Thought i'd ask whether you have noticed differences in food descriptions and terminology through the years.


I was watching a program last night where the chef said she was making an Indian Kebab dish. She described the original dish as using meat on a skewer.

She then said that in this dish there was no meat and no skewer was needed

eh?



What was the point in using the term "kebab" and describing it when all along she was making veggie burgers?




Another one i've heard of is "Carpaccio" where it is thin slices or raw/seared beef.

Nowadays you see Pinapple Carpaccio. Saying Thinly sliced Pineapple is obviously not enough

Just watching JC Novelli and he says "introduce" a lot which is a bit funny

I'm going to introduce the tomatoes to the garlic



It reminded me of the BBC shorts "Posh Nosh" with Richard E. Grant and Arrabella Wier. Their food terminology was quite outstanding

Here are some clips
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/poshnosh/clips/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzjR0yL4f0Y

I made a dish the other day that was name as a vegetable lasagna, even though it wasn't made with lasagne pasta. It was made with penne.

Why not just call it a pasta bake?

In another thread I was commenting on the annoying camera work on some modern cookery shows and someone posted this link.

Classic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TuCn8xA6SI

Wiki suggests that the meaning of the word kebab is bread wrapped round some kind of filler and is based on Arabic words for fried meat. Certainly the kebab shops I've frequented don't necessarily use skewered meat ti fill their 'kebabs', but I can't find a suggestion that it might refer to a vegetarian meat substitute.
Again Wiki suggests that carpaccio did refer originally to all sorts of thinly sliced meats but now includes such things as pineapple.

Of course we all know how unreliable Wiki can be.

I guess from the time I first started eating in restaurants on special occasions as a child in the 70s, it's been the arrival of 'poncey' names for ordinary things. For instance, back then if a place was too upmarket to say 'chips' on the menu, it called them 'chipped potatoes' not 'frites', 'pommes frites' or 'French fried potatoes'. Likewise, dishes were served with a sauce, gravy or custard. Not a 'jus', 'foam', 'coulis' or 'crème anglaise'.

Admittedly, some of there new terms do tie in with cooking techniques that weren't around then - you never saw a foam-like savoury sauce, for example - but some of them are just pretention. Crème anglaise is French for custard. You're in England, so call it custard, for heaven's sake! Coulis is a pouring sauce, etc.

Btw, I'm not saying that the eating out experience should in any other way revert back to how it was in the 70s - an age when a tiny glass of orange or grapefruit juice from a tin was considered a suitable starter at even quite ritzy restaurants..

There's a good bit about Custard/Créme Anglaise on Qi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO4MDSuomBE#t=6m05s

it looks like a unappetising, disgusting gob of spit to me

The good old days of the Berni Inn.

Tomato soup or prawn cocktail for starter
Well done rump steak for main
Black forest gateau or cheesecake for pudding (cheescake was always a bit foreign though!)

Where did you think the Black Forest was?

It was just a fancy name for chocolate cake, so wasn't foreign (the North East in the early 70s could not be described as cosmopolitan)

I was reminded by this thread and Posh Nosh last night while watching Jamie Oliver's new series.

He was making a dip and said to use Sour Cream with a Gesture of Lemon



Earlier in the show he described some tinned Herrings as not overly aggressive (can you get aggressive Herrings?), but the Gesture of Lemon takes the biscuit

"pan fried" - where else do you fry
"oven baked" -where else do you bake
"drizzle" - urgh, just the word

Deep Fat Fryer?

Yeah but even then a deep fat fryer is basically a pan with a heating element.

You can't fry things without using a pan.

True, but 'pan fried' is used to distinguish it from something that's been deep fried. It's likely to be less fatty/oily.

"Sweated off" is the new buzz term. It annoys me.

the clue is in the word Pan.

You asked where else you fry, as someone else has already pointed out the term "pan fry" is to indicate a certain type of frying (ie, a different amount of oil). Whilst it could be argued that the items are put into a pan to achieve this, the fact is they're in a basket within the pot - since this is a terminology thread, surely it is best to use the standard terminology?

You certainly wouldn't call Chip Shop chips as "pan fried", for instance. Or would you?

A few quotes from Nigella

and some more from Posh Nosh

I think one of the lines used in Posh Nosh was "...next, adgitate your vegetables"
and here's a few more from Posh Nosh
Minty: ...Introduce your fish to your vegetable chips and marry them on a duvet of rice paper.
Minty: We use free-range, organic, home-schooled chicken.
Minty: Next week on Posh Nosh, we'll be taunting an aubergine.
Minty: Leak a little Madagascan vanilla essence. It is easily available in all good food shops in Madagascar.

That was hilarious! Thanks for starting my morning with a good chuckle. It's actually one of the reasons I don't like to watch Nigella programmes.




What new Jamie Oliver series? I thought his new 30 minute meals didn't start until 11 October?

Yes, summerwine, I thought that too and thought I had missed the new series coming soon. However, the poster wrote that on 29 April!

Haha! Thanks for that tvfanny. I didn't see that. I thought I missed it too.

I've always thought meat wrapped in a flat bread was a doner kebab or gyro and meat on a skewer was a shish kebab.