[Sca-cooks] on topic: Healthy Feasts - was OT: diet, was sugar problems

Tom Vincent Tom.Vincent at yahoo.com
Sun Aug 6 17:42:19 PDT 2006


Let me provide an example so that you know I'm not suggesting 
substituting TVP for lamb.

Here's "To bake Chickens with Damsons" from The Good Huswives Handmaide 
for the Kitchen, 1594:

Take your chickens, drawe them and wash them, then breake their bones 
and lay them in a platter, then take foure handfuls of fine flower and 
lay it on a faire boord, put thereto twelve yolks of egs, a dish of 
butter, and a litle saffron: mingle them altogether, & make you paste 
therewith.  Then make sixe coffins and put in every coffin a lumpe of 
butter of the bigness of a walnut: then season your six coffins with one 
spoonful of cloves and mace, two spoonfuls of synamon, and one of sugar 
and a spoonfull of salt....

Now, removing the walnut-sized butter and salt from each coffin (not to 
mention cutting back on the twelve egg yolks) would significantly cut 
down the sodium, fat and cholesterol of this dish without, I suggest, 
effecting the flavor one bit.  The damsons, currants and spices give the 
dish all the flavor it needs.

No tofu, TVP or turkey bacon.  But a healthier dish that's still loyal 
to the original.

Duriel


grizly wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
>
>
> I try to build a recipe to meet my understanding of the culture source and
> the corpus I am reading from.  What makes sense from what I have learned of
> a region-time and the rade and dining & cooking habits as I can find them.
> I do my level best to remove as much of modern sensibilities as I reasonably
> can in developing the resulting version I cal my own.  test it a few times
> for success and amendment, then out it comes.  I don't go in for making "low
> fat" or "vegan" versions of a dish.  If I want to give someone that option,
> then I find a dish or dishes that are designed or written that way.  If the
> text says lard, I ain't putting in cannola oil.  I also won't put in tofu or
> TVP for chopped lamb, etc.
>
> In my own personal paradigm/philosophy of historical cookery, there are a
> gracious plenty recipes available to us these days that meet various
> personal dietary needs that we don't need ot go butchering the ones we have
> and still call them "authentic" or "historic recreations".  By all means
> change it for yourself or friends with dietary needs, but I don't ascribe to
> presenting that dish at a feast at an event.  That venue for me is the realm
> of presenting my dead-level best attempt at recreated dishes to try to build
> the atmosphere as best I possibly can to try to capture a moentary glimpse
> of what it may have been like to dine with the Duke of Naples or the local
> baron in England, etc.  There are so many things I cannot make the same
> (florescent lighting, modern foodstuffs, modern food safety stuff, ratan
> swords, plywood shields, nylon tents, cars parked by the feast hall, etc.)
> that I try to make sincere attempts at the things I have some control over.
>
>
> niccolo difrancesco
>
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>   

-- 
***********
Tom Vincent
***********
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and
carrying the cross" - Sinclair Lewis




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