[Sca-cooks] Tomatoes( Philip)

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 12, 2006, at 11:02 AM, Micheal wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----- From: "marilyn traber 011221"  
> <phlip at 99main.com>
> To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 10:44 AM
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Tomatoes
>
>
> You may want to take this up with the tourist board for the city of  
> Valencia  Spain. They advertise it as authentic since Medieval  
> Times. I simply trying to find out where they consider the term  
> Medieval ends . Tomatoes being the question since Valencia Paella  
> has tomatoes or at least thats the recipe they present.
> Da

I'm inclined to agree with Phlip here, at least on the logical side  
of things (although I think in general, we _all_ need to drink more  
Scotch and get less tense). You're trying to learn as much as you can  
about paella, as far as I can tell, but once we address the  
prevailing view that it is named for the cooking vessel, and not the  
rice, that opens up the distinct possibility that the early  
references you've found aren't going to be what we moderns are  
expecting to find. H*ll, that puts even rice in question, so why  
would questioning tomatoes come as a surprise?

Bottom line, and I say this with respect, this is your project, and  
Phlip was advising caution in the face of possible leaps of logic.  
It's no skin off her nose if you want to ignore those, but she's also  
not obligated to take anything up with the tourist board of Valencia.  
If you, on the other hand, choose to believe them when they make a  
claim like this, there need to be certain caveats included in your  
own claims; why you think what they say makes sense, or you don't  
support the claim, or whatever. Those are pretty much part of  
standard rules for this kind of research.

It kind of sucks to be a responsible academic, sometimes ;-).

Adamantius

>> You might want to slow down a bit. Just because there was a dish  
>> called
>> paella pre-1600, doesan't mean it contained tomatoes. As an  
>> example for
>> comparison, there was most definitely a dish called gazpacho  
>> pre-1600, but
>> extant recipes show no tomatoes- it seems it was called gazpacho  
>> because it
>> used soaked bread as a thickener.
>>
>> Phlip
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"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04