Welcome back! (See
my B word! I’m really into this blog challenge!) I hope you left off reading my
first post wondering what is coming up. I had a lot of fun gathering some usual
and unusual terms for you. Today . . .
B is for Bard
Bard is a verb. Barding is attaching thin slices of fat
or bacon to a roast or poultry before cooking. It probably comes from the
Persian word pardah meaning a
covering for a horse.
Now why would one bard
one’s meat? Sometimes poultry and roasts dry out while cooking. (Haven’t we all
had tough and dry meat at some time?) Barding
provides not only a cover, but a cover that adds to the moisture while also
keeping moisture in. There’s something about fat . . .
Alli, from my Mission Impastable book, should bard something in the sequel. Maybe she could teach the word to her cooking school students. Hmmm.
B is for Braise
Braise is also a
verb. A friend who has been cooking for a very long time recently commented
that she had seen the word braise on
menus (and liked the foods that came that way) but wasn’t quite sure what braising meant. Ta Da! Here I am with
the answer for others of you in the same spot.
To braise is to
cook in liquid AFTER searing or browning the meat. That simple. It’s a cooking
method using dry and then moist heat. Just cooking in liquid doesn’t produce
the depth or layers of flavor that browning-first imparts. Just browning
doesn’t get the depth of flavors either. Sometimes you’ll see people call braising, pot roasting.
