What is jitomate?

I bought a Mexican cookbook while on holiday there. Unfortunately it is written in Mexican. The recipe for salsa Mexicana calls for jitomate. What is it and where can I get it? L. Bell

Of all the salsas in Mexico, salsa Mexicana is one of the most common. It's a blend of chopped raw chilli, tomato, onion, coriander leaves and Mexican lime juice. The jitomate part refers to tomato. Ordinary red tomato. In Mexican Spanish jitomate is a tomato with a belly button. A Mexican tomato is what we would call a tomatillo.

Without being rude I suggest your cookbook is most likely written in Mexican Spanish, not Mexican. Hopefully it wasn't written in Aztec, then it would be a series of pictographs calling for raw chocolate and human hearts. The Aztecs were big on human sacrifice.

I am making sausages at home. How do I stop fat from smearing on the sausage skins? F. Lawrence

This is quite an embarrassing problem. It's the home butchery equivalent of a flat sponge cake or runny marmalade. It happens when the fat you are using gets too warm. Some types of fat begin to become liquid at quite low temperatures. Imagine butter in a Cloncurry kitchen. Liquid. When you mix together lean meat and fat, as one does in sausage making, friction occurs. This warms the meat.

If the meat and fat are not cold enough the fat can begin to melt and this ends up coating the inside of the sausage skin, resulting in an unpleasant-looking smear on the inside of the translucent skin. Avoid this by keeping your meat chilled, even placing it in the freezer to chill for about 45 minutes before mincing and blending. Chill but don't freeze the meat and fat.

Remember to follow the three Cs when making sausages: Clean, cold and quick (Q is technically not a C but ''three Cs'' is a better alliterative mnemonic). Keep surfaces and hands scrupulously clean. Keep meat and fat cold - this might mean putting trays or bowls back in the fridge to keep the temperature down. Be quick. Don't dawdle. Don't let the sausage ingredients lie around getting warm.

What is the polite way of eating mussels? C. Dickson

I was once covering a story on an island in Bass Strait and found myself watching a seagull gorge itself on mussels that were growing on granite boulders rising from the crystal clear water. The seagull would prise a mussel away from the rock then fly straight up in the air and drop the mussel onto the rocks below. With its shell shattered the mussel was quickly extracted by the seagull.

Now I don't suggest you take mussels outside and smash them on the patio. Most mussels open when cooked. Some don't. (Cooks, if this happens to you, cook the mussels a little longer and prise unopened mussels open with the twist of a knife.) Eat mussels with a fork. According to Debrett's guide to everyday modern manners mussels can be eaten whole.

Debrett's also suggests using an empty mussel shell like a pair of tweezers to extract the cooked mussel from the other shell and bring it to your mouth. Mussels served on the half shell as a canape or tapa can be eaten straight from the shell.

My shortbreads spread when I bake them. J. Tumnell

When one creams butter and sugar one has to be careful not to work the mixture too much. For biscuits that need to remain quite solid, such as shortbread, the sugar needs to dissolve in the water present in the butter until the mixture is pale and creamy.

If you continue to beat the mixture further it will begin to incorporate air and become light and fluffy. This is fine if you want the air to expand when the mixture is baked, as in a cake.

When you make shortbread though, there is not enough liquid free in the mixture for the proteins in the flour to form elastic bonds. If there was, the protein would trap the expanding gas and you would have little cakes. Instead, the butter melts and there is not enough strength in the shortbread to hold its own shape, so it spreads like a compromising video of a celebrity on the internet.

If you have a vexing culinary query send it to brainfood@richardcornish.com.au