Cabbage
Cabbage Pronounce it: ka-badge The cabbage, or brassica, family is huge, and includes everything from the familiar red, white or green varieties with tightly packed leaves, to cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts as well as pak…
Vinaigrette
Vinaigrette Pronounce it: vin-uh-gret A basic oil and vinegar-based salad dressing usually used to dress salads. A good vinaigrette can also be used to baste meat, poultry, seafood or vegetables before cooking as well as…
Stevia
Stevia Stevia is a South American wilderness herb with leaves that contain an ingredient of exceptional sweetness. Weight for weight, the sweetening compound in stevia is about 150 times sweeter than sugar but it has…
Chervil
Chervil Pronounce it: chur-vil Chervil is an annual herb that looks similar to flat leaf parsley but with a finer stem and more delicate, almost wilting leaves. It has a faint aniseed flavour and is…
Martini cocktail
Martini cocktail Pronounce it: mah-teen-ee kok-tayl The word cocktail is vital when ordering in all except the grandest, smartest bars and restaurants. If you simply ask for a martini, you might get Martini vermouth. This…
Mai Tai
Mai Tai Pronounce it: my-ty This cocktail was almost certainly created by Victor Bergeron, the man behind Trader Vic’s restaurants and is thus supposedly of Polynesian descent, except that rum is originally from the Caribbean…
Semolina
Semolina Pronounce it: swiss shard Pronounce it: sem-oh-leen-ah Semolina flour is pale-yellow in colour, high in gluten and used for traditionally made pasta, pizza, bread and biscuit doughs. The term ‘semolina’ comes from the Italian…
Amaranth
Amaranth Pronounce it: am-uh-ranth Amaranth is a protein-rich, gluten-free pseudo-grain (like quinoa) and a distant relation to Swiss chard and spinach. An amaranth plant produces multiple seed heads, each of which can yield up to 5,000 seeds. It is…
Clove
Clove Pronounce it: klo-ve The dry, unopened flower bud of the tropical myrtle tree family used to flavour a wide variety of sweet and savoury dishes. Cloves can be used whole or ground to impart…
Spinach
Spinach Pronounce it: spin-atch Used in almost every cuisine across the world, spinach is an enormously popular green vegetable. The leaves can be either flat or slightly ruffled, and are a bright green when young,…