by Tom Stobart
Conejo a Ia ampurdanesa
Fry a rabbit cut in pieces to a golden brown colour. Take it out of the pan and fry one sliced onion and two cloves garlic. Add a skinned, de-seeded and chopped tomato, fry it a little, then put back the rabbit. Then add one glass wine (which should be rancio – the word is the same as rancid – an aged Spanish wine which is almost amber in colour, it is off but not vinegary) and a bouquet garni of bay, thyme and parsley. Cook gently for 15 minutes, then add several mushrooms (which should correctly be the orange Lactarius, in Catalan country known as robellanes) in pieces and a good handful of chopped mixed pine nuts, hazel nuts and almonds. Cook on gently for 30 to 40 minutes until the meat is tender.
[Rabbit – French: lapin German: Kaninchen Italian: coniglio Spanish: conejo
Hare – French: lièvre German: Hase Italian: Iepre Spanish: liebre]
RADISH (Raphanus sativus) is eaten for its roots, although the top is also edible. The plant has been cultivated for so long that its wild ancestor is unknown, but occasionally a radish that has gone woody suggests what the original radish might have been like once. Radishes are annual or biennial. They are unfamiliar as adult plants because the small varieties are in the ground for no more than a month before being pulled and eaten. The enormous number of varieties differ in pungency; in colour from white, through pink to red, to two-coloured – red on top and white below – and even black; in size, from marbles to huge winter radishes a foot and more long; in shape from ball to cylinder and spinning-top. The small varieties must be lifted young, as they tend to become hollow when left in the soil for even a few days too long. Commercially grown radishes are now lifted and topped by machines which handle six rows at a time; by big American producers, they are also sorted, washed, cooled in ice-cold chlorinated water, bagged, weighed and sealed, all by machinery, before being delivered to the supermarkets in refrigerated trucks. Peering through the bag, you have to decide if the green bit looks fresh, because if it is not, the radish will also be hardly fresh; a surreptitious squeeze will show if the larger ones are hollow. If they are sold in bunches without wrapping, radishes should look bright and fresh (not just doused with water). Radishes can be kept for a couple of days if they are stood root-end down in a soup-plate of water, they can even be revived a little if wilted, but they will never taste as they do when pulled fresh from the garden.
For keeping, there are the huge winter radishes, such as China Rose, which are as big as a slicing sausage. A black-rooted type, shaped like a beetroot, is known as Black Spanish, but is rarely seen in Spain. These large winter radishes are peeled and cut into pieces – chips, slices or grated – and are excellent. A large white variety is the Japanese daikon.
The daikon-type (or China Rose) will keep for two weeks in the bottom of the refrigerator. Daikon is used in many ways peculiar to Japan – for example, grated with red caviar, or shredded and used in garnish for soups. Daikon is also the basis for pickles – takuan for instance. The small radishes belonging to varieties with names like Cherry Belle and French Breakfast are usually eaten fresh in salads, whole, sliced or sometimes used for decoration, cut nearly through to the top in segments and dropped into ice water, so that they open like flowers. In France and Italy, radishes are eaten as part of an hors d’oeuvre with butter (the four hors d’oeuvre of Rossini were radishes, butter, anchovies and pickled gherkins), although I prefer them with salty sheep’s-milk cheese as eaten in south-eastern Europe. It is a pity that so many radishes now seem to taste of little more than stagnant water – perhaps they are grown by hydroponics. Radishes are sometimes cooked like turnips, but are not very interesting.
[Radish – French: radis German: Radeschen Italian: rafano Spanish: rábano]
RAGI. See millet.
RAISINS are traditionally muscatel grape varieties dried in the sun. Some of the best come from Malaga in Spain, and the very finest dessert raisins are at least partially dried on the vine, still attached to the stalk in a bunch .The stalk is almost, but not quite, cut through to stop the sap getting to the bunch, and the leaves are removed to let the hot sun bathe it. Slightly less expensive bunches are dried by laying the grapes out on mats. Seedless raisins may be raisins stoned by machine – the best – or dried seedless grapes, which lack the full muscat flavour. Other dried grapes are *currants and *sultanas.
