HM's Food & Wine Magazine » Surya Kiran Shrestha

Tea

Surya Kiran Shrestha — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:39:12 +0000

Tea is the world’s most popular drink. It is the name given to the leaves of the tea plant Thea Sinensis, an evergreen tree or shrub which grows in damp tropical or subtropical regions at altitudes of up to 7000 feet. Tea plant may have originated in India and reached China by 200 AD. Tea as a beverage was discovered in China whilst boiling water, leaves from a tree dropped into it and formed a brew. Tea seeds were introduced into Japan in 805 AD by the Buddhists who had become acquainted with tea cultivation while pursuing religious studies in China. It is not only popular drink of Japan but had reached great ritual significance in the Cha-no-yu a Tea Ceremony. It was brought to Europe by the Dutch in 1610, reached England in 1644 where it has given its name to a light afternoon meal. It reached America at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is grown particularly in China, Taiwan, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia and, to a lesser extent in Africa.

Types of Tea Leaves
There are two main types of tea leaves, black and green, produced from different treatments of the leaves after they are picked.

Black Tea
Black tea leaves are fermented, have amber-color and strong flavor. They are brittle leaves and have smoky taste. Black tea may be served with lemon and sugar or with milk. >>Read More

Cooking Pasta

Surya Kiran Shrestha — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:40:15 +0000

The word pasta simply means “dough”, is the staple diet of Italy. It is probably indigenous to Italy, have been developed by the Etruscans (an ancient Italian state) from the Greek recipe. It was a dough cut into strips and called laganon, from which the word lasagne is ultimately derived. Yet one of the earliest words for pasta was tri, from the Arabic itriyah, “string”, which as a description of spaghetti “little threads” hints at an Arabic origin. By the fifteenth century, pasta was known as vermicelli, “little worms”, and in Sicily as maccheroni, today, macaroni has become generic term for all types of factory-made pasta.

There are approximately 350 different shapes of pasta and fall into two main types: the factory-made pasta and home-made pasta or can be further categorized in two basic styles: Dried and Fresh. Dried or factory-made pasta produced with hard wheat flour, semolina, eggs, water, salt and vegetable colorings, can be stored for up to two years under ideal conditions, while fresh or home-made pasta is made of flour, eggs, salt, vegetable oil and colorings such as spinach paste for green, tomato paste for red and ink of cuttle fish for black pasta. It can kept for a couple of days in the refrigerator.

Some famous varieties of factory-made pasta:

Fusilli
It refers to a corkscrew, the spiral shaped pasta. It is also known as tortiglioni. It is usually served with creamy sauce like carbonara and is not compatible with tomato sauce. Carbonara sauce is made from cream with shredded ham, fresh herbs, liaison and grated cheese. >>Read More

Caviar

Surya Kiran Shrestha — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 05:56:28 +0000

The word caviar entered in English via Italian, and is derived from Persian, from khaya “egg” (Middle Persian khayak “egg”). Some also think it is derived from the Persian word (Xâg-âvar), meaning “the roe-generator”; others say chav-jar, which means “cake of power”, a reference to the ancient Persian practice of eating caviar. In Persian, the word refers to both the sturgeon and its roe; in Russian, the word (ikra), “roe”, is used.
The term “caviar” applies to the prepared roe or egg of the members of the sturgeon fish family. The Caspian Sea is considered the source of the finest black caviar in the world. Contemporary black caviar is roe from sturgeon fish from the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia and Kazakhstan. Sturgeon belongs to those species of fish which seek fresh river water and come up to spawn. Although there are 22 different sturgeon species world-wide, five of them live in the Caspian Sea and 3 of these supply 90 percent of the world’s caviar. They are Beluga, Ossetra, and Sevruga and highest prices are paid for them. Caviar is used as food commodities, used as spread on bread or mix in dressings.

Beluga Caviar
The finest caviar comes from the giant beluga, which is also known as ‘elephant fish’ by the Persians. The belugas are very rare and mostly found in the south Caspian Sea. The annual catch of the beluga hardly exceeds 100 fish. The giant beluga takes 20 years to mature, by which time it would weigh about 1400 kg and about 9 meters in length. It lives for 300 years and the eggs range from gray to black, although the black eggs are the most high priced. It is the largest grained and the most expensive caviar. It is available fresh, pressed and pasteurized. >>Read More

Lamb / Mutton

Surya Kiran Shrestha — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 17:59:15 +0000

Sheep and goats have an ancestry that certainly predates cattle. For centuries, cross breeding has been applied to rear lambs for two purposes; to provide wool and meat. The earliest evidence of animal domestication comes from northern Iraq, where long-haired, mouflon sheep and (Ovis orientalis) were kept for their fleece and eventually slaughtered for their meat.

Lamb is the meat from a sheep or goat under a year old; above that age the animal is called a hogget, and its meat becomes mutton. The demand for lamb in preference to mutton is partly due to the fact that the lamb carcass provides smaller cuts of more tender meat. Mutton needs to be well aged by long hanging before cooking and, as it is usually fatty, it needs a good deal of trimming as well.

The best domestic lamb is marketed when it is between five and seven month’s old, also called ‘summer’ or early lamb. Much of the flavor of lamb has now been sacrificed to productivity – a deep frozen lamb bears no comparison with a fresh. Whatever the source, the demand of lamb is more than mutton due to the health conscious. Mutton was one time more popular than lamb because of the larger size of the roasts. Whether it is lamb or mutton, it will convert to meat only after 12 hours of slaughtering. >> Read More