[Sca-cooks] Plantains: Period for Old World?
Judith Epstein
judith at ipstenu.org
Tue Sep 1 10:30:29 PDT 2009
In another thread, we discussed the notion that tomatoes were first
used (at least, in the Near East) as they would originally have used
either eggplants or plums. This weekend, I tried four varieties of
plums in a dish that I usually make with one to four varieties of
tomatoes (depending on what's fresh and juicy at the market), and WOW,
was that good.
So. I know bananas are Old World (Period for Asia, Africa, and the
Middle/Near East). I was reading on Joe Pastry blog (http://joepastry.web.aplus.net/?blog=1&page=1&paged=2
) that plantains are often for a lot of the things that normally use
potatoes. I'm wondering if potatoes, when first brought back from the
New World, were used in ways that they would have normally used
plantains.
This is confusing as I try to word it, so let me try again. Here's a
supposition (which I'm not married to, and I'm just as happy to have
it shot down as to have it triumphantly confirmed):
1. The Old World had recipes, techniques, or treatments that used
plantains as the starch.
2. Potatoes were brought from the New World to the Old World.
3. People weren't sure what to do with potatoes, so after a bit of
suspicious glaring, they started to use them in the dishes that had
originally used plantains.
4. Plantain use waned while potato use waxed.
5. Recipes evolved as time passed, sometimes very slowly and sometimes
rapidly.
6. Now a dish that uses potatoes COULD conceivably be made with
plantains instead, and it MIGHT be Period. (Documentably? Probably
not, or someone would have surely crowed about it and done it by now,
right? But it might be "reasonably Period" or "Peri-oid," right?)
Shoot me down fast, please, before I get really excited about trying
something like this. Start with whether plantains are Old World, or
whether they're a species of the Musa genus that only developed after
bananas made it over to the New World, so I know whether this weird
thought may have any basis whatsoever in reality.
Judith
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