[Sca-cooks] Foods for hot weather....

V A phoenissa at gmail.com
Wed Jul 18 16:10:07 PDT 2007


On 7/18/07, S CLEMENGER <sclemenger at msn.com> wrote:
>
> At any rate, when it gets *this* freaking hot, the last thing I find
> myself wanting to do is heat up the kitchen, so I got to thinking about
> summer foods, which led, of course, to me thinking about *historical* summer
> foods. Now, I can think of a couple of specific-to-a-season recipes in the
> Anonymous Andalusian cookbook, but I wondered if anyone's come across
> similar recipes in other cultures--foods to promote cooler humors, or summer
> foods, etc.?
> I'd like to have a small collection of them for my own use, and I think
> they'd make a neat article for my local newsletter....
> --Maire, surviving the smoke and the triple digits with copious amounts of
> salad and sekanjabin....


Well, Scappi's menus (Book 4 of the _Opera_) are organized by date, and his
June-July-August meals make use of summer fruits and vegetables.  There's
not much talk of humors, but it's still pretty interesting.  I think
Castelvetro (writing slightly after SCA period, since he published his
treatise on produce in 1614) also groups his fruit & veggie discussions by
season.

One of my very favorite summer dishes exists in both medieval and modern
versions -- it's a cucumber and yogurt salad, which I think is in the 12th-c
Baghdad cookbook (and which I also grew up eating, in a slightly different
version, with the addition of garlic and dried mint....)  Few things are so
deliciously cooling in hot weather as cucumbers and yogurt.


Vittoria



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