On Food and Cooking

faster. Poaching Temperatures The great advantage of poaching fish is the ease of controlling the heat to ...

opacification and savor the evolution of their texture. Soups and Stews; Bouillabaisse Fish stews and soups ...

with a stock made from scraps and small bony fish to provide gelatin and flavor, tomatoes and aromatics fo ...

bed on which the fish sits. Even cooking requires that the fish pieces be the same thickness, and that ...

simmered or steamed fish can be quite successful thanks to the relatively thin dimensions of fillet ...

cold-smoking requires an appliance with separate chambers for the smoke source and the fish (p. 236). Bu ...

small scraps or cooked leftovers, or fish that are bony or otherwise unsuited to serving in large pieces. ...

whisking also incorporates air, which lightens the mixture. If the fish is very fresh, then it can ...

Ancient Quenelles Pike is good too. Egg white should be mixed into the dish called spumeum which is ...

starchy sauces or gelatin. Fingers and Burgers, Surimi Commercial “minced” fish products are made fr ...

shaping it, and boiling it until it solidifies. Washing the mince removes nearly everything from the muscle except t ...

invertebrates: they don’t have a backbone or internal skeleton; and most of them don’t swim much. ...

exoskeleton, that protects and supports the muscles and organs within, and many rigid appendages that are ad ...

portion, or cephalothorax, often called the “head” in shrimp, is the equivalent of our head and t ...

(below). It’s thus one of the richest, most flavorful parts of the body, and is especially prized in lobs ...

characteristic of the crustaceans is a “shell” or cuticle made up of chitin, a network of molecules that ...

massive cephalothorax. As a crustacean grows, it must periodically cast off the old cuticle and create a larger ...

water as muscle. Crustacean Color Crustacean shells and eggs provide some of the table’s most vivid colors. The ...

butter, for example — or contains some. Crustacean Texture Like fish flesh, most crustacean flesh consists ...

Most of our words for crustaceans go back to prehistoric times. Shrimp comes from the Indo-European root s ...