Julia Child
Julia Carolyn Child was an American chef and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, her subsequent television programs, the most notable of, The French Chef, which premiered in 1963. Julia Child was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams in 1912, in Pasadena, the daughter of John McWilliams, Jr. a Princeton University graduate and prominent land manager, his wife, the former Julia Carolyn Weston, a paper-company heiress whose father, Byron Curtis Weston, served as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Child was the eldest of three, followed by a brother, John McWilliams III, sister, Dorothy Cousins. In high school, Child was sent to the Katherine Branson School in Ross, at the time a boarding school. At six feet, two inches tall, Child played tennis and basketball as a youth and continued to play sports while attending Smith College, from which she graduated in 1934 with a major in History.
Child grew up with a cook. She did not learn how to cook from the family's cook. Child did not learn to cook until she met her would-be husband, who grew up in a family interested in food. Following her graduation from college, Child moved to New York City, where she worked as a copywriter for the advertising department of W. & J. Sloane. Child joined the Office of Strategic Services after finding that she was too tall to enlist in the Women's Army Corps or in the U. S. Navy's WAVES, she began her OSS career as a typist at its headquarters in Washington, but because of her education and experience soon was given a more responsible position as a top secret researcher working directly for the head of OSS, General William J. Donovan; as a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence division, she typed 10,000 names on white note cards to keep track of officers. For a year, she worked at the OSS Emergency Rescue Equipment Section in Washington, D. C. as a file clerk and as an assistant to developers of a shark repellent needed to ensure that sharks would not explode ordnance targeting German U-boats.
In 1944, she was posted to Kandy, where her responsibilities included "registering and channeling a great volume of classified communications" for the OSS's clandestine stations in Asia. She was posted to Kunming, where she received the Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service as head of the Registry of the OSS Secretariat; when Child was asked to solve the problem of too many OSS underwater explosives being set off by curious sharks, "Child's solution was to experiment with cooking various concoctions as a shark repellent," which were sprinkled in the water near the explosives and repelled sharks. Still in use today, the experimental shark repellent "marked Child's first foray into the world of cooking..." For her service, Child received an award that cited her many virtues, including her "drive and inherent cheerfulness." As with other OSS records, her file was declassified in 2008. While in Kunming, she met Paul Cushing Child an OSS employee, the two were married September 1, 1946, in Lumberville, Pennsylvania moving to Washington, D.
C. A New Jersey native who had lived in Paris as an artist and poet, Paul was known for his sophisticated palate, introduced his wife to fine cuisine, he joined the United States Foreign Service, in 1948 the couple moved to Paris when the US State Department assigned Paul there as an exhibits officer with the United States Information Agency. The couple had no children. Child recalled her first meal in Rouen as a culinary revelation. In Paris, she attended the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school and studied with Max Bugnard and other master chefs, she joined the women's cooking club Le Cercle des Gourmettes, through which she met Simone Beck, writing a French cookbook for Americans with her friend Louisette Bertholle. Beck proposed that Child work with them to make the book appeal to Americans. In 1951, Child and Bertholle began to teach cooking to American women in Child's Paris kitchen, calling their informal school L'école des trois gourmandes. For the next decade, as the Childs moved around Europe and to Cambridge, the three researched and tested recipes.
Child translated the French into English, making the recipes detailed and practical. In 1963, the Childs built a home near the Provence town of Plascassier in the hills above Cannes on property belonging to co-author Simone Beck and her husband, Jean Fischbacher; the Childs named it "La Pitchoune", a Provençal word meaning "the little one" but over time the property was affectionately referred to as "La Peetch". The three would-be authors signed a contract with publisher Houghton Mifflin, which rejected the manuscript for seeming too much like an encyclopedia; when it was first published in 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf, the 726-page Mastering the Art of French Cooking was a best-seller and received critical acclaim that derived in part from the American interest in French culture in the early 1960s. Lauded for its helpful illustrations and precise attention to detail, for making fine cuisine accessible, the book is still in print and is considered a seminal culinary work. Following this success, Child wrote magazine articles and a regular column for The Boston Globe newsp
Croissant
A croissant is a buttery, viennoiserie pastry of Austrian origin, named for its historical crescent shape. Croissants and other viennoiserie are made of a layered yeast-leavened dough; the dough is layered with butter and folded several times in succession rolled into a sheet, in a technique called laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to a puff pastry. Crescent-shaped breads have been made since the Renaissance, crescent-shaped cakes since antiquity. Croissants have long been a staple of Austrian and French bakeries and pâtisseries. In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, pre-formed but unbaked dough made them into a fast food which can be freshly baked by unskilled labor; the croissanterie was explicitly a French response to American-style fast food, as of 2008 30–40% of the croissants sold in French bakeries and patisseries were baked from frozen dough. Croissants are a common part of a continental breakfast in France; the kipferl, the ancestor of the croissant, has been documented in Austria going back at least as far as the 13th century, in various shapes.
