New World Foods- was Re: [Sca-cooks] Earthapples eyc

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

> 
> I take issue with this kind of thinking.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone trying to
> have fun with period (or 'perioid' or whatever) cooking.  If the person in question were to make a
> hamburger, and actually try to pass if off as 'period food', then yeah, they should be admonished.
>  However, there is no harm in taking period ingredients and techniques, and creating new dishes
> using them, if that's what the cook wishes to do.  This does not, in any way, shape or form,
> indicate that the cook is 'lazy'.  That's a derogatory remark which I find offensive.  The entire
> width and breadth of human culinary history evolved from just such an experimentation.  And, all
> things related to the SCA should be enjoyable... so if a cook and his guests derive pleasure from
> creating new, delicious dishes in this manner, then so be it.  Nothing to get upset about.  There
> are so many people who belittle others because they did not "take the time to study what has been
> done", without considering whether they did or not.  Perhaps the cook in question is the most
> knowledgable person in the world in this regard...but just happens to want to experiment from time
> to time as well. 

I think it's excessively difficult not to be frustrated with many of the 
people who want to be 'creative' because they say "but I don't just want 
to work with existing recipes, that stunts my creativity" or whatever, 
and then they just try to create recipes using period ingredients in 
ways that people in period would never have used them.

I call myself 'a good plain cook' because mundanely, I can barely cook. 
Every one of Adamantius' messages is a revelation to me because I don't 
know much about modern food terminology and technqiues-- I've made white 
sauce 2 or three times and it was a nerve-wracking procedure every time, 
and I just don't do things that require a roux. So when I cook from 
period recipes I just read what they say and try to do it.  

Sometimes as a result,  over time I get up on my high horse...
Christopher and I had a loud 'discussion' about why I felt that adding
milk to Savory Toasted Cheese to improve the emulsification was an
unperiod variation... and poor Cadoc got to listen to me whining about 
how pre-peeling and parboiling turnips for armored turnips was extra 
work and contrary to the spirit of the recipe, which really doesn't care 
if the turnips stay crisp. Of course, most people who aren't Jadwiga 
(look, the name means 'war' + ' contention', it was an accident, honest) 
would probably just politely flinch.

Now, it's helpful to read books that talk about period ways of 
combining foods so that you get a sense of period techniques-- in fact, 
I think it's essential. And discussions on this list help too. But I 
don't see how people can create new recipes in the medieval style 
without having visibily mastered at least a subset of period recipes. 
And most of the people who say they don't want to 'just duplicate period 
recipes' aren't willing to actually sit down and try making the recipe 
and its variants as directed first.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try making new variants of an existing 
dish-- but we need to look at all the extant variant recipes we can get 
our hands on first, and avoid using non-period techniques and ways of 
thinking.

-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"The toad beneath the harrow knows/exactly where each tooth-point goes,
The butterfly upon the road/Preaches contentment to that toad." 
			- Rudyard Kipling