Yogesh Singh

Chaud-froid   Chaud-froid Chaud-froid  (pronounced "show-FRWAH") is a word that has two meanings in the culinary arts. Originally, it referred to a dish of cooked chicken which was then cooled and bathed in a jellied sauce made from its cooking liquid.   Today, the word chaud-froid is mostly used to describe the sauce itself, which is a simple enough preparation that involves adding gelatin to a velouté sauce (a sauce made from a base of chicken stock  thickened with roux ) and is mostly used for decorating serving platters. That jellied chicken dish from which the sauce gets its name is  so  much more interesting.   First of all, chaud-froid is a French term that translates literally to "hot-cold." The reason for this curiously contradictory name is obscured by the fog of the  culinary   origin   story , examples of which tend to represent either the "fortuitous mistake" genre or the "demanding master" genre. This latte...

  Aspic Aspic  is a dish in which ingredients are set into a gelatin made from a meat stock or consomme.  Aspic can also be referred to as  aspic gelée  or  aspic jelly . Non-savoury, sweet dishes, often made with commercial gelatin mixes without stock or consommé, are usually called jello salads in the United States, or  gelatin salads  elsewhere.   History The 10 th  century Kitab al- Tabikh, the earliest known Arabic Cookbook, contains a recipe for a fish aspic called  qaris . It was made by boiling several large fish heads with vinegar, parsley, cassia, whole onions, rue, black pepper, ginger, spikenard, galangal, clove, coriander seeds and long pepper. It is colored with saffron enough to add a "radiant red". The cooked fish heads were removed from the vinegar cooking liquid along with the seasonings, and only the tongues and lips were returned to steep in the liquid until it cooled an...

  Galantine Chicken Galantine   A galantine is an elaborate preparation that dates back to 17th century France. They were originally prepared by deboning a whole chicken, then combining its meat with minced veal, truffles, pork fat and other ingredients, plus a lot of seasonings, to make what's  called a forcemeat , and then stuffing this forcemeat into the skin of the chicken. It was then tied up, wrapped in bacon and  poached  in a rich stock that would eventually jell when cooled. The idea is very similar to the way foods were preserved in  aspic  or  confit . Indeed, like the aforementioned dishes, galantines were typically served cold, accompanied by the cold gelatinized stock and garnishes such as truffles, pistachios, and bacon. Galantines were originally made specifically from chicken. (If you speak Spanish, you know that the word  gallina  means hen, and the words come from the same root.) But eventually the technique ...