milling, bran is deliberately kept in flakes so that it can be separated easily. Where wholewheat flour is unobtainable, you can grind up bran finely in a coffee grinder and add it to white flour. This cheating will produce something with the grittiness of atta, the Indian wholemeal flour which makes the best parathas and other unleavened breads.
[Bran – French: son German: Kleie Italian: crusca Spanish: salvado]
BRANDY (from the Dutch brandewijn, burnt wine) is distilled from wine (unlike *marc) and is found in every country where there are vineyards. Brandy was originally an expensive remedy sold by apothecaries. As it is made from many types of wine and hence from many different grapes, brandy is an exceedingly variable product. Every country produces its own range, and there are strong local preferences and tastes. In France, the finest brandies are *cognac and *armagnac. A good, lesser brandy is usually called a fine, with possibly the area of origin tacked on. If recipes specify un verre à liqueur de fine bourgogne, it would probably (to anyone other than a Burgundian) be permissible to use another fine, but never cooking brandy, and certainly not a brandy from another country which might be muscat flavoured or over-sweet to French tastes.
Spain produces brandies of its own which are not imitations of French brandies; indeed, the Spanish probably first learned the technique of distillation from the Arabs. Popular Spanish brands vary greatly, and there are also fine Spanish liqueur brandies long aged in the wood. In cooking Spanish dishes, such as zarzuela of fish, the selection of the right local brandy is necessary for the authentic dockside taste (if that is what you want), especially as cheaper brandies are often faked up with vanilla or sassafras. Where Spain is addicted to brandy for both cooking and drinking, Italy is not, and brandy is not a common ingredient in Italian food. When used, it tends to be in sophisticated recipes, for which cognac is often specified.
In Germany, people often refer to Weinbrand as cognac without implying that it is the genuine article from France. For a country that produces such superb wines, the brandy is usually fiery stuff, but then the Germans are Schnapps drinkers and prefer it like that; otherwise they wouldn’t make it that way. In German recipes containing brandy, however, nothing is to be gained by searching for a German brandy as a French one can be used. In Greece, brandy is a popular drink and has its own peculiar taste which is derived from the local grapes. It is not much used in Greek cooking.
Outside Europe, important producers are the US, which manufactures enormous quantities of brandy in continuous stills, South Africa – another country where brandy is a very popular drink – and Australia, where the home market is limited as Australians prefer beer. In the past, South African brandies were noted for their over-strong, raisiny taste, as they were made from muscat grapes. There, as in many countries, folle blanche and other special brandy grapes have recently been introduced from France and a great improvement has been the result. (I must say, though, that hardboiled penguin eggs, without that raisiny brandy, will never taste so memorably horrible again.) South America also makes a great deal of brandy which follows the usual pattern, but pisco, a brandy from Peru, has a highly characteristic taste, which was originally derived from the bees’ wax used in pioneer days to waterproof earthenware amphorae, which had to serve instead of oak casks. Naturally, if a recipe calls for pisco you have to use pisco, but use one made in Peru, as there are imi
tations made elsewhere which are little like the brandy they purport to imitate.
[Brandy – French: cognac, eau de vie German: Weinbrand, Branntwein, Kognak, Schnapps (colloquial) Italian: acquavite, cognac Spanish: aguardiente, coñac]
BRANK. See buckwheat.
BRASS is an alloy of copper and zinc, which was probably first known to the Romans at about the time of Christ. An earlier alloy (probably that referred to as brass in the Bible) was bronze, a mixture of copper and tin. In the Orient, brass is still much used for utensils though, it is, alas, fast being replaced by aluminium – aesthetically less pleasing, but cheaper. The coppersmiths in the bazaars beat brass, as it can be worked cold if it contains over 64% copper.
Naked brass is used for making those beautiful water vessels village girls in India carry on their heads. The vessels are kept scrupulously clean by scouring with ashes inside and out. Naked brass is also traditionally used for drinking mugs for water or milk. For cooking, however, brass pots are usually tinned inside; the exceptions are preserving pans and the pans used for heating jam glaze. Heavy tinned brass pans can still be bought in the Orient, and although it takes much work to keep them clean (they are not as easy to clean as copper), they are durable, beautiful and excellent for cooking. My kitchen is full of them. However, these pans should be retinned as the original tinning is likely to contain lead.
