Food and Cooking — B1 Vocabulary

B1 VOCABULARY · food

Read the Menu

PICTURE

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"A menu is not information. It's advertising."

Fish & seafood · meat · fruit & vegetables · cooking methods · *eat out, cut down on, cut out*

Reading

Speaking

LEAD-IN

Yesterday, honestly

Quick-fire in pairs.

1. What did you eat yesterday? All of it.

2. Whose day was healthier? Whose was tastier?

3. Are those ever the same day?

PICTURE

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VOCABULARY · A

Put each word into the correct column.

crab · lamb · mango · courgette · mussels · duck · raspberries · beetroot · squid · pork · melon · cabbage · prawns · beef · cherries · aubergine · salmon · green beans · tuna · peach · cucumber · grapes · pear · lemon · red pepper · chicken

SEAFOOD

MEAT

FRUIT

VEGETABLE

VOCABULARY · B

Odd one out — circle the word that does not belong, and say why.

More than one answer is allowed if you can justify it.

1. salmon · tuna · lamb · squid

2. cherries · grapes · raspberries · cucumber

3. duck · chicken · crab · beef

4. aubergine · peach · courgette · red pepper

5. British or American? What do Americans call an aubergine and a courgette?

VOCABULARY · C

Cooking methods: match the method to its definition.

Then discuss: which two methods are the healthiest? Which is the least healthy? Which tastes best — be honest.

1. boiled

2. fried

3. grilled

4. roast

5. baked

6. steamed

a) cooked in hot oil in a pan

b) cooked in an oven (bread, cakes, potatoes)

c) cooked in an oven with fat (especially meat)

d) cooked in water at 100 degrees

e) cooked over or under direct strong heat

f) cooked over boiling water, in the vapour

BEFORE YOU READ

Twenty-two years in kitchens

Lucia Ferreira has one rule when she eats out: read the menu like a detective.

READ ONCE AND ANSWER

1. Which three menu words should make you suspicious?

2. Why?

PICTURE

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READING

How to read a menu like a chef

After twenty-two years in professional kitchens, Lucia Ferreira has one rule when she eats out: read the menu like a detective. "A menu is not information," she says. "It's advertising."

Start with the fish. "If the menu says 'fresh salmon' but the restaurant is four hundred kilometres from the sea, ask yourself what 'fresh' means. Squid and mussels freeze well, so frozen is honestly fine — but then the menu shouldn't perform poetry about the morning catch. And be careful with tuna: if the price looks too good, it probably was, for somebody."

Next, the cooking methods — this is where menus quietly confess. "Grilled and steamed are confident words. Grilled lamb, steamed green beans — you can't hide anything, the ingredient is naked. Fried is delicious but it's also make-up: fried squid tastes mostly of frying. And 'pan-seared', 'oven-crisped', 'flame-kissed'? Those are just fried, baked and grilled wearing perfume. The word I trust most is roast. Nobody writes 'slow-roast pork' unless someone actually stood in a kitchen for five hours."

Vegetables tell you about the kitchen's heart. "A restaurant that does interesting things with cabbage, beetroot or an aubergine cares. Anyone can grill a steak. Turning a courgette into something people fight over — that's cooking. And if the only vegetable on the menu is a sad cucumber salad, order accordingly."

Dessert? "One good thing, made properly. A perfect baked peach with raspberries beats a fourteen-item dessert menu. Long menus mean freezers."

Her final advice is for your wallet, not your palate. "I love eating out, but most of us should probably cut down on it — restaurants exist to make Tuesday feel like a celebration, and they charge celebration prices. Don't cut out the things you love, though. Food isn't only fuel. A bowl of perfect cherries in July, a roast chicken with people you like — that's not spending, that's living."

COMPREHENSION

True, false, or not mentioned?

