Cook's Encyclopaedia

by Cook's Encyclopaedia (epub)

  Basic preparation depends on what the nests are to be used for – soup, stuffings or sweets – but one method is to clean them, soak them overnight, remove any feathers, then boil them for 10 minutes and rinse. To most of us, however, birds’ nests are fragments of translucent material, a bit like dried seaweed, bought ready prepared in a packet from a Chinese provision shop. Exhortations such as ‘use half a nest per person’ or ‘one should use nests in the year in which they are gathered’ are superfluous when directions are printed on the pack. The sense of adventure has gone, but the results are probably better for it.

  [Bird’s nest – French: nid d’oiseau German: Vögelnest Italian: nido di uccello Spanish: nido de pájaro]

  BISCUIT. In Britain, this is the general collective word for all sorts of flat, thin, dryish baked goods, and it causes some confusion when people try to translate it into other languages, in which it cannot be rendered by a single word. Even Americans have the words cookie and cracker to cover the field. What appear at first sight to be the equivalents in French, Italian and Spanish are not so except in the original meaning of the word.

  The word biscuit came from the French, and meant ‘twice cooked’, as also did the Italian biscotto, the Spanish bizcocho and the German Zwieback. It referred to what we might call ship’s biscuits – army biscuits, hard tack, biscuits de guerre – the very dry, bone-hard, little slabs of cooked flour and water paste made to keep for ever and ever (unless destroyed by seawater or weevils) on voyages in old sailing ships. So hard were biscuits that they had to be soaked before use, and many an ancient mariner has broken his teeth on them. Ship’s biscuits have long been extinct (I used to buy them with difficulty from the Army and Navy Stores to take climbing) and would cause a mutiny on a modern ship. In French, biscuit is now used for several sorts of baked goods, including some we would call sponge cake (so a cake tin is un moulard de biscuit).The Italian equivalent is biscoccia, while the word biscotto (and the French biscotte) often indicates a sort of rusk, though there are biscuit-like cakes from Genoa and Sardinia that bear that name (biscotti sardi, biscotti di san martino, biscotti del lagaccio – or simply lagaccio), often covered with fennel or anise seeds and intended for long keeping in a tin. In Spanish, bizcocho can mean a rusk or toasted bread, but is also applied to mixtures of flour, eggs and sugar cooked in the oven which are in some cases a kind of biscuit (bizcochos de avellanas with hazel nuts), but equally a sort of cake (bizcocho de chocolate) to be served with cream, or even something like a sponge (the Cuban bizcocho relleno al ron filled with jam and sprinkled with rum).The German Zwieback is a very popular kind of rusk. In 17th-century English recipes, references to French biscuit indicate sponge cake.

  BISHOP’S WEED. See ajowan.

  BIVALVES. The *oysters, *mussels, *cockles, *clams, *razor shells, *scallops and so on – molluscs with two shells hinged together and closed by strong muscles. They may bury themselves in sand or mud and move laboriously by a foot, attach themselves to rocks with threads like the mussel, bore into rocks like the sea date or even swim by flapping their shells like scallops. Most bivalves are edible, but they are sometimes responsible for poisoning or spreading infections, as they feed by filtering out particles from the water and may pick up pathogenic bacteria from sewage or poisonous plankton. Undisturbed shells gape to allow entry of food and oxygenated water, but if a bivalve still gapes when it is disturbed, do not eat it because it is dead or dying. A healthy bivalve indeed closes tight as a clam.

  [Bivalves – French: bivalves German: zweischalige Muscheln Italian: bivalvi Spanish: bivalvos]

  BLACHAN. See balachong.

  BLACK BEAN. See kidney bean.

  BLACKBERRY or bramble. Blackberries and the very similar dewberries (which are less prickly and have fruit with the same bluish lustre as black plums) belong to the genus Rubus, in the rose family. The genus also includes the raspberry. The dewberry is Rubus caesius, and botanists originally called the blackberry R. fructicosus. A recent monograph, however, distinguishes 386 species of blackberry and there is a similarly complicated situation in North America. Even the distinction between blackberry and raspberry becomes clouded outside Europe, where the names originated to describe the fruit growing there. There is even a black raspberry in eastern Canada and the US. Other relatives do not look exactly like blackberries or raspberries – the cloudberry (R. chamaemorus), for example, is orange.