[Brass – French: cuivre German: Messing Italian: ottone Spanish: cobre amarillo]
BRATHERINGE. See herring.
BRATWURST is a German sausage for grilling or frying. It is pale in colour and made of finely ground pork or veal. There are also smoked varieties which should be cooked only for a short time.
BRAWN. Usually pig’s head, salted and cured very briefly, boiled with seasonings, boned and chopped, then moulded with some of the gelatinous broth formed during boiling. In this form, it is equivalent to the French fromage de tête or fromage de cochon; indeed, in the US, brawn is usually known as head cheese. Sheep and cow heads may also be used, and brawn was even made from baby rabbits by the hard-hearted farmer’s wives where I lived as a child.
Although most modern brawn recipes call for the head to be chopped and the brawn set in a mould, there are also recipes which leave the outside of the head, the skin and the cheeks intact to serve as a covering. After removal of the bones, and arrangement of tongue and other bits, the whole is rolled and tied in a cloth in a sausage shape before being given a final boiling. In France, this form of brawn might be called hûre (head, as in hûre de sanglier, boar’s head). Refined versions of brawn, in which the broth is clarified and used to coat a mould (often with cut-out vegetable decorations), merge with galantine, although this was usually made from chicken or veal. Brawn is eaten cold (otherwise the jelly would melt), and needs mustard and pickles or, better, Dijon mustard with it.
Brawn
Brawn (in my opinion) is best when made from a young pig, the head lightly dry-cured, and cooked very simply without flavourings. The following is based on a Sussex recipe. For half a head, well cleaned and washed in cold water, you will need 25 g (1 oz) saltpetre, 100 g (4 oz) sugar and 225 g (8 oz) salt, with ¼ lt (½ pt) of vinegar. Have the brains removed by the butcher and possibly also the tongue; but traditionally the latter is included in the brawn.
Cut off the ear, cut it open and clean it well. Scald the head and scrape off any bristles a careless butcher may have left. Dry the meat and ear well and rub all over with half of the salt. Leave it overnight. Next day, throw out the accumulated liquid and rub the meat with a mixture of the saltpetre, sugar and remaining salt. Make quite sure that this mixture is poked into every hole and cranny. Leave until next day. Then pour on the vinegar and turn all the bits round in the brine that has been formed until they are well wetted. Turn the meat (I always drain off the brine and pour it back over again) daily for at least another 2 days (you can continue for up to a week).Then wash the head, tongue and ear, and put them to soak in plain water for 2 hours to remove some of the salt. Put them into a pan of cold water, bring to the boil, skim and simmer until the tongue can be skinned and the bones removed. Do this as soon as the meat is cool enough to handle. Check that everything is tender and sufficiently cooked (the tongue or ear gristle occasionally need a little longer than the rest). When they are ready, cut the cheek (the main piece of meat) into 3 slices, parallel to the skin. Line a basin with 2 of these slices, and fill the centre with the bits of muscle, ear and cut-up tongue. Cover with the third slice of cheek. Press down. (I like to use a basin which is just overflowing and press the brawn down into it with a weighted board, but others wrap the brawn in a cloth, or bandage it, and then press it down under a board.) When cold, unmould the brawn and, if possible, keep it in the refrigerator to mature for 2 days before use. Brawn may be flavoured with onion, pepper, nutmeg, bouquet garni or lemon juice, but if is well made, the meat can stand on its own. Some brawns are made by cutting the meat into small bits and incorporating it into the jelly. The choice is open and the results range from a delicately flavoured, pale pink, tender brawn, to a tough, greyish jelly with bits of chopped gristle embedded in it.
[Brawn – French: fromage de tête, galantine de porc, pâté de cochon German: Schweinesülze Italian: salome di porco, sminuzzato Spanish: carne en gelatine]
BRAZIL NUT, para nut or cream nut. This nut is the seed of a giant tree (Bertholettia excelsa) which grows wild in the tropical South American jungle. Although domestication has begun and the tree has been tried in other tropical places, the odds are still that the nuts one buys have come from some remote tributary of the Amazon. They grow packed together like the sections of an orange inside a large, spherical woody fruit. The tree itself grows to a great height, and, with its long unbranched trunk, thrusts its head far above the general green canopy of thick forest. When the nuts are ripe, the whole fruit comes crashing to the ground. Since each one weighs several pounds and falls from such a height, collecting is a dangerous occupation. lt goes on from November to June. The fruit are broken open with a machete and the nuts washed in the nearest creek (bad nuts tend to float away).They are then dried on mats, taken downstream by canoe during the rainy season and finally transported to market by river steamer.
Brazil nuts are graded. The largest come mainly from the higher forest of the upper Amazon. Most common are the average-sized nuts. The small ones go to the chocolate makers.
Apart from the whole dessert nuts, which have become traditional at Christmas, it is usual, for cooking purposes, to buy nuts already cracked, because extracting the kernel in a whole state is difficult with ordinary nutcrackers. Commercially, they are cracked by rollers. As Brazils become rancid fairly soon after exposure to the air, you need to be careful when buying cracked ones. They are easy to grate or grind.
As Brazil nuts contain 60-65% oils and up to 20% protein, they are very nutritious. They are high in cobalt and even higher in calories than almonds which, in analysis, they rather resemble. Even the oil pressed from Brazils is like almond oil. When fresh, it is pale yellow, almost odourless and pleasantly nutty. It is sometimes used in Brazil as an olive oil substitute.
Brazil nuts are used in modern vegetarian or health food recipes, but are otherwise neglected. When freshly cracked, they have a delicious and individual flavour, so the field is wide open for experiment.
Paradise or Sapucaya nut (Lecythis sabucajo). A near relative of the Brazil, and rather like it, but more rounded and with deep grooves running from end to end. The shell is so fragile that it can often be broken with the fingers. The creamy-white kernel is sweeter than that of the Brazil and has a more delicate flavour. It is used mainly in tropical South America, but is increasingly exported.
[Brazil nut – French: noix du Brésil German: Paranuss Italian: noce del Brasile, noce del Para Spanish: nuez del Brasil]
BREAD. Unleavened bread has been a staple food for many thousands of years. In Europe and Asia, it was mainly made of wheat, barley or millet, but in America up to the time of Col
umbus, bread was baked from maize, the only cereal known on that side of the Atlantic. It is interesting that rice was usually boiled and not baked into a bread (although such exists), while in northern China (where wheat, not rice, is the staple), the wheat is traditionally eaten steamed as dumplings or made into pasta, rather than being baked into bread.
Although leavened bread with yeast was well known in the Middle East of the Old Testament among poor people, especially nomads, this bread would usually have been baked on a flat iron plate or stone; an oven is more costly to construct and cannot be conveniently moved about. The old brick ovens in which the hot fuel had to be raked out before the bread was put in were ideal, as they provided a falling heat and the fuels added flavour to the bread. Compared to modern ovens, though, they are tricky to manage. Some think that the bread tastes better if the oven has been fired with wood. Modern bakeries use ovens heated by gas, oil or electricity, and the bread is often baked on conveyor belts.
Until the middle of the 19th century, bread was always leavened by yeast, but then various forms of baking powder were tried. This leavening is still used for scones, girdle cakes and soda bread (as well as for cakes).The so-called aerated bread was also invented and introduced in Victorian times. This contained no yeast, but had the dough artificially inflated by gas. It never became really popular because of its uncharacteristic flavour. Today, in some developed countries, much bread is made in factories, and new, shorter methods of making bread have been introduced. One of their advantages is that they allow a higher proportion of low-gluten flour to be used. Also, partly because fermentation losses are smaller, more loaves can be made from the same quantity of flour. In the Chorleywood Bread Process, the gluten fibres are ‘developed’ during a few minutes of high-power mixing. Bread made in this way contains a proportion of yeast to allow it to mature quickly. Another method, Activated Dough Development, relies mainly on chemicals to work on the gluten; the additives include Vitamin C, potassium bromate and the amino acid, cysteine.