News You Can Bruise for 2005 May 8

I've written before about words that only show up on restaurant menus, weird vegetables, and techniques like "coulis". At Watercress there was tomato something, "tomato coralage" or some similar word. I asked the waiter what a tomato corolage was, and he said it was just tomato sauce. So either he was patronising me, or he didn't actually know, or this mystery word actually means "made into sauce" and was just put on the menu to make the food sound fancy.

I've decided that when I see a word I don't recognize on a restaurant menu, I'll write it down to remember it, and expose its true meaning here on NYCB. First, the only cooking term so far I've learned from menus: coulis is a sauce made in a blender and strained to make it seedless and very smooth. In restaurants it is usually used to garnish a dessert, and is inevitably made from two fruits: raspberries plus something really off-the-wall like passionfruit. Using three fruits in a coulis would clutter up the menu. Using one makes it seem cheap.

Also, jicama, a food I first saw on restaurant menus. Jicama is a South American root vegetable that has the texture of an apple. I can't decide whether or not I like it.