  A berry which I came on one day when hot and thirsty in the Himalayas (and which has stayed in my mind as one of the most delicious fruits I have ever eaten) was beyond question a Rubus, but I have never discovered exactly what it was.

  There is considerable natural hybridization between the species. The best-known hybrid is the loganberry, a natural hybrid between a blackberry and a raspberry, which was first found in California. The cultivated varieties of blackberry are large, juicy and often seedless. It is doubtful whether they can ever become very popular because they command the same price as raspberries in the shops and are equally perishable, so most people will prefer the raspberry’s more delicious flavour. Cultivated blackberries also suffer in popularity from being no better than the best wild ones, which can be gathered free from the hedgerows in summer. However, wild ones can be so seedy as to be fit only for jelly. Seedy blackberry and apple pie is one of the supreme horrors of British cooking. A linguistic warning: the same word is used in French, Spanish and Italian for both blackberries and black mulberries (which are of course a different fruit altogether).

  [Blackberry – French: mûre German: Brombeer Italian: mora selvatica Spanish: mora, zarzamora]

  BLACK CURRANT. See currant.

  BLACK-EYED PEA or black-eyed bean. See cowpea.

  BLACK GRAM, urd, or mash (Phaseolus mungo) is a pulse about half the size of a pea, and usually has a black seedcoat, though this is sometimes green, which can lead to confusion with the green gram or *mung bean. However, when split for *dal, the mung bean is yellow while the flesh of the black gram is white. This is especially obvious in the expensive dhuli urd from which any black flecks of husk have been washed out. It is exceedingly important in Indian cooking and is grown and used all over the sub continent, but especially in the north-west, the Punjab, where in winter it is eaten as a daily food. It is very nutritious – ’heating’, they say in South India – and so is more suitable for cold weather, though a bit stodgy and difficult to digest. Black gram is best cooked without prior soaking. It takes longer to soften than either *mung bean or *pigeon pea (tur), and it does not mix readily into its water. Usually the most costly pulse, black gram is nonetheless essential in a number of important dishes. Roasted, it goes into the mixtures for flavouring vegetarian curries. Soaked and ground to a paste, it is one of the ingredients of the classic idlis and dosas of South India, and is also the usual basis for poppadoms.

  BLACK JACK. See browning.

  BLACK PUDDING, blood pudding or blood sausage. ‘Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him’, Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1. Anyone who has attended a village matanza (pig-killing feast) in Spain, a survival of something which in medieval times went on all over Europe, will not easily forget this quotation. The wretched pig, cherished lovingly through the summer and the autumn nut season, is suddenly betrayed to enable its owners to survive during the coming winter. Every part is precious; nothing can be wasted. The blood does not keep well, but drained and mixed with cereal, onion, fat, salt and spices it can be made into blood sausages or black puddings.

  Variations on this theme exist in every country in Europe and have emigrated to America. In Britain, commercial black puddings are often too heavily padded with cereal – barley, oatmeal, flour and rusk. Their flavouring is undistinguished, and in most places the results are deservedly not very popular, although better may be had from individual butchers in the North of England, where the blood puddings are traditionally flavoured with pennyroyal. Sometimes in Scotland they are made with sheep’s blood. The boudins noirs of France, those
glossy black sausages one sees in the charcutier, which are cheap only in comparison to most of the other pork butcher’s products, are made with finer ingredients than their English counterparts. They contain a smaller proportion of cereal and usually some cream. They are correspondingly more delicious, although, as a north-countryman, I like to make blood sausages with the French materials and the distinctive English pennyroyal flavouring. Black puddings keep only a few days in the refrigerator but may be frozen. Although cooked when made, most versions are intended to be eaten sliced and fried, or cooked according to local recipes.

  Black pudding

  Mix together pig’s blood (which has been salted and stirred until cold) and oatmeal (which has been soaked overnight in water), in the proportion 1 lt (1¾ pt) blood to 1 lt (1¾ pt) oatmeal. Grate 1.5 kg (scant 3½ lb), or a bit less, of bread, soak it well in 1.75 It (3 pt) of hot milk, and add it to the blood mixture. Add 800 g (1¾ lb) chopped suet, 400 g (14 oz) *flair fat and a seasoning of onion (grated), thyme, pennyroyal, and 1 teaspoon each ground spices (allspice and ginger), 5 cloves, and half a small nutmeg (grated).

