by Tom Stobart
Martinique makes excellent. highly-flavoured rums much used in France.
The US produces more rum than any other country. New England rum was made in Colonial days from molasses shipped up from the West Indies, and taxes on it were resented in Boston just as much as the tax on tea. Though excellent, the flavour of American rum is less refined than that of good Jamaican.
Barbados makes a medium rum with many additions other than those natural to a cane-sugar product. They may include wine, raisins and bitter almond.
Demerara. Named, like the sugar, from a district near Georgetown, Guyana, this is very fruity rum with many additions, such as plums, raisins, caramel and spices. It is very popular in Britain.
Cuba is famous particularly for daiquiri, and produces light-coloured rums, with natural ‘rum’ flavours removed by filtration and a light new flavouring of fruit, bay. sugar and secret ingredients added. The colourless Bacardi rum, the sort usually made into daiquiris, originated in Cuba but is now made in Brazil.
Rum was a common kitchen ingredient in the last century. when fruity rums were particularly in fashion. It is still used in confectionery all over Europe and is a better flavouring than brandy in most cases. Less commonly, rum is used in savoury dishes, with meat, fowl and fish. It goes excellently with shell fish, as fishermen in Spain have discovered, and it is used in one of the six courses of the famous langostinara of giant prawns (or *shrimps) from San Carlos de Ia Rapita at the mouth of the Ebro river.
Langostinos al Ron
Cook the langostinos on the plancha (i.e. the hot top of the stove or in a dry frying pan) until they are just dry. Then fry in olive oil, salt to taste and flame in rum.
[Rum – French: rhum German: Rum Italian: rum Spanish: ron]
RUNNER BEAN (Phaseolus coccineus) originated in South America and was brought to Europe as a decorative plant – there are varieties with vermilion, scarlet, and white flowers – but it has for long been the most popular green bean grown in British vegetable gardens. Runners are perennials, which are grown as annuals as in cold climates where they are killed by the winter frosts. They are nearly always eaten as green beans, and British gardeners have a tendency to pick them when they are so old and tough that they have to be sliced. Slicing beans is known as ‘Frenching’ in the US, although it is certainly not the practice in France. Runners are climbers (pole beans) and so are not usually grown commercially for dried seed (being difficult to harvest by mechanical means), but if left on the plant until they are ripe, the beans are excellent. The flavour of runners is somewhat stronger than that of French beans.
RUSH NUT. See chufa nut
RUSKS. Dry. airy slices of a bread, cake or scone basis are called rusks, and some are only one degree removed from toasts. When rusks are called for in a dish (usually as a base on which something is spread) it is important to consider which of the many kinds should be used. A double baking is involved in making rusks as in Zwieback and biscuits in their original form. The word rusk is said to come from the Spanish rosca, but those – at least today – are ring shaped. There are large ones called roscónes and small ones called rosquillas, and they may sometimes be fried as well as baked, so have very little to do with rusks as we know them. Their rusks, sold in packets, are called biscottes or toast.
[Rusk – French: biscotte German: Zwiebach Italian: biscotti Spanish: biscotte, tostada]
RUTABAGA. See swede.
RYE (Secale cereale) is a recent cereal compared to wheat or barley. It is thought to have been first noticed as a weed in cornfields in the arid areas around Mount Ararat, that snowy cone you pass on the road going east from Erzerum into Iran, where Noah’s Ark is supposed to have been grounded after the flood. The usefulness of rye rests on its ability to tolerate cold conditions, in which wheat would be uncertain. It also has a better bread-making quality than barley, as it contains a sufficiency of gluten. Up to the mid-19th century, it was the staple bread grain in much of northern Europe – in Germany. Poland and particularly Russia – and was much used by the early settlers in North America. In those days, people considered rye bread inferior to any made of wheat, and it is only in recent years that it has come to be valued. Perhaps one reason why it was denigrated in the past was that with rye there was always danger of poisoning from the *mould, ergot, which is now very unlikely.
