Food History

I’ll finish my drinks test tomorrow night. Today it’s all too much for me: I look at the array of bottles and think I shall never touch liquor again. More than that, I think I shall have an early night and sleep heaps. I didn’t get a hangover, but I did get a cold. The drinks (oddly) got rid of most of the sneezing and sniffing and I’m left with a faint fever and a vast, vast exhaustion. It isn’t just the cold. For many reasons (not just the ones I’ve blogged) it has been a very big week.

I tested one more recipe last night. #11. That means just two more to go. What’s more, I’ve swapped it with one of the other sour drinks – the balance of this one is just so much better. Not too much sugar or too much sour.

Karen checked out a couple of non-alcoholic drinks yesterday. Her view was that both were OK. One was “was a little ‘cloudy’ at first, but not unattractively so” and the other was sweet and might appeal to those who like sweet things, which sounds pretty fair.

Where does this leave us? There are five (possibly six) alcoholic cocktails that have gone through for further thinking and two non-alcoholic. A good week’s work, I think.

If I’m not quite so tired, I’ll extend the week by a day and taste the last two drinks in my list tomorrow. Or maybe Sunday. And then I’ll only have the testing of others to report and will be able to go back to normal business. Normal business includes five community cookbooks about which I very much want to tell yout.

My second drink of the day (I’m really beginning to sound like a chronic tippler, aren’t I?) is # 8. It’s a little sour, but even more refreshing than the mint ones. I think I’m going to have to put it on the long list, too. I don’t know if it’s the alcohol, but the long list is looking … long. I’m going to have to cull it a little if all the testers get the same results as me. Nothing is to die for, but 2/3 of the drinks are nice, and worth following up on.

I might choose the 2-3 top drinks using each alcohol base. I could more easily diminish the list by selecting according to those with fresh lime, or crushed mint, or grenadine. That might give a better mix, in fact. I’ll think about it. Maybe the thirty other recipes out there will all turn out to be bad news and maybe the long list won’t prove so long after all. My sizzled brain doubts that, though. What I need are about 6 tests that come out with amazing drinks, worth pursuing a barman to the ends of the earth to obtain. So far we don’t even have one of those.

I won’t be testing five drinks today. I’ve made it as far as two and that’s probably enough. If I feel enthused later, maybe I’ll test one more. One thing I have to say is how useful a really good cocktail is for getting rid of muscle aches and pains. My poor neck, victim of too much typing, suddenly feels almost normal. I certainly won’t do cocktails every night, but maybe I’ll try them once a week and find out how much is due the muscles relaxing and how much the anaesthetic qualities.

I keep looking at my list. Three drinks to go. And all of them tomorrow. One of them is rum-based and two are brandy-based. The other thing I have to do tomorrow is write three extraordinary pages of fiction, since I’m now in novel-editing mode. Expect much laughter from my publisher. I don’t have to reassure you, do I, that this is not the normal way my history interfaces with my fiction?

I got off to a slow start today. In fact, I’ve only just poured my first drink. I’ve started with #10 on my list and it’s cool and refreshing and something I could get used to. It has to go on the long list. That’s four for the long list so far, out of seven. This is a bit of a surprise. Either I handed on all the undrinkables to others to test, or really, only bits of tastes have changed. I’ve devised a form for second stage testing so that somehow we can discern between a good drink and a drink we can’t possibly miss out on.

If you’ve been counting, you will have noticed that the numbers just do not add up. This is because I received my first report-back from someone else and I still have one drink to comment on from yesterday.

Rachel says:

“Firstly, this is going to be a disappointment to anyone expecting a martini (after all, it looks just like a Gibson) but the two vermouths give it quite a distinctive taste. Secondly, it’s very hard to measure half a pony with one of those conical cocktail thingies.

However, I liked it. It’s hit me quite hard (I’m having to retype every second letter), but I’m about to watch Spicks and Specks, so that’s OK.