  Half-fill large sausage skins (which leaves room for the oatmeal to swell) and simmer them gently for an hour. The skins must be pricked occasionally to let out trapped air. When the puddings are done, the juice which comes out on pricking is clear. Take them out of the pan and allow them to cool. Commercial black puddings are dyed black, so home-made black puddings do not have the same slick appearance as commercial ones.

  Boudin noir. Apart from pig’s blood, this contains varying amounts of fat, cream, onion, and maybe quatre épices. There are many local variants, e.g. de Poitou containing spinach, de Lyon with herbs and brandy, aux pommes, aux morrans, à l’ail containing apple, chestnut and garlic respectively, as well as many other additions to the basic mixture.

  Blutwurst. German blood sausage is made of blood with pork and bacon fat, which show when it is cut, and flavoured with marjoram and allspice. Unlike other blood sausages, it is intended for eating cold in slices, but is also good fried.

  Sanguinaccio is the Italian blood sausage. It is large, rounded and tied in a net of thread.

  BLACKSTRAP. Another name for *molasses.

  BLADDER CHERRY. See physalis fruit.

  BLAEBERRY. See cranberry.

  BLANCHING. To blanch something, put it into boiling water, or bring water with the ingredient in it to the boil for a relatively short time. In practice, the name is given to several rather different operations. Blanching can mean:

  1. To whiten and harden meat and temper its flavour, as when slices of bacon are blanched before adding to a delicately-flavoured dish, when rabbit is blanched to whiten the meat or joints are blanched to harden them before larding.

  2. To set the colour and partly cook vegetables in the French method: vegetables are first cooked for a short time in boiling water, then refreshed in ice-cold water to cool them quickly, drained and finally heated again in butter or cream.

  3. To dip vegetables or bundles of herbs into boiling water for various lengths of time before freezing in order to destroy and inactivate enzymes and to set colour.

  4. To make it easy to remove skins. Peaches and tomatoes should be dipped in boiling water for a few seconds only; oranges, for ½ -1 minute. Nuts, like almonds and hazels, are usually covered with boiling water and left to soak only for long enough for the skins to become soft and easy to slip off. Chickens’ feet can be peeled after leaving in boiling water for 10 seconds – no more. The skin of tongue and salt pork requires much longer to loosen it, and the operation is usually begun in cold water which is brought to the boil. Onions for pickling need 12-14 seconds blanching, then cooling in cold water, before skinning.

  When boiling water is poured over something, this is known as scalding, but the word also describes bringing milk or cream almost to the boil. To a gardener, blanching means whitening vegetables (e.g. celery) by depriving them of light, for example by banking up earth over them.

  [Blanching – French: blanchir German: abkochen Italian: imbiancare Spanish: emblanquecer]

  BLENDING. The dictionary definition is ‘mixing together, especially intimately and harmoniously’, and that applies in cooking. But the word has other specialized meanings – a blended, as opposed to straight whisky; a blend, as in ‘our own blend of tea’, meaning a formula. The word is also applied to operations carried out by the modern electric blender, and in that case implies reducing ingredients to a fine state of suspension in a liquid, even to an emulsion.

  [Blending – French: mélanger German: mischen Italian: mischiare Spanish: mezclar]

  BLOATER. See herring.

  BLOOD. The Masai tribe might be called the vampires of East Africa; they drink fresh blood (sometimes mixed with milk) warm from the cow, and it is partly to this diet that they owe their marvellous, slender figures. It is also a very humane practice as it involves no killing. They take blood by tying a cord round the neck of one of their cattle, just tight enough to cause the jugular vein to swell, but not to cause distress, and then shoot, at point blank range, a small arrow with a blunt end armed with two pins into the vein. They have a tiny bow especially for the purpose. From the two small punctures thus made (I doubt Dracula was so neat), a pint or so of blood is collected. Afterwards, mud is rubbed on the puncture to stop the bleeding, and the animal is released with no more harm than is suffered by a human donor to the blood bank. One might recommend the practice to vegetarians who eat eggs and cheese or drink milk. As blood coagulates very quickly, it must be well stirred or beaten with twigs immediately it is drawn.