The kipferl can be made plain or with nuts or other fillings. Some Egyptians claim, that the kipferl may have been based on the feteer meshaltet pastry known to the Egyptians; the birth of the croissant itself—that is, its adaptation from the plainer form of kipferl, before the invention of viennoiseries—can be dated to at least 1839 when an Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris. This bakery, which served Viennese specialties including the kipferl and the Vienna loaf became popular and inspired French imitators; the French version of the kipferl was named for its crescent shape and has become an identifiable shape across the world. Alan Davidson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Food, found no printed recipe for the present-day croissant in any French recipe book before the early 20th century. However, early recipes for non-laminated croissants can be found in the 19th century and at least one reference to croissants as an established French bread appeared as early as 1850.
Zang himself returned to Austria in 1848 to become a press magnate, but the bakery remained popular for some time afterwards, was mentioned in several works of the time: "This same M. Zank...founded around 1830, in Paris, the famous Boulangerie viennoise". Several sources praise this bakery's products: "Paris is of exquisite delicacy. By 1869, the croissant was well established enough to be mentioned as a breakfast staple, in 1872, Charles Dickens wrote of "the workman's pain de ménage and the soldier's pain de munition, to the dainty croissant on the boudoir table"The puff pastry technique which now characterizes the croissant was mentioned in the late 17th century, when La Varenne's Le Cuisinier françois gave a recipe for it in the 1680 and earlier, editions, it was used not on its own but for shells holding other ingredients. It does not appear to be mentioned in relation to the croissant until the 20th century. Stories of how the Kipferl — and so the croissant — was created are widespread and persistent culinary legends, going back to the 19th century.
However, there are no contemporary sources for any of these stories, an aristocratic writer, writing in 1799, does not mention the Kipferl in a long and extensive list of breakfast foods. The legends include tales that it was invented in Europe to celebrate the defeat of the Umayyad forces by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in 732, with the shape representing the Islamic crescent; the above-mentioned Alan Davidson proposed that the Islamic origin story originated with 20th-century writer Alfred Gottschalk, who gave two versions, one in the Larousse Gastronomique and the other in his History of Food and Gastronomy: According to one of a group of similar legends, which vary only in detail, a baker of the 17th century, working through the night at a time when his city was under siege by the Turks, heard faint underground rumbling sounds which, on investigation, proved to be caused by a Turkish attempt to invade the city by tunneling under the walls. The tunnel was blown up; the baker asked no reward other than the exclusive right to bake crescent-shaped pastries commemorating the incident, the crescent being the symbol of Islam.
He was duly rewarded in this way, the croissant was born. The story seems to owe its origin, or at least its wide diffusion, to Alfred Gottschalk, who wrote about the croissant for the first edition of the Larousse Gastronomique and there gave the legend in the Turkish attack on Budapest in 1686 version; this has led to croissants being banned by some Islamic fundamentalists. However, many in the Arab world ho
Cheese straw
Cheese straws are a traditional food of England and the Southern United States. They are eaten as an snack, they are made as cut strips, or by using a cookie press, from dough made with butter, salt, cheddar cheese and cayenne pepper. Variations use different types of cheese and nuts
Grocery store
A grocery store or grocer's shop is a retail shop that sells food. A grocer is a bulk seller of food. Grocery stores offer non-perishable foods that are packaged in bottles and cans. Large grocery stores that stock significant amounts of non-food products, such as clothing and household items, are called supermarkets; some large supermarkets include a pharmacy, customer service and electronics sections. In Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and convenience shops are sometimes described as grocery businesses, groceries or grocers. Small grocery stores that sell fruits and vegetables are known as greengrocers or produce markets, small grocery stores that predominantly sell prepared food, such as candy and snacks, are known as convenience shops or delicatessens; some grocery stores form the centerpiece of a larger complex that includes other facilities, such as gas stations, which will operate under the store's name. Some groceries specialize in the foods of a certain nationality or culture, such as Chinese, Middle-Eastern, or Polish.
