WHAT IS ASPIC?

Aspic is a dish in which ingredients are set into a gelatin made from a meat stock or consommé. Similar dishes, made with commercial gelatin mixes instead of stock or consommé, are usually called gelatin salads.

When cooled, stock made from meat congeals because of the natural gelatin found in the meat. The stock can be clarified with egg whites, and then filled and flavored just before the aspic sets. Almost any type of food can be set into aspics. Most common are meat pieces, fruits, or vegetables. Aspics are usually served on cold plates so that the gel will not melt before being eaten. A meat jelly that includes cream is called a chaud-froid.

Nearly any type of meat can be used to make the gelatin: pork, beef, veal, chicken, turkey, or fish. Gelatin is also found in cartilage. The aspic may need additional gelatin in order to set properly. Veal stock provides a great deal of gelatin; in making stock, veal is often included with other meat for that reason. Fish consommés usually have too little natural gelatin, so the fish stock may be double-cooked or supplemented. Since fish gelatin melts at a lower temperature than gelatins of other meats, fish aspic is more delicate and melts more readily in the mouth.
Historically, meat jellies were made before fruit and vegetable jellies. By the Middle Ages at the latest, cooks had discovered that a thickened meat broth could be made into a jelly. A detailed recipe for aspic is found in Le Viandier, written in around 1375.

Aspic is rather an ingredient than a dish. Aspic, made from clarified stock and gelatin, is used for many things; it can be used as a binder to hold other ingredients together in terrines, or sealers in such foods as pate en croute.
Today, aspic is often used to glaze show pieces in food competitions to make the food glisten, making it more appealing to the eye, but its original use was to prolong the shelf life of food. Since the aspic was used to glaze the entire item, it cut off the oxygen supply to the food, preventing bacteria within from multiplying.

In Poland (known as “galareta”), in Ukraine (known as “studinets”), Latvia (similarly known as “galerts”), in Russia (known as “kholodets”), in Serbia (known as “pihtije”), and in Romania (known as “piftie” or “rǎcituri”) aspic often takes the form of pork jelly, and it is popular around the Christmas and Easter Holidays. In Asia, among the Newars of Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, buffalo meat jelly is a major component of the winter festivity gourmet. It is eaten in combination with fish aspic, which is made from dried fish and buffalo meat stock, soured, and contains a heavy mix of spices and condiments.

WHAT IS CURRY?

Curry (IPA: /ˈkʌri/) is a generic description used throughout European culture to describe a general variety of side dishes, best known in South Asian cuisines, especially Indian cuisine. The word curry is an anglicized version of the Tamil word kari, which is usually understood to mean “gravy” or “sauce” rather than “spices”. In most South Indian cuisines, a curry is considered a side-dish, which can be eaten along with a main dish like rice or bread.

In Pakistan and North India, where dishes are classified as sukhi (dry) and tari (with liquid), the word curry is often confounded with the similar-sounding Hindi-Urdu word tari (from the Persian-derived tar meaning wet) and has no implications for the presence or absence of spice, or whether the dish is Indian or not (e.g. any stew, spicy or not, would be considered a curry dish, simply because it is wet). In Urdu, an official language of Pakistan , curry is usually referred to as saalan. The equivalent word for a spiced dish in Hindi-Urdu is masaledar (i.e. with masala).

Curry’s popularity in recent decades has spread outward from the Indian subcontinent to figure prominently in international cuisine. Consequently, each culture has adopted spices in its indigenous cooking to suit its own unique tastes and cultural sensibilities. Curry can therefore be called a pan-Asian or global phenomenon with immense popularity in Thai, British, and Japanese cuisines.

COOKING WELL AS A MEANS OF NECESSITY

I heard about this contest held by Anthony Bourdain, a personal hero of mine, to write an essay about what it means to cook “well”. In my opinion, cooking well means understanding the grass roots of any cuisine you love to cook. Great chefs don’t just start cooking great food. Most know what their mother, grand mothers and great grandmothers cook. One of the reasons I always post a history of different cuisines on this blog is so that cooks understand and relate to the different cuisines they cook. You can vote for my essay by using the following link:

http://bourdainmediumraw.com/essays/view/1270

Here is the essay:

A mother preparing dinner for her five children… no father on sight, no brothers, sisters or parents. She works 12 hours a day to make ends meet and another eight hours preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner and tending to the needs of her children. You walk into her house and smell the fragrant stews consisting of inexpensive meats and aromatic vegetables slowly cooking in a hand-me-down, dilapidated pot missing a single handle. Young eyes focused on their mother, she is barely sweating, as they eagerly await for tonight’s dinner. Despite the poor conditions of their small two-bedroom apartment in a poor neighborhood, after dinner the children run off and play outside excited about coming back for seconds of the unnamed stew their mother lovingly prepared for them. Although the scenario is not uncommon for this household, the mother is always able to create different dinners for her children, using different mixtures of beef, chicken, pork and spices to keep her children smiling and from asking “this again?.”

Twenty years later, one of the same five children, a respected, successful business man, sits down in a four-star restaurant and enjoys a meal prepared by a CIA-graduated chef with 15 years of experience in top French restaurants from around the globe. A kitchen stocked with the finest stock pots, sauce pans and kitchen equipment that money can buy. The Chef is assisted by classically trained souse chefs cooking with only the finest local ingredients. The plates are works of art as they are escorted out to the patrons by tuxedo clad waiters. When dinner is over, the Chef approaches the table with a fake smile to ask the patron, “How was your dinner?.” The patron smiles back to reply “It was well done.” The Chef walks away with a look on his face that screams, “Of course it was, I am the Mozart of the culinary industry.” The scenario is not uncommon for this or many other restaurants. The menu is consistently being “innovated,” using different mixtures of beef, chicken, pork and spices to keep the patrons smiling and from asking “this again?”

After the next couple of days, the patron has long forgotten about the dinner he had at the four-star restaurant. Shortly afterward, his mother calls and asks him to come to dinner that she has spent hours preparing. Of course, there is no hesitation in accepting the offer. After twenty years, he remembers… he remembers the smells from the old apartment, the sight of his mother smilingly over the pot worthy of remebering and the different variations of stews his mother created, while tending to the same stock pot. Most of all, he remembers that “cooking well” derives from the means of necessity, not immortality.