cooking @ home

©2008 Harry Kenney

I first did an article like this back in September. This is about certain foods or items or techniques that keep cropping up — on menus, food challenge shows, recipes shows and cook books — that despite hearing of them over and over you really might not know a whole lot about.

Again, your knowledge and experience may vary and you may know quite a few of these. Seriously, bravo! For the rest of us curious about just what these are, here’s ten of those often-heard, not fully understood foods and food items.

ceviche – is a South American appetizer, often considered to have first originated in Peru, whereby fresh raw fish (or other seafood) is marinated in citrus juice (usually lime juice, sometimes lemon and lime juice) which chemically cooks it to a certain degree, and the dish also contains tomatoes, chill peppers and onions. There are variations of this in nearly each South American country, as well as a starting point for chefs to make their own combinations. Because of the non-heat, chemical reaction one gets a meal that is less than conventionally cooked yet with a taste that is “more cooked’ than say a sashimi or tartar.

compote – a fruit mixture (can be fresh, dried, frozen, a combination) that has been slowly cooked (the “slow” is important to retain the fruit’s shape) in a sugar syrup, usually containing spices and/or liquor or liqueurs, served either as desert or along side meat or poultry.

confit – It seems this is one of those terms you hear ten times a season (guaranteed) on Top Chef and once in a while on Iron Chef America. I most often hear this as being a “duck confit”. It also seems to be one of those many cooking terms whose definition is changing. Historically it’s a method from Gascony, France whereby meat, most notably poultry, is salted and cooked in it’s own fat as a method of “ancient” preserving. Now you see it as the served dish. More so, one of the more modern definitions is it can also mean fruit or vegetables cooked and preserved in brandy or other liquor. Still very new, chefs are using this word instead of another word, “confiture” which means a jam or preserve that is often savory or “savory-sweet”.

tiramisu – While it is often called the Italian trifle, the texture is much ligther. Translated the word means “carry me up”, with the unspoken ending of the sentence supposedly “to heaven” as in this is a heavenly dessert. It is composed of sponge cake or ladyfingers dipped into a coffee-and-marsala mixture. Then it’s layered up with mascarpone and grated chocolate and refrigerated for several hours before serving.

Now here are three foods that sound so much alike they can sometimes be confused with each other:

cannellini – white beans or white Italian kidney beans, often called a Tuscan bean, prevelant in soups and salads

cannelloni – Literally tranlated as “big tubes” it is the large pasta cylinders that are that are stuffed with a meat or savory cheese filling and then baked with a sauce.

cannoli – Meaing “little tube”, these desserts where in sweet pasty shells are formed into tubes and deep-fried, then filled with a sweet filling, using consisting wholely or partially of whipped ricotta, plus other flavors such as nuts or chocolate.

And since it seems we’ve already touched upon a few sweet desserts, let’s end with that theme, talking about three “genteel” custard desserts that a lot of us keep hearing about and some of us can’t get enough of and which seem in many ways to be similiar

crème caramel – Some places call a flan a crème caramel and see no difference in the two; Wikipedia is among those. NewItalianRecipes.com however makes a distinction saying “a flan is a liquid or semi liquid mixture, held together with whole eggs, egg whites, or egg yolks, that is gently baked in a mold or pastry shell. Quiches, crème caramel, and crème brulee are examples of sweet flans.” Another definition of crème caramel is a rich custard dessert with a layer of soft caramel on top. Which then brings up the difference between this and ….

crème brûlée – defined as custard with a hard caramel top. And as a “rich custard base topped with a layer of hard caramel, created by burning sugar under a grill, or other intense heat source”. In short, yes, this is the dessert you see on television when the chef brings out the blowtorch! And neither of these should be confused with ….

panna cotta – Italian for “cooked cream” panna cotta is a light, silky egg custard, which is often flavored with caramel. It’s served cold, accompanied typically with fruit or chocolate sauce.