It’s not “giggle water” by any stretch and is not going to be to everyone’s taste. It would not go well with food either as it’s very strong. The onion is perfect with it (I’m normally an olive person). I can imagine this being a gentleman’s drink. I want to say aniseed-y, but not quite.” I’m marking this down, with a question-mark, for the Speakeasy.

My final drink from last night was one that suits everyone, to balance this. #5 in my list has come forward to the twenty-first century unchanged. In fact, by co-incidence, it’s exactly what I was drinking at the stroke of midnight when the century changed. It goes forward to the long list, but I don’t know if it’s distinctive enough to stay there. We’ll see.

Now I have a friend to help me get drunk. We’re trying #1. Her view is that it’s axle-grease. My view is that it’s very bright red. Neither of us think that this should be served at Conflux. We have an opinion on the history – modern tastebuds look for a little more sweetness and creaminess to balance the astringency. After the first mouthful and with proper blending, it improves, but it’s still a shock to the mouth. Donna says that it needs people who have no tastebuds and that these people will appreciate its finer qualities. She’s making a fabulous face, but has drunk it all. I’m only three sips in. We’re dropping it.

#7 is lovely. All mint and sugar and we-can-pretend-there’s-no-alcohol. There’s a very slight afterburn, but it will appeal to many people. Donna described it as refreshing and light, good as a palate cleanser. We’re assigning this one (tentatively) to the Banquet.

This is when I had a good long break. Dinner and some sobriety. Family intervened, as family does. Then I had my brainwave. A very considerate friend has let me borrow her House of Eliot DVDs. Why not test the next two (and last for the day) in front of a TV series set in the 1920s? Go out in style, so to speak?

I’ve looked at the list again to try to decide what those last two should be, and I found myself shuddering. They all look perfectly potable … in theory. In practice, though, I’m not sure I can face two more drinks tonight. I’ll drink one more only, and then watch the DVD with only water by my side. The rest can wait. I’ll report back on the last one tomorrow, when I try to demolish more of my little list. Thank you to all the people helping me test, because even the diminished list I have is almost too much*.

* In an ideal world I would taste a drink a day for ten days, but I have meetings and things over the weekend and reviews that must be started and articles that must be finished and teaching next week. From today till Friday is all the time I have.

Note to self: when using spoon to float brandy for #6, do not even think of drinking extra brandy out of the spoon. There is enough alcohol in your day already. Already, in fact, there is more than there has been at any time these last two weeks. #6, for the record, is dull. It’s lemonade for alcoholics and a waste of good brandy. I bet it was a drink like this that spawned the term ‘giggle water.’

I’m eyeing off the other recipes. Discretion is the better part of valour. Also, my typing is going peculiar: I need an afternoon nap. I especially need one because the next drink calls for a full wineglass of brandy. No it doesn’t. That’s because I’ve suddenly changed the order of testing to save my sanity. Also so that I can try one more drink then have that sleep. (For the record, I’m not making them full size, just in case you were wondering why I still sound almost-not-drunk. Also for the record, both drinks have suddenly hit me like a steamroller. Right now I’m a very, very happy historian. A small piece of me wonders why I chose the Middle Ages when I could have been drinking early twentieth century liquor for the last twenty years. Most of me still knows that there are very, very good reasons for confining the drinks to a very few days and then getting back to the Middle Ages.)

The third drink (and the very last I can manage this session) is a shaken cocktail. I’m hoping it will turn out well, because it looks cute and has ingredients I like, individually. When I bought the Grenadine, the shop assistant told me, quite sincerely, that it tastes much nicer than red cordial. I was strong and brave and refrained from giving her a complete history of grenadine. It still puzzles me that anyone could use red cordial instead of it. My only sorrow is that real grenadine isn’t available in the ACT (that I can find) so I have an artificial version. It’s a nice red, though.

