Cooking Terms, Part VIII Trivia Quiz

Answer: to cut food into small cubes

Dicing is a knife skill by which fruit, vegetables and sometimes meat are cut into perfect cubes, of equal dimensions on every side, a bit smaller than those "chopped" and a bit larger than those "minced." The purpose of such precision is to ensure that each piece cooks evenly with every other.

Answer: the bain marie

A bain marie is a sort of double boiler with a lower pot for water and a nested upper pot for the substance being heated. All of the other devices are strainers of a sort. In the cartoon strip "Calvin and Hobbes," there is a device made of a colander attached to a cardboard box called the Cerebral Enhance-a-Tron which makes the wearer temporarily incredibly intelligent.

Answer: Because it is shaped like little ears

The shape of pasta is important to its ability to hold different kinds of sauces, to the amount of time necessary to cook it and to its place in the architecture of a dish. Orecchiette are a specialty of Puglia in Southern Italy where they are often served with chunky sauces.

Answer: The sour juice of immature fruit (mostly grapes)

Pronounced vayr-ZHOO, this medieval ingredient has enjoyed a comeback among modern chefs. It is used like vinegar or lemon juice to add acid to sauces. It can be found in some wine shops and gourmet ingredient providers.

Answer: 8

A stick of butter equals 1/2 cup. There are eight tablespoons in 1/2 cup (U.S. dry measure). The conversions are often made easier for home cooks in the United States by printing these measurements on the paper wrapper surrounding each cube of butter.

Answer: A Hawaiian dish made with white rice, a hamburger patty, a fried egg and brown gravy.

One account of the creation of loco moco is that it was invented by the Inouye family at the Lincoln Grill in Hilo, Hawaii, in 1949. Its popularity spread throughout the Hawaiian Islands, to the Mainland and to Samoa, Guam and Saipan.

Answer: It has sharp serrations on the tip and/or sides of the bowl with which to cut the fruit from the rind.

Some makers/vendors describe this implement as an "orange spoon." The average teaspoon is an implement unequal to the task of digging the fruit out of a grapefruit rind. A grapefruit spoon is a vast improvement. They double as useful tools for getting the seeds out of a papaya or scooping the potato out of its jacket to make twice-baked potatoes.

Answer: They are quite different fruits; tomatoes have no husks.

Both members of the family Solanaceae, the tomato is Solanum lycopersicum and the tomatillo is Physalis philadelphica. The tomatillo is more closely related to the gooseberry than to the tomato. Both are used extensively in Mexican cooking but for different purposes. To make matters even more confusing, the tomatillo is called "tomate verde" (green tomato) in Mexico.

Answer: The dried and ground husk of a nutmeg seed

Inside the fruit of the nutmeg tree, there is a single large seed covered by a husk or arillus. This husk is the source of mace, which is similar in flavour to nutmeg but more delicate and especially desirable for the orange colour which it gives to food. There is no such thing as a mace tree or mace shrub.

Answer: It is the stage at which the batter falls back into the bowl, when lifted on the beater or whisk, in a flat ribbon.

At the ribbon stage, an implement dragged through the mixture leaves an exposed trail for a second. The texture changes because air has been beaten into the mixture. The air causes the mixture to turn a pale yellow, lighter in colour than the deep yellow seen when the process begins. Some cookbooks refer to this stage as having "sabayon consistency."