Rye flour is a dirty grey colour, though it is frequently lightened by mixing with wheat flour, sometimes with barley flour and with maize flour in America. It is the flour of black bread (schwartzbrod), pumpernickel and some crispbread. The texture of rye bread is close and the taste is characteristic and usually slightly sour, partly because of sourdough methods of rising it, which take longer than is necessary with wheat bread. Unfortunately, good rye bread is now difficult to find, as tastes have changed. The market in Innsbruck, where I used to buy beautiful, round polished rye loaves to take to the mountains (rye bread keeps better than wheat bread), now sells a very inferior product. Rye bread is an essential in making Scandinavian open sandwiches, and goes best with German and eastern European sausage. The grain is the basis for rye *whisky (although it is cut with other grain) and is used for making beer in Russia as well as gin in Holland and some sorts of vodka.
[Rye – French: seigle German: Roggen Italian: segala Spanish: centeno]
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SABRE BEAN. See Jack bean.
SACCHARIN is now the only non-carbohydrate sweetener that is permitted in Britain. It was discovered by accident in 1879 by chemists at Johns Hopkins University who were doing research on the derivatives of toluene, which is a constituent of coal tar. One of them found that his food tasted sweet and also found the sweetness on his hands, although he had washed them before eating. Tracing the cause back to the experiments led the scientists to identity saccharin, which has a chemical name that can be given as orthosulphobenzimide. lt is insoluble in water, and saccharin tablets are made either of its soluble sodium salt or of a mixture of saccharin and bicarbonate of soda which react together when moistened. Either way, it is sodium saccharin that sweetens your cup of tea. Although estimates of its sweetness vary, it is around 400 times as sweet as cane sugar and more than ten times as sweet as *cyclamates.
It has been used as a sweetener since 1894, when a method of making it commercially was first patented. The food manufacturers’ main reason for using saccharin is its cheapness – as one food science textbook puts it, ‘one shilling’s worth of saccharin is equivalent in sweetening power to one pound’s worth of sugar.’ In Britain, the only restrictions on the amount of saccharin in food are in soft drinks where there are legal maxima and in ice-cream where it is not permitted at all.
Although saccharin was suspected along with cyclamates of being linked with bladder cancer and was banned in some countries, it seems to be the safest artificial sweetener that we have, presenting no health problems if it is used in moderate quantities. However, although there are no legal limits on the use of saccharin in many foods, manufacturers do take account of the ‘Acceptable Daily Intakes’ recommended by the WHO: 0.5 mg per kg of body weight or 0.15 mg per kg of body weight for dietetic use. The main disadvantage of saccharin is its unpleasant lingering aftertaste, which is said to be caused largely by impurities that can be avoided in newer methods of synthesis. Saccharin is a substitute only for the sweetness of sugar and has none of its nutritional or preservative qualities. It passes unchanged through the body, being excreted in the urine. Because it is not metabolized by the body, saccharin is valuable in diets for diabetics and slimmers.
[Saccharin – French: saccharine German: Saccharin Italian: saccarina Spanish: sacarino]
SACCHAROSE. Sucrose. See sugar.
SACCHAROMETER. See hydrometer.
SAFFlOWER or saffron thistle (Carthamus tinctorius) comes from India but is unknown as a wild plant. It can be grown quite well even in Britain and similar temperate areas. The orange-red flowers contain a dye (carthamin) which may be used to colour food and as a substitute for saffron, a
lthough false saffron does not have the proper flavour. The seeds have greater commercial importance as a source of safflower oil, which is a good kitchen oil that is also held to be safe for people with a tendency to atherosclerosis. It is often mixed with other oils in proprietary brands but can also be bought separately. The seeds and even the leaves of the plant are edible.
[Safflower – French: carthame German: Saflor Italian: cartamo Spanish: cartamo]
SAFFRON consists of the stigmas of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus). It is an ancient spice, with a peculiar, unique flavour and a strong yellow colour. Nowadays, it is enormously expensive, because of the hard work involved in extracting it from the flowers. Luckily, only a pinch is needed to flavour any dish; the dried stigmas are first soaked in a little milk or water for 15 minutes or so to loosen the dye.
