[Sca-cooks] Paella was Tomatoes (was Philip)
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Fri Jan 13 13:06:47 PST 2006
From: Micheal <dmreid at hfx.eastlink.ca>
> But here`s the twist only in Spain does Paella reach the level of notice
>that it does. Why ? that is my project.
But that's in MODERN Spain. And it seems to me that you're a bit
fixated on modern paella, which may be blinding you to its potential
antecedents.
Of course, the Arab corpus has tons of rice cooked with "stuff"
recipes. And the Arabs brought rice cultivation to Spain, where it
was cultivated for some time after the reconquista, although because
the wet rice fields harbored malaria-carrying mosquitos, the Spanish
government eventually closed rice agriculture down.
And what about other places in period? What about Italy in period?
And what about Southern France, for which we have little culinary
reference in SCA-period, so it's hard to research?
There are so many potential reasons - social, agricultural,
trade/economic, political (don't for get that Spain controlled
significant chunks of what is now Italy in SCA-period), etc. - for
paella becoming what it is now in Spain, but not somewhere else.
I mean, think about Garum - Mediterranean fish sauce - which was
still being made in Byzantium in the 15th century almost up to the
16th c. Why has it virtually disappeared in the intervening 4-plus
centuries, leaving only anchovy paste behind (Worchestershire sauce
seems to me to have Malaysian roots).
Sometimes there is no simple single answer.
--
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
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