Real Men Eat Salad

A nineteenth century salad from the works of Lucien Tendret - author of La Table au pays de Brillat-Savarin.

Put into a salad bowl some olive oil of the best quality, some white wine vinegar, 4 tablespoons roast turkey juice, 1/2 teaspoon tarragon mustard, the inside of a lobster, salt, and pepper. Stir until the mixture is perfectly smooth. Then add slices of lobster flesh, slices from the breast of a braised chicken and the breast of a roast turkey without the skin, the breast of three young partridges (keep the best slices for decoration), some thinly sliced truffles cooked in an excellent dry white wine, some mushrooms prepared in the same way, and a number of shelled crayfish. Cover with a layer of blanched endive (chicory) leaves. Add a second layer of the mixture, then a further layer of endive. Then on top tastefully arrange the reserved slices of meat, a few strips of ham from which the fat has been removed, a few large slices of truffle and mushroom, a border of shelled crayfish, a tablespoon of capers washed in white wine, and a cupful of stoned (pitted) green olives. Put a mound of thick mayonnaise in the centre with the largest truffle on top. Serve with the finest dry champagne, very cold but not iced.

Twenty-first century, eat your heart out!

Getting Medieval on the World's Tastes

The format of medieval cuisine has waned over the centuries but if you squint hard enough, you can still see its antecedents reflected in modern food.

Medieval cuisine — at least in the European sense — was characterized by its use of exotic spices and ingredients. Meat was expensive with game being even more so. There's heavy use of black pepper, saffron, cardamom and ginger and a reliance on a sweet-sour taste. Nuts make their way into most dishes either in the native form or as a thickener – almond milk is practically a cliché.

Most cooking was hard not just from the point of the expense of ingredients and firewood but labor as well. There were no modern conveniences. Everything was done by hand. When we talk about "medieval cuisine", we end up inevitably talking about the nobility because that's what's documented and they're the only ones who could afford to do so.

The modern conception finds some of these dishes to be strange. Meat cooked in sugar syrup or honey is relatively alien to the modern palate – even though it tastes terrific. Our tongues are still the same but our trained response seems to be a little off-center. (You can still see it in dishes like pork chops with apple sauce except the sauce is now served separately.)

Even the format of the meal is a little strange. The stomach needed to be "opened" with an apéritif (literally from Latin: aperire - "to open"), then followed by vegetables, then "heavy meats", then "closed" with aged cheese and a digestif.

If you recognize the above as the slightly modified format of a classic French meal then you will understand the medieval roots of modern eating. (The placement of the salad has been moved around a few times by the French and Italians – and the Americans – but that's fodder for another post.)

Medieval cuisine in its traditional sense but with New World enhancements is most clearly seen today in Persian and Indian cooking. Indian is not that surprising because most spices originally came from India and classical Indian cooking borrows heavily from the Persian format so they are joined at the hip. In fact, most cooking styles borrow heavily from the Persian format given that they were the original Empire spread over vast swathes of modern-day Asia, Africa and Europe. You can see the same formats spread with the medieval Arabic Empire over Northern Africa into Spain and all the way to Sicily.

The point is that these cooking styles have still maintained their "medieval nature" — there's heavy use of spices, saffron, black pepper, ginger, nuts, and a marked preference for sweet-sour tastes.

A slight detour must be made at this point about why spices lost their use in Europe as opposed to modern-day Iran and India where they are still as popular as they were a millenia ago.

Most spices were imported from India to imperial Europe. The spices were a province of the nobility and both Constantinople and Venice were founded on the basis of taxation of the spice trade. In modern economic terms, the middlemen made the spices expensive. This was the whole basis of trying to find a new sea route to India – disintermediation – a way to bypass the taxation. Once these routes were found, and the New World accidentally discovered, the price of spices went down precipitously because of the lack of taxation and the fact that alternatives were found to grow spices in the newly discovered Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and Dominican Republic), various islands in Indonesia, etc.

After that we come to a cliché of human nature. Anything that the hoi-polloi discovers is anathema to the upper-classes just like the old money on Fifth Ave. would disdain the Brooklyn hipsters. And so, spices fell out of favor with the upper-classes in Europe in favor of a "purer cleaner taste" — reverse snobbery at its very finest.

The critical point is that these ideas never did fall out of favor in the places where the spices were grown where the distinction between "expensive" v/s "cheap" simply didn't exist. Spices were always cheap across the growing areas and the swathe populated by traders traversing routes that were not subject to taxation. Places like Sicily are more like the lands that "time forgot" — they had no strategic value and they kept the formats even though their neighbors did not.

This is what explains meats cooked in cashewnut milk with heavy spices in classical Awadhi cuisine even though the cashews are New World – they would've been almonds originally — or the love of almond granita in Sicily. Sicilian dishes like sardines cooked in a sweet-sour sauce or the very Persian "Jeweled Rice" (javaher polow) are all modern-day embodiments of medieval cooking.

The past bleeds into the present — and in a very aggressive format. It's just hard to see until you squint just right.

On the Delusions of Men

From the Guardian:

Carlo Cracco has cooked alongside Alain Ducasse and earned two Michelin stars for his restaurant in Milan, where the city’s elite feast on dishes such as lemon risotto with anchovies and cocoa, and marinated salmon with foie gras. 

But the chef’s professional pedigree did not stop the local council in Amatrice, a town two hours from Rome, from publicly denouncing and ridiculing him.

Cracco’s sin? The chef confessed on national television that he used unpeeled, sautéed garlic as the “secret ingredient” in his amatriciana, one of Rome’s staple pasta dishes.

According to officials in Amatrice, there are six ingredients that make up a real amatriciana: guanciale (pork jowl), pecorino cheese, white wine, tomatoes from San Marzano, pepper and chilli.

The town’s deputy mayor, Piergiuseppe Monteforte, denied that officials were being too strict. “Use one ingredient for another, it changes not only the flavour of a dish but also the history of it,” Monteforte told the Guardian. “If you use ingredients like garlic or onion in an amatriciana, it means you are ignoring a pastoral tradition that is almost 1,000 years old, passed down from generation to generation.”

Anyone spot the error?

Anyone?!?

A pastoral tradition with 1,000 years of tomatoes and chili peppers in Italy?

Pass the bong, baby! Don't bogart it.

Italy has only used tomatoes consistently since the late 18th-century or the early 19th century. Chili peppers are also New World. This complete lack of historic perspective is typical for people steeped in a particular tradition. Thankfully, chez CC, we aspire to higher standards of truth.

The Indian Peas' Process

"What is it about Indians and peas?" a friend asked the CC recently, "Why are they so obsessed about them?"

A most worthy question and certainly one that requires more than an offhand answer and since its her birthday, the CC will answer at leisure.

("Does the CC ever answer not at leisure and without copious footnotes?" is the query from the peanut gallery which is a question he will ignore.)

Perhaps this should be a series? "What is it about Russians/Korean/Japanese and mushrooms?", etc. which follows roughly the same line of questioning and the same analogous answer as well.

The answer, slightly speculative as it might be, involves geography, growing seasons and plant biology.

Peas are ancient and have grown all along the Mediterranean and the near East since ancient times. Even in what is modern-day India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we are talking at least 2500 B.C.E. or earlier.

Peas are annual plants. They produce a seed within the year and die.

Peas are a cool season crop. They can only germinate from late spring to early summer. In fact, last summer, the CC couldn't get fresh peas at all the farmers' market because the waves upon waves of heat destroyed all the pea crops.

India lies just north of the equator and has a short winter but an even shorter spring. Summer arrives with a vengeance right around April.

So the answer should be clear. You can only grow these for the shortest of growing seasons in the winter which is not as cold as the rest of the world. The window is barely a few months (Feb. to late Mar.) which explains its nature as "delicacy" not particularly different from the way that asparagus is considered a delicacy in Europe or North America.

In fact, the Mughal emperors used to grow them in Kashmir which has an extended growing season for peas because of its altitude. We have additional evidence from ingredients in rare royal dishes which are paired with peas like mushrooms. These are not any old mushrooms. They were morels (gucchi) from Kashmir. Morels are seasonal, rare and expensive and require foraging since they couldn't be cultivated easily.

(We are just beginning to understand the science to cultivate them right now!)

Also, if you look at it from the Emperor's perspective, you can't just chomp down a bunch of foraged stuff. You have to have an "official taster" to make sure you're not getting poisoned from mushrooms which means you need even more of them than just for the dish.

Almost every modern-day Indian dish that substitutes the common button mushroom comes from these rarefied dishes that served Emperors once upon a time!

In the modern world, all of this is not particularly germane because you can get ingredients shipped from anywhere in the world right down to your home. Not to mention frozen stuff which doesn't matter if you are going to purée the peas anyway.

However, cultural habits are reinforced by geography first and foremost and modern technology cannot make up for millennia of habit. (Have absolutely no argument for the fact that "habit" and "culture" are nothing more than pseudo-legitimatized bias in some shape or the other!)

So peas. And Indians. And pea-shelling, pea-eating, pea-loving Indians.

Of course, this wouldn't be complete without the CC providing a favored recipe. This one is a Gujarati classic that is both simple and lip-smackingly delicious.

Ingredients

2 cups fresh shelled peas
3 small tomatoes (chopped really fine)

1 tbsp. dhanajeeru (equal parts cumin + coriander, roasted, and ground fine)
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp amchur (dried green mango powder - NON-NEGOTIABLE!)
1 tsp chilly powder (or to taste - not so important)
pinch of asafoetida

1 tbsp. corn flour or chickpea flour

oil
salt

Recipe

Heat up the oil. Fry the asafoetida till it is fragrant. Add the rest of the spices and the tomatoes and fry till they are soft. Add the peas and some water and let it cook till done.

Sprinkle the flour all over and mix vigorously till the sauce is thickened.

Eat with rotis or parathas. The CC is biased. He prefers the latter.

This stores well. Easy to reheat too although the peas will not have the starchy crunch which is partly what makes the dish so irresistible.

The Fetishization of Seasonal and Local

One of the great tragedies of the culinary world is that it is not only faddish but also completely ignorant of science, history, economics, and the mechanics of trade.

In an ideal world, we would all eat seasonal and local but it's not an ideal world. For starters, there are 7+ billion people in the world and they can't all eat locally. An increasing amount of the world's population lives in cities so it is literally impossible that everyone in the city eat locally. It's just a simple mathematical argument about the population versus the amount of arable space and the steepness of its value. (The value comes from the fact that the population provides steep "value" on the economic food chain.)

Simple economics argues against it. The crux of a modern city — and by modern we have to understand that this is at least 500+ years old — is upwardly-mobile cheap labor. The desire to have a better life propels the cheap labor into the cities in the first place. The idea that these people can eat "local" is risible beyond the extreme. If cheap labor propels cities then by definition, it's cheap food that propels the cheapness of the labor.

So cheap means invoking Ricardo's principle of comparative advantage. Source the produce from wherever labor is cheapest and that means Africa, Asia and South America.

Seasonal is another bugaboo.

Places that have absurdly short growing seasons (think: Japan, Korea, Russia, Poland) rely to an unprecedented degree on pickled salted food.

Before World War II, Japan had the highest rate of stomach cancer in the world. It was so high as to be a routine tear-jerker movie cliché most memorably exploited by Kurosawa in his masterpiece Ikiru (生きる). It was definitely due to a heavy reliance on salted, smoked, and nitrate- and nitrite-rich foods (cured meats), the heavy incidence of the bacterium H. Pylori which thrives in stomachs with heavy salt diets, heavy tobacco usage, and above all, the lack of fresh vegetables for all but the briefest of growing seasons.

The same happened in Korea, Russia, and most of Eastern Europe. The common factor is the "short growing season" which means a reliance on "pickled foods".

Compare with both China and India where in spite of the heavy smoking and an equally important pickling tradition, the vegetable-rich diet traditionally traveling along trade routes had stomach cancer incidences at de minimus levels.

This is not just speculation. We have evidence for this.

After World War II, when vegetables flooded the Japanese markets thanks to free trade, the rate of stomach cancer plummeted precipitously. (Even then today, it's still 4x the rate in the UK!)

Do we really want to go "seasonal" so that we can go back to these bad old days?

To rephrase, going non-local caused stomach cancer rates around the world to plummet. Is this a bad thing?

Seasonal and local are not bad things.

For one, the seasonal component gives you an extreme rush of excitement. There's an anticipation to looking forward to something pleasurable that won't come around for another six months. There's also the fact that seasonal actually means cheap. Whatever is plentiful is cheap by the simple laws of supply and demand.

Local is a good thing too.

You can talk to the farmer. You can actually ask for something that lies outside the norm and since you are there to pay for it, they will do it. (Try doing that at a supermarket!)

What's wrong is the fetish. The hide-bound rules that don't allow for five thousand years of trading history (think: spices!), and science (think: stomach cancer) and a certain flexibility of both thought and process. A certain give and take (trade pun intended!) in the approach to food and markets.

Why not have a rich understanding of the subject and the best of both worlds?

The Oldest Recipe Books

Some of the oldest recipes come from Babylonia ca. 1750 B.C.E., the time of Hammurabi. They are inscribed in Akkadian and are clearly meant for experienced chefs because they are not detailed. Entire steps are skipped. Addition of fat and/or water is assumed. No measurements or timings are given. They assume a common culinary expertise. The recipes are both elaborate and call for rare ingredients which implies that they were meant for the royal palace or the temple. This tablet includes recipes for 25 stews — 21 involving meat and 4 involving vegetables. This one has seven detailed recipes. The second recipe involves "small birds".

Remove the head and feet. Open the body and clean the birds, reserving the gizzards and the pluck. Split the gizzards and clean them. Next rinse the birds and flatten them. Prepare a pot and put birds, gizzards and pluck into it before placing it on the fire.

Put the pot back on the fire. Rinse out a pot with fresh water. Place beaten milk into it and place it on the fire. Take the pot (containing the birds) and drain it. Cut off the inedible parts, then salt the rest, and add them to the vessel with the milk, to which you must add some fat. Also add some rue, which has already been stripped and cleaned. When it has come to a boil, add minced leek, garlic, samidu and onion (but not too much onion).

Rinse crushed grain, then soften it in milk and add to it, as you kneed it, salt, samidu, leeks and garlic along with enough milk and oil so that a soft dough will result which you will expose to the heat of the fire for a moment. Then cut it into two pieces. Take a platter large enough to hold the birds. Place the prepared dough on the bottom of the plate. Be careful that it hangs over the rim of the platter only a little. Place it on top of the oven to cook it. On the dough which has already been seasoned, place the pieces of the birds as well as the gizzards and pluck. Cover it with the bread lid [which has meanwhile been baked] and send it to the table.

(Source: Yale Babylonian Collection.)