1. Lucia thinks frozen seafood is always a bad sign. ______

2. "Pan-seared" is, in her view, a decorated word for fried. ______

3. She trusts the word roast because it implies real time and effort. ______

4. She believes vegetarian restaurants are better than steakhouses. ______

5. A very long dessert menu suggests things are frozen. ______

6. She thinks people should stop going to restaurants completely. ______

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Phrasal verbs and collocations.

1. Find a phrasal verb meaning have meals in restaurants: ____________

2. Find one meaning do or consume less of something: ____________

3. Find one meaning eliminate completely: ____________

4. Complete: My doctor told me to ________ sugar completely, but I've decided just to ________ it — one dessert a week instead of one a day.

5. Collocations: which cooking methods go most naturally with these? eggs · chicken · potatoes · salmon · green beans · pork

PRACTICE ·

Complete with a food word. The first letter is given.

1. Mussels, prawns and c________ are all seafood with shells.

2. B________ is the meat from a cow; l________ is from a young sheep.

3. A c________ is long, green and mostly water — the least exciting salad ingredient known to science.

4. R________ are small, red, soft and expensive; g________ come in bunches, green or black.

5. B________ is a purple root vegetable that stains everything it touches.

6. A m________ is a large orange tropical fruit with a big flat stone.

PRACTICE ·

Circle the correct option.

1. I'm trying to cut down on / cut out red meat — just twice a week now.

2. We hardly ever eat out / eat off since the prices went up.

3. For my health, I've cut down / cut out energy drinks completely. Zero.

4. I prefer my salmon grilled / boiled — boiled fish reminds me of hospital.

5. A full English breakfast is mostly fried / steamed, which is why it's wonderful.

6. In summer we do roast / baked vegetables on the barbecue — peppers, courgettes, aubergine.

SPEAKING

The honest menu

In pairs, design a five-line menu for a restaurant that tells the absolute truth. "Fried squid: tastes of frying. Comes with a sad cucumber salad."

• Each line must include one food item and one cooking method.

• Read your menus aloud; the class votes for the restaurant they would actually visit.

• Then discuss: what dishes is your region famous for? Which would you tell a visitor to try — and which to avoid?

PICTURE

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TEACHER'S REFERENCE · HIDE OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key

A Seafood: crab, mussels, squid, prawns, salmon, tuna · Meat: lamb, duck, pork, beef, chicken · Fruit: mango, raspberries, melon, cherries, peach, grapes, pear, lemon · Vegetables: courgette, beetroot, cabbage, aubergine, green beans, cucumber, red pepper. (Aubergine, cucumber and pepper are botanically fruits — reward anyone who says so, then move on.)

B 1 lamb (not seafood) · 2 cucumber (not sweet / a vegetable) · 3 crab (not meat) · 4 peach (not a vegetable). Accept justified alternatives. British/American: aubergine = eggplant; courgette = zucchini.

C 1 d · 2 a · 3 e · 4 c · 5 b · 6 f. Healthiest: steamed and grilled (boiled too); least healthy: fried.

GIST Be suspicious of fresh (far from the sea), of the perfumed words (pan-seared, oven-crisped, flame-kissed) that really mean fried, baked and grilled, and of suspiciously cheap tuna. Long dessert menus mean freezers.

COMPREHENSION 1 F (frozen is honestly fine) · 2 T · 3 T · 4 NM · 5 T · 6 F (cut down on, not cut out).

LANGUAGE FOCUS eat out · cut down on · cut out. Sentence: cut out / cut down on. Typical collocations: eggs — boiled/fried; chicken — roast/grilled/fried; potatoes — boiled/baked/roast/fried; salmon — grilled/steamed/baked; green beans — steamed/boiled; pork — roast/grilled.

practice 1 crab · 2 Beef / lamb · 3 cucumber · 4 Raspberries / grapes · 5 Beetroot · 6 mango

practice 1 cut down on · 2 eat out · 3 cut out · 4 grilled · 5 fried · 6 roast (baked also defensible)

HOMEWORK Write a review (80–120 words) of the last meal you ate out: what you ordered, how it was cooked, whether the menu told the truth. At least eight words from the lesson.