FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The waiter appears at your table and you drop the menu to pay
close attention as the daily specials are announced. Will you follow
his or her lead and live dangerously, or will you play it safe with
something from the menu you've had before?
Chances are, you'll return to the menu if you're dining with an
important client or trying to impress a date and don't want to expose
your lack of culinary savoir faire.
Help for the gastronomically challenged appears in this Cliffs
Notes for diners, "Everything You Pretend to Know About Food, and Are
Afraid Someone Will Ask" by Nancy Rommelmann.
Following are some of the terms and information found in the book.
Pay attention, and perhaps you'll be the one to translate those
enticing daily specials for your fellow diners next time you gather
at a restaurant.
Nothing makes a carnivore happier than a perfectly cooked steak.
The most tender cuts of beef are from the tenderloin, which is
butchered into three sections: chateaubriand comes from the center,
filet mignon (steaks) from wide end, and tournedos (smaller pieces)
from the small end. While these steaks will practically melt in your
mouth, they're a bit short on flavor because of their low fat
content.
These cuts are often dressed with a demi-glace (French for
"half-glaze"). The sauce is made with meat stock or poaching liquid
reduced to a syrupy consistency with added sherry or wine and butter.
Whole glace is reduced stock or poaching liquid that has been reduced
further, resulting in a much thicker sauce with a very strong taste.
Every Italian restaurant has pancetta and prosciutto somewhere on
the menu.
Pancetta is salt-cured unsmoked bacon, crafted into a salami-like
roll and sliced. Not usually fried, it is eaten by itself or added to
sauces and pasta dishes. Prosciutto is unsmoked Italian ham that is
seasoned, salted and hung to dry. It is sliced very thin and usually
served atop a slab of ripe melon (honeydew is best) or eaten with
bread, olive oil and parmigiano-reggiano cheese.
Rather get your protein from poultry? Free-range chicken is
considered superior to standard supermarket fare because the birds
get to roam around in the fresh air and develop more muscle than
their coop-bound cousins. They are killed at a younger age and are
more tender.
Fish and seafood are consumed more often at restaurants than at
home because most of us aren't completely comfortable cooking it.
While those portion-sized pieces of filets and steaks certainly are
