Roots
A taste for words
Deepti

WITH all the eating joints and homes in a festive mood, the season of cheer brings loads of cuisine extravaganzas, so it’s not a bad idea to soak up a few French words that have become a part of the culinary register.

The verb saut`E9 refers to the style that involves cooking in a hot pan with little oil, frequently turning or tossing. It comes from the French sauter that means ‘to jump’. The connection becomes clear on seeing the process in which the cook vigorously jerks the pan to keep the ingredients from burning.

Vinaigrette is a`A0sour, savoury sauce of which there are a hundred variations. Its base ingredients are almost always oil and vinegar. Used for salad dressings, it can also be served with fish, seafood, and meat dishes. The French word vinaigre (vinegar) literally means ‘sour wine’, made up of vin (wine) and aigre (sour). This double word takes the diminutive -ette and becomes ‘little vinegar’.

A mixed dish, usually of fruit or perhaps vegetables, in which several different varieties are combined into a colourful tableau is a macedoine, from the French mac`E9doine. The background lies in the Balkan area of many different territories and ethnic groups that Alexander the Great welded into a single unit, Macedonia. An amuse-bouche is a titbit, often tiny, served as a free extra to keep people happy while they are`A0waiting for the first course to come. It gives an idea of the chef’s approach to cooking and the attention paid to appetite. In French, it literally means ‘mouth amuser’, from amuser or ‘to amuse’ and bouche or mouth. Amuse-gueule, is the same thing but is the more informal version, as gueule is the French term for an animal’s mouth and bouche for a human’s. If the waiter offers you a rechauffe, beware! It sounds exotic but in French the word is the noun use of the verb rechauffer that means ‘heat up again’. Literally, it denotes a heated-up dish or dish made from reheated leftovers’.