Just made a modern change to the look of this blog, this was mainly done to be able to increase the size of the posting area so that I could make the dietary chart pages (in menu above) more readable
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
New/Old Project...
I have a new project, well... it is actually an old one that I've been making scribbles about, researching for, testing stuff while keeping it in mind, but not actually organizing in any formal sense so am now blogging it when the mood strikes since I have been taking a break from playing with my middle English recipe blog (for now anyway)
You can find it in the links to the right... or right here: The Cooks Dinner
What I am basically doing it planning far ahead on creating a period dinner to the best of my present, and possibly future, abilities and sharing a bit of the process as time allows. On doing so, am hoping to up things several notches above my work in the past.
You can find it in the links to the right... or right here: The Cooks Dinner
What I am basically doing it planning far ahead on creating a period dinner to the best of my present, and possibly future, abilities and sharing a bit of the process as time allows. On doing so, am hoping to up things several notches above my work in the past.
Passionate Parsnips or just Presumptuous
Lately I have been revisiting paintings with parsnips, and/or possibly carrots or other white roots, left on tables set for eating. What struck me was that the vegetables seemed purposely placed there apart from the partaking of food. What gave me cause to believe this was the fact the food was seemingly fresh from the garden or market, as in raw and unpeeled yet sitting on the table among other food items and not much of what I have read about parsnips, or carrots, lead me to believe that eating them in this manner was common at all. So, I did what any curious person would do, I dug around a little to see what there was to be said about parsnips and similar roots.
On my path to enlightenment what I found was loads of sexual content, at least once done weeding a lot of the wheat from the chaff. "Society and religion in Elizabethan England" (Greaves), gave me my first hint with a reference to both parsnips and wild carrots increasing a man's sexual desires. Of course the next obvious place to look was herbal/medical texts. In 1563 Culpeper states: "The garden Parsnip nourishes much, and is good and wholesome nournishment,but a little windy, whereby it is thought to procure bodily lust" which is pretty close to similar quotes I found on the net. Of course there are many earlier references, such as in the widely known "Tacuinum Sanitatis" of the 14th century where it attributes the stimulation of sexual intercourse to the Pastinace, a word sometimes used to describe both carrot and parsnip. An other reference I found from the materia medica (the Taylor-Schechter Genizah collection) dating to 11th to 14th century Cairo, depicted the parsnip as an aphrodisiac. What is amusing, as pointed out in much of the above references, is that it was also a wind producing food (it was said to make you fart), this apparently was connected to the excitement (blood flow) of certain areas.
Of course, there is more here at play than just medicinal qualities, it also had a phallic property which pops up in Florio's Italian/English dictionary, 1598, (cited in the OED) as the "pastinaca muranese", "a dildoe of glasse" ... or at least this is what I was able to gather from various sources. This is also brought to light in "Picturing women in late Medieval and Renaissance art" (Grössinger) where she describes parsnips and cabbages representative of male and female genitalia, and given much of what I have read today, am inclined to agree.
I am not entirely sure how a painting of the last supper (dated 1546) fits into the theme however, being one of a few table settings I found with the presumably symbolic parsnips. Nor am I sure why some regular fellas at a table (1620) would require parsnip symbolism. Did people actually keep raw parsnips/carrots at the table after all?
But then we have this highly suggestive painting with a, possibly equally suggestive, root veggy that certainly fits the scene!
close up of offending root
On my path to enlightenment what I found was loads of sexual content, at least once done weeding a lot of the wheat from the chaff. "Society and religion in Elizabethan England" (Greaves), gave me my first hint with a reference to both parsnips and wild carrots increasing a man's sexual desires. Of course the next obvious place to look was herbal/medical texts. In 1563 Culpeper states: "The garden Parsnip nourishes much, and is good and wholesome nournishment,but a little windy, whereby it is thought to procure bodily lust" which is pretty close to similar quotes I found on the net. Of course there are many earlier references, such as in the widely known "Tacuinum Sanitatis" of the 14th century where it attributes the stimulation of sexual intercourse to the Pastinace, a word sometimes used to describe both carrot and parsnip. An other reference I found from the materia medica (the Taylor-Schechter Genizah collection) dating to 11th to 14th century Cairo, depicted the parsnip as an aphrodisiac. What is amusing, as pointed out in much of the above references, is that it was also a wind producing food (it was said to make you fart), this apparently was connected to the excitement (blood flow) of certain areas.
