SC - What kind of recipes would you experiment with....

[CBlackwill@aol.com]

> The Chinese were eating tomatoes before the Europeans were. 
>  So were the arabs.  
> 
Really?  What is the evidence?  Tomato seeds in a mummy's stomach, if they
were correctly identified and were not the result of improper handling do
not demonstrate the use of tomatoes as a food product.  The Chinese were
very meticulous in their record keeping and I would expect references to the
plant to appear.

IIRC, the Chinese records do contain reference to one voyage of exploration
to the New World, but they do not record a steady trade and I do know the
evidence of Chinese in the New World is difficult to assess and place a date
on.

The commonly accepted opinion is that the Turks got the tomato from the
Spanish via the Venetians and then traded it into Central Europe along with
capsicum peppers, maize and turkeys.

For what its worth, a few years ago, botanists found a native maize growing
in China with enough genetic drift to make it a separate species.  For our
purposes, it is of no importance because it is not commonly used as food and
never was exported from its native habitat.

> Peanuts were being grown and eaten in Siam and India for 
> thousands of years. 
> 
Taxonomic information, please, so I can chase down the botanical history.
All of my documentation points to a New World origin.

>  Bananas were being eaten in Southeast Asia for thousands 
> of years as well.  
> 
As well they should be, since the banana is native to Southeast Asia.  They
entered Africa about 300 CE during a migration from Indonesia to Madagascar
and were spread across the Mediterranean and into Central Africa by the
Islamis expansion.  They were brought from the Canaries to the New World in
1516 by Friar Tomas de Berlanga as recorded by Gonzales Fernando de Oviedo y
Valdez in his Historia general y natural de las Indias, Islas y Tierra-Firme
del Mar Oceano originally published in toledo in 1526.

> Hot peppers have been an elemenf of Indian cooking (as 
> well as Mongolian, Afghan, and Siamese) for centuries.  
> 
Capsicum peppers are of New World origin and are believed to have been
traded into the Far East in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries.  Which
means they have been used there for centuries, but are not necessarily
pertinent to the time frame we study.

> Sure sounds like they 
> were period... oh, not European, of course, but period.
> 
>     But if we are talking about Europe, lets consider:  The tomato entered
> 
> Italian cuisine in the 1500's... which is during period.  Potatoes were
> being 
> grown as a food crop in Spain and France in the 1500's as well.  Period
> again.
> 
>     The problem seems to me that we (the generic "we") forget that period
> is 
> more than the Renaissance and the Dark Ages, but the Age of Exploration as
> 
> well.
> 
>     Sayyid Suleyman al-Rashid ibn Beyazid
> 
I would suggest you take a look at the Florilegium and see what we have
previously posted on the subject of potatoes and tomatoes including period
documentation.  It is substantial and might be enlightening.

I accept that these are your opinions, but I, for one, would rather hear
about their factual basis and the reasoning behind them than a diatribe
about the Eurocentrism and period blindness of people you really don't know,
such as myself.

The standard on this list is recipes and documentation, please, and civil
argument over disputed facts.  I am certain we on this list hope you will be
able to post your documentation soon, so that we can evaluate your arguments
on the basis of the facts presented.

Bear