[Sca-cooks] parching, was: Smoked Meats in general

King's Taste Productions kingstaste at comcast.net
Mon Oct 9 18:53:24 PDT 2006



Anne Wilson leads off with this paper "Preserving food to preserve life:
The response to glut and famine from early times to the end of the Middle 
Ages." pp. 5-31.

She discusses air drying, burial, parching, smoking, salting, preserving
Cream and milk, salted meat and dairy products, salted fish, cereals, pulses, sugar, spices,dried fruits, and wines.


Johnnae


Interesting, I am not familiar with "parching".  
I notice that pickling meats in whey is not mentioned, and I have read
about that process several times recently.  As a matter of fact, I have
about a gallon of whey in stock right now since I just made some fresh
cheese, and was considering what to do with it.  


Christianna


Ok, answering my own question:

parch´ing    (pärch´ĭng)
a.	1.	Scorching; burning; drying.

Parching corn means not only to cook the kernels gently until they expand ... Parching corn is similar to popcorn, in that kernels pop loudly when heated


Hm, seems there is a society against eating spoiled foods.  

"There is a recently established League Against Spoiled Food (Samtök gegn skemmdum mat) which dedicates itself to fighting against the eating of whey-pickled food, skate and skark. In my opionon, they should count themselves lucky to have been born in the 20th century, when they at least have a choice as to what they eat, a luxury our ancestors didn't have. The old-fashioned" food of today is much healthier than the same kind of food used to be. Here I am not just referring to the traditional Þorri food, but also for example to sour and mouldy butter, rotting meat and bread with lots of extra proteins due to maggots and insects in the flour. People had no choice but to eat this kind of food, or else starve."
From: http://tradisjoner.no/articles_show.php?id=5

Everyone has to have a cause, I suppose :)
Christianna




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