[Raisin – French: raisin sec German: Rosine Italian: uva secca Spanish: paso de uva]
RAMBUTAN. See lychee.
RAMPHAL. See custard apple.
RAM’S-HEAD PEA. See chick pea.
RANCIDITY. Rancid butter has a characteristic taste caused by the formation of butyric acid through a process of hydrolysis. Most rancid tastes, however, are produced by the oxidation of fats and oils exposed to the air. Commercially, this is prevented in freeze-dried meat products and in sausages by the addition of anti-oxidants; at home, rancidity can be very much delayed by storing fats and oils in full containers in the refrigerator. As cold very much slows down the chemical process, keeping salad dressings, mayonnaise, margarine, drippings and butter in the refrigerator is also sound practice, while the pan of oil or pot of old dripping kept for deep frying is not good sense for either the flavour of the food or good health in the family. Rancid flavours which develop in crude vegetable oils, particularly in olive oil made from olives that have been damaged by fly or that were half-rotted on the ground, are removed by ‘stripping’ (extracting the flavour), although some Spaniards, who have been used to semi-rancid oil since childhood, actually come to like it. The yak butter that Tibetans put in tea is also usually rancid.
RAPE (Brassica napus) is an outstandingly versatile and valuable species of food plant. It probably originated by hybridization between cabbage (B. oleracea) and turnip (B. rapa), but its history is uncertain; some varieties are of relatively recent origin, while others have been in cultivation since ancient times. Rape may be annual or biennial and may or may not have a tuberous root. The varieties grown for their roots are the *swede (var. napobrassica) and the rutabaga (var. rutabaga).
The non-tuberous varieties, such as the biennial var. arvensis, are known as rape, cole or coleseed. These are grown very widely as feed for cattle (to the distress of beekeepers who find that honey produced from the yellow rape flowers has an unpleasing crystalline texture).The seeds are the source of rape-seed or colza oil (see oils and fats); after this has been expressed, the residue is still oily enough to be worth making into rape-seed cake for feeding to cattle.
It is only in these days of the Trade Descriptions Act that rape has entered the culinary vocabulary of the urban British public. Greengrocers now distinguish rape from turnip tops as a spring green vegetable, and supermarkets even offer punnets of rape and cress, thus acknowledging a practice that has been common for years – rape seed tends to be cheaper than mustard seed and the seedlings keep better in warm weather (they differ from mustard seedlings in having leaves that are more intensely green). *Chinese cabbage may also be a variety of rape.
[Rape – French: colza German: Raps Italian: colza Spanish: colza]
RASPBERRY and loganberry. The many species of raspberry belong to the same genus (Rubus) as the blackberry and the dewberry in the cooler parts of the Northern hemisphere. However, there is a vast difference in taste between a raspberry and a blackberry (though not between a blackberry and a dewberry).
Raspberries occur in the cooler parts of the Northern hemisphere. The species that is native to Britain (R. idaeus) also grows wild all over Europe, except Portugal, Iceland and Turkey. Its natural habitat is damp woods, and it likes a brisk climate – and it is in Scotland, notably around Blairgowrie in Perthshire, that the best raspberries are grown commercially in Britain. From there, they are exported frozen even to the US. Raspberries are less known in Mediterranean countries, except near rainy mountains.
In the horticultural varieties of raspberry, flavour has to be balanced against disease-resistance and cropping. Although red is the usual colour, there are white, y
ellow and golden raspberries (which are soft and richly flavoured), as well as black-fruited raspberries developed from the American species, R. occidentalis. A small proportion of wild raspberries, particularly in Scotland, are pale yellow.
Since raspberries, like most fruit, are best when fully ripened on the cane and are highly perishable, those bought in shops are often suspect, doubly so if they are cheap. Damp stains on the bottom of the punnet will indicate that the fruit underneath is rotting, but however careful you are, it is still likely that a few raspberries will be mildewed when the punnet is tipped out, and they may have already given a musty taste to the rest. The bad ones should be picked out with a toothpick to avoid more squashing and further contamination. Frozen raspberries are in perfect condition and may be a better buy than dubiously fresh ones.
