Your coconut cake deserves fresh-grated
coconut. Photo courtesy Taste Of Home.
Here’s the recipe.

Recently, the folks at Microplane wrote to tell us that their Microplane Elite Extra Coarse Grater was terrific for grating coconut. The grater has large grating holes that give fresh coconut a texture similar to commercial shredded coconut—but if you’re a coconut lover, you’ll really prefer the superior taste and natural crunch of freshly-grated coconut.

We love moist, grated coconut in and on ambrosia salad, cakes, cupcakes, lemon-coconut bars, macaroons and ice cream. On the savory side, there’s coconut batter shrimp, coconut rice, Thai chicken and soups, numerous Indian dishes and other Pacific Rim cuisine.
The grater also works on cheeses and root vegetables. The suggested retail is $16.95, and you can buy it online. If you have a friend who makes a great coconut dish, you can make a gift of the grater and a fresh coconut.

A COCONUT IS A FRUIT, NOT A NUT

Actually, it’s a drupe—a category of fruits that includes the coffee cherry (bean), mango, olive, most palms (date and coconut palms, e.g.), strawberry and all members of the genus Prunus, including the almond, apricot, cherry, nectarine, peach and plum.

Here’s what we dug up at the Library of Congress:

Is a coconut a fruit, nut or seed? Botanically speaking, a coconut is a fibrous one-seeded drupe, a classification of fruit.

A drupe is a fruit with a hard stony covering enclosing the seed (like a peach or olive) and comes from the word drupa meaning overripe olive. A coconut, and all drupes, have three layers: the exocarp (outer layer), the mesocarp (fleshy middle layer), and the endocarp (hard, woody layer that surrounds the seed). When you buy a coconut at the supermarket the exocarp and the mesocarp have been removed and what you see is the endocarp.

So why is it called a nut?

Food names were bestowed long ago, often by explorers and others who had no botanical training.

Eggplants have nothing to do with eggs, but the early small, white oval varieties looked like eggs to the folks who named them. Grapefruit growing on trees looked like jumbo clusters of grapes. To Columbus’s crew, the heat in chiles reminded them of the black peppercorns back home, so they called chiles “peppers.” They were ignorant of the fact that there is no relation between chiles and peppers.

The oldest reference to the coconut comes from a 5th century Egyptian traveler, Cosmas, who wrote about the “Indian nut” or “nut of India” (the coconut more than likely originated in the Indian Archipelago or Polynesia). “Coconut” was derived from old Portuguese and Spanish, where coco meant head or skull.

Why skull?

It’s not a nut, but a fruit. Photo courtesy Microplane.

Botanically, the coconut palm is not a tree since there is no bark, no branches, no secondary growth. The coconut palm is a woody perennial (flowering plant) called a monocotyledon; what we see as the trunk is a very thick, woody stem.

Other monocotyledons include the true grains (maize, rice, wheat, etc.), the pasture grasses, sugar cane, bamboo, banana, ginger and the amaryllis family—which includes onions and garlic plus flowering plants such as the amaryllis, daffodil, lily, iris, orchids, and tulip.

Isn’t botany enlightening?
  

Hey there, Edible Arrangements: You’re missing out on dazzling vegetable bouquets like these.

The vegetable arrangements were created by blogger Amy Locurto of LivingLocurto.com, who developed the veggie bouquet concept to entice her children to eat more vegetables.

Serve them at home, or bring them to parties and barbecues as your contribution. You can make a large basket or bowl centerpiece, or make individual servings in juice glasses.

VEGETABLE BOUQUET RECIPE

Ingredients

1. CUCUMBER & ZUCCHINI FLOWERS: Cut cucumbers/zucchini into flower shapes and cut small circles for the flower centers. Affix centers with cream cheese.

2. CARROT, TOMATO & RADISH BLOSSOMS: Affix individual vegetables to the top of long toothpicks.

3. CELERY LEAVES: Cut the leafy upper stems of celery to fill out the bouquet. If you don’t have enough leafy stalks, use regular celery sticks. Make cuts in the top about 1/2 inch deep as a design element. If you place the tops in water with ice cubes, the “fringe” should open a bit.
 
You can wash and recycle the skewers.

