[Sca-cooks] Food Quality and bad cooking was RE: Bad Cooking at Feasts - was Re: good taste

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Tue May 23 11:24:08 PDT 2006


On May 23, 2006, at 1:41 PM, Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:

> Niccolo sez:
>   People who eat lousy food that is lousy because it is partialy
>> spoiled, poorly stored or poorly prepared . . . and then blame it  
>> on being a
>> period recipe/dish . . . are falling unwitting prey to bad cooking  
>> and
>> unfortunately so.
>
>
> one of my standard lines in my food classes I teach is that I've  
> never had a bad medieval recipe. I've met some
> really bad medieval cooks, though....
>
> --Anne-Marie, who has also met some amazing medieval cooks, thank  
> goodness!

I'm a big proponent of that idea myself: God sends us good meat, and  
the Devil sends cooks! Putting it another way, good ingredients don't  
become bad food unless someone does something bad to them.

I found myself, in the middle of organizing  a feast several days  
ago, trotting out another favorite old saw of mine, probably in  
reference to trimming or picking through something like greens: if  
you aren't willing to put that brown leaf or burnt whatever-it-is in  
your mouth, why would you want to try to put it in somebody else's?

I think there are some cooks out there who forget that, even though  
bulk food preparation can be something of an industrial process, it's  
also a very human and very vital process that can't be approached  
without care any more than diapering 12 babies you care about. After  
all, asking somebody to put something in their mouth is a pretty  
darned intimate thing (all joking aside, it's a fact), and my  
suspicion is that a lot of our bad cooking is the result of just  
getting sick and tired of looking at the food and wanting to get it  
the &%$#@ out of the kitchen any old way, as long as it gets done.

Adamantius



"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





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