Anyhow, to drink #2 on my list: it looks like red medicine and, by golly, it tastes like red medicine. Lots of ice would dilute it, but I really doubt anything can redeem it. Actually, it improves as I drink more of it. It’s less odious, but still not something I would drink again. My main thought is that this is the medicine the Darling family was so fond of in Peter Pan. Just to be certain, I’ve mixed it more, since the recipe advises to shake well and really, all I did was stir it. Yes, the extra effort makes a difference. It tastes almost drinkable. Almost is not good enough. Not nearly good enough. Much as I like the thought of everyone sporting glasses that look nicely medicinal, no-one at the Banquet will taste this beauty.

And now I need that nap. I hope no-one rings in the next two hours, because I doubt I am as sober as I think I am.

Today I am starting my drink testing. Given the comments other testers have made about the likelihood of loss of grammar and maybe even social skills, I thought you might appreciate a step-by-step account of my progress. I’m not testing everything in the one day (11 drinks! And besides, I’m still missing an ingredient for some of them) but I want to finish up quickly and move onto other things. Also, I’ve finished my teaching for the week, so from today and Friday is not a bad time to go quietly crazy.

Because I can’t guarantee my sobriety (being a cheap drunk), I’ve printed out all my recipes and I’m numbering them. The numbering means that I know which recipes I’m trying but you only get the tasting notes. I’ll post in normal blog-lengths, so you will get my notes in stages. This is very cruel of me, but necessary. The final drinks recipes will all enter this space in October, and that’s when you’ll find out specifics. I don’t know how detailed the notes will be from the rest of the team, but at least you can laugh at my attempts to not get drunk and also to details the strengths and weaknesses of each drink. One thing I know before I start: we probably need three of my eleven drinks on the long list, just because they have the same base alcohol.

My first drink is #3. I’ve already spilled some. This has nothing to do with drunkenness and everything to do with trying to find ingredients stashed in odd places while sipping. The brandy and sugar were in the library and are now not, and I am saved from early overdose of alcohol by losing 1/3 of the first drink. My flat is going to smell delightful by the time I’m finished.

#3 is good. Perfect for the Speakeasy. Not bad for drinking before the Banquet begins, but not flexible enough for the menu, really. Sophisticated and dead easy to make. So easy, in fact, that the bartender is likely to look at me in horror. They’ll just have to jazz it up themselves with fancy gestures and throwing things around.

This would have been an entirely salubrious start if some weren’t spilled. On the other hand, if anyone rings at least I’m still sober. I’m so sober, in fact that I remembered to change the spellcheck to Aussie English.

More will follow. I need a few minutes recovery.

Tonight is the night. Two gorgeous community cookbooks, randomly selected from the pile at my desk. Except the first one I picked up was a rather unexpected one. Friends and family didn’t just give me random cookbooks, it turns out. So tonight, you meet just one book, but it’s a special one.

The first book is slim and the cover is a splash of orange and yellow. It’s called “recipes from the tropics help a bush child”. The first four words are in a different font to the rest but no, there is no punctuation nor any space between the two phrases. So next time you meet a bush child, you know what to cook.

Inside, there is a really interesting cookbook. It was compiled in the far north of Australia by the Whitsunday Branch of the Queensland Bush Children’s Health Scheme. A community cookbook, sure, but with the funds raised reaching across a vast territory. This is one of the things I love about these books – they can be national or local or something quite, quite different. This booklet is quite, quite different.

It is a 1970s book, and a lot of trouble has been taken to show why it’s necessary. There’s a map on page c showing the places children have come from over a thirty year period to get help at the Rowes Bay Bush Childrens’ Home in Townsville. They travelled from as far north as Thursday Island and as far south as Winton, as far east as Mackay and as far west as Camooweal.

The map is a reminder that there are politics in cookbooks. In fact, the book is a reminder that there are politics in cookbooks. These children were some of the least privileged in the world, despite living in a prosperous country. One of the biggest public statements the new Prime Minister will ever make was the ’sorry’ he said to the Stolen Generation: the period covered by the map was just a part of the period and apart of the terrain covered by that apology. The cookbook is a reminder that nothing is as simple as it seems and that, throughout the bad years, there were goodhearted people doing their best: politics are complicated and stories are individual.