Good raspberries have a very delicate taste which is easily destroyed by cooking. To get the most of their flavour, it is better to squash them against the roof of the mouth with the tongue than to bite them. They are best eaten raw or ‘cooked’ by pouring boiling sugar syrup over them. Sweet, beautifully flavoured raspberries may be seedy (their only fault), and are then best put through a fine hair sieve, never a metal one. Raspberry sorbet and the figs in raspberry syrup of French haute cuisine are delectable but expensive; most of us, though, can manage very nicely with fruit from the garden eaten with properly-aged Jersey cream and a sprinkle of fine sugar. The best raspberries I ever tasted came from a single wild bush in a gorge in the South Tirol, I wish I had marked it.
Raspberries contain 1.75-2% pectin, plus sufficient citric and malic acids to set into a jelly or jam. When in good condition, raspberries will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator, but washing, if needed, should never be done until the last minute.
Although the European raspberry varieties come mainly from R. idaeus, there are also cultivated varieties of the American R. strigosa. Other ‘raspberries’, such as the hinsar and the dark, pointed kailka, are so refreshing in spring to the thirsty Himalayan traveller that they might one day be cultivated, as is the golden-orange wineberry (R. phoenicolasius) of northern China and Japan.
The loganberry (R.Ioganobaccus in older works) is a species that originated as a natural hybrid between a raspberry and a blackberry, the marriage having been consummated in the garden of Judge J. H. Logan at Santa Cruz, California. He gave his name to the offspring. Loganberries are now less popular than they used to be, but are still canned in quantity A similar hybrid of more recent origin is the boysenberry, which is grown quite widely. This berry is long and dark red, but is rather acid and lacks the raspberry’s delicate flavour. There are various other curiously named berries derived from species of Rubus. The youngberry, was bred by Mr B. M. Young in Louisiana; it is large, winered and sweet. The olallie is a cross between a youngberry and a loganberry; it is medium sized, black and extensively grown in California. However, the bingleberry, no doubt named by Pickwick, is a variety of the dewberry. These curiosities are all of more than academic interest, as they turn up in cans and in garden catalogues; none of them beats the raspberry for flavour.
[Raspberry – French: framboise German: Himbeere Italian: lampone Spanish: frambuesa]
RATAFIA. Victorian cookery books are full of recipes for ratafias, now largely forgotten. There were apricot, blackberry, black currant, cherry, angelica, gooseberry, orange-flower, quince, raspberry and rose ratafias, as well as cakes, creams, cheese-cakes, ice creams, puddings and biscuits flavoured with common ratafia. The common factor, regardless of what else ratafias contained (mainly the juice of the fruit concerned and strong brandy) was bitter *almonds, or the flavour of bitter almonds derived from the kernels of apricots, peaches, plums and cherries, or from the leaves of peaches and apricots gathered in spring. *Noyau is a ratafia. Books generally advise that ratafias be both taken with and used with moderation as flavourings, not only because too much bitter almond taste is unpleasant but because it is poisonous in quantity, although heating will drive off the very poisonous hydrocyanic acid and leave only the benzaldehyde, which is lethal in large doses.
Ratafia today usually refers to ratafia biscuits or macaroons with a strong bitter almond flavour, which in Italy are called amaretti. These are sometimes used as a flavouring.
RAVIOLI. See pasta.
RAY. See shark.
