SC - Getting people to eat period food

[Siegfried Heydrich]

    No, actually, both are quite period. When you ask me for a recipe, I'll
tell you how I make it. By and large, I don't document e-mail. I'm new to
the list, I didn't know it was a requirement.
    I've read descriptions of Frutti di Mar (though not by that name) in the
writings of Homer and other classical authors. It's just a seafood
antipasto, a coastal peasant or sailors dish, utterly simple to make, and by
virtue of its simplicity, has remained virtually unchanged down the
centuries. Why change it? What's to change? You use what you've got; seafood
as available, olives, some cheese, whatever else will fill the belly, throw
it in a bowl with oil & vinegar, and eat it!
    Bistec Ajado is another extremely basic dish - you take a tough cut of
meat, pound the snot out of it, marinade it in juices that will further
tenderize it, and pan/griddle fry it with onions & garlic. No complexity,
and if you don't have one thing, substitute another. It's not exotic in the
least. The stir fry is my own addition, as I love the flavors you get with
the veggies when you deglaze the pan. Once again, I've seen numerous
references to this style of dish in period writings. The recipe I gave is a
method, not a formula, open to adaptation as you will.
    As a rule, when I see a period recipe, I don't see a scientific formula
to be replicated. I see a process, a method, and a list of things that taste
good in this dish along with rough proportions, and that's when the artist
takes over. Except in those dishes where proportions must be exact, I use
the ol' mark 1 eyeball, an ability to judge flavors, and common sense when
assembling a dish. If I don't have one thing, I look around to see what
would be an acceptable substitute. And I experiment on myself before
inflicting it on others.
    I'm quite certain that's how it was done in period; you used what you
had. Your cookbooks were mostly working notes, and assumed you knew
considerably more than the basics already. Unless you were lucky enough to
be close to a major trading route or port, being able to get spices and
exotic ingredients was severely limited, so you had to know what was
available locally, and how to work with it.While there were, I suppose,
certain standard dishes, I'd guess that the actual product varied wildly due
to the individual interpretations, cultural tastes, and availability of
ingredients. Regional variants. And I might point out that ethnic food in a
culture going back for centuries, if not millennia, has at the very least,
its roots in period cooking.
    That's where the art comes in. Consider Veal Marengo - we just won a
battle, the boss wants a feast, I ain't got squat to work with, so let's
fake it. We steal a calf, forage some tomatoes and mushrooms, got the basic
staples, flour, butter, wine (yeah, lotsa wine!), and so was born a classic
dish. If the chef had relied on cookbooks, he's have flopped. When he told
Napoleon that he had nothing to work with, Napoleon responded, ``That's how
you recognize a good chef; they can do something from nothing.''
    If I'm doing a dish that's SPECIFICALLY period, I'll do the redactions
and documentation. But for a feast, I use what's in my budget, what's
available, and is as period in essence as I can possibly make it. It's way
too easy to expend so much effort into making it 'period' that the 'good'
part gets pushed to the side, which probably got all this broo-ha-ha started
to begin with. I guess that's why I'm a cook, and not a Laurel<G>.

    Sieggy


> And then, in response to a query for recipes, responds, in effect,
> that both Frutti di Mar are modern ethnic dishes, for neither of
> which he has a period recipe.
>
> This seems to be getting us back to the confusion between "period
> food" and "odd and exotic stuff that lots of people don't like."
> Except that this time it is the person arguing for "period food" who
> really means "people should be willing to try stuff they find exotic."
>
> As it happens, I agree that people should be willing to try stuff
> they find exotic. But the fact that something is exotic and ethnic
> doesn't make it period, any more than the fact that something is
> period means it is exotic.