Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Carol Taylor’s – Culinary A – Z Rewind – ‘T’ for Tea and Toast, Turmeric, Tobasco, Tahini, Tamarind and Elephant’s Ears (it is a T)
Welcome to a repeat of the series from Carol Taylor, the wonderful Culinary A – Z and a reminder, not only of the amazing variety of food we have available to us today from around the world, but delicious recipes to showcase them. Carol also introduces to cooking methods and kitchen equipment that assist in creating meals for all occasions.
Welcome once again to Carols Cooking Column and today in my culinary trawl we have the letter T.
Tea and Toast
How many times in your life have you been offered tea and toast. Maybe never but it was something which when I was growing up was a telling example of your class and status.
Drinking tea and eating toast revealed more about you than you could ever imagine…For example, the taking of sugar in your tea was seen as a definite habit of the lower classes…even just a tincy winsy tiny bit more than one spoonful and you were definitely in the lower middle class ( at best)…More than two….working class and not only that cemented your status if you added your milk first and stirred noisily…Working-class…
To the English tea also had practically magical properties and that was across all the class lines. Headache or a skinned knee, out came the teapot. Bruised ego, bereavement or divorce, and out came the teapot. It was the balm to soothe most ills.
Photo credit: trawets1 on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA
Add toast to the equation and we really came into our own, haha
It must be cool and dry, no soggy toast and it was also a matter of class how you ate that toast. I mean if you slathered it with butter and marmalade and god forbid if it wasn’t Dundee marmalade, and then proceed to take a bite. So vulgar it was the height of bad manners. The correct way: Take a small piece and add just a smidgen of marmalade before taking a gentile bite. That guys and gals are how Toast and Tea are taken in England, according to your class of course.
Tabasco Sauce – TABASCO®
Original Red Pepper Sauce is made with three simple ingredients and aged in oak barrels for up to three years on Avery Island, Louisiana, before bottling. The recipe originating from Edmund McIlhenny in 1868 has been used by the McIlhenny family for nearly 150 years, just aged vinegar, salt, and peppers make this versatile hot pepper sauce.
Image by iSAW Company from Pixabay
Are you familiar with the following The Culinary Alphabet T terms?
Tabbouleh
Traditionally served as part of a Meze in the Arab world it has fast grown in popularity in the Western world. I do love how increased travel and the internet have broadened our Culinary World. Tabouli salad or Tabbouleh is a simple Mediterranean salad of very finely chopped vegetables, lots of fresh parsley and bulgur wheat, all tossed with lime juice and olive oil.
