[Sca-cooks] Paella was Tomatoes (was Philip)

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

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