by Tom Stobart
[Tin – French: etain German: Zinn Italian: latta, stagno Spanish: estaño, lata]
TISANE. See tea substitutes.
TOADSTOOL See mushrooms.
TOCINO. See bacon.
TOFU. See soya bean.
TOHEROA (Maori for long-tongue) is a large bivalve (Amphidesma ventricosum) found in the sand of certain beaches in the North Island of New Zealand. It is the basis for the fabled toheroa soup. Mechanical means of collecting the shellfish almost resulted in its extermination and now its taking is strictly regulated and, although it is canned, it is a luxury that is not easily found, even in New Zealand.
TOMATE DE MER. See sea anemone.
TOMATE VERDE. See physalis fruit.
TOMATILLO. See physalis fruit.
TOMATO. As tomatoes are now one of the world’s most important foods, it is amazing that they were for so long regarded with suspicion and grown only for decoration. ‘Gold and unhealthy’ was how one Elizabethan herbalist described them. Perhaps it was because, like potatoes, they were rather obviously related to the deadly nightshade. Tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum) may have originated in Peru and Ecuador, but they had been domesticated and had moved up into Mexico long before the Spanish arrived in America. The name tomato, in fact, is derived (through the Spanish tomate) from the Aztec tomatl. The Spanish brought the plant to Europe in the 16th century, and Gerard’s Herbal says that they ate it with oil and vinegar as a salad, but it did not become popular. In Britain and France, it was known as the ‘love apple’ (pomme d’amour), which perhaps came from the Italian pomodoro – golden apple – because the first varieties in Europe were yellow. It was not until the 18th century, after two Italian Jesuit priests had brought a red variety back with them, that tomatoes began to be taken seriously for eating. It was in southern Italy that tomatoes first became popular, and for some time they remained a food of the poor. In his Cuoco galante, published in 1778, the Neapolitan abbot, Vincenzo Corrado, gives a recipe for a tomato sauce – but he recommends it for fish and meat, not for pasta or rice. He also offers recipes for stuffed tomatoes of various kinds. A chef to Catherine II of Russia, a Roman named Francesco Leonardi, author of Apicio moderno (1790) seems to have been the first to write about tomato sauce with spaghetti, but such a dish was a poor man’s, not a court chef’s invention. It was not until 1835 that tomatoes began to be adopted in the US, where millions of tons are grown today
Among the bewildering number of tomato varieties are the gigantic ones with evocative names like Beef-master that run to almost I kg (21b) per fruit, down to cherry and cocktail tomatoes (with names like Sugar-lump) which are no bigger than marbles. However, apart from such fancy tomatoes, which also include the yellow, orange and pink varieties, there are numerous more normal types, each with its own purpose.
Salad tomatoes are for slicing raw, for use in mixed salad and hors d’oeuvre. A salad variety should have a good acid-sweet balance and certainly, when fresh off the vine, the proper tomato taste. This is so often lacking in bought tomatoes, especially those produced out of season or with too little sunshine.
Cooking tomatoes are not just salad tomatoes that are past their prime. For stuffing, tomatoes must be of the right size, and it is noticeable that some varieties cook particularly well, while others are better bottled. For example, the very old Italian variety, San Marzano, one that is often peeled and canned, lends a special quality to Italian canned tomatoes.
Sauce tomatoes are usually the plum tomatoes, which make the best concentrates and sauces. Varieties include Roma, which, despite its name, is an American tomato. Plum tomatoes have more meat than juice and are often rather tasteless raw, and almost without seeds.
Juice tomatoes are different again. For salads, too much juice in a tomato is bad – people even let tomatoes drain. For cooking and making a dry paste, it is a nuisance, but for tomato juice, the really juicy varieties perform best in the home juicer.
