[Sca-cooks] Questions

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Marcus Loidolt:
>Okay, I know I'm being lazy here, but I don't have
>alot of time at hand.
>
>How period are grilled steaks? Steaks of any other
>sort?

Steaks as slices of meat cut across the grain are eminently period. 
They are often cooked using moist-heat methods, though, and are 
sometimes described as being small. The recipe may say something 
like, cut it into stekys of a hand's breadth.

However, late 16th and early 17th-century English sources refer to a 
cooking method called, collectively, a carbonado (which is vastly 
different from, say, Carbonade de Falamande, which is a stew made 
with onions and beer, but also wonderful). Gervase Markham talks 
about how to carbonado different foods at some length, and I believe 
he mentions steaks among them -- also various items like boiled pig's 
feet, the wings of poultry, small pieces of breast of lamb or veal, 
veal chops, sausages, etc. The cooking apparatus is a sort of 
vertical iron grill covered with little spikes or hooks, and you 
stand the grill up next to the fire. The Elizabethans may have 
preferred to avoid the smoky flavor of grilled meats, which may 
explain their apparent fixation with wrapping certain foods in paper 
before cooking, and cooking next to, rather than over, a fire. There 
are also the logistics of cooking in a fireplace, rather than over an 
open fire, to be considered.

Platina, writing in the 15th century, also mentions grilling small 
pieces of meat over, I believe, charcoal.

>Where does Barbeque fit in?

Pit or grill?

>  Is Oriental Barbeque
>different from Caribbean?

If I can ever find an Oriental who can tell me, conclusively, what 
Oriental Barbecue is, I'll let you know. Until then I will assume it 
is a Western marketing fad that is largely unknown in Asia. Don't get 
me wrong, I'm not making fun of you, but even the term "Mongolian 
Barbecue" (the term you're probably most likely to hear around my 
neck of the woods) seems to mean whatever the speaker of the moment 
wants it to mean.

I have recipes in Chinese cookbooks for Mongolian barbecue (which 
don't seem very Mongolian to me, but what do I know?), and I've seen 
photos from Western China of "Mongolian barbecue" being done both on 
huge round griddles over a heat source, and on actual gridirons (the 
bars placed more closely together than in your typical Weber grill, 
no more than 1/2 inch apart, maybe) over a real fire. It seems to 
generally involve lamb and leeks, and a sesame-seed-covered 
roti/nan/lavosh type of bread.

In Mongolia, though, herdsmen will still occasionally cook with 
stones heated in the fire, sealed, with the meat, in a container like 
a clay jar or a steel milk can. Somewhere I actually have video 
footage of this being done.

>How so? Are either one of
>them period for us?

I believe Columbus found the Caribs doing some form of grilling over 
a smoky fire when he arrived. Some might argue this, but it sounds 
pretty period.

>Is Caribbean Barbeque Native or would it have been
>brought from Africa with the slave trade?

I don't know for sure, but I think it's native and predates the slave trade.

Adamantius
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