2008.12.31
Do you know mirepoix from quinoa?
For Christmas, my aunt gave me a nifty trivia game all about food. It has four sets of cards and each set tackles a different set of terms, from ingredients to foodie lingo.
I busted it out last night while my in-laws were there because my father-in-law, Bill, is something of a foodie himself and was curious about how difficult the game would be. The very first card was a multiple choice question: What is quinoa? I was the only one who even knew how to pronounce the word, much less knew what it is (a grain).
Before they declared me a know-it-all, I held up my hand and said, "I have to tell you a story." Not long into my stint as food writer here, I interviewed a chef about whole grain cooking. And I butchered the pronunciation of "quinoa" worse than a sacrificial lamb. I think I said something like "kee-Noah," as in the guy who loaded the ark with animals. The chef paused and replied to the question using the term again and conspicuously pronouncing it the correct way: "Keen-wah." I felt like a goof. A fraud.
I declared then that I would try my best to never be ignorant about a food term again. Since then, I've probably looked up half of the more than 6,000 terms in Sharon Tyler Herbst's "Food Lover's Companion," which is otherwise known to me as The Food Bible. Since a friend gave me the new, fourth edition of the book for Christmas, I plan to geekily mark each new term I look up to keep track of how much I have learned. And I gave the old, somewhat ratty third edition to Bill.
If you don't own "The Food Lover's Companion," I urge you to buy it and keep it with your cookbooks. How many times have you run across an ingredient or a method in a recipe and drawn a blank? I guarantee you The Food Bible has the answer. And after last night, I'm a big fan of foodie quiz games. Not only are they fun and challenging, but you'll learn something useful that might carry into the kitchen.
Here are a few options: At this site, you can play a free, online quiz game. Or you can order The Original Food Lovers Trivia game here. I'll have to find out where my aunt purchased the little game she got me and get back to you guys.
What's the weirdest food term you know?
I received a Dog Biscuit cookbook that in several receipes calls for "bulgar wheat" - can you look that up in your book for me?
Comment by Michelle — December 31, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
By the way, what is mirepoix?
Comment by Michelle — December 31, 2008 @ 2:35 pm
What a great resource! I have a B and N gift card burning a hole in my pocket...
Thanks and Happy New Year!!
Comment by Amy Hanek — December 31, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
Bulgur wheat is also a grain, Michelle. It is used in a lot of Mediterranean dishes. You may be most familiar with tabbouleh, the mixture of diced tomatoes and bulgur wheat, parsley and seasonings. You should be able to get it at most grocery stores, I would think. They call for it as filler in a lot of recipes. I'm not surprised that it's healthy for dogs.
And mirepoix is a French word referring to a sautee of diced vegetables that serves as the base for many dishes, like soups and stews. It's like when you cook carrots, celery and onion in butter to start off a soup.
It really is a terrific book for any food lover.
Comment by lindseynair — December 31, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
I got a bag of bulgur wheat at Kroger. It's in the section where Middle Eastern foods are. Michelle it's in a plastic bag like rice is.
Comment by Debbie — January 1, 2009 @ 9:46 am
I didn't get a cooking "book" for Christmas but I did get the "Personal Cooking" game for Nintendo DS - it is really neat! It is like a cooking website with recipes and instructional videos - even a kitchen timer! And with the recipes, it is voice activated and will read the instructions to you one at a time. So it will be like "Saute the carrots, onions, and butter." and if you want to hear it again you say "repeat!" and if you're ready for the next direction you say "Continue!" and it will read the next one. So that way you don't have to touch it if you have dirty hands.
I haven't cooked anything with it yet but I've been watching a lot of the videos and looking through the recipes. You can search them by category, title or ingredients.
Comment by Michelle — January 2, 2009 @ 8:15 am