Growers tend to select mainly for commercial considerations, suitability to climatic conditions, soil, disease resistance, yield, storage and shipping qualities (which means a good thick skin – American varieties have lately been developed with thick enough skins to survive picking by machine). Regular form and attractive colour are commercially more important than taste, because most people buy by appearance. However, in farmers’ markets, you will often do best by looking for the smallest, roughest tomatoes because these usually have the finest taste, and they are likely to be cheaper. The canning companies organize the cultivation of huge areas of tomatoes under contract with the varieties they find best for their purpose. ln general, canned tomato products are excellent and a great help to the cook Sometimes tomatoes acquire tastes in canning which may even be preferred for certain dishes. However, brands vary in flavour, so look around and experiment before making a recipe standard. Tomatoes mix particularly well not only with basil and garlic, as has long been known, but with bay, thyme and oregano. They also go well with cheese, with peppers and with meaty flavours. Ripe and wellflavoured tomatoes can even be eaten as a fruit with sugar and cream. (For this, they should be dunked in boiling water for a moment to loosen the skin peeled, cut in quarters and deseeded.)
Tomatoes have a range of tastes depending on the length of time they are cooked. For instance, chopped and very lightly cooked, as in the sauce for spaghetti all’amatriciana (see below), they have a delicious, fresh flavour – this dish should never be overcooked or contain onion or chilli peppers, as it is the unalloyed taste of fine tomatoes that is important. Tomatoes baked soft have yet another taste. They are best done in an old-fashioned, wood-fired, baker’s brick oven so that they get a slightly smoky taste from the ashes.
Pa amb olli – Bread and oil (Catalan Spain)
This is a popular snack everywhere and loved even by children who do not usually like tomatoes. Take a thick slice of good bread, cut a juicy tomato in two and press the cut face on to the bread to impregnate the surface with juice. Dribble good oil (preferably olive) all over it and salt generously. As with every simple dish, the quality of each of the ingredients is of the utmost importance. The bread might be from a large round Majorcan loaf, the salt a crude one from the Salinas, while the oil should be light and pleasant.
Panzanella (Tuscany)
Soak 8 slices of stale, good bread in spring water until they are soft, squeeze them out gently and crumble them roughly into a bowl. Thinly slice a cucumber, a large mild onion and 4 ripe tomatoes into the bowl. Add some chopped basil leaves, good olive oil, a little wine vinegar, and salt and pepper. Mix and put in a cool place until lunchtime.
Spaghetti all’Amatriciana
This dish is named after Amatrice, a small town between Rome and the Abruzzi. For 400 g (14 oz) of spaghetti, to be boiled in the usual way, take 300 g (11 oz) of ripe tomatoes of a sweet, fleshy variety suitable for sauce, dip them in boiling water, peel and de-seed them and break them into small pieces. Fry 100 g (4 oz) of diced, fat *bacon (it should be guanciale) gently in some good olive oil and, when it starts to colour, add the tomato and turn up the heat. When the tomato has become soft, but not overcooked, add salt and pepper to taste, mix it with the cooked spaghetti and sprinkle with 50 g (2 oz) of grated Pecorino cheese.
Passato – Bottled Tomato Purée
Peel the tomatoes and remove the seeds. Simmer with chopped onion at the rate of 1 kg (2 lb) onion to 10 kg (22 lb) de-seeded tomato, plus 3 cloves garlic, 2 handfuls basil leaves, 2 bay leaves and a bunch of celery. Simmer until the mixture has reduced by half, then salt to taste and put it through a Mouli. When the purée has cooled somewhat, put it in bottles of a suitable size for household needs, close and sterilize by heat. Alternatively, add *salicylic acid as a *preservative at a maximum rate of 1 g acid per 1 kg (2¼ lb) of sauce – tomatoes already contain salts of salicylic acid. Cover the contents of each bottle with a little olive oil and close with a sterilized cork. The passato will now keep without heat treatment. A third method is simply to deep-freeze the passato in
cartons.
Dried Tomatoes in Oil
Halve the tomatoes and spread them on trays in the hot sun to dry. When they are almost leathery, sprinkle them with salt, put them in jars and cover them with olive oil.
[Tomato – French: tomate German: Tomate Italian: pomodoro Spanish: tomate]
TOMATO SAUCE. Commercially-bottled tomato sauces are intended for table use and are more or less synonymous with tomato ketchup. Tomato sauce for spaghetti is not the same thing.