Of course, there is more here at play than just medicinal qualities, it also had a phallic property which pops up in Florio's Italian/English dictionary, 1598, (cited in the OED) as the "pastinaca muranese", "a dildoe of glasse" ... or at least this is what I was able to gather from various sources. This is also brought to light in "Picturing women in late Medieval and Renaissance art" (Grössinger) where she describes parsnips and cabbages representative of male and female genitalia, and given much of what I have read today, am inclined to agree.
I am not entirely sure how a painting of the last supper (dated 1546) fits into the theme however, being one of a few table settings I found with the presumably symbolic parsnips. Nor am I sure why some regular fellas at a table (1620) would require parsnip symbolism. Did people actually keep raw parsnips/carrots at the table after all?
close up of offending root
These two other examples may also possibly be making the same sort of suggestion...
while the picture at the top and below are Dutch, this one appears to be taking the theme to Germany
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Purple sauce night
as I mentioned earlier, I sometimes like to go the Medieval Cookery site and play a little game, basically grabbing a key ingredient, plugging it in and choosing a random recipe (or carefully choosing one or more)
It's great fun, well for me it is anyway
Last night it was grapes, though I kinda veered off of it a bit and did cherry and mulberry as well
The sauces (please click links for more detail and transcription):
Black grape sauce
I was making a small amount (plenty for two), oz in weight
-I took 4oz of grapes and half of much in bread (weight), smashed them together in a mortar with a little verjuice (I make my own but only have apple verjuice in the freezer so it is what I used here). I played around to see what happens if you don't mash it with the bread, all I can say is don't skip that, it will make it harder to incorporate if it is only added while straining. (what can I say, was curious)
-Once strained into the saucepan, boil with cinnamon and ginger and other good spices... I used my favourite powder douce to taste.
-Since the amount was so small, it did not take long to thicken and with the amounts I used, it thickened quite nicely! Use a smaller ratio of bread if you do not wasn't a sauce that is able to "stand".
Cherry sauce
Made the same as the grape sauce above only without verjuice and more added sugar if you wish when using sour cherries (which I used)
Slavic Cooking Sauce
The way we made it... oh wow, this had some kick!
I really didn't measure hard when making it, but used about a small handful of walnuts, pounded in my freshly washed and still wet mortar, 2 cloves garlic chopped and smushed in there as well (with the nuts), small handful (and I don't have very large hands) of some dried white bread (I save this from old dried out loaves I made) soaked in chicken broth. I save broth reduced from the water I boil whole chickens in, this is then frozen in cubes and baggied... for this I used two cubes with a little bit of boiling water. I then mushed all this together but did not add more broth since I added more than I needed to mush the bread.
Now, to make it peacock blue it said I could use either black grape or cherry juice... tried a little grape but it was looking like I would need more grapes than I wished to spare so went with cherry juice which kept making it go more and more purple. As you can tell from the picture, I did stop before achieving full colour but it certainly would not have been any shade of blue.
Must Sauce
I ended up using the later mulberry version, only one problem, I had not a single fresh mulberry. What I did have was a simple syrup made from mulberries and dried mulberries.
For one sauce I experimented with 2oz syrup (mostly juice rather than sugar) with 2oz dried fruit and 1/2tsp cinnamon to 1/4tsp ginger. The other had the same spice but was only from the syrup. No sugar was added due to the sugar already present in the syrup.
The one with the fruit was strained, the other did not need straining (all that hard work being previously done). Interestingly, dried mulberry fruit does not really have the strong tannin flavour like some other dried fruit and the sauce with them ended up tasting more like I had used fresh fruit than the other with lacked a bit of character.