RAZOR SHELLS are bivalve molluscs which belong to the genera Solen and Ensis. They have shells shaped like an old fashioned cut-throat razor, either straight or slightly curved. They are distributed throughout the world. These shellfish lie buried in sand in a vertical position with their siphons – inhalant and exhalant – at the top. They may be at the surface or down in a burrow. In many cases, they live just at or below low tide mark and are best fished at low springtides. An indication is a keyhole shaped hole in the sand, from which occasional squirts of water are ejected. The traditional way of catching a razor shell is to put a teaspoon of salt into its burrow and grab it as it pops out. This has to be done neatly and without hesitation; if the animal is missed, there will be no second chance to grab it. A more modern method, and one which can be used under water, is to fill an old plastic squirt bottle, of the sort used for washing-up liquid, with saturated brine, and to squirt that into the holes. Razor shells are regarded as good eating, although I find them rather strong tasting. Some people eat them raw like oysters – there is no problem in opening them as they cannot close tightly – and they are also made into soup or included with other shellfish. Intrepid Italians can be observed catching and eating them raw on Adriatic beaches, notably the Lido in Venice. lt is in Mediterranean countries that you will mostly find them in markets, but they are too tedious to catch for there to be much commercial exploitation, although they are canned in Spain.
RED GRAM. See pigeon pea.
RED SORREL. See mallow.
REDUCING is concentrating a liquid by boiling to evaporate some of the water. Reducing increases flavour of non-volatile constituents but may reduce the flavour of the volatile ones, such as essential oils of herbs and spices or the acetic acid in vinegar. It may also concentrate salt to unpleasant proportion; final salting is done after and not before reduction.
REFRESHING is cooling hot food quickly by putting it under a running tap or by plunging it into ice water. This stops further cooking by residual heat and firms up the tissues. Refreshing is part of the usual French method of cooking vegetables which are boiled, drained when not quite done, refreshed, and later heated and finished in cream or butter. Other foods that would suffer from over-cooking, like shellfish, may be refreshed when they are removed from the cooking water.
REFRIGERATION. Since earliest times, food has been kept cool in ice boxes or ice chambers wherever there was winter snow. The snow or ice was stored in deep pits or special ice houses and was usually covered with straw to provide insulation. A large body of snow, if well protected, would last all through the hottest summer. In Tabas, a most remote town in the middle of the Dasht-i-lut, one of the great deserts of eastern Persia, I saw a huge domed pavilion, which I was told was an ice-house that had fallen into disuse. Even such a hot area would have had enough snow in winter to justify the building of such a structure.
It was known by observation, of course, that food kept longer in cold weather. It had also long been understood that when salt was mixed with ice it lowered the temperature, so that other things in contact with the mixture could be frozen. In 1876, meat was shipped across the Atlantic from America to Britain using ice and salt as the freezer, and before the turn of the century meat was regularly being shipped in refrigerator ships through the tropics from Australia and New Zealand. It was not, however, until after World War I that household refrigerators began to be common and to replace the cool cellars and larders which were once as essential in a house as a kitchen or a bedroom. Today, when houses are built without cool larders, we are compelled to keep many foods colder than they should be because we have nowhere else but the refrigerator.
T
his invention depends on the fact that when liquids boil they absorb heat, but that if the vapour is compressed, it gives off the heat it has absorbed and returns to a liquid. A refrigerator uses a substance such as ammonia or freon, which is a gas even at the low temperature inside a refrigerator, but will become a liquid under pressure. This substance circulates continually, vaporizing and extracting heat as it passes in pipes inside the refrigerator and being compressed back to a liquid – giving off the heat it has absorbed – outside, at the back of the refrigerator.
You could say it was pumping the heat out. By this means the modern refrigerator will freeze water and ice cream in the freezing compartment or will keep frozen food frozen. Cold air, being denser than warm air, falls, but the proximity of the freezing compartment means that in practice the top part of the refrigerator is cooler than the bottom.
[Refrigeration – French: réfrigération German: Ahkühlung Italian: refrigerazione Spanish: refrigeración]
REGULO or gas mark. A system of numbers used on gas cooker ovens and representing approximate temperatures inside the oven as follows:
Regulo °C °F
½ 120 250
1 135 275
2 150 300
3 160 325
4 180 350
5 190 375
6 200 400
7 220 425
8 230 450
9 240 475
Regulo devices originally set the flow of gas and not the temperature, which varied according to the type of gas and pressure. In modern ovens, the gas regulator is linked to a thermostat and the regulo mark does indicate a particular temperature.