[Sca-cooks] Recipe direction

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> We are planning our event for next year.  The autocrat loves my idea of"
> Defending the Americas."  Doing an Incan/Mayan/Am Indian vs Spanish menu
for
> our Defending the Gate.
>
> I can find SOME Mayan recipes, but not enough.  Any direction ya'll can
head
> me in? Yes, we always have dual feasts.
>
> Soffya Appollonia Tudja

well, as it happens, I've been doing some research in that direction,, and
I've been discussing it with Gene Anderson, since he spends a fair amount of
time every year involved in Mayan archaeology. I've been cooking a
conjecturally period meso-American meal at Pennsic every year.

The first thing that you need to keep in mind, is that, just as many
foodstuffs we use today came from the New World, and thus aren't generally
period for our European reenactments, many european foods were equally not
available in the New World until late.

The meso-americans ate a very lean diet- they didn't have the pigs for fat
until the europeans brought them over, so fried foods are very unlikely.
Thus, I use anasazi beans, boiled, rather than fried, or refried.

Tortillas were available, but corn tortillas, not the flour kind, and were
basicly used as a wrap for whatever might have been cooked- they were also
eaten alone, as we might eat a piece of bread.

Fish and waterfowl provided a large part of their protein intake. Hot
peppers seem to have been generally available, tomatoes less so. Turkey was
fairly available, but venison tended to be reserved for the upper classes.

Pototoes were available, but different sorts, depending on the when/where.
sweet potatoes would have been fairly likely, our white potatoes, as I
understand it, weren't found until fairly late, when the interior of the Sa
continent was broached.

Chocolate/chocolatl was considered strictly a ceremonial drink, usually
mixed with hot peppers. There is some evidence that it was sweetened, but
again, only in very limited areas. since the european honey bee is an
import, they got some sweetening from a couple varieties of wasps, now
almost extinct, and ants- apparently this honey didn't travel very well.

The meal I make, other than the boiled beans, consists of duck enchiladas,
sauced with a tomato/hot pepper sauce- one year, thanks to akim, we included
venison enchiladas. Gene, however, told me the following:

Wasps etc yeah, but most of the pre-Columbian honey came from a
domesticated stingless bee, Melipona beecheyi.  It survives but has become
rare; there are attempts to propagate it again.  Most honey today is from
European bees, but Africanization has made those risky and hard to work
with.  Those African bees really do sting!
Duck enchiladas:  probably not.  Try stewing the duck with achiote and
allspice and chiles, thickening the sauce with corn flour, and then baking
it in a pie with crusts made of corn meal made into dough with the stock
from boiling the duck.  More authentic.  Major pre-Columbian dish.
Incidentally, cacao is a Maya word (loanword into English).  But they don't
seem to have used it much in sauces, unlike the Aztecs (from whom the word
"chocolate" comes).
best--Gene

I'm still looking, but I hope this helps ;-)

Phlip

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....