Sauces: (we used chicken to taste them with)
It's great fun, well for me it is anyway
Last night it was grapes, though I kinda veered off of it a bit and did cherry and mulberry as well
The sauces (please click links for more detail and transcription):
Black grape sauce
I was making a small amount (plenty for two), oz in weight
-I took 4oz of grapes and half of much in bread (weight), smashed them together in a mortar with a little verjuice (I make my own but only have apple verjuice in the freezer so it is what I used here). I played around to see what happens if you don't mash it with the bread, all I can say is don't skip that, it will make it harder to incorporate if it is only added while straining. (what can I say, was curious)
-Once strained into the saucepan, boil with cinnamon and ginger and other good spices... I used my favourite powder douce to taste.
-Since the amount was so small, it did not take long to thicken and with the amounts I used, it thickened quite nicely! Use a smaller ratio of bread if you do not wasn't a sauce that is able to "stand".
Cherry sauce
Made the same as the grape sauce above only without verjuice and more added sugar if you wish when using sour cherries (which I used)
Slavic Cooking Sauce
The way we made it... oh wow, this had some kick!
I really didn't measure hard when making it, but used about a small handful of walnuts, pounded in my freshly washed and still wet mortar, 2 cloves garlic chopped and smushed in there as well (with the nuts), small handful (and I don't have very large hands) of some dried white bread (I save this from old dried out loaves I made) soaked in chicken broth. I save broth reduced from the water I boil whole chickens in, this is then frozen in cubes and baggied... for this I used two cubes with a little bit of boiling water. I then mushed all this together but did not add more broth since I added more than I needed to mush the bread.
Now, to make it peacock blue it said I could use either black grape or cherry juice... tried a little grape but it was looking like I would need more grapes than I wished to spare so went with cherry juice which kept making it go more and more purple. As you can tell from the picture, I did stop before achieving full colour but it certainly would not have been any shade of blue.
Must Sauce
I ended up using the later mulberry version, only one problem, I had not a single fresh mulberry. What I did have was a simple syrup made from mulberries and dried mulberries.
For one sauce I experimented with 2oz syrup (mostly juice rather than sugar) with 2oz dried fruit and 1/2tsp cinnamon to 1/4tsp ginger. The other had the same spice but was only from the syrup. No sugar was added due to the sugar already present in the syrup.
The one with the fruit was strained, the other did not need straining (all that hard work being previously done). Interestingly, dried mulberry fruit does not really have the strong tannin flavour like some other dried fruit and the sauce with them ended up tasting more like I had used fresh fruit than the other with lacked a bit of character.
Sauces: (we used chicken to taste them with)
And the verdict:
We actually liked them all, though, because I took it easy on the sugar with the cherry (I actually like sour, and it is to taste), the boy was not as fond. I also took it easy with the verjuice in the grape (by contrast) which made it a little more sweet than the cherry and the boy just LOVED it. If he is any example to go by, I suggest tweaking the sugar/verjuice to ensure the sauces are a little more sweet than sour.
The garlic sauce was surprisingly full of punch. I could not taste anything walnut in it, nor feel anything unusual for a thickened sauce, but it is not to say something would not be missing without them. Because this was an uncooked sauce, the garlic has a sneaky quick bite. This would probably be really nice with cooked/roasted garlic but then it would be something different.
The must sauce was my favourite of the bunch. It wasn't bread thickened which does not make for very good dipping, but in practice any of these sauces would be served on/under ones food and this one can even be used as a cooking sauce (as per it's name). The flavour was decidingly fruity but the spices gave it a nice warm sensations.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Using out of period sources
There has been a long trend involving the use of opst period sources for earlier forms of cooking and they can make very valuable additions to anyone's library, however, it is wise to know why we are using them and to understand both the oop (out of period) recipes as well as the older.
Back when I first started to study medieval cookery, there really wasn't a lot available for most amateur historians, even 19th century stuff was not so easy to come by unless you owned original sources (which is what got me interested in historic cookery in the first place). This is why I suspect the Edward Kidder book and Martha Washington book became so popular in the SCA. Though arguable that some recipes were quite old, the underlying reason was because period sources were rare and hard to find. There were a handful of books popping up, mostly 13th-15th century stuff and difficult to read for many and even with more, not a whole lot of the familiar foods people were craving or wishing to start out with (either because of being unfamiliar or lost without better instruction) and thus the popularity of more great 17th century books, such as by May or Markham. I will kid you not, these are great books, but then I am partial to English 17th century cooking.