Powdered saffron is almost always a dye (such as carthamin from *safflower), a cosmetic with no flavour that is best avoided. Cheap saffron does not exist and anything masquerading as such is almost certainly the stamens of some other yellow flower, such as marigold. Where saffron is needed, as in Mediterranean fish soups and some Kashmiri dishes, there is no substitute for it. There are versions of Spanish paella which use no saffron; Spanish restaurant paellas are likely to be made with dye.
[Saffron – French: safran German: Safrangewürz Italian: zafferano Spanish: azafrán]
SAFFRON THISTLE. See safflower.
SAGE. Garden sage (Salvia officinalis) is a perennial that is a native of southern Europe; it is plentiful, for instance, on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia. There are many culinary varieties; since sage is usually grown from cuttings passed from one person to another, it is as well to look for a good, aromatic plant to use for cuttings. Sage dries well and is one of the few herbs still regularly used in Britain. It is used particularly in Germany and Italy, less so in France and Spain. The flavour is powerful and with overtones of camphor.
[Sage – French: sauge German: Salbei Italian: salvia Spanish: salvia]
SAGO is virtually pure starch extracted from the sago palm (Metroxylon sagu) and to a lesser extent from other plants (palms and cycads) which develop a similar starchy pith. The sago palm grows in swampy places in southern Asia. It looks like a typical palm, but has the peculiarity that just before it flowers (when it is about 15 years old) it builds up a large reserve of starch to be drawn on for the reproductive effort. At this point, man intervenes, cuts down the palm, extracts the pith from the stem, grinds it up, washes out the starch with water and allows it to settle. After the clear top water has been poured off, the wet starchy paste can be dried into a flour or granulated through a sieve to give the well known pearl sago. It is this latter which provides the much-feared nursery pudding known for generations as ‘frog-spawn.’ Few, if any, important European dishes are based on sago, although it is sometimes used in place of pasta in broths and there are various sweets made from it. In parts of the Orient, it has more uses, although mainly in its floury form, which root. In South India, it is used in various sun-dried wafers and deep-fried vegetarian patties, such as vattala, pakoras, vadas, and chakli: Sago is also used throughout South East Asia. Rose-Mary Brissenden’s South East Asian Food (Penguin) gives a recipe for the Thai saku sai mooh, which consists of envelopes of sago paste steamed with a stuffing of pork, roasted peanuts and onion.
Sago Vadas (Indian)
Make 450 g (1 lb) plain mashed potato. Soak a cup of sago in water for 20 minutes, drain it and mix it with the potato. Add 100 g (4 oz) coarsely pounded peanuts, a finely chopped mixture of 4 green chillies and a small handful of green coriander leaves, some lemon juice and salt to taste. Knead all this together into a dough. Roll bits of the dough into table-tennis ball size, flatten them and fry them until brown. Serve with green chutney as a snack
[Sago – French: sagou German: Sago Italian: sagù Spanish: sagú]
SAITHE. See cod (coal fish).
SAKE is Japanese rice wine. lt usually has an alcoholic content of about 15% (like a very strong European wine) and is served warm. Sake is a necessary ingredient in Japanese cooking. A sweet, less strong rice wine known as mirin is used only for cooking and is often required to be mixed in equal quantity with soy sauce. A substitute for sake in cooking is a dry sherry.
SALAD. By far the most popular of the salad vegetables is *lettuce, but there are many others, notably the various types of *chicory and *cress. One of the most useful, and a popular winter salad in European countries, is Lamb’s lettuce or Corn salad (Valerianella locusta), an annual member of the valerian family that is a native of Britain, most of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It was introduced into the US at the beginning of the 19th century. When young, not far beyond the seedling stage, the small roundish leaves make an excellent salad, with a pleasant, sometimes almost primrose like taste. If the plants are too large or grown in the wrong conditions, they are inclined to be tough.
A plant I particularly like in salads is *rocket, and others are fond of tender leaves of raw *spinach, of acid-tasting *sorrel and of *dandelion leaves (which are best if the plant has been blanched under a tile). A garden flower with peppery-tasting leaves that can be good in salad is *nasturtium.