Check Out These Nifty Vegetable Cutters

Today, August 12th, is National Julienne Fries Day. We’re here to talk French fries, julienned, and beyond.

First, what are julienne fries? How do they fit in with all the other types of fries?

Julienne is a French cutting technique, typically for vegetables, in which the food item is cut into long thin strips, similar to matchsticks. Another word for the same cut is allumette.

 
Fries, or French fries, refer to sliced, deep-fried potatoes. They can be made with sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes, baked instead of fried, and served plain as well as with a myriad of condiments (barbecue sauce, blue cheese dressing, ketchup, gravy, malt vinegar, mayonnaise, mustard, ranch dressing, Thousand Island dressing.

While julienne and baton are the most typical cut, here is a delicious accounting of the different types of fries.

There are 30 different types of fries for you to try!

National French Fry Day is the second Friday in July (it was formerly July 13th).
 
 
A GLOSSARY OF THE TYPES OF FRIES

[1] Can you name the fries? From the top: tots, chips, waffle fries, curly fries, crinkle fries, sweet potato fries, and what most Americans think of as the classic French fry, the baton (photo © Idaho Potato Commission).

[2] Sidewinders, a new shape made to generate excitement at restaurants (photo © Simplot).

[3] Tornado fries, also called spiral fries (photo © DaphneLLC.Wordpress.com).

[4] Potato spirals, made by piping a mash into spirals. Here’s the recipe (photo © Taste Made).

Potatoes originated in Peru and spread to other parts of Latin America. Fried potatoes—cooking potatoes in fat over a fire—is a practice thousands of years old.

Potatoes were “discovered” and brought back to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century—where they were used as hog feed! The French were convinced that potatoes caused leprosy, and the French Parliament banned the cultivation of potatoes in 1748.

Modern french fries date to the late-1600s. In the winter, when the rivers iced over and fishing was difficult, fried potatoes were substituted for fish at meals in some regions.

During World War I the fried potatoes were nicknamed “French fries” by the Americans because the official language of the Belgian Army was French. They carried the name back to America.

While the French had nothing to do with naming French fries (the term in French is pommes frites, fried potatoes), they did finally start eating potatoes in the 18th century.

A French army medical officer named Antoine-Augustine Parmentier was forced to eat potatoes as a P.O.W. and discovered their culinary potential. Through his efforts, in 1772, the Paris Faculty of Medicine finally proclaimed that potatoes were edible for humans—though it took a famine in 1785 for the French to start eating them in earnest.

In 1802, Thomas Jefferson’s White House chef, Honoré Julien, a Frenchman, served “potatoes served in the French manner” at a state dinner. The potatoes were “deep-fried while raw, in small cuttings.” French fries had arrived in the U.S., if not in name, then in form.

The French didn’t call them French fries, but frites, the word for fried potatoes.

So how did they get called “French” fries? One prevailing theory is that “French” came from American soldiers who arrived in Belgium during World War I. They came across frites.

Since the dominant language of southern Belgium is French, they dubbed the tasty potatoes “French” fries and brought the term (and the demand) back home.

Shortly afterward, in the early 20th century, the term “French fried,” meaning “deep-fried,” was being used for other foods as well (onion rings and zucchini sticks, anyone?)

UNESCO has declared the Belgian French Fry “a cultural treasure,” giving it Heritage Status. Belgian fries are served in a paper cone with mayonnaise and eaten with a small fork.

July 13th is National French Fry Day.
 
 
> MAKE YOUR OWN SIGNATURE FRENCH FRIES RECIPE.

> CHECK OUT THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF POTATOES & POTATO DISHES.
 
 

Move over, pain au chocolat and chocolate croissant. We don’t have to go searching for you anymore. We can make the American version of a chocolate sandwich at home—in five minutes.

A few days ago we suggested different uses for grilled bread. We saved the dessert version, grilled bread with chocolate, for today.

As with grilled cheese sandwiches, you can toast the bread on the grill, under the broiler or in a frying pan. Here are two recipes, including a quick variation, courtesy of King Arthur Flour—an exceptional resource for the finest flours and other baking ingredients.

