Coq au vin is a French dish of chicken braised with wine, lardons, mushrooms, and optionally garlic. A red Burgundy wine is typically used, though many regions of France make variants using local wines, such as coq au vin jaune (Jura), coq au riesling (Alsace), coq au pourpre or coq au violet, and coq au Champagne.
The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars to create melanoidins, the compounds that give browned food its distinctive flavor. Seared steaks, fried dumplings, cookies and other kinds of biscuits, breads, toasted marshmallows, falafel and many other foods undergo this reaction. It is named after French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described it in 1912 while attempting to reproduce biological protein synthesis. The reaction is a form of non-enzymatic browning which typically proceeds rapidly from around 140 to 165 °C. Many recipes call for an oven temperature high enough to ensure that a Maillard reaction occurs. At higher temperatures, caramelization and subsequently pyrolysis become more pronounced.
Searing or pan searing is a technique used in grilling, baking, braising, roasting, sautéing, and the like, in which the surface of the food is cooked at high temperature until a browned crust forms. Similar techniques, such as browning and blackening, are typically used to sear all sides of a particular piece of meat, fish, poultry, etc. before finishing it in the oven. To obtain the desired brown or black crust, the meat surface must exceed 150 °C (300 °F), so searing requires the meat surface be free of water, which boils at around 100 °C (212 °F).
Alton Crawford Brown Jr. is an American television personality, food show presenter, food scientist, author, voice actor, and cinematographer. He is the creator and host of the Food Network television show Good Eats that ran for 16 seasons, host of the miniseries Feasting on Asphalt and Feasting on Waves, and host and main commentator on Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen. Brown is a best-selling author of several books on food and cooking. A recap series titled Good Eats Reloaded aired on Cooking Channel, and a true sequel series, Good Eats: The Return, ran from 2019 to 2021 on Food Network.
Risotto is an Italian rice dish cooked with broth until it reaches a creamy consistency. The broth can be derived from meat, fish, or vegetables. Many types of risotto contain butter, onion, white wine, and Parmesan cheese. It is one of the most common ways of cooking rice in Italy. Saffron was originally used for flavour and its signature yellow colour.
Choux pastry, or pâte à choux, is a delicate pastry dough used in many pastries. The essential ingredients are butter, water, flour and eggs.
Harold James McGee is an American author who writes about the chemistry and history of food science and cooking. He is best known for his seminal book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, first published in 1984 and revised in 2004.
Recado rojo or achiote paste is a popular blend of spices. It is now strongly associated with Mexican and Belizean cuisines, especially of Yucatán and Oaxaca. The spice mixture usually includes annatto, oregano, cumin, clove, cinnamon, black pepper, allspice, garlic, and salt. The annatto seeds dye the mixture red, and impart a distinctive red-orange color to the food.
Heston Marc Blumenthal is an English celebrity chef, TV personality and food writer. His restaurants include the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, a three-Michelin-star restaurant that was named the world's best by the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2005.
Shirley O. Corriher is an American biochemist and author of CookWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking, winner of a James Beard Foundation award, and BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking.CookWise shows how scientific insights can be applied to traditional cooking, while BakeWise applies the same idea to baking. Some compare Corriher's approach to that of Harold McGee and Alton Brown. She has made a number of appearances as a food consultant on Brown's show Good Eats and has released a DVD, Shirley O. Corriher's Kitchen Secrets Revealed.
A popover is a light roll made from an egg batter similar to that of Yorkshire pudding, typically baked in muffin tins or dedicated popover pans, which have straight-walled sides rather than angled.
Molecular gastronomy is the scientific approach of cuisine from primarily the perspective of chemistry. The composition, properties and transformations of an ingredient are addressed and utilized in the preparation and appreciation of the ingested products. It is a branch of food science that approaches the preparation and enjoyment of nutrition from the perspective of a scientist at the scale of atoms, molecules, and mixtures.
Cook's Illustrated is an American cooking magazine published every two months by America's Test Kitchen Limited Partnership (ATK) in Brookline, Massachusetts. On February 2, 2023, Cook's Illustrated was one of ATK's brands included in the sale of its controlling interest to Marquee Brands.
Persimmon pudding is a dessert pudding made with persimmons. There is a lot of variety in the recipes, some are made with eggs, others add sweet potatoes or pumpkin. There's no set recipe, although common ingredients include some type of cornmeal or flour, brown sugar or molasses, and spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Owing to the difficulty of preparing the pulp from wild American persimmons, persimmon pudding is mostly a regional specialty of the cuisine of the Midwestern United States.
Doneness is a gauge of how thoroughly cooked a cut of meat is based on its color, juiciness, and internal temperature. The gradations are most often used in reference to beef but are also applicable to other types of meat.
America's Test Kitchen is a half-hour long American cooking show broadcast by public television stations and Create and distributed by American Public Television. Originally hosted by Christopher Kimball, the program currently is co-hosted by Julia Collin Davison and Bridget Lancaster.
Shogaols are pungent constituents of ginger similar in chemical structure to gingerol. The most common of the group is [6]-shogaol. Like zingerone, it is produced when ginger is dried or cooked. Moreover, shogaol are converted to other constituents when heat is applied over time, which is why ginger loses its spiciness as it is cooked.
Nun's puffs are a dessert pastry originally from France, where they were known as pets de nonne. They are now also produced in French Canada, the United States, England, and Spain.
Batter is a flour mixture with liquid and other ingredients such as sugar, salt, and leavening used for cooking. It usually contains more liquid than dough, which is also a mixture of flour and liquid. Batters are usually a pourable consistency that cannot be kneaded. The batter is most often used for pancakes, light cakes, and as a coating for fried foods. It is also used for a variety of batter breads.
Gastrophysics is an emerging interdisciplinary science that employs principles from physics and chemistry to attain a fundamental understanding of the worlds of gastronomy and cooking. Gastrophysical topics of interest include investigations of the raw materials of food, the effects of food preparation, and quantitative aspects of the physical basis for food quality, flavour, appreciation and absorption in the human body.
