malarkey

Exaggerated or foolish talk, usually intended to deceive: “snookered by a lot of malarkey” (New Republic).

wilting

I'm wilting too. Here right now, humidity is only 56% and the temperature is at 27.9°C/82.2ºF. Foretasted are 34ºC/93.2ºF. Thus I expect even more wilting for the afternoon.

prepone

The Indians introduced the term prepone into the English language. It means the opposite of postpone - although, I've never experienced anything like that in India. Nevertheless, the Indians use it all the time. The world outside the Indian subcontinent is largely unaware of it.

Monder

A couple of years ago, we had major discussions about monder. According to Alicia (Toño's fabulously charming boss), you can't say that your are blanching and peeling a tomato. It's called monder a tomato.

Obviously, monder is French, the Lingua Franca of cooking. And being a graduate of the famous École Hôtelière de Lausanne, Alicia has to know this.

So how does one monder? It's quite easy. You even may do this at home. Just keep your kiddos away from the boiling water and the sharp knife.

Step 1: Get rid off the stalk of the tomato.



Step 2: Cut a small cross with the point of a knife



Step 3: Plunge the tomato in ebullient water and leave it there for about 30 seconds (which is the time it takes until you can observe that the skin is detaching from the flesh).



Step 4: Put the tomato in ice water.



Step 5: Now peeling is easy like taking candy from a baby.



Why all this effort? Well, I just wanted to make some Roulade Estiva.

à une bouchée

Yesterday evening we enjoyed a relaxed 25 course dinner at Denis Martin in Vevey. If you are facing 25 courses, not all are actually that big. Since the main emphases lies on the taste of the course, to each one specific instruction were given on how it had to be eaten to exploit it to the max. Some of them, like the Lingot d'Or (gold bullion) below, had to be eaten à une bouchée (in one bite).

[so much bigger]

tongue-in-cheek

I so hope it was a tongue-in-cheek statement, when a colleague of mine put this in our coffee room...



... however, I don't think it was one by the maniacs who came up with this poster in the first place.

Verve

I first came across the term verve by discovering the British band The Verve in the 90es. I did not even know that this French word is also used in the German language. However, since then, I use it with verve as often as I can.