Dozens of wild herbs with pungent, peppery flavours can be used in salads, especially crucifers such as the cresses and the leaves of *Lady’s smock or Cuckoo flower (Cardamine pratensis). Milder flavours come from the Salad burnet (Poterium sanguisorba) and the small new buds of hawthorn in spring.
Some people like to mix their lettuce with wet tomato or purple-staining beetroot, but neither is very aesthetic. A careful admixture of other leaves and herbs will make something beautiful as well as refreshing and interesting – salads repay a little experiment.
[Green salad – French: salade verte German: grüner Salat Italian: insalata verde Spanish: ensalada.
Cuckoo flower – French: cardamine des prés German: Wiesenschaumkraut Italian: billeri Spanish: cardamina.
Burnet – French: pimprenelle German: Pimpinelle Italian: pimpinella Spanish: pimpinela.
Lamb’s lettuce – French: mâche, valérianelle German: Acker Salat Italian: erba riccia Spanish: canonigo, valeriana cultivada]
SALAD DRESSING. The most primitive salads are not dressed at all, but rely only on the flavours of the salad materials. A meal in an Iranian village stands out in my mind. Rice and kebabs were served with a bowl of onion tops and branches of Russian tarragon.
The word salad is derived from the Latin sal (salt), and the simplest salad dressing is salt. A dressing of olive oil, salt and vinegar is also an ancient one. Lemon juice, which some prefer as the souring agent, is much used in the Middle East, especially where wine, the forerunner of vinegar, is frowned on for religious reasons.
From simple beginnings, both salads and the dressings have increased in complexity, and by the beginning of this century cookery writers were mildly deploring the growing use of ready-made dressings bought from the grocer. Some of these dressings are quite good, but most dedicated cooks will want to make their own. The dressing of the salad at table can be part of the gastronomic ceremonial. The type of dressing to be used must depend on the ingredients in the salad. It is a subject that gives rise to strong prejudices. For instance, I dislike salads that are a bewildering mélange of ingredients dressed with a thick heavy dressing and I cannot understand anyone finding such creamy treasure hunts stimulating.
Oil and Vinegar, Vinaigrette or French Dressing The classic directions are to use 1 part wine vinegar to 3 parts olive oil. Salt is left to the salad mixer’s discretion. The amount – according to the old Spanish saying – needs a wise man to determine. The oil should preferably be a good, light olive oil with a delicate flavour. Strong-tasting olive oils, such as the Spanish oil which has the very respectable label virgin, are overwhelming. If you can’t get good olive oil, it is best to turn to light seed or nut oils, which have little flavour (most of it has been stripped out in refining). Avoid the thick oils like maize oil, which tend
to make salads greasy. The vinegar should preferably be a good wine vinegar, and should be chosen with some thought. Tarragon or other flavoured vinegars are sometimes used. Cider vinegar seems mainly to be a modern health fad, but it has a distinctive taste which some people like better than that of wine vinegar. There are even said to be those who prefer malt vinegar, which in general is frowned upon.
For a simple lettuce salad, using a good olive oil, the proportion of 3 oil to 1 vinegar seems wrong, and something like 4 to 1 is better. Those who mix a salad with a flourish, by eye, with lots of splashing about. will usually find this is what they arrive at by instinct if they pour the oil with some generosity. Mixing the salad with the dressing may need to be done some time before the meal for vegetables which need to absorb the dressing – beetroot, celery and celeriac, for instance – but a green salad should always be mixed at the last minute, very thoroughly. This can be done with the hands, which is best for a large party, but then the process has to be done in the kitchen. Salad bowls are often too small and badly designed for mixing at the table. Sloping sides tend to make the leaves slide up over the edge. They discourage efficient mixing and encourage the spread of salad over the table. A fairly deep, straight sided container is better. You can mix any salad thoroughly in it. Garlic is best introduced by rubbing it on a slice of bread and laying it on the bottom of the bowl under the salad, but you will then need a little more dressing- the bread absorbs some of it.
Soulie
One of the simplest dressings I know was always made by an old Irish friend who did not know where the name came from, but said it was traditional in his family. It is useful for anyone who does not like oil. My friend heated vinegar in a large spoon with some sugar, and when the sugar had dissolved poured the hot sweet-sour soulie over the salad.