Also as with grilled cheese, grilled chocolate sandwiches are cooked until the bread is toasty and the chocolate is chocolate melted. Make them as a snack or a fun dessert. We enjoy them with a glass of cold milk.

You can also use croissants and sweet rolls, although grilling the uneven tops is challenging. It’s better to microwave them until the chocolate melts.

What chocolate should you use?

The dessert sandwich on pound cake or bread. Photo courtesy King Arthur Flour.

GRILLED CHOCOLATE SANDWICH

Ingredients For 20 Sandwich Triangles

 
*In a pinch, you can use firm-textured white bread.

Preparation

1. BRING the cream to a simmer and stir in the chocolate. Continue to stir until the mixture is shiny and smooth, heating briefly if necessary to melt the chocolate completely. Let cool until thickened.

2. BUTTER one side of each piece of bread. Spread about 3 tablespoons of the chocolate onto the unbuttered side of 5 of the slices, leaving an uncoated rim around the edges.

3. TOP with the remaining bread. Sprinkle the buttered sides of the bread with the optional sparkling sugar.

4. GRILL the sandwiches over medium heat until they’re golden brown on both sides. Be careful if you’re using the sparkling sugar: The sugar tends to burn if the heat is too high. Be sure to wipe the pan between sandwiches. Cut the sandwiches into triangles and serve warm.

NOTE: Any extra filling may be stored in the fridge, tightly covered, for later use. You can warm it and use it as a dessert topping.
 
QUICK RECIPE: GRILLED CHOCOLATE SANDWICH

Ingredients

 
Preparation
1. SLICE the cake into pieces about 3/8” thick. If desired, further cut the slices into more manageable individual pieces (e.g. for children). Butter one side of each slice.

2. SPACE the chocolate on the unbuttered side of the cake slices. Top with another slice of cake, buttered side up. Grill over medium heat, turning once, till both sides are golden, and the chocolate is melting.

3. SERVE plain or with one of the garnishes above.

FOOD 101: ENGASTRATION

Turducken consists of a de-boned chicken stuffed into a de-boned duck, which is in turn stuffed into a de-boned turkey. The dish is a form of engastration: a preparation method in which one bird is stuffed inside the gastric passage of another to create a bird inside a bird inside a bird. The term is derived from Greek words meaning “in the belly.”

Some recipes also have stuffing between each layer. The entire bird/bird/bird could also be covered in pastry.

The method of engastration supposedly originated during the Middle Ages (here’s more engrastration history). A popular dish in 19th century England was Pandora’s Cushion, a boned goose stuffed with a boned chicken, which was stuffed with a boned pheasant, itself stuffed with a boned quail.”

The Beast: a sausage stuffed with a hot dog, the cousin of turducken. Photo courtesy MLBlogs.com.

But turducken might easily have remained unknown outside Louisiana for a long time. Fortunately for turducken lovers, American football commentator John Madden promoted the dish on Fox Sports by feeding it to the Thanksgiving Bowl winners.

Schlitz claimed it was “The beer that made Milwaukee famous.” But with all the food fans online these days, that claim is waiting to be updated.

In the 21st century, the contender to make Milwaukee famous is The Beast, a grilled bratwurst sliced in half and stuffed with a grilled hot dog. The brat/dog is then wrapped in bacon and grilled.

At The Plaza Pavillion in Miller Park, it’s served with sauerkraut and grilled onions on a Pretzilla pretzel roll, with house-made potato chips and a pickle.

What, only one item stuffed into a second item? If the bacon doesn’t work for you as the third layer, just split the grilled hot dog in half and stuff it with cheese.

TURDUCKEN: A PORTMANTEAU

The word turducken is a portmanteau of turkey, duck, and chicken.

A portmanteau (port-MAN-toe) is a combination of two or more words or morphemes, and their respective definitions, into one new word.

The term derives from portmanteau luggage, a British term for a piece of luggage with two compartments, which in turn is derived from the French porter (to carry) and manteau (coat). A porte-manteau is a coat tree.

The term was first used in the combined-meaning context in 1871 by Lewis Carroll in “Through the Looking-Glass.” Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of the unusual words in Jabberwocky: “slithy” means “lithe and slimy” and “mimsy” is “flimsy and miserable.”

Humpty Dumpty explains: “You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”