The problem I am finding today is that the English 17th century library has been accepted and brought into the fold of pre-1600 era cooking, and this is wrong. At least it is partially wrong. The problem is basically where new cooks will refer to these generally accepted books without knowing why they are acceptable and may unwittingly assume a dish made in 1630 would have been known in 1590. This may or may not be true, we simply can not make that assumption, we can't even assume theories speculating that food fashion has a 20-30 year time frame of error once it hits print. A whole knowledge base of food existing in one book can't even be generalized as having the same time-frame of birth in popularity or popularity of that time. Both fairly brand-spanking newer recipes and hundred year old recipes have been recorded in the same books, indeed it takes a much larger library and much reading to get an idea of when certain foods seem to rise and drop in popularity. Even foods that share names go through a sort of evolution and in as little as a decade. The real issue, as with clothing fashion, architecture, writing and many other things, nobody really seems to be deciding that hey, it's now 1500, time to do it all up new again. It's messy and random. A new trend from 1562 can very well cease to be all the fab by 1578, though it doesn't mean some trendy diners won't hold on to some favourites. As well, we can see new foods pop up in 1589 and more again in 1603 and 1618 and so on and these guys are trendy writers. Sure, some things are going to be those favourites that just won't die but it doesn't make the whole body of work printed oop plausible for food within period. It is up to us not to treat a body of work as one, but to look at each and every recipe on it's own merit.
Back when I first started to study medieval cookery, there really wasn't a lot available for most amateur historians, even 19th century stuff was not so easy to come by unless you owned original sources (which is what got me interested in historic cookery in the first place). This is why I suspect the Edward Kidder book and Martha Washington book became so popular in the SCA. Though arguable that some recipes were quite old, the underlying reason was because period sources were rare and hard to find. There were a handful of books popping up, mostly 13th-15th century stuff and difficult to read for many and even with more, not a whole lot of the familiar foods people were craving or wishing to start out with (either because of being unfamiliar or lost without better instruction) and thus the popularity of more great 17th century books, such as by May or Markham. I will kid you not, these are great books, but then I am partial to English 17th century cooking.
The problem I am finding today is that the English 17th century library has been accepted and brought into the fold of pre-1600 era cooking, and this is wrong. At least it is partially wrong. The problem is basically where new cooks will refer to these generally accepted books without knowing why they are acceptable and may unwittingly assume a dish made in 1630 would have been known in 1590. This may or may not be true, we simply can not make that assumption, we can't even assume theories speculating that food fashion has a 20-30 year time frame of error once it hits print. A whole knowledge base of food existing in one book can't even be generalized as having the same time-frame of birth in popularity or popularity of that time. Both fairly brand-spanking newer recipes and hundred year old recipes have been recorded in the same books, indeed it takes a much larger library and much reading to get an idea of when certain foods seem to rise and drop in popularity. Even foods that share names go through a sort of evolution and in as little as a decade. The real issue, as with clothing fashion, architecture, writing and many other things, nobody really seems to be deciding that hey, it's now 1500, time to do it all up new again. It's messy and random. A new trend from 1562 can very well cease to be all the fab by 1578, though it doesn't mean some trendy diners won't hold on to some favourites. As well, we can see new foods pop up in 1589 and more again in 1603 and 1618 and so on and these guys are trendy writers. Sure, some things are going to be those favourites that just won't die but it doesn't make the whole body of work printed oop plausible for food within period. It is up to us not to treat a body of work as one, but to look at each and every recipe on it's own merit.
Monday, January 30, 2012
When is food not food?
It's hard to judge if there ever was a time in history when man considered potential food not to be food, or should I say recorded history since there have been evidence of human gnawing on domestic animals going back as far as early man (and I'm talking about our present species so will stop there).