Tomato Sauce for Spaghetti
Peel and remove seeds from 1 kg (2 lb) plum tomatoes (or canned, peeled tomatoes). Put a small, finely chopped onion, 1 crushed clove garlic, 5 dessertspoons olive oil and 25 g (1 oz) butter in a pan and fry gently. When the onion is soft, add the tomato, several leaves of basil, salt and pepper. Cover and simmer slowly for about an hour, stirring occasionally to prevent the tomato from sticking. Put the sauce through a sieve or Mouli, add a pinch of sugar and another 25 g (1 oz) butter. Adjust the seasoning. Serve with spaghetti. This quantity of sauce will do for 400 g (14 oz) pasta. Grated Parmesan cheese should be sprinkled generously on each serving.
TOPE. See shark.
TORTELUNI. See pasta.
TORTILLA FLOUR. See masa.
TRACE ELEMENTS are essential for health but required in such small amounts that it is only in recent years that the quantities have begun to be measured, although the presence of such elements has long been known. Many of the trace elements are harmful in larger amounts, even if these are still microscopically small, so ill-health could result from too much as well as too little. Trace elements known to be essential are chromium, cobalt, copper, iodine, manganese, molybdenum, selenium and vanadium. Those probably essential, and essential to animals are flourine, nickel, silicon and tin.
TRAIL is the collective term for the entrails of such animals as snipe, woodcock, plover and red mullet. In these cases, the trail is not removed before cooking and is considered a delicacy.
TRASI. See balachan.
TREACLE. Originally medicines were often mixed with honey, but later, thick, sticky sugar syrup was used. This original function remained in that devilish school medicine ‘brimstone and treacle’ (flowers of sulphur and molasses) with which, I remember, our German matron tried to purify the blood of the school. (Spoonfuls dotted by ‘accident’ into her hair were an effective counter.) But treacle pudding, treacle tart, treacle parkin and treacle toffee were all another matter.
Treacle is a variable substance. Black treacle is molasses; a slightly lighter version is West India treacle, which still has the authentic molasses taste. A much lighter, medium brown syrup made by refining molasses is also known as treacle but has a much less strong molasses taste. Finally *golden syrup is often loosely called treacle.
The expression ‘treacle’ is not normally used in the US, where the niche is filled by corn syrups (light or dark), molasses (light or dark), caramel or brown sugar syrups made at home and maple syrup. Indeed, the world of treacles and syrups is one where there is almost total confusion in older books, although writers of recipes are now becoming more specific.
[Treacle – French: mélasse German: Sirup, Melasse Italian: melassa, sciroppo di zucchero Spanish: melaza]
TREE POTATO. See sapodilla.
TREPANG. See sea cucumber.
TRESTERBRANTWEIN. See marc.
TRICHINOSIS. One of the most terrible parasites to infect man is a tiny nematode worm, Trichinella spiralis, which also lives in pigs, rats and other animals; humans can get this from eating measly pork. The spotted measly appearance is produced by the millions of tiny worms encysted in the muscle, which could contain as many as 80,000 worms in 25-30 g (1 oz).
When measly meat is eaten and digested, the Trichinella worms are released to mate. The females bore into the wall of the gut and deposit their offspring in the lymph system.
Prevalence of trichinosis varies from country to country. It is more common in the US than in Europe. Although meat which is sold today has been subjected to rigid inspection, risk of this disease is the main reason why sensible people avoid rare pork and fry samples of pâté and sausage meat before tasting them for seasoning. Cooked or smoke-cooked sausages such as mortadella and frankfurters are safe because worms are killed at temperatures as low as 70°C (140°F) maintained for a specific length of time. They are also killed in meat that is kept frozen at -15°C (5°F) for three weeks. Raw pork products such as raw ham, bacon, salame and chorizo sold in shops are safe as they have been hung long enough for any trichinella worms to have been killed by the salt, saltpetre and spices.
[Trichinosis – French: trichinose German: Trichinose Italian: trichinosi Spanish: triquinosis]
TRIPE is usually the stomach of the ox, but the stomachs of sheep and pigs are also used, especially in peasant communities. There are several varieties of tripe. Most people will have seen cows or bullocks lying in the fields and chewing the cud. These ruminants stuff themselves with grass, without chewing it until they have filled the bag of the first stomach, the rumen. The lining of this is of warty villi. When it settles down to chew the cud, the animal regurgitates the grass, now in the form of rough balls, which it chews at leisure into a purée. This well chewed grass, when swallowed a second time, goes, via the reticulum, a smaller bag lined with a honeycomb structure, to the psalterium, which has a lining with folds or leaves, and finally into the abomasum, which is ridged. There are thus four parts to the ruminant stomach, each recognizable by the form of the lining.