These stores are known as ethnic markets and may serve as gathering places for immigrants. In many cases, the wide range of products carried by larger supermarkets has reduced the need for such specialty stores; the variety and availability of food is no longer restricted by the diversity of locally grown food or the limitations of the local growing season. Beginning as early as the 14th century, a grocer was a dealer in comestible dry goods such as spices, peppers and cocoa, coffee; because these items were bought in bulk, they were named after the french word for wholesaler, or "grossier". This, in turn, is derived from the Medieval Latin term "grossarius", from which the term "gross" is derived; as increasing numbers of staple food-stuffs became available in cans and other less-perishable packaging, the trade expanded its province. Today, grocers deal in a wide range of staple food-stuffs including such perishables as dairy products and produce; such goods are, called groceries. Many rural areas still contain general stores that sell goods ranging from tobacco products to imported napkins.
Traditionally, general stores have offered credit to their customers, a system of payment that works on trust rather than modern credit cards. This allowed farm families to buy staples; the first self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, was opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, by Clarence Saunders, an inventor and entrepreneur. Prior to this innovation, grocery stores operated "over the counter," with customers asking a grocer to retrieve items from inventory. Saunders' invention allowed a much smaller number of clerks to service the customers, proving successful "partly because of its novelty because neat packages and large advertising appropriations have made retail grocery selling an automatic procedure." The early supermarkets began as chains of grocer's shops. The development of supermarkets and other large grocery stores has meant that smaller grocery stores must create a niche market by selling unique, premium quality, or ethnic foods that are not found in supermarkets. A small grocery store may compete by locating in a mixed commercial-residential area close to, convenient for, its customers.
Organic foods are becoming a more popular niche market for the smaller stores. Grocery stores operate in many different styles ranging from rural family-owned operations, such as IGAs, to boutique chains, such as Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's, to larger supermarket chain stores. In some places, food cooperatives, or "co-op" markets, owned by their own shoppers, have been popular. However, there has been a trend towards larger stores serving larger geographic areas. Large "all-in-one" hypermarkets such as Walmart and Meijer have forced consolidation of the grocery businesses in some areas, the entry of variety stores such as Dollar General into rural areas has undercut many traditional grocery stores; the global buying power of such efficient companies has put an increased financial burden on traditional local grocery stores as well as the national supermarket chains, many have been caught up in the retail apocalypse of the 2010s. However, many European cities are so dense in population and buildings, large supermarkets, in the American sense, may not replace the neighbourhood grocer's shop.
However, "Metro" shops have been appearing in town and city centres in many countries, leading to the decline of independent smaller shops. Large out-of-town supermarkets and hypermarkets, such as Tesco and Sainsbury's in the United Kingdom, have been weakening trade from smaller shops. Many grocery chains like Spar or Mace are taking over the regular family business model. Larger grocer complexes that include other facilities, such as petrol stations, is common in the United Kingdom, where major chains such as Sainsbury's and Tesco have many locations operating under this format. Traditional shops throughout Europe have been preserved because of their history and their classic appearance, they are sometimes still found in rural areas, although they are disappearing. Grocery stores in Latin America have been growing fast since the early 1980s. A large percentage of food sales and other articles take place in grocery stores today; some examples are the Chilean chains Cencosud, Walmart (Lid
Butter
Butter is a dairy product with high butterfat content, solid when chilled and at room temperature in some regions, liquid when warmed. It is made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk to separate the butterfat from the buttermilk, it is used as a spread on plain or toasted bread products and a condiment on cooked vegetables, as well as in cooking, such as baking, sauce making, pan frying. Butter consists of butterfat, milk proteins and water, added salt. Most made from cow's milk, butter can be manufactured from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats and yaks. Salt and preservatives are sometimes added to butter. Rendering butter, removing the water and milk solids, produces clarified butter or ghee, entirely butterfat. Butter is a water-in-oil emulsion resulting from an inversion of the cream, where the milk proteins are the emulsifiers. Butter remains a firm solid when refrigerated, but softens to a spreadable consistency at room temperature, melts to a thin liquid consistency at 32 to 35 °C.
The density of butter is 911 grams per Litre. It has a pale yellow color, but varies from deep yellow to nearly white, its natural, unmodified color is dependent on the source animal's feed and genetics, but the commercial manufacturing process manipulates the color with food colorings like annatto or carotene. The word butter derives from the Latin butyrum, the latinisation of the Greek βούτυρον; this may be a compound of βοῦς, "ox, cow" + τυρός, "cheese", "cow-cheese". The word turos is attested in Mycenaean Greek; the unlatinized form is found in the name butyric acid, a compound found in rancid butter and dairy products such as Parmesan cheese. In general use, the term "butter" refers to the spread dairy product when unqualified by other descriptors; the word is used to describe puréed vegetable or seed and nut products such as peanut butter and almond butter. It is applied to spread fruit products such as apple butter. Fats such as cocoa butter and shea butter that remain solid at room temperature are known as "butters".
Non-dairy items that have a dairy-butter consistency may use "butter" to call that consistency to mind, including food items such as maple butter and witch's butter and nonfood items such as baby bottom butter, hyena butter, rock butter. Unhomogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in microscopic globules; these globules are surrounded by membranes made of phospholipids and proteins, which prevent the fat in milk from pooling together into a single mass. Butter is produced by agitating cream, which damages these membranes and allows the milk fats to conjoin, separating from the other parts of the cream. Variations in the production method will create butters with different consistencies due to the butterfat composition in the finished product. Butter contains fat in three separate forms: free butterfat, butterfat crystals, undamaged fat globules. In the finished product, different proportions of these forms result in different consistencies within the butter. Churning produces small butter grains floating in the water-based portion of the cream.
This watery liquid is called buttermilk—although the buttermilk most common today is instead a directly fermented skimmed milk. The buttermilk is drained off; the grains are "worked": pressed and kneaded together. When prepared manually, this is done using wooden boards called scotch hands; this consolidates the butter into a solid mass and breaks up embedded pockets of buttermilk or water into tiny droplets. Commercial butter is about 15 % water. Butterfat is a mixture of triglyceride, a triester derived from glycerol and three of any of several fatty acid groups. Butter becomes rancid when these chains break down into smaller components, like butyric acid and diacetyl; the density of butter is about the same as ice. In some countries, butter is given a grade before commercial distribution. Before modern factory butter making, cream was collected from several milkings and was therefore several days old and somewhat fermented by the time it was made into butter. Butter made from a fermented cream is known as cultured butter.
During fermentation, the cream sours as bacteria convert milk sugars into lactic acid. The fermentation process produces additional aroma compounds, including diacetyl, which makes for a fuller-flavored and more "buttery" tasting product. Today, cultured butter is made from pasteurized cream whose fermentation is produced by the introduction of Lactococcus and Leuconostoc bacteria. Another method for producing cultured butter, developed in the early 1970s, is to produce butter from fresh cream and incorporate bacterial cultures and lactic acid. Using this method, the cultured butter flavor grows. For manufacturers, this method is more efficient, since aging the cream used to make butter takes more space than storing the finished butter product. A method to make an artificial simulation of cultured butter is to add lactic acid and flavor compounds directly to the fresh-cream butter. Dairy products are pasteurized during production to kill pathogenic bacteria and other
Miguelitos
Miguelitos are a type of cake made in La Roda, in Castilla–La Mancha, Spain. They are a quite simple traditional cake consisting of soft puff pastry with a creamy custard-like filling and covered with sugar powder. In Castilla–La Mancha, Miguelitos are eaten along with café con leche. List of custard desserts Miguelitos de La Roda at Albacity.org