It's just something food related that I was forced to ponder as a friend had become vocally upset and eating jokes in relation to their pets. As horrible as it sounds to joke about eating someone's pet, to at least a portion of the population out there, it is an instinctive reaction to dehumanize any pet traditionally seen as livestock. In this case we make jokes and name our pets things like Lambchops or Bacon. It isn't meant in disrespect to the animal, in many cases, these animals are maintained quite comfortably and can generally lead very nice lives. On the end of the livestock pet, sometimes we give them personable names but joke aside from that, again a reminder of the true function of the pet... livestock.
Unfortunately, sometimes people choose lifetime pets that other cultures consider livestock or simply food and even though they know they are only intended as pets, it becomes to easy to forget that we might be doing the same as suggesting fluffy the cat should be fricasseed... I suspect that doesn't always go so well.
Being a little socially inept, it certainly isn't something I think about and am sure I've talked about yummy curried goat to people who only see them as great pets, not food...
and then this picture popped into my mind (which I posted on flicker some time ago, now lets hope I can find it again):
mom and daughter happily shopping... then look at the dog food on the far left, I bet they wouldn't even have batted an eye, maybe not people food but still food and something we might just protest today
It's just something food related that I was forced to ponder as a friend had become vocally upset and eating jokes in relation to their pets. As horrible as it sounds to joke about eating someone's pet, to at least a portion of the population out there, it is an instinctive reaction to dehumanize any pet traditionally seen as livestock. In this case we make jokes and name our pets things like Lambchops or Bacon. It isn't meant in disrespect to the animal, in many cases, these animals are maintained quite comfortably and can generally lead very nice lives. On the end of the livestock pet, sometimes we give them personable names but joke aside from that, again a reminder of the true function of the pet... livestock.
Unfortunately, sometimes people choose lifetime pets that other cultures consider livestock or simply food and even though they know they are only intended as pets, it becomes to easy to forget that we might be doing the same as suggesting fluffy the cat should be fricasseed... I suspect that doesn't always go so well.
Being a little socially inept, it certainly isn't something I think about and am sure I've talked about yummy curried goat to people who only see them as great pets, not food...
and then this picture popped into my mind (which I posted on flicker some time ago, now lets hope I can find it again):
mom and daughter happily shopping... then look at the dog food on the far left, I bet they wouldn't even have batted an eye, maybe not people food but still food and something we might just protest today
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
How much are you eating?
A few years ago I was in a conversation about eating habits and portion size came up where I noted that many of my older dishes were much smaller than many of the dishes we see in most homes today.
So... I thought it a bit more poignant to explain this in pictures
We generally use our salad plates for meals where the dinner plates (once known as steak plates but now seem to be the general size for dinner plates now) are relegated as platters.
This is my left-over dinner on a modern salad plate
This is the same meal again, but on a modern dinner plate
Now we have the same meal but, this time, it is on an early 20th century dinner plate. Notice the similarity in respect to the modern salad plate?
and here I have the same meal as before, but on a salad plate from the same set.
I have a couple sets from both the eary 20th century and sets from today and the measurements are very similar so this is in no way the exception.
Here is a picture of these two sets together (just the dinner, salad, bowl, and bread and butter)
As an added note, even juice glasses were smaller than they are today and by no small difference.
It is no small wonder that stomach aids are advertising towards those with gluttonous behaviour rather than the old spicy food bit...
So... I thought it a bit more poignant to explain this in pictures
We generally use our salad plates for meals where the dinner plates (once known as steak plates but now seem to be the general size for dinner plates now) are relegated as platters.
This is my left-over dinner on a modern salad plate
This is the same meal again, but on a modern dinner plate
Now we have the same meal but, this time, it is on an early 20th century dinner plate. Notice the similarity in respect to the modern salad plate?
and here I have the same meal as before, but on a salad plate from the same set.
I have a couple sets from both the eary 20th century and sets from today and the measurements are very similar so this is in no way the exception.
Here is a picture of these two sets together (just the dinner, salad, bowl, and bread and butter)
As an added note, even juice glasses were smaller than they are today and by no small difference.
It is no small wonder that stomach aids are advertising towards those with gluttonous behaviour rather than the old spicy food bit...
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