Frittered by detail -- simplify, simplify

“W aiter, we’ll begin with the Petrossian tsar imperial transmountainus American caviar followed by the veal Oscar chop with tempura sweet breads, sunchoke fritter, braised salsify and peppered-wasabi sauce. Then for dessert, we have chosen the éclair, religieuse and cream puff with satsuma cream, Michel Cluizel 1st cru de plantation mangaro milk chocolate and caramel”. *

We did not make these items up. These are taken directly from menus where we have eaten recently. For those of you who are ultra-sophisticated foodies, read no further, this article will be superfluous. For everyone else, including yours truly, who have been finding it difficult to read restaurant menus these days, we’ve done some research, made some phone calls and dipped into our vast reservoir of culinary knowledge to help you translate and interpret “menu speak.”

Maybe the cognoscenti can tell if the baby leeks come from McGrath Farms or the watercress from Sausalito Springs but we are not sure whether people really care to know the exact provenance of their vegetables.

If you fancy frogs’ legs, does knowing they are from the Everglades make your taste buds tingle? We all know that Scottish salmon has a good reputation but is the salmon from Loch Duart better than from any other loch? What about pumpkin seed oil? Must it be from Austria? Call us Philistines but we think this trend is often pure pretension in the service of justifying a higher price.

Here are some classic cookery terms that we have run into lately on Laguna Beach restaurant menus that no longer mean quite what they once did. We are not exactly sure what they do mean now but we’ll give you the context and our best guess.

CONFIT: Duck or goose salted and cooked in its own fat then covered with this fat in a casserole dish to preserve it. Now we see confits of fennel, tomatoes, eggplant caviar, eggplant/potato and veal. Since none of the vegetables have any fat and the veal very little, we assume that this term implies anything that is cooked in fat for awhile or maybe just cooked, period..

COULIS: Traditionally, a thick puree of meat or seafood, it now refers to vegetable or fruit purees.

FONDUE: Beloved by all as a hot melted-cheese sauce, it also has an esoteric meaning: vegetables slowly cooked in butter or oil to a pulp.

FRICASSEE: Meat or chicken that is browned first and then stewed. Now it usually means some kind of concoction, not necessarily browned or stewed, often, just sautéed vegetables.

GASTRIQUE: An old term, not misused, that has suddenly reappeared meaning a reduced sauce of vinegar, sugar and fruit.

PAVE: A sponge butter-cream layered dessert or cold aspic-coated mousse of fish, meat or poultry. In this case we encountered a piquillo pepper and potato pave, which may refer to something in layers.

SCENTED: Not really a cooking term but it would imply the addition of something fragrant like rosewater or lavender, nowadays it appears on menus (meaning a little bit?) in phrases such as: chevre scented, leek scented, crème fraiche scented, etc.

TIAN: A gratinéed mixed vegetable casserole served hot. So, a tian of crab and heirloom tomatoes with cucumbers, olives, walnuts and remoulade sauce might be a composed salad served in an earthenware dish, but cold.

Here are some relatively new menu terms that have been appearing everywhere.

DAY BOAT SCALLOPS: Generally a scallop fishing boat has to travel far to harvest scallops, so it is more economical to stay out for several days before returning (usually a three-day affair). With day boat scallops, the boat goes out and rushes back the same day.

KOBE BEEF: Almost always refers to Kobe-style beef. Authentic Kobe beef, a legendary Japanese luxury, is a highly marbleized meat, priced at $300 a pound or more. The Wagyu cattle (Wagyu is a breed) is raised according to an exacting method, that includes massage and feeding with expensive grains and beer. It also used to mean that the beef had to come from Kobe, Japan.

However, despite its price, it is now so popular that the Kobe producers are contracting the raising of the cattle to the U.S. and Australia where costs are less and then sending the animals to Kobe for processing, so they can still be legally designated as Kobe beef. Unless your steak is a whopping $250-plus, you are most likely eating Kobe-style beef, raised and butchered here.

KUROBUTA PORK: Also from Japan, Kurobuta means supreme black hog. This Black Berkshire pig had its origins in England and was a royal gift to the Japanese from the House of Windsor. This amazing breed is known for its sweet flavor, delicate texture and extreme juiciness, primarily due to the meat’s extensive marbling. It is also distinguished by its redder color so that it contrasts in every way with “the new white meat.” This breed of pig is now raised in the U.S. If you see it on a menu, order it!

Another problem on menus is when the entrées have many ingredients, the punctuation in the description makes it impossible to tell what is combined with what, for example: a fish dish with “confit of potato, Japanese eggplant and green asparagus fondue with apple saffron jam.” As it turned out, the potato and eggplant were together. The fondue was a little squiggle of green on the plate and the jam was on top of the fish.

We know that the provenance of all food and wine is an indication of quality but most people don’t necessarily appreciate having to plow through elaborate descriptions in an attempt to order dinner.

Waiters become professors, giving lengthy tutorials that neither they nor the customer particularly enjoy. Why can’t menus simply describe what we are about to eat in terms that we can understand? Why not leave out the poetry and the pretension?

The preceding rant constitutes another on our list of pet peeves and we would like to hear your feedback. And speaking of hearing from you, we are available and will attempt to answer any food or recipe questions you may have.

*Chocolate is now being described much the same way as wine. Michel Cluizel is a chocolatier. Here is the manufacturer’s information on this product: “With an exceptional 50% cocoa content, the worlds first ‘1er cru de plantation’ milk chocolate is composed only of very characteristic light colored beans produced by the ‘Mangaro’ plantation in the north-west of the island of Madagascar. It expresses in a highly refined blend, notes of caramel, exotic fruits, pain d’espices, spice cake, honey, completed, in the finale, with sultanas.” Need we say more?