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THE FOOD ENCYCLOPEDIA Over 8,000 Ingredients, Tools, Techniques and People by Jacques L. Rolland and Carol Sherman with other contributors Robert Rose October 2006 $49.95/laminated hardcover Full-color illustrations throughout ISBN: 0-7788-0150-0 Book Information

à la mode — a French phrase meaning, literally, "in the current fashion." It originated in Paris in the late 18th century, when a restaurant hung a sign above its door to announce that only the finest beef was used in the kitchen. The sign portrayed a cow with a blue ribbon around its neck and a flower bonnet on its head. To Parisians, this suggested a fashionable cow, and the restaurant soon became known as Boeuf à la Mode. The specialty of the house was a dish of braised beef, well simmered in a stock spiked with brandy and wine, still known today as boeuf à la mode. Pie à la mode, meaning pie with ice cream, is strictly North American. It made its appearance circa 1920, after commercial ice cream became widely available.

grind — to mechanically break into tiny granules or reduce to powder. Old-fashioned manual grinders are turned by hand and use a rotating screw inside a hopper to force foods against a sharp grinding plate and reduce it to the desired texture. Modern grinders use the same mechanism but are powered by an electric motor. Food processors or mini-choppers can also grind food, but use a sharp metal blade that rotates at high speed to grind food inside the work bowl. There are also small electric coffee grinders for grinding whole coffee beans and spice grinders for grinding whole spices. Both work on the same principal as the food processor, but with much smaller blades and bowls.

Japanese knives — the traditional knives used in Japan for centuries, highly prized by chefs and home cooks in the West as well. Unlike many Western knives, they are honed on one side only, typically on the right side for right-handed users (left-handed users need to request a left-handed knife when purchasing one). The knives fall into two broad categories, which reflect the length of time their edges stay sharp without honing: honyaki are the hardest steel and therefore the best at staying sharp for a long time, also the most expensive, brittle and difficult to sharpen; and kasumi are more moderately priced, not as hard as honyaki and easier to sharpen.

sea bass — the name given to as many as 500 species of firm, white-fleshed marine fish, not always related. The white sea bass is actually a member of the drum family but is so named because its firm, white flesh is very similar to that of the sea bass. Although great numbers of sea bass can be found off the California coast, many of them come from Mexico. The giant sea bass was originally classified as part of the Serranidae family, to which the grouper belongs, but was reclassified as part of the Percichthyidae, or perch, family for their physical similarities. Black sea bass is from the Serranidae family, found along the U.S. Atlantic coast as well as in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. See also Chilean sea bass.