If you are starting from scratch, the stomachs have to be cut open, separated into manageable pieces and cleaned carefully. After washing in several changes of water and cutting away any bits and pieces, the tripe is scalded and scraped inside to remove any slime. Kettles of boiling water are poured liberally over it. The tripe must then be soaked for 3-4 hours in water which contains a little salt and vinegar. After a final scrape and wash, the tripe is dropped into boiling, salted water, cooked for about 30 minutes and then drained. It is now ready for basic cooking. This may be done in a pan or pressure cooker with flavouring herbs and vegetables. Ordinarily, tripe needs many hours of cooking – 16 hours simmering was recommended in the past, but then it was easy to leave a pan at the back of the kitchen range. Today, in Western countries, tripe is usually sold only after it has been cleaned and cooked, i.e. dressed. (This is the only way in which tripe is allowed to be sold in some countries.) Even so, it may need some hours of further cooking to become tender.
The most delicious tripe is veal tripe, and the best part is the honeycomb; thick and white is better than thin and brownish. The British method of cooking tripe, tripe and onions (a famous dish in the North of England), is for tripe addicts only, as it has a strong visceral flavour. The most famous tripe dish is tripes à Ia mode de Caen, from Normandy, in which tripe is cooked in a sealed pot for at least 10 hours with calf’s foot, onions, vegetables (carrot and leek), a bouquet garni and cider. For good measure, it gets a lacing of Calvados. Best of all for those who do not relish tripe, is the spicy Spanish callos a Ia rnadrileña, in which tripe is cooked with calf’s foot, chorizo and morcilla, onion, garlic, white wine, brandy, sweet and chilli peppers, bouquet garni, the usual seasonings and a squeeze of lemon juice. Both this and tripes à Ia mode de Caen can be bought canned or frozen and can be nearly as good as the freshly-made article. In Italy, tripe is cooked with white beans, with tomatoes and with cheese; these dishes are also delicious. In general, tripe is not as popular as it used to be. Most of it is reduced to an unrecognizable state and used by the food industry.
[Tripe – French: tripes German: Kaldaunen, Flecke, Kutteln Italian: trippa Spanish: callos]
TRIPLE SEC. See liqueurs and cordials.
TRITICALE is a new cereal, a cross between wheat and rye. lt has a higher protein content than wheat and a much higher amount of the essential amino acid, lysine, which is already used to fortify some breads. In America, bread made from this cereal is known as triti bread, but it is not yet in
general use on a wide scale. Triticale (a hybrid word derived from Triticum, wheat, and Secale, rye) is also used as a *sprouted seed.
TROUT and CHAR belong to the same family as the salmon. They were always important freshwater fish to people who lived within reach of lakes and fast-flowing streams, but now they are extensively farmed, even in places where there is no permanently running water.
There is much argument over which is the best trout. The answer depends on the water in which the trout has lived, the food it has eaten and, perhaps equally, on its birthplace; local loyalties play a major part in any gastronomic argument, but it is generally conceded that the Sea trout (also called the Salmon trout because the flesh is pink) is the finest of all and one of the most delicious fish in the world. The Sea trout is merely a variety of the Common trout (Salmo trutta) of Europe and (like the Rainbow trout) it sometimes goes to sea, where it gets its pink colour and delicious flavour, perhaps from the crustaceans it eats there. The same fish is called the Brown trout when it occurs in streams and burns, and those who as children caught them in the mountains and cooked them rolled in oatmeal over the campfire within minutes of landing them will no doubt think these the best they have ever tasted. Sportsmen the world over will find their local trout best. All agree that the same trout living in lakes, through they grow large, are less tasty, and that goes for trout raised on trout farms (truites d’élevage), although their flavour depends on their food in the last weeks before they are killed.