Food History

My parents and I needed time together, so we spent most of today exploring Melbourne’s environs with food history in our minds. We spent the rest of the day watching a 1940’s serial, but that’s not relevant to this blog. Watch this space over the next couple of days, because there’s too much to tell you for just one post. Especially watch out for the post on de Bortoli wines and the cheeses we tasted.

We started our day out with a quick visit to the Convent Bakery shop. Abbotsford Convent (the Sisters of Good Shepherd) is (or was) in a 1902 building and the ovens are woodfired. These days, I suspect it isn’t a convent (the brochure I have is worded rather carefully). The Convent Bakery, howver, bakes bread in an artisanal way that reminds me of regional France.

We bought some “spelt and ancient grains” bread. I asked what the ancient grains were, and they turned out to be an older variety of wheat. The low level of gluten showed in the bread - it was very dense and filling. The flavour was superb, but you need good teeth to get through the thick crust. We ate it with a magnificent goat’s cheese. The cheeses of today will get their own post - we had a very special experience in taht regard.

The Convent Bakery is artisanal and organic and part of the slow food movement. You can buy Fair Trade coffee to go with your hand-shaped breads.

This approach to bread and coffee is part of some very interesting changes in foodways. Many small firms and their customers are seeing food and teh provision of food as relating to lifestyle and ethics as well as to sustaining life. Now, food has never been simply about sustaining life, but it’s fascinating to see just how this awareness of the different roles food can play is spreading and how that awareness changes the food that we can buy or the ingredients we have for our cooking.

This is one of those times in food history when it’s fascinating to live through, not just study from afar.

A special guest post for my holiday period - Felicity Pulman, author of Ghost Boy and the Janna Mysteries has kindly given me something I’ve been curious about for a long, long while. Biltong - with recipe!

“Growing up in the 50s in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) as I did, one of our greatest treats was eating biltong. Our (infrequent) supplies came from a farming friend who would make it after shooting some sort of game buck, usually impala. The meat would be cut into strips, salted and seasoned, and then hung up to dry - not a problem in a country with (usually) low humidity. Our ‘drying rack’ was on the side of the lean-to shed that housed ‘V13′, an ancient black box Ford much beloved by my father and so-christened because of its number plate.

Biltong nearly broke up my relationship with my fiance, a Pom. He came out with his family from England for our wedding and was so disgusted and horrified when he saw the strips of meat drying in the sun and crawling with ants that I wondered if the wedding was off. Although we now live in Australia, I am tormented by the knowledge that my childhood home, once the ‘breadbasket’ of Africa, is on the brink of starvation and ruin because of Robert Mugabe.

It’s possible to buy (beef) biltong in some butchers’ shops here in Sydney, but my kind nephew makes his own and keeps me in supplies - yum yum!”

Biltong recipe: a topside (about 5 kg). Take fat off and separate the muscles. Cut into slices 30cm x 5 cm x 1.5cm approx along grain of muscle. Make spice mixture as follows: 3/4 cup coarse table salt; 1/3 cup brown sugar; 1/2 cup ground coriander; 1/3 cup cracked pepper; 1/4 cup Allspice. Roll meat slices in spice mixture and lay in dish. Sprinkle brown vinegar over each layer. Leave in fridge to marinate for 12 hours then turn; leave another 12 hours. Hang meat strips with fan blowing cool dry air over them for 4-6 days. NB Leave tray underneath to catch the drips. Meat should be firm when squeezed before removing. Store in fridge. Enjoy!

Felicity Pulman.

food history, Felicity Pulman, Janna Mysteries, Ghost Boy, biltong

Today I went wandering down by St Kilda esplanade with friends. One of the friends was Jaime from Write Anyway which meant I chatted about blogging and fiction writing a bit. Mostly though, we chatted about food.

We passed the row of cake shops on Acland Street and I was reminded that some were opened by Holocaust survivors. After World War II Shoah survivors came to Australia, getting just as far away from Europe and its hate as they could. One of the many gifts they brought with them were fine cakes and pastries.

My favourite array of cakes (saved from depredation only by the fact that we had just eaten a substantial lunch) was at Monarch Cakes, which was one such shop. It still has very European delicacies. They’re totally mouthwatering. I’m going back there (though not this trip) and I promise I will report on it to you. I might take my mother with me and find out a bit more about the history of the shops in Acland Street, which is as interesting and delicious as the cakes arrayed in the windows.

My mother surprised us all by using two different honeycake recipes this year - and neither of them are family ones. Five family recipes are languishing, lost and forlorn. Well, four, really, since I gave you my personal favourite the night before last.

If anyone has a honeycake rcipe the world needs to know, I’d be happy to act as a conduit, lest more old recipes