  Blood is much used in traditional country cooking. Pigs’ blood, not to be wasted, goes into *black pudding and related sausages. For really hearty food, it can be substituted for egg in a batter to make blood pancakes which few, other than Scandinavians, can tolerate. (The Norwegian cook on the Antarctic expedition I was with years ago used to make excruciating pancakes out of seals’ blood.) Chickens’ blood is the correct medium for thickening the sauce of a coq au vin. lt needs careful collecting in a vessel which contains a little brandy and vinegar to prevent coagulation. There is really no substitute for blood in a coq au vin as other thickeners do not give the proper black, ointmentlike sauce of a coq au chambertin as made in Dijon. Because sauces thickened with blood behave like sauces thickened with egg, they are likely to curdle if boiled.

  In some European countries, especially in districts where there is still a robust, old-fashioned peasant style of cooking, blood which has been coagulated by boiling or baking is sold in shallow earthenware pans in the market. Even coagulated chickens’ blood is offered for sale in small pots. Although some people try to reconstitute such coagulated blood by liquidizing it in the blender, it will not thicken sauces properly, as it is already coagulated. Baked blood – sold by weight – is mainly used in fried dishes of which the Spanish sangre con cebolla (blood with onion) or sangre con pimientos (blood with peppers) are typical examples. It is also put into the well known fritos mallorquine.

  Sangre con Cebolla

  Put some oil in a frying pan with a few crushed cloves of garlic and plenty of onion which has been sliced lengthwise so that it retains its identity. When this is cooked to your liking, add some finely chopped fennel, some small potato chips (already fried) and some pieces of baked blood. Mix together and continue frying until the blood and chips are nicely hot. Serve with grilled pork chops.

  [Blood – French: sang German: Blut Italian: sangue Spanish: sangre]

  BLOOD SAUSAGE or blood pudding. See black pudding.

  BLUEBERRY. See cranberry.

  BLUEPOINT. See oyster.

  BLUTWURST. See black pudding.

  BOAR. The wild pig (Sus scropha) occurs in deciduous and mixed forests and in scrub in many parts of Europe and Asia, but became extinct in Britain in the 17th century. European Boars grow to about 155 cm (5 ft), in Europe, but in some places, such as Kashmir, they grow to weigh over 300 kg (660 lb); at that size, one is capa
ble of taking on a tiger. As wild boar is not bled like pork, the meat is dark. There is little fat, and the flesh can be dry and tough unless marinated and larded, but the flavour is excellent.

  A Classic French Marinade for Boar

  Take 100 g (4 oz) each of sliced onions and carrots, 2 shallots, a clove of garlic, a small stick of chopped celery and 4 sprigs of parsley. Colour all lightly in oil, then add 4 glasses of red wine, 1 glass of good wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon of salt, a few peppercorns, a large sprig of thyme and several bay leaves. Simmer this gently for 45 minutes, then strain it over the meat. After marinating for 24 hours, the meat can be cooked in any way liked. This marinade also suits hare and venison.

  [Boar – French: sanglier German: wildes Schwein Italian: cinghiale Spanish: jabali]

  BOCKWURST. See frankfurter.

  BOG MYRTLE or sweet gale (Myrica gale).Well known to all who tramp northern moors, and an important aromatic herb in the past, this is vaguely like bay, and possibly called for in old country recipes.

  [Bog myrtle – French: myrte des marais German: Gagel, Sumpfmyrte Italian: mirto Spanish: mirto holandes, arrayán]

  BOILING is an easily recognized reference point: it is the hottest water can get in an open pot. Go on boiling it over the fire and the extra heat is used up in changing the water into steam. Water boils – and stays boiling – at 100°C (212°F).The only way in which the temperature of boiling water can be raised above this is by adding sugar or salt (which will push it up a few degrees), by increasing the pressure (in a pressure cooker) or perhaps by carrying the cooking pot down to the Dead Sea. Conversely water boils at a lower temperature when pressure is reduced at a higher *altitude. (Himalayan climbers take pressure cookers with them. At about 6000 m or 20,000 ft, with less atmospheric pressure, water boils at only 80°C (176°F), ideal for simmering yak, but hopeless for making a decent cup of tea.) The effect of pressure on boiling point is made use of when water is extracted from delicate foodstuffs by evaporating under reduced pressure. Although boiling is a common operation in cooking (because it is easily recognized without a thermometer), the temperature is often not ideal for cooking. For the proteins of fish or meat it is too high, and for vegetables not high enough. A quick blast of a higher temperature for vegetables preserves colour and vitamins better. Pressure cookers would undoubtedly be used more if they allowed the cook to prod, stir and observe the food while it cooked.