[Sca-cooks] Greek terracotta foufou stove

[Huette von Ahrens]

My answers are interspersed below.

--- On Tue, 3/3/09, Sharon Gordon <gordonse at one.net> wrote:

> In Hoffman's book, The Olive and the Caper, she
> describes a 2000+ year old
> stove style that is still in use in the present in Greece.
> 
>  
> 
> Description:
> 
> Made of red clay
> 
> ~15 inches tall
> 
> Wine cup shape on thick hollow stem
> 
> Incisions in at the bottom of the cup leading to the stem
> 
> At the bottom of the stem is a triangular cutout
> 
> Two small curlicued handles on opposite sides of the
> cup's broad lip
> 
> Presently only made and sold on the island of Sifnos
> 
>  
> 
> To use:
> 
> Put small heap of charcoal in the cup, perhaps with a bit
> of paper
> underneath
> 
> Light it
> 
> Let coals burn to red glow

First off, starting the fire in a ceramic chafing dish will cause thermal shock to the piece and it will crack.  What is best to do is to start your fire with the chafing dish next to the fire to warm it up.  Once the fire has died down and you have hot coals, using tongs, pick up the hot coals and place it in the bowl of the chafing dish.
> 
> Place food into long-handled two sided grill basket

The grill basket is modern.  There were no grill baskets pre-1600.  What was used was a bowl placed on top of the chafing dish, used to heat up your stew or soup or sauce.  A chafing dish wasn't used as a grill pre-1600.

> How it works:
> 
> Triangular slot acts as fire-feeding air hole
> 
> Ashes drop through incisions into stem
> 
> When cinders/ashes are cool, they can be dumped out of the
> triangular slot
> and the cup

Yes.  This is what the slots/slits/holes were used for.
> 
>  
> 
> If anyone has seen one of these or knows about the
> historical use, I'd love
> to know:
> 
>       1) It seems like this design would be very fuel
> efficient.  Is it?

As efficient as a coal fire is.  I wouldn't characterize it as such, because this wasn't a concept known to the Medieval person.
> 
>       2)  Any indications of what might have been used
> historically for the
> grill basket?
> 
Absolutely none.  Grill baskets are modern.  As I stated above, a chafing dish wasn't used to grill meats, but to make stews, soups, sauces, etc.

> 3) Any place I could see pictures of historic or museum
> versions?

Selene already posted the URL to my husband's website.  There is a fragment of a chafing dish from the Ashmolean Museum's PotWeb, but it isn't much of a fragment to show what it was supposed to look like.  Here is a wiki on Diego Velazquez, which has a 1618 painting of a woman poaching eggs in a ceramic bowl over a ceramic chafing dish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Vel%C3%A1zquez

Ignore the commentary under the picture.  The woman is poaching eggs, not frying them.

Here is an actual chafing dish from the Museum of London:

http://tinyurl.com/dddhdt

Here is another chafing dish fragment from the Museum of London, but is much larger and can give you a better idea what it looked like:

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/pages/object.asp?obj_id=114255

> 
>       4) Are you aware of any places in the US or Europe
> that have current
> ones and maybe internet photos?

I am not sure what you mean?  The Greek chafing dish or other kinds of chafing dishes?
> 
>       5) How wide is it at the top?  Is the stem thinner or
> wider than the
> cup?  How stable is it?

Each of my husbands chafing dishes is hand made, so they vary.  The top is about 12 to 14 inches wide.  The stem is much narrower than the bowl.  My husband's pieces are very stable.
> 
>  
> 
> She really enjoyed using her foufou stove and used it
> almost daily when she
> lived in Greece in the house that had no electricity or
> running water.  (She
> also had a gas hot plate.)

I would have worried a ton about carbon monoxide poisoning.  No stove, grill or chafing dish should be used indoors, unless you want to commit suicide.  I have heard constant stories about how elderly people and whole families who are very poor have used charcoal indoors for heating and cooking and were found days later dead from CO poisoning.

Muette
www.twoheartsentwinedpottery.com