Precooking? (was Re: SC - questions/kinda long, sorry)
KallipygosRed at aol.com
KallipygosRed at aol.com
Sun Jun 18 13:51:28 PDT 2000
In a message dated 6/17/00 8:43:10 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
grizly at mindspring.com writes:
<< I don't imagine in my personal little picture of medieval life that
cooks in the Lord's kitchen would do too terrible much precooking for
the same reason I don't . . . economy. I imagine they would cautiously
prepare the dish, tasting frequently and reconsidering the procedures at
each stage until they came up with a final product that was successful.
I have, on occasion, prepared a dish for a small dinner for the first
time, and then later used it for a historical feeding at some event or
other, but I see that differently. >>
Keep in mind, too, that cooks in the middle ages for the most part would have
learned to cook through apprenticship, wouldn't they? So they would have
watched other cooks with the same receipes, learned a formal background to
what they were expected to do **someday** as they washed pots and pans....
How many of us as cooks actually have formal education or work in the field
in our mundane lives? I used to cook all the time when my kids were little,
but as teenagers I've done more flashing and microwaving then I like.
Consequently, I'm doing more cooking at home to "reaquaint" myself with spice
interaction and flavors again. Someone who cooks mundanely, only, and tends
toward standard American fare of fried chicken and sliced potatoes, might
have difficulty with using spices whose flavors he is not aware of, or the
intensity of, in the receipe called for. That might account for some of the
errors in judgment on receipes and some of the bad feasts I've attended.
Hey, I'm finding a whole new way to look at this....
Lars
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