[Sca-cooks] New Cook Book

[James Prescott]

At 23:13 -0700 2001-05-10, Katy Ice wrote:

> I received a present tonight....a new book entitled "The Original Mediterranean Cuisine; Medieval Recipes for Today." The author is Barbara Santich. Its a charming little book full of yummy looking recipes. The great thing about this book is that it lists the recipe as it appeared in the Medieval period, then a translation that we can understand, and explanations on the recipe. It looks like a great book, and I am hoping to try out some of the recipes very soon.
>
> Does anyone on the list have any experiance with this book, or perhaps own it? Does anyone have any opinions on this?


It's quite good, and I've liked (and everyone else has liked) everything
I've done out of it (maybe a dozen recipes in all).  As I recall the
'Roast pork with sweet-sour sauce' got the best comments.

However in doing her own redactions she makes quite a number of what
are, to my view, quite unnecessary substitutions and omissions and
other alterations.  Some of them seem entirely arbitrary.

Always read the original recipe, compare with her redaction, and
make your own decision about whether to follow her or the original
or split the difference.

In the recipes that I've done, following the original very closely
has worked fine every time.


Thorvald
who spent an enjoyable afternoon about six years ago chatting about
medieval cooking with Dr. Santich