Restaurant language lessons from Andrew Coppolino

Like any industry, restaurants have a specialized vocabulary or jargon.

While waitstaff may tell you that they have run out of that night'struffledmac and cheese special, the kitchen refers to not having anymoreas "86-ed."

Here's a select list of words, thatyou might find on a restaurant menu, what they mean and a bit of their history.

Meat & cheese

At the Charcoal Steak House, enjoy a Wagyu steak (an uber-premium Japanese breed of cattle) with ademi-glace, which is a reduced sauce thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Stock (like a broth) that is on its way to being reduced to glace deviande("meat ice or meat glass") is a demi-glace when it's half-way there. (The wagyu and demi, by the way, is $149 for 14 ounces.)

You will findsalumioncharcuterieboards at Proof in Waterloo. It has echoes of salami and so it should:it's the huge range of Italian cured (usually pork) meats. Sure, call them cold cuts.

La Cucina Kitchener servesburrata: mozzarella cheese formed into a "pouch" and filled with even more cheese (traditionallystracciatelladibufala) and cream. Wildcraft wraps theirs in prosciutto. It's a heavenly appetizer.

Mayo-li

Two terms that have (wrongly) become conflated and which appear just about everywhere aremayonnaise and aioli. The former is made by whipping oil into an egg yolk; the latter is a Provenal condiment made by whipping together garlic paste and lots of olive oil.

Note: taking a teaspoon of chopped garlic and stirring it intoHellmansdoes not an aioli make.

Regardless, neither of the above could be done without anemulsion, a term sometimes used as a fancy-pants word for sauce.An emulsion is the result of beating together two liquids that don't want to go together. Put some oil and vinegar in a jar and they want to stay separate; shake vigorously and add some seasoning and you have a vinaigrette.

Cooking

On many menus,confitwill appear: it's both an ancient meat preservation technique and a dish that is perhaps most often seen as duck confit.

Time was, you submerged a duck leg in fat and cooked it in the oven. It was stored in the fridge buried in the fat and then cooked in a hot pan so it's crispy and tender. Recently, chefs are cooking vegetable confit: submerged in good olive oil, veg like parsnips, onions, green beans and carrots are cooked low and slow in the oven.

Crudois Italian for "raw:"compareceviche, which in Latin American cooking is raw fish marinated (therefore "cooked") in citrus; Taco Farm serves ceviche, whilecrudomakes its way onto the menu at Public periodically. Alternatively, something that is well cooked and nicely crispy is "en croute," meaningbaked in pastry.

Another popular low and slow cooking method issous-vide(French for "under vacuum"). It, too, is a technique that's 200 years old. Today, with inexpensive equipment and phone-app technology, it has become morepopular.

The process vacuum seals, say, a pork chop in a bag with some oil and herbs and places it in an immersion circulator (like a water bath) which cooks the meat for a long time at a constant low temperature so it never dries out or becomes overdone. Kitchener's Gilt Restaurant has 24-hour sous-vide beef ribs on their menu.

Vegetables can be cooked sous-vide, too: heat your water to 88 C and vac seal some carrots in olive oil and cook. You may also see a"64-degree" poached egg on restaurant menus.

Heritage heirlooms

We can have lots of local food but not all of it isheirloom or heritage.The interest in heritage food counters our mainstream industrial food production.

Historic varieties of fruit and vegetables that may have been recovered from near-extinction are increasingly popular.

Heritage fruit are not hybrids, and an heirloom tomato is a knobbily-shaped affair compared to a perfectly round tomato hybridized and created for display in the produce section.

For meat, there are many heritage pork varieties that were once on endangered species lists, the Red Wattle being raised in Baden, Ont., for instance.

These varieties are overseen by Rare Breeds Canada and have to satisfy certain technicalrequirements:a heritage breed pig must produce the breed type when mated together and itmust have access to open pasture and diets and be free from routine prophylactic antibiotics and administered synthetic or natural growth promoters.

Spice words

Of course, many restaurants featuring foods from around the world offer lots of unfamiliar terms. As just one set of examples, many have to do with spices; what's interesting is the number of blends you will encounter.

You will likely findtogarashion a Japanese table: it's a blend of ingredients likechilis, seaweed, sesame, orange peel and ginger. It's part ofBaoWaterloo's chicken katsu dish.

Similarly, found at virtually all Indian restaurants, the foundationalgaram masalaisn't one spice but several: it blends cumin, coriander, mace and cardamom.

Harissais a north Africanchili paste.Alsonorth African areraselhanoutand chermoula: they all addflavoursin the cumin, coriander and cardamom range.

Za'ataris a Middle Eastern spice blend often with sumac, whileberbereis achili pepper-based spice blend with cardamom and fenugreek that you can find in dishes atMuyaand East African Caf, both in Kitchener.

Cuisines

You might enjoy the occasionalomakasemenu:it means "entrusting" in Japanese; or, the "chefs' choice" in which theyserve you what they want to serve and you don't know what's coming. It's not for timid eaters.

It's interesting how many cuisines share common ingredients and howmany of these blends and otherflavoursare being used by cooks in North American-style restaurants.

As a last example, I want to go back to Wildcraft where there's a juicy nugget of "secret" restaurant lingo that's based in pop culture: it's the seven-ounce "Thurston Howell" tenderloin with truffles ($49) that you'll only understand if you watched Gilligan's Island.