SC - peas in period

[SigridPW@aol.com]

By sheer happenstance, the current issue of Petits Propos Culinaires (a
food history journal) contains the recipe book of Ni Tsan (Ne Zan,
1301-1374) in the article entitled "Ni Tsan and His 'Cloud Forest Hall
Collection of Rules for Drinking and Eating'" by Teresa Wang and E.N.
Anderson (Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside).

There are 52 recipes translated into English with an Afterward by Yao
Tzu of the Ming Dynasty. These include recipes for "Honeyed Stuffed
Crabs", "Cooking Noodles", "Cooking Wonton", "A New Way to Cook Clams",
 "Green Shrimp Rolls", "Quick Cooked Meat Stew", "How to Pickle
Ginger", "How to Cook Mushrooms", "How to Brew", "Cooking Carp",
"Cooking Pig's Head Meat", "Barbecued Pork", "Barbecued Goose" and
much, much more.  There are no modernized recipes but the authors make
some comments about many of the recipes. 

In the article is mention of the "nearly contemporary "Yin-Shan
Chen-Yao (Yin-shan Zeng-yao, YSCY) by Hu Ssu-hui (Hu Sihui).  This
work, written by a Turkic-speaker but in Chinese, was a dietary guide
for the Mongol court (Buell et al, ms; Sabban 1983).  Writing as a
Central Asian for Central Asians, in the inland dust of Peking, Hu
based almost all his recipes on meat - lamb abouve all.  He had little
truck with vegetables, and almonst none with seafoods, which were
rarely available in the deep interior at that time.  The contrast with
Ni's book is as extreme as one can find between two roughly
contemporary works, at any time in the history of Chinese cookbooks."

Alys Katharine


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