Something beginning with Y

YASSA  A Sengalese dish consisting of pieces of grilled (broiled) mutton, chicken or fish (originally monkey), which have been marinated in lime juice and highly seasoned condiments. It is served with rice or millet, and the marinade is used as a sauce.

RECIPE

chicken yassa

The day before the meal (or at least 2 hours in advance) cut up a chicken into 4 or 6 pieces; marinate them in the juice of 3 limes with half a chilli pepper, finely chopped, 1 tablespoon groundnut (peanut) oil, 3 large onions (sliced), salt and pepper. Remove the chicken pieces and grill them, preferably over hot embers, browning them well all over. Remove the onions from the marinade and brown them with a little oil in a saute pan, then moisten with the marinade and 2 tablespoons water. Add the chicken pieces, cover the pan and simmer for about 25 minutes. Serve the chicken very hot coated with the sauce, in the centre of a ring of rice a la creole.

Larousse Gastronomique. (2001). English ed. London: Hamlyn.

Banana Yoshimoto on dirty kitchens

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).

I like even incredibly dirty kitchens to distraction - vegetable droppings all over the floor, so dirty your slippers turn black on the bottom. Strangely, it's better if this kind of kitchen is large. I lean up against the silver door of a towering, giant refrigerator stocked with enough food to get through winter. When I raise my eyes from the oil-spattered gas burner and the rusty kitchen knife, outside the window the stars are glittering, lonely.

Yoshimoto, B. in Foulston, J. (2006).The Virago Book of Food: The Joy of Eating. Virago: London. 

Polish proverb

Kiedy ryba ma być dobra, powinna trzy razy pływać: W wodzie, maśle i w winie.

Fish, to taste right, must swim three times: in water, in butter, and in wine.

Polish Proverb

Dr Watson on French cuisine

We then spent the next three hours consuming a meal of grotesque opulence. Despite my service under General Cathgart, I had never before borne the full weight of haute cuisine. Each dish was more fantastical than the last. One can only conclude that it is the special purpose of French cookery to dissolve the entire substance of a dish into polish, so that no trace of the primeval beef, pork, or chicken remains, converting the whole into a sort of puree raisonne that can then be shaped and reshaped by an abstract and extravagant fancy far closer to architecture than cookery, a fancy whose sole intent is to remove from its creations all taint of the hearth and kitchen, not to mention pasture and field.

Dr Watson in Alan Vanneman (2005). Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara. Carroll & Graf: New York City.

Something beginning with Z

ZEPHYR  The name (meaning literally 'a light wind') given to various savoury or sweet dishes, served hot or cold, characterized by a light and frothy consistency.

A zephyr is often a souffle. The name is also given to quenelles, mousses or small savoury puddings made in dariole moulds and consisting of pounded lean veal, chicken meat or fish mixed with butter, egg yolks, and either creme fraiche or stiffly whisked egg whites.

In the West Indies zephyrs are balls of vanilla and rum ice cream surrounded by meringue shells and accompanied by a chocolate zabaglione, served as a dessert. Zephyrs may also be small light cakes made of layers of sweet pastry or meringue covered with praline- or coffee-flavoured buttercream, sandwiched together, then iced (frosted) with fondant. 

Larousse Gastronomique. (2001). English ed. London: Hamlyn.