Foods Beginning with O, Part 2 Quiz

Answer: queso Oaxaca

The Dominican monks who came to the Oaxaca region of modern Mexico during the ages of discovery and conquest brought with them skills from Italy as cheesemakers. They used the local cows milk to produce a cheese a bit like Monterey Jack and a bit like mozzarella. Queso Oaxaca is an ingredient in many Mexican dishes where it melts easily and well.

A similar cheese is made elsewhere in Latin America: Queso Palmito in Costa Rica, and Quesillo in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Answer: offal

Any part of a butchered animal aside from muscle meat may be considered offal. Other names for offal are variety meat, pluck and organ meats. Cultures vary in the use of offal: some consume it as a specialty (foie gras, pâté, menduo, and haggis); others discard it or turn it into pet food. Common examples include heart, kidney, liver, lungs, spleen, pancreas, testicles, and tripe.

Answer: olallieberry

The olallieberry (spelt variously) is a cross between the Mammoth blackberry and the youngberry accomplished in 1935. The Oregon State University registered the hybrid. The olallieberry, in turn, is one of the progenitors of the Marionberry. The name "Olallie" was chosen because it means "berry" in Chinook Jargon. This berry is especially delightful in pie.

Answer: olives

An olive is a fruit grown on a tree (Olea europaea) which is edible but, more importantly, a source of high-quality oil. For thousands of years, olive trees have grown around the Mediterranean Sea. They are now cultivated around the world. A small number of olives are eaten as "table olives" - green unripe ones, semi-ripe red/brown ones, and fully ripe black ones, leached in lye and preserved in brine.

The considerable majority of olives are pressed for their oil. Spanish missionaries brought olive trees to California, thus the ubiquitous canned California olives today.

A life spent without tasting tapenade (a mixture of minced olives, capers, garlic, anchovies and olive oil) is a life wasted.

Answer: onion

There are many varieties of the common onion (Allium cepa) and there are many similar species within the genus, e.g. garlic (A. sativum), scallions (A. fistulosum), leeks (A. porrum) and chives (A. schoenoprasum). Onions are grown around the world and figure centrally in a great many cuisines.

They are rarely at the center of a dish (French onion soup) and more often an adjunct to savoury dishes, salads, chutneys and the like.

Answer: orange roughy

Perhaps if shoppers in the fish market knew that a common name for orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus) is "slimehead", it would not sell as well. In fact, the orange roughy belongs to an entire family of slimeheads (called Trachichthyidae). This fish is very slow growing which makes it subject to overfishing.

The flesh is firm and mild. Because the flesh concentrates mercury, it is often avoided. Because it is overfished, it is on several lists of fish to avoid.

Answer: Oregon grape

There are two sorts of Oregon grape growing wild in the Douglas Fir forests of Canada and the Western United States. One is Mahonia aquifolium, properly called Oregon grape, and the other is Mahonia nervosa, variously known as dwarf Oregon grape, Cascade Oregon grape, and Cascade barberry.

The Oregon grape is not related to true grapes (genus Vitis) but was so named because its dark blue/purple berries grow in clusters reminiscent of table/wine grapes. The fruit is edible, tart, and mixes well with salal berries (which are sweeter). Birds like them, as did Lewis and Clark.

Their juice can be fermented into something like barberry wine.

Answer: ouzo

Ouzo is a Greek distilled alcoholic beverage flavoured with anise. It is somewhat comparable to pastis, raki and arak. It may be consumed straight, as an aperitif, or mixed with water (which turns white when combined), or on the rocks, or as an ingredient in cocktails.

The role of ouzo in savoury cooking is less well known. Keftedes me ouzo is a Greek dish of lamb meatballs with ouzo sauce.

Answer: oxtail

Oxtail is defined by the North American Meat Processors Association as "beef oxtail" which is not limited to the musculature of the caudal vertebrae of oxen but rather includes the tails of all beef cattle. A complete oxtail weighs around 5 pounds (3.5 kg) but is sawn into shorter lengths for consumers.

The meat on an oxtail is about as tough as shoe leather but yields unctuous gelatine during slow cooking and is wonderfully flavourful. It is often the foundation of hearty winter soups. Pressure cookers were invented for tasks such as this.

It seems that every cuisine on Earth has a use for oxtails, probably because good food ought never be thrown away.

Answer: oyster sauce

In classic Chinese cooking, oysters were boiled in water to produce a white broth which caramelized to brown as it was reduced. The result was oyster sauce. This is far too expensive a method of manufacture today; modern oyster sauce is made with oyster extract, coloured with caramel, thickened with cornstarch, and made salty by the addition of soy sauce. It is very popular in Chinese cooking as well as Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer (Cambodian), Hong Kong and Malay cuisine. There is no such thing as vegetarian oyster sauce; attempts to make one are simply mushroom sauce.