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

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> 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.
>

Agreed, Jadwiga.

One of the points that's being missed here, is that, while modern chefs are
great, in order to become a chef, they had to be trained. That training
consisted of making certain basic recipes (and sometimes making them and
making them and making them) until they got them right. Unless you went to a
school, or trained under a Master I don't want to know about, a chef in
training was not told, "Here, be creative with these ingredients. Anything
you decide to make will be called white sauce." or whatever. Instead, by
repeating the basic recipes, your teacher instilled certain habits and bits
of knowledge that allowed you to take that recipe and transform it into
something creative.

Medieval cuisine is a specialized cuisine, just as Italian, French, Thai,
Japanese, and many other cuisines which are seperated from us by space,
rather than by time, are. In order to learn it, you need to do the same
things you'd do learning any of the others- study the recipes, make them,
understand the peculiar techniques, not only of heating, but of spicing that
makes it distinctly Medieval, rather than modern American.

You wouldn't slop some tomato sauce and pasta into a pot and call it
"Italian spaghetti". Don't do that to Medieval foods.

Saint Phlip,
CoD

"When in doubt, heat it up and hit it with a hammer."
 Blacksmith's credo.

 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....