Cooking Terms, Part XIV Trivia Quiz

Answer: mixing fat and flour into a crumbly dough

Cold butter or shortening is "cut in" to flour to produce a crumbly dough, as in biscuits or scones. Two knives can be used to accomplish this task but using a "pastry blender" (sometimes called a "pastry cutter") is quicker and easier. The goal is produce a light flaky product when baked.

Answer: a burst of rising as dough first heats up in the oven

When first placed in a hot oven, yeast dough may rise as much as a third of its height due to "oven spring." As the yeast initially heats, it gives off carbon dioxide and, as the water in the bread heats, it gives off steam, both of which cause this sudden rising. Spring ends when the interior of the loaf reaches about 120 degrees F as the yeast are killed by the heat and the crust of the bread becomes inflexible.

Answer: corn soaked in alkali

Hominy likely originated in Mesoamerica in about the 15th Century BC. Corn is soaked in alkali (often lye derived from wood ashes) in a process called nixtamalization. Whole hominy is used in dishes such as Mexican pozole; ground hominy is eaten in the US in the popular form of "hominy grits."

Answer: eggplant

In Britain, a rutabaga is called a swede, a ham steak is called gammon, and golden raisins are called sultanas. Eggplant is a perennial, a member of the nightshade family, native to India. The name aubergine is from the French language.

Answer: the bark of a cinnamon tree

Cinnamon is the inner bark of the cinnamon tree which grows in Ceylon, Indonesia, India, the West Indies, Brazil and Egypt. The stuff grown in Vietnam and China is not true cinnamon but rather cassia.

Answer: All of these are correct

Dashes, pinches and smidgens are colloquial measurements for very small amounts. This is often an indication that precision is unimportant. There have been some modern attempts to quantify these terms: a dash is equal to 1/8 teaspoon or 2 pinches; a pinch is equal to 1/16 teaspoon or two smidgens; a smidgen is equal to 1/32 teaspoon or half a pinch.

Answer: pre-arrangement of prepared ingredients and necessary tools

Mise en place (pronounced MEEZ-ahn-PLAHS) is a French term meaning, literally, "put in place." It is the habit of a good cook to prepare all of the ingredients before cooking, to lay them out in a sensible order, and to lay out all of the implements which will be needed, once cooking begins. In the patois of restaurant cooking, having one's mise en place ready is called being "fully prepped."

Answer: rendered chicken fat

Jewish dietary laws do not permit meat to be cooked in either butter or lard. Chicken (or sometimes goose) fat fills the need suitably. Schmaltz is available as a commercial product but can easily be made at home. Chicken fat is slowly rendered, often with onions added, and then strained into a jar for keeping in the refrigerator. The leftover bits of chicken skin and onions are called, in Yiddish, gribenes or grieven, which is delicious when spread on bread.

Answer: filberts

The name "filbert" is from French and likely derives from the readiness of these nuts for harvest around the Feast of Saint Philibert (22 August), the First Abbot of Jumieges and Nermoutier. The English name "hazelnut" is used in Great Britain and in the US, particularly in Oregon where 90% of these nuts produced in the USA are grown.

Answer: to precook in boiling water

Parboiling is a method of partially cooking food in boiling water before its cooking is finished using another method. Parboiling is similar to blanching except that the latter is of shorter duration and is ended by plunging the food into ice water to stop the cooking.

Some older cookbooks call it "leaching." For example, carrots are parboiled before being stir fried with more tender ingredients, vegetables are parboiled before being oven-roasted or charcoal-grilled, new potatoes are parboiled before being fried.

Some older cookbooks suggest parboiling racks of ribs before roasting or barbecuing them.