Food and Cooking
Glossary
F
Falafel
A popular Middle Eastern street food made of spiced chickpea
fritters, often served in warm pitta bread with tahini sauce.
It's often served as part of a selection of hot meze dishes.
Farfalle
Literally 'butterfly' in Italian, this is pasta shaped like
little butterflies or bow-ties. It's very popular with children
because of its novelty factor. Allow about 75g of pasta per
person. If you can't find farfalle, fusilli is a good substitute.
Certain pasta shapes hold different sauces better than others.
Cheese or rich tomato sauces cling well to farfalle because
it's a relatively small pasta shape with a large surface area.
Fava Beans
Fresh or dried broad beans. Fresh broad beans only have a short
natural season during the summer and are often sold frozen or
canned. They're sweet and delicious with a smooth creamy texture.
Fresh beans are more popular than the dried variety, which tend
to be quite floury. Young thin beans are eaten pods and all,
but larger, older broad beans need to have the tough pods removed.
After boiling or steaming them (for about five minutes), peel
away the thin, pale sheath covering the bean.
Fennel
There are two main types of this aromatic plant - the vegetable
and the herb. Both have pale green, celery-like stems and bright
green, feathery foliage. Florence fennel, also called finocchio
or Italian fennel, has a broad, bulbous base with a mild aniseed
flavour and is treated like a vegetable. Both the base and stems
can be eaten raw in salads or cooked by braising or roasting.
Look for small tender white bulbs - the darker green bulbs tend
to be bitter.
Feta Cheese
A creamy white Greek cheese traditionally made from ewes' milk
or ewes' and goats' milk mixed together (but now sometimes made
using cows' milk) and preserved in brine or oil. It has quite
a salty flavour but it shouldn't be so salty that it detracts
from the flavour of the cheese. If you want to remove some of
the saltiness, just soak the cheese in milk or water for a couple
of minutes.
Fettuccine
Long flattish noodle-shaped pasta, similar to tagliatelle. A
very good pasta to serve with oil or butter-based sauces because
the sauce goes a long way to coat the pasta evenly and also
helps to prevent the strands of pasta from clumping together.
Fillet
The term used to describe a boneless, lean cut of meat, fish
or poultry. Fillet of beef is a prime cut and different parts
of it are called different names depending on which part of
the fillet they're cut from, including filet mignon, tournedos
and châteaubriand. You also 'fillet' a fish to remove
the bones.
Fish Sauce
A powerful thin brown sauce used in the cooking of numerous
countries in Asia. It's made by fermenting small whole fish
in brine and drawing off the liquid, which is then bottled.
It smells pungent and tastes very salty, although cooking greatly
reduces its 'fishiness' and simply adds richness and a layer
of flavour to cooked dishes. It's frequently used in the cooking
of Thailand, where it's known as nam pla. In the Philippines
it’s known as patis and shottsuru in Japan. Fish sauce
is available in most Asian shops, as well as in supermarkets.
If you can't find it, use a light soy sauce.
Five-spice Powder
A pungent mixture of five spices commonly used in Chinese cookery;
it's a brown powder made of ground star anise, fennel seeds,
cloves, cinnamon and Sichuan pepper. It's available from Chinese
grocers, and is becoming more widely available in supermarkets
too. A good blend should be fragrant and spicy but also slightly
sweet.
Flaky Pastry
A type of pastry that's rolled, folded and re-rolled several
times to create layers of pastry which in the heat of the oven
will rise into thin leaves. Heavier than puff pastry, but easier
to make, it's usually used for savoury pies and is often baked
with a roasting pan full of water at the bottom of the oven
because the steam helps the pastry rise evenly and develop a
crisp crust.
Flan
An open pie with a pastry base containing a sweet or savoury
filling in a custard of eggs and cream. Spinach flan or leek
and bacon flan are examples. In Spain and Latin America 'flan'
is used to refer to the egg custard dessert that we know as
crème caramel.
Florets
Florets are the small, individual flower stems that make up
the heads of vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower.
Focaccia
An Italian olive-oil bread, quite flat and usually round or
square. It has an almost cake-like texture and is often flavoured
with herbs such as rosemary, sage or basil, perhaps olives or
tapenade, and sometimes has a filling of ham or cheese. It's
fun to experiment making your own with various toppings and
fillings.
Fondue
A glorious Swiss dish of melted cheese and wine served at the
table in a large pot (also called a fondue) set over a burner
to keep the cheese warm. Each person spears bite-size pieces
of bread with a long-handled fork and dips it into the melted
cheese. It's a dish associated with ski chalet cuisine.
Fragrant Rice
An aromatic long-grain rice favoured in Thai and Vietnamese
cooking. It’s also known as jasmine rice and is quite
similar to Indian basmati, but is slightly stickier. Serve it
with Thai-style curries or spicy, saucy dishes. For something
different try using it to make a sticky rice pudding.
French Dressing
Also known as vinaigrette (French for 'little vinegar') this
is a fairly thick salad dressing made from a mixture of olive
oil, wine vinegar (red, white or balsamic) and salt and pepper
to which various flavourings can be added such as herbs, mustard,
honey or chilli.
Fricassée
A delicate creamy dish of chicken and vegetables, often served
with rice. The chicken is cooked gently in butter, after which
a creamy white sauce (usually made with double cream) is added.
It's often garnished with small glazed onions and lightly cooked
mushrooms.
Fritter
A fritter is any piece of raw or cooked meat, fish, fruit or
vegetable coated in batter and deep-fried until crisp, golden
and cooked through.
Fritter batter is usually made from flour, eggs, milk, salt,
pepper and a little oil to help them go crisp. If it's a sweet
batter for fruit then a little caster sugar is added and often
the fritters are dredged in icing sugar before serving.
Fromage Frais
A fresh, low-fat curd cheese (similar to cottage cheese but
processed until the texture is smooth and lump-free) made from
pasteurised cows' milk. Fromage frais has very little fat but
there are ones that have cream added which make them better
for cooking. It's delicious eaten on its own or with honey or
fresh fruit purée. It can also be used in desserts or
savoury dishes. Use it to make savoury sauces or as a topping
for jacket potatoes.
Fumet
A strong-flavoured cooking liquor used for flavouring sauces;
fumet usually refers to concentrated mushroom and fish stocks.
The liquid left over from cooking is boiled down rapidly to
a syrupy consistency, to be added to an accompanying sauce.
For meat, poultry and game stocks, the word fond is normally
used.
Fusilli
Spiral-shaped pasta which comes in plain, wholewheat and flavoured
varieties such as spinach or tomato. Fusilli tricolore comes
in three colours: white (plain egg pasta), green (coloured with
spinach), and red (coloured with tomato). The twists and turns
are good for holding rich, chunky pasta sauces. Fusilli bucatti
has slightly rounder, tighter spirals.
