[Sca-cooks] Drying stuff

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 2, 2006, at 11:21 AM, Michael Gunter wrote:

>> Incidentally, it's also worth noting that Scandinavian households  
>> dry  fish in the wind, not in a kiln or on the hearth. I assume  
>> the heat  would do something undesirable to the fish; I wonder if  
>> the same is  true of berries...  caramelization and/or  
>> fermentation  of sugars  comes to mind as possibilities.
>>
>> Adamantius
>
> Just last night I was watching "Good Eats" (In Alton we trust) about
> making jerky and he discussed that the best environment for drying
> meats would be in someplace like the high mountain deserts of
> Peru. Basically very cold, very windy and very dry.

Remember... ummm, what was it called.... "Babette's Feast"? There's a  
scene where someone (I don't remember if it was the title character  
or one of the sisters that employ her) goes out and harvests a couple  
of the klippfisk (think medieval stockfish, unsalted and air-dried)  
from the stakes set up above the tide line on the beach. I'm pretty  
sure the movie is set in Jutland, in Denmark.


> He also went on
> to make a pretty groovy dryer using house filters and a box fan
> but that's another show....er....discussion.
>
> I do agree that if the recipe calls for raysons of couryance then they
> should be grapes and if it calls for currants it should be just that.

Well, okay, but now I'm confused. How about this? Can anybody provide  
an example of a period written recipe that calls for red or black  
currants in any form, which simply refers to them as "currants"? And  
if so, are they dried?

Adamantius



"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