There are some fabulous tropical recipes in the book itself and a bunch of Australian classics. Zucchini and Lamb sounds like something from my childhood, while Tropical Trifle (with pineapple, mango and passionfruit) makes my mouth water. There is a Palm Island Pie I shall be making next summer and jellied pawpaw wedges that look perfect to serve to children. Ragout of Octopus appeals less, I’m afraid: I’d rather have Gingered Pacific Island Steaks or Polynesian Baked Chicken.

The recipes are so clearly Australian and have a lovely Islander influence. They’re the perfect reminder that peoples’ lives are never simple and that politics is never what it seems. And that community cookbooks to raise funds to help children are usually just that, and worth noticing.

I’m going to post about cookbooks tomorrow after all. Tonight I want to put in a plea for more help. Four months ago I had a queue of people who wanted the food testing for the Prohibition Banquet all sorted out so that they could move on to the more joyous task of drinks testing. I still have a core of happy testers (and one new one) but most of the queue seems to have disappeared.

I have thirty-something recipes that need homes and tasting. I would very much like results by the end of May so that the committee can do the tricky job of trying all the drinks in one evening before the evenings get so long and so cold that such a task becomes dangerous. Though an extended cocktail party in mid-winter does have its attractions, and I do have a camera…

Testing these recipes is really a matter of getting the ingredients, mixing them, sipping elegantly and telling me how much you like what you taste and what, exactly, it tastes like. If you say something curious or colourful (or even curiously colourful) I might blog it. If you are three sips in and think of a splendid new science fictional or fantasy name for the drink then I can take that to the committee for consideration. We’re not renaming the food for the occasion, but we are most certainly renaming the drinks.

I’ll blog the final recipes with their new names (and slightly modified ingredients – Australian brands in 2008 and New York brands in 1921 don’t always overlap) after Conflux, which isn’t until October. This is, in other words, your last chance to taste what’s going to happen at the Banquet and at the Speakeasy the night after.

All I need is an email address and the number of recipes you’re willing to try and I’ll email them to you forthwith. In advance, thank you, because I really, really didn’t want to have to make all thirty-nine of those recipes myself.

I was offered an exceptionally wonderful opportunity to talk about a subject I love on the blog of a major Aussie publisher. If you want to see what terrible liberties I took with this opportunity, check it out here.

I promise to post about those two cookbooks later tonight.

Several thoughtful people gave me community cookbooks for my birthday. I’m delaying putting them away until I can blog them, because community cookbooks are way more fun when they’re shared. I looked at my little stack today and wondered where to start and how to go about it. The problem is that in some ways local cookbooks are all different and unique. In other ways, they’re a bit the same. It’s the latter that worries me. Normally I classify works by similarities of ideas or concepts or language. If I do that in these instances, what you will get are blog posts of the greatest boredom. It will strip the books of their individuality and quirkiness and render them intellectual sludge. That intellectual sludge might be the underlying material for really interesting academic papers, but I’ve decided against it in this case. Be proud of me.

What I thought I would do is introduce them in pairs. Not matched pairs, either. I’ll take two at random each day for three days and find you something cool in each and every one of them. After all, a lot of love and work goes into each and every community cookbook. Even the ones that use a set format and just modify it a little and then add their own recipes entails a bunch of effort.

I’m afraid my blogposts won’t lead to a sparkling little article on the nature of community cookbooks. It will help you retain your respect for them and understand just how fascinating they are, though, and the lack of sludge should mean that you won’t use my blog last thing at night to help you get a good night’s rest. So, three posts, two books a post, starting tomorrow.

I promised my grandmother’s recipes and, after racking my brains to think what I should talk about tonight, I remembered my promise. It’s a pity I remembered that I had promised recipes, though, because I had just about decided that it was time to talk about the gabelle. Salt is important, after all. Anyhow, there’s world enough and time for a post on French salt taxes and their extraordinary effects on world history. Another day. If I remember.

The baked egg recipe is identical to a recipe that appeared in the 1920s in the US, which just goes to show that US cuisine and Australian aren’t so far away from each other as they sometimes look. The only difference between my grandmother’s recipe and the US version is that my grandmother’s follows the Jewish technique of breaking the egg into a cup first, to check for blood spots or embryos. I find it works best with the perfect rich tomatoes of high summer.

The main course of tomato and egg is so light and healthy that I’ve given a rather decadent dessert to match it.

Baked Eggs & Tomatoes
Allow 1 egg & 1 tomato to each person. Slice about 1 ¼ off the top of the tomato, scoop out the pulp. Break an egg into a cup & pour it into the tomato. Add a little butter, pepper & salt. Bake slowly until egg is set. Warm the pulp, season, and pour around each egg.

Caramel Custard
3 eggs, 1 qt milk, 2 oz lump sugar, vanilla essence. Make a custard with eggs and milk in a shallow dish, cooking it very slowly so that it will not curdle. Put sugar in a pan with a little water and warm until it is a dark coffee colour. Add vanilla. Take the brown skin off the custard when it is cold and arrange in a glass dish and pour the cold caramel sauce over it. Serve with cream.

This is the moment that far too many people have been waiting for. My hardworking group of testers and myself are about to embark on an epic voyage across the alcohol of a generation. We need to test quite a few cocktail recipes.

I don’t know how many we’ll be testing. It really depends on how many volunteers I have. I know we need between six and eight really wonderful drinks for the science fiction convention.

Why so many? It’s because the committee has fallen in love with the whole Prohibition theme and the bar area is being turned into a speakeasy the night after the banquet. This means the more recipes we can test, the better, so I’m asking for a whole new team of volunteers. All regular testers are entirely welcome to return, and anyone who has a desire to try drinks from the 1920s, well, now’s your chance.

There will, of course, be other illicit alcohol at the convention, but these cocktails have to be special. To make sure they are, what I’m asking is that individuals test a range of them. I shall take everyone’s favourites and then they’ll be tested a second time across more tastebuds. After that, they might be renamed. It all depends on how enthusiastic the committee feels after tasting much foul liquor in a very short time.

On Monday I shall email the first set of cocktail recipes. Anyone possessed of a vast desire to report on the value of hard liquor mixed with various other things, let me know just how many recipes you wish to trial and give me an email address. I promise not to be judgemental if you test more than three in a night.

I think we’re going to have fun.

Today’s biscuit recipes are from The American Economical Housekeeper, and Family Receipt Book by Mrs EA Howland. It was published in Cincinnati in 1845. For saleratus you can use baking soda, and everything else is pretty obvious. Is it equally obvious that I’m falling asleep at my desk? I hope not.

“17. Brown Bread Biscuit.
Two quarts of Indian meal, a pint and a half of rye, one cup of flour, two spoonfuls of yeast, and a table-spoonful of molasses. It is well to add a little saleratus to yeast almost always, just as you put it into the article. Let it rise over night.

18. Bread Biscuit.
Three pounds of flour, half a pint of Indian meal sifted, a little butter, two spoonfuls of lively yeast; set it before the fire to rise over night; mix it with warm water.

19. Tea Biscuit.
* Take one pint of sour milk, one tea-spoonful of saleratus, flour enough to knead up, a small piece of lard or butter, a little salt; roll it out, and cut it into small biscuits.

20. Light Biscuit.
Take two pounds of flour, a pint of buttermilk, half a tea-spoonful of saleratus; put into the buttermilk a small piece of butter or lard rubbed into the flour; make it about the consistency of bread before baking.

21. Rice Biscuit.
Two pounds of flour, a tea-cupful of rice, well boiled, two spoonfuls of yeast; mix it with warm water; when risen enough, bake it.

25. Rich Milk Biscuit.
Two pounds of sifted flour, eight ounces butter, two eggs, three gills of milk, a gill and a half of yeast. Cut the butter into the milk and warm it slightly, sift the flour into a pan, and pour the milk and butter into it. Beat the eggs and pour them in, also the yeast; mix all well together with a knife. Flour your moulding-board, put the lump of dough on it, and knead it very hard. Then cut the dough in small pieces, and knead them into round balls; prick and set them in buttered pans to rise till light, probably about an hour, and bake them in a moderate oven.

26. Butter Biscuit.
Eight ounces of butter, two pounds of flour sifted, half a pint of milk or cold water, a salt spoonful of salt. Cut up the butter in the flour and put the salt to it, wet it to a stiff dough with the milk or water, mix it well with a knife. Throw some flour on the moulding-board, take the dough out of the pan, and knead it very well. Roll it out into a large, thick sheet, and beat it very hard on both sides with the rolling-pin. Beat it a long time, cut it out, with a tin or cup, into small, round, thick cakes. Beat each cake on both sides with the rolling-pin, prick them with a fork, put them in buttered pans, and bake them to a light brown in a slow oven.”

Yesterday was so busy and last night so fatigued that I completely forgot to blog. Sorry about that! I blame first week of term, but the real problem lay with me coming back in the afternoon to teach a new course that evening. Naturally this means that today and tomorrow all I want to do is sleep.

Tomorrow has all kinds of paperwork lying in work, some messages, and a meeting.

I think I might take the easy way out. Today and tomorrow I’m going to give you other people’s recipes. Not Sharyn’s, though I’m certain more of them will come. More for the biscuit and scone collection tomorrow and something else the day after. I’ll decide tomorrow and the day after when they come. Today I want to talk about what I have in store for the blog over the next little while.

I also have five new cookbooks. They were birthday presents from sensible souls. I shall blog about them soon. In fact, I won’t put them away until they’re blogged, so that’s something to look forward to. They’re all community cookbooks of one kind or another, so the recipes will be interesting and the stories behind them good.

Soon we’re going to start testing cocktail recipes for the Prohibition Banquet and the next night’s Speakeasy. I feel as if I should start a chart for my hangovers.

While I was away I scored some cool cooking equipment. Most of it is modern and only of interesting to people who eel like eating at my place. My mother let me have a set of antique scales. They’re not very antique, I don’t think, but beautifully balanced and use pre-decimal weights. Now I have a 1940s scale for my big weigh-ins (for those rare occasions when I make cakes) and this other balance for the smaller things. I’m going to try to take a picture, but if you see the moustache cup at the top of the post you’ll know that I failed. The failure is probably due to a missing cord (things are a bit topsy-turvy at my place when term begins). When the cord appears I’ll try again.

And that’s the sum of my apologies. Historical scone and biscuit recipes tomorrow!

My mind has, all day, been scattered like chaff by the breeze.

Every now and again I get that way, in between-times. This particular between-time is the place between Passover and the start of term (moving from the Jewish calendar to the secular one), between kosher food and my everyday fare, between the continuous food at my mother’s and the more sporadic supply at my own home.

There are some continuities in my life. We talk about the history of food in Melbourne whenever I visit, for instance. This time round I discovered the whereabouts of the cherry farms that supplied the Eastern suburbs, fifty years ago, and the precise variety of prune that my family ate forty years ago.

Some aspects of work are also continuities. You will be pleased to know, for instance, that I am the proud possessor of a costume for the Prohibition Banquet. I bought reproduction fabric and 2 metres of silk and my mother did the rest. She can sew, thank goodness. When I sew life becomes interesting.

I maybe ought to let you know that I bought a bit of extra fabric and I’ll be making them up into picnic squares. There may be some kind of giveaway on the blog later in the year to celebrate the banquet and my guestliness. That giveaway might include picnic squares and folding instructions and recipes. The only thing that might come between you and possessor of hand-hemmed picnic squares of reproduction fabrics is if all my friends get there first. Maybe I should just squirrel two away and promise them here, now. Watch this space. You, too, could be the proud possessor of a square and recipes to go with it. It won’t happen for a few months, though.

Tomorrow I move away from between and into term time. This term I’m not teaching food history. My subject is Medieval Women and women eat food, so food won’t be entirely absent from my teaching. I have no idea how it will affect my blog. I’m in between-time, though, so I really don’t have much idea about anything.