[Sca-cooks] Serving stuff over rice

[Margaret Rendell]

this is an interesting thread - always interesting to see one's
unconsidered assumptions being considered!

Inter-kingdom trivia:
"over rice is a common phrase today"
actually, I've never heard it before! Although I regularly serve or
have dishes served to me "with rice" or "on rice"... 
(internet search shows it is sometimes used .au , but I've managed to
never encounter it before)

Margaret/Melbourne, Australia
Emma/Krae Glas, Lochac

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cooks within the SCA" 
To:"Cooks within the SCA" 
Cc:
Sent:Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:16:28 -0400
Subject:Re: [Sca-cooks] Serving stuff over rice

 Over rice is a common phrase today, but in actuality rice would have
been expensive, unless one is living in the rice growing areas.
Adamson mentions it was a luxury foodstuff in the 13th century, but by
the 15th century was being traded cross Europe and most often used as
rice flour. 

 Today rice is cheap and filling. And the ads for various modern rice
dishes often promote instructions or serving advice such as "serve on
the side" or "serve over rice." 

 Also what is the cultural influence of the modern American food
scene? We are very accustomed today to eating Asian dishes with rice.
Certainly medieval Europeans would not have been so accustomed to it. 

 Dishes, all sorts of dishes, are routinely photographed over rice,
including many in Middle Eastern cookbooks. That may influence how we
think about serving rice and other foods.

 I would suspect that serving meats or vegetables over rice became
traditional or customary at our Society feasts in part because it's
convenient and saves on the number of serving dishes needed. 

 Why use three serving dishes if or when the food can be served on one
platter per table? Who wants to purchase or use more dishes than
necessary? Or wash them later? So we combine dishes and serve them
together.

 Johnnae

 Sent from my iPad

 On Oct 22, 2013, at 11:48 PM, David Friedman  wrote:

 > My standard way of serving various period Islamic dishes is on top
of rice. Urtatim recently suggested to me that that might be wrong,
historically speaking. Checking the obvious sources, I cannot find any
period reference to food being served that way. The closest I can come
is a recipe where you cook rice in milk and then put meat on it and
serve it--but most rice recipes are considerably more elaborate than
that and I didn't find anything along the lines of "and serve it over
rice."
 > 
 > Does anyone here have evidence for or against the claim that that
was how it was served?
 > 
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