Glossary

Ingredients : Something that enters as an element into a mixture. Example: Flour,eggs, and sugar are the main ingredients in the cake.

Cake: a sweet, baked, breadlike food, made with or without shortening, and usually containing flour, sugar, baking powder or soda, eggs, and liquid flavoring.

Vegan:  Someone who omits all animal products from their lifestyle. So a vegan cake would have no animal products in the ingredients, i.e. no milk, eggs or butter.

Caviare: The roe of a large fish, especially sturgeon, that is salted, seasoned, and eaten as a delicacy or relish. But in the case of Vanilla beans, the inner filling which we scrape out from the bean is also known as caviare. So mostly used to define fish, but there are always exceptions.

Asafoetida: In the Indian kitchen it is better known as “hing“. It has a pungent, unpleasant smell when raw, but in cooked dishes, it delivers a smooth flavor, reminiscent of leeks.

Cumin: A flowering plant, whose seeds (each one contained within a fruit, which is dried) are used in the cuisines of many different cultures, in both whole and ground form. Known as “Jeera” in the Indian kitchen.

Appam: A south Indian bread. Eaten with curries and dried dishes like its north Indian brother naan or roti. Made with a batter of soaked rice, lentil and coconut. Looks like a bowl shaped pancake.

Kadhai or Karahi or Kadahi: A type of thick, circular, and deep cooking pot (similar in shape to a wok). It is made of cast iron or stainless steel, quite common in the Indian kitchen.

Jamun (a.k.a. Jambhul/jambu/jambula/jamboola, Java plum, jamun, jaam/kalojaam, jamblang, jambolan, black plum, Damson plum, Duhat plum, Jambolan plum, or Portuguese plum. Malabar plum): is an evergreen tropical tree in the flowering plant family Myrtaceae. Jamun is native to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Indonesia.The name of the fruit is sometimes mistranslated as blackberry, which is a different fruit in an unrelated family.

Lychee (a.k.a. Lichi): is the sole member of the genus Litchi in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae. It is a tropical and subtropical fruit tree native to southern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and now cultivated in many parts of the world. The fresh fruit has a “delicate, whitish pulp” with a fragrant flavor. Since this perfumy flavor is lost in canning, the fruit is usually eaten fresh.