by Tom Stobart
GRAS DOUBLE. The fatter outer layer of the ox stomach, usually sold cooked in France, otherwise simmer it for five hours in slightly salted water. In England, it is not distinguished from other forms of *tripe.
GRASS PEA. See lath.
GRAVLAX, gravadlax (Swedish), or gravlaks (Norwegian). Literally ‘grave salmon’, this treated salmon is one of the world’s great food specialities. Methods of making it vary from one country to another, but basically the salmon is boned into two fillets, rubbed on the cut faces with a mixture of salt, saltpetre, sugar, ground black pepper and finely-chopped dill, put back together and pressed under a weight for 24-36 hours. Gravlax is usually eaten raw – it has been ‘cured’ by the salt – with a sauce. Occasionally, it is grilled or lightly baked in foil with dill. Gravlax is expensive, but well worth trying for a treat.
Each 30th April (Walpurgis Night), Sweden celebrates the end of winter and the arrival of spring. The main dish is usually gravlax, with the following mustard sauce.
Mustard Sauce for Gravlax
Mix together in a bowl 2 tablespoons mustard and 1 tablespoon each of vinegar and sugar. Then add 6 tablespoons oil, a little at a time, until well blended. The sauce will thicken rapidly and must be stirred vigorously. Finally, add 6 tablespoons sour cream and plenty of finely-chopped dill.
GREEN ALMOND. See pistachio nut.
GREEN BEAN. See *kidney bean.
GREENGAGE. See plum.
GREEN GRAM. See mung bean.
GREEN LAVER. See seaweed.
GREENS. See cabbage.
GREENSAUCE. See sorrel.
GRENADINE. A French fruit syrup made from pomegranates and sugar.
GRILLING or broiling. In the old days, this always was done on an iron grill over red hot charcoal and was distinguished from roasting which was done beside the fire. Grilling therefore was a combination of radiant and rising heat, while roasting was almost entirely done by radiant heat, and the meat did not get so much taste from the fire. Also, since the heat of grilling was more intense, it was a method suitable for smaller bits of meat – steaks, chops and so on. The modern electric or gas grill is in a sense more like roasting since the cooking is by radiant and not by rising heat. The meat, of course, does not get the taste of the fire or of burning drippings. In barbecue grilling, it is important that the grill be really clean, something that cooks often neglect. Before use, the grill should be heated and rubbed with fat so that the meat does not stick. The grill should preferably be slightly inclined to encourage the fat to run down the bars and so to minimize dripping into the fire. Dry meats should be brushed over with oil before being cooked. Salt should be sprinkled on the meat only at the last moment before it is put on the heat, as it will otherwise make the juices run. In the US grilling is still called broiling, an old English term.
[Grilling – French: griller German: auf dem Rost braten, rösten Italian: cuocere alla graticola Spanish: asar a Ia parrilla]
GRILSE. See salmon.
GRINDING. Sometimes it is useful to be able to grind things in the kitchen. For those wishing to grind their own wheat or chick peas, small hand grinders can be bought. With chick peas, it will be necessary to put them through twice. Grinding spices is best done in a small whirling-blade coffee grinder kept for this purpose. Very hard, large pieces, such as dried ginger and whole turmeric need to be cracked with a hammer first or they may break the blades. In making spice mixtures, oily materials like cloves and mace are best ground with non-oily spices such as ginger, turmeric or chilli if possible. The difference between freshly-ground spices, coffee and even flours and the commercially-milled, bought versions is immense – more than you will imagine until you have tried.
[Grinding – French: moudre, émoudre German: mahlen Italian: macinare Spanish: moler]
GRISKIN. In cutting up pigs (especially for bacon), when the spine is separated from the sides, some 5 cm (2 in) of meat are left attached to it, and this is known as the griskin. The word is also used for bits of loin. In small pigs, the griskin is left attached to the top of the spare ribs. See chine.
[Griskin – French: grillade de porc German: Schweinsrücken, Rippenstück Italian: coscia di maiale]
GRISSINI. Finger-thick, crisp bread sticks, a speciality of Piedmont, especially Turin, but now made commercially and distributed throughout the world. The excellence of grissini was noted in writings in the 17th century. Napoleon was partial to the petits bâtons de Turin, and an attempt was made to make them in Paris, with two Torinese experts brought in for the purpose. The result was a disaster. tough sticks of pale bread instead of the crisp, light and beautiful grissini of Italy. Grissini are extremely difficult to make by hand and require great dexterity. They are formed by taking strips of dough about 1 cm (⅓ in) thick and 7 cm (3 in) long and pulling it out into a thin filament almost 1 m (about 3 ft) long, then swinging it to shape it and laying it out on a sheet sprinkled with rice flour. In Piedmont, Lombardy and a few other places in Italy, it is still possible to get the authentic grissino stirato torinese, which is preferred by some to the factory-made grissino. However, commercial grissini are often excellent and, properly packaged, have the advantage of keeping crisp and good for two weeks, while the hand-made article keeps for at most a day. Grissini are very digestible, very dry – they contain only 12% moisture compared to 25-40% in bread – and are baked at a high temperature, usually 250°C (480°F).
GRITS. Grain which has had the hull removed and has been ground into a coarse meal. In Britain, the grain is usually oats, but in the US, usually maize (i.e., hominy grits). Groats, which are mixed with hot milk as an infant food, are oat grits.
[Grits – French: gruau d’avoine German: Grütze Italian: tritello d’avena Spanish: avena a medio moler]
GROATS. See grits.
GROENE HARING. See herring.
GROS SEL. See salt.
GROUND CHERRY. See physalis fruit.
GROUNDNUT. See peanut.
GROUSE, PTARMIGAN and CAPER-CAILLIE. The grouse family are game birds of the cold North and mountain regions, and are characterized by their feathered legs and feet. Its members include the ptarmigan (Lagopus mutus) from Europe and North America, and the caper-caillie (Tetrao urogallus) of Scandinavia, northern Russia, the Alps and the Carpathians, which clings to the north of Scotland (after having become extinct there and been reintroduced). It also includes the hazelhen (Tetrastes bonasia) of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe and the Black grouse (Lyrurus tetrix),which is also called the blackcock (male) and greyhen (female). One of the many American species, the Sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), feeds on sage buds; it needs to have the crop removed as soon as it is shot, but even then does not have a very pleasing flavour on account of its diet.
None of these relatives approaches the Red or Scottish grouse (Lagopus lagopus scoticus) – usually just known as grouse – for quality. Indeed, many gastronomes have said that grouse is the finest game bird in the world. The Red grouse is a subspecies of the Willow grouse (Lagopus lagopus) of Scandinavia and North Russia, a bird which, like a ptarmigan, has a lot of white on it and goes almost completely white in winter. The Red grouse is ruddy brown and does not go white in winter. Probably because of its diet of heather buds and berries on the moors, it has an incomparable flavour. Such is the cult of the grouse that experts claim to distinguish between the flavour of birds from one part of Britain and another, and say it also varies from year to year, like a wine vintage. Red grouse are found only in the north and west of Britain and in Ireland; they live only on moors. The shooting season starts on 12th August and lasts until 10th December. Visitors to Britain at that time may have a unique experience. The best grouse are those born the same year and eaten before mid-October.
Young grouse will have clean, fresh-looking claws and a flexible tip to the breastbone – like other young birds. They are hung as long as possible – a week in warm weather and considerably longer in cold (unless they have been badly shot) – and are then plucked, wiped (never washed)
, drawn, trussed neatly either without the head (or with the head tucked under the wing) and roasted. They are best done very simply, perhaps stuffed with a spoonful of butter mixed with a few rowan berries. Older grouse may be made into pies or pâtés, but grouse recipes are never elaborate as the bird needs little added flavour.
[Grouse – French: tétras German: Birkhuhn, schotisches Moorhuhn Italian: starna di montagna Spanish: gallo de bosque, lagópodo escocés, ortega.
Ptarmigan – French: lagopède German: Alpenschneehuhn Italian: pernice di montagna Spanish: perdiz blanca]
GUANCIALE. See bacon.
GUAVA. The guava (Psidium guajava) is a tropical and subtropical fruit, originally from central America but now grown all over the world in warm climates, though not greatly in the Mediterranean region or in the US. It is important in India, South East Asia, Hawaii and Cuba. In many places, it is a poor man’s fruit, as it runs wild, even becoming a pest and producing poor quality fruit, which is nonetheless useful as it contains about ten times as much vitamin C as an orange, and vitamin C is a frequent deficiency in tropical diets.
The name guava comes from the Spanish-American guayaba. The plant is a small tree of the myrtle family, which includes such important plants as eucalyptus, and the spices allspice and cloves. The fruit looks superficially something like a quince (though no relation), being greenish, yellowish or creamy in colour, round or pear shaped, with a smooth or rough thin skin, according to variety. The whole fruit is edible. Inside, it is divided into two zones, an outer seedless one and an inner pulp which usually contains minute gritty seeds (although there are seedless varieties). Good guavas are acid-sweet, with a strange exotic flavour. The smell is very strong, especially when the fruit is overripe, and it drowns all others in Asian fruit markets during the guava season.
Unripe fruits are so astringent that they are inedible. The best fruit are plucked perfectly ripe, but commercially they are picked when the colour is just turning from green to yellow, so that they will be ready about 24 hours later. Guavas go off rapidly. Though they can be kept in cold store for up to a week, the results are not really satisfactory. Guavas are therefore rarely available outside the warm countries unless they have been flown in as a luxury. They make excellent jelly and guava cheese (a stiff fruit butter).They are also canned, and the better brands are worth eating, although the flavour is not quite the same as in the fresh fruit.
The related cattley or Strawberry guava (Psidium cattleianum) is native to Brazil and is sometimes cultivated. It is reddish purple, smaller than the guava, and good to eat.
[Guava – French: goyave Italian: guaiva Spanish: guayaba]
GUINEA FOWL. There are a number of species of guinea fowl which make up the small family Numididae. They come from Africa, where they are plentiful in some places. I once stayed for a month with a Kenya farmer whose wife served guinea fowl for lunch and dinner every day, and never any other meat. After a while, I became interested and made enquiries. From other guests I discovered that guinea fowl were so plentiful in the area that the farmer had probably eaten no other meat for at least eight years, possibly longer. Since guinea fowl run and rarely take to the wing where they can be shot, the technique was to go out in the evening with a pack of assorted dogs who compelled the birds to take to the trees where they could be picked off with a .22 rifle. Getting the day’s supply took no more than a few minutes.
The handsome speckled bird we know was domesticated from West Africa long ago. It was known to the Romans as Carthage or Numidian hen. Until after Shakespeare’s time what we now call guinea fowl were known as turkeys in English – people thought they had come from Turkey (the place everything from foreign parts seems to have been ascribed to in the old days). It was only later that the name was transferred to the American turkey. Presumably the early colonists called their new-found birds after the smaller, but in some respects similar, bird they knew at home. To confuse things further, the old French name for guinea fowl was poule dinde. Guinea fowls are smaller than chickens and were often hung and used as substitutes for pheasants in Victorian times to cover the months when real pheasant was out of season.
The flesh of young guinea fowl is excellent, though rather dry. As domestic birds, guinea fowl have the snag that they are inveterate wanderers, almost always trying to hide their nests and never quite liking captivity. The eggs, smaller than hens, are slightly speckled, with very thick shells, so that when boiled they take some cracking. They are excellent when hard boiled and are used as a substitute for plover’s eggs. Roasted guinea fowl tends to be rather dry, so the bird needs to be larded, or at least barded. There are also some excellent casserole recipes in British, French and Italian cookery books, and guinea fowl, under the guise of Bohemian pheasants have even had a place at banquets, though they are in general neglected.
[Guinea fowl – French: pintade German: Perlhuhn Italian: faraona, gallina di Faraone Spanish: gallina de Guinea]
GUINEA GRAINS. See grains of paradise.
GUITAR FISH. See shark.
GUM is used more by industry or by professional cooks and sweet-makers than in the home. British gum is another name for *dextrin. Of the true gums, gum arabic and gum tragacanth are the best known. These, like most other gums, are chemically closely related to *pectin. Gums are colloids, which usually dissolve completely in water, but not in alcohol, and they can be obtained by wounding various plants, mainly trees, and collecting the sticky stuff that exudes. In this, gums may seem similar to resins such as *mastic, but in other respects they are quite different. (Resins contain essential oils and do not dissolve in water.) Both gum arabic and gum tragacanth were known in pre-Christian times. In ancient Egypt, for instance, gum arabic was used in paint as long ago as 2000 BC. It is still largely produced and shipped from Egypt, although nowadays Senegal, India and other parts of the world including the southern US have an important production. Gum tragacanth comes mainly from Iran, Turkey and Syria. Both these gums are exuded from small leguminous trees, gum arabic from a small acacia, Acacia senegal, and tragacanth from Astragalus gummifer of the milk-vetch genus. Acacias are well known to flower lovers and include the ‘mimosas’ which flower so profusely in Mediterranean countries in January, although they are Australian trees more correctly called ‘wattles’ (the flowers are candied for cake decoration). Another acacia, Acacia farnesiana, originally from the West Indies and abundant in the Jordan Valley, produces a gum as fine as gum arabic.
Gum arabic. Strips of bark are removed from the acacia in spring (February to May). After about three weeks, the tears of gum can be removed. These are dried and bleached in the sun; after cleaning they are ready for export. Gum arabic is colourless and without taste or smell. Although there are a few people who are allergic to it, it is generally considered harmless. In food manufacturing, it is a stabilizer used in the soft drinks and brewing industries, in chewing gums, jellies, jujubes, marshmallows and various food mixtures. In ices, it retards the crystallization of sugar. Gum arabic can usually be bought from chemists (it was used in making pills). When melted in a little hot water, it makes a gum useful for sticking and varnishing in cake decoration. It can be coloured and used as a paint on marzipan. Artificial frost for cakes can be made by painting a thin layer of the gum on a clean glazed surface and allowing it to dry until it crazes, after which it is scraped off and roughly powdered.
Gum tragacanth. Collected in the same way as gum arabic, it can be bought in tears or flakes. A commonly used, and cheaper, substitute is Karaya or sterculia gum (from a plant of the cocoa family), which can be bought as a powder. Gum tragacanth has a faintly gluey taste, but is harmless. Allergies to it are very rare, and it is one of the oldest known emulsifiers. Commercially, it is used in water ices, salad dressings, jellies and candies. Gum tragacanth can be used to make small cake ornaments if it is soaked in water, and then mixed into a paste with icing sugar, the mixture can be coloured and moulded into shapes.
[Gum – French: gomme German: Gummi Itali
an: gomma Spanish: goma.
Gum arabic – French: gomme arabique German: Gummiarabikum Italian: gamma arabica Spanish: goma arábiga]
GUMBO. See okra.
GUR. See jaggery.
GUTTING. See drawing (for birds), fish.
GYPSUM, calcium sulphate (CaSO4), a common mineral. It is to some extent soluble in water and in tap water causes the ‘permanent’ hardness which is not removed as a precipitate by boiling. Plaster of Paris is gypsum that has been heated in a furnace.
Adding gypsum to wine is known as plastering, an ancient technique for increasing acidity, already known – and complained about – by the Romans. Hot-country grapes (unless picked early so that a percentage of them are unripe) are liable to lack the acidity that is necessary for the preservation and flavour of good wine. If gypsum is added, it reacts with the *cream of tartar that is naturally present to produce tarraric acid plus calcium tartrate and potassium sulphate. Calcium tartrate is not soluble in water, so is precipitated as a sludge, which settles out. Unfortunately, the potassium sulphate remains in the wine, and this is unwelcome. Plastering is always done in making sherry because the palomino grape is always short on acid. Apart from that, in most wine-producing countries, the use of gypsum has been discontinued. The modern alternative is to add tartaric acid instead of gypsum.
[Gypsum – French: gypse German: Gips ltalian: gesso Spanish: yeso]
h
HADDOCK. See cod.
HAGGIS. A type of sausage consisting of minced sheep’s liver, heart and lungs, mixed with toasted or plain oatmeal, onion and fat (usually suet), seasoned with salt, pepper and nutmeg, packed in a sheep’s stomach and simmered in salted water for 4 hours. (Haggamuggie is similarly prepared from the liver of a fish.) There is much argument as to the origin of this, the Scottish national dish, some saying it was introduced by the Romans, others that it came from France. Why shouldn’t it have come from Scotland? On a farm north of the Cairngorms, where I worked one winter, two things were plentiful besides the snow: oatmeal – the farm workers had part of their wages paid in it – and sheep. Given those two ingredients, and the bleak cold to keep out, it is difficult to see how the invention of haggis could have been avoided. Ever since then, whenever we killed a sheep on expeditions, I have made haggis (with wild onions and porridge oats). Apart from being tasty and filling, sheeps, innards dealt with in that way would keep for up to two weeks, even when being carried about from place to place. Haggis, indeed, is not a Burns Night speciality, but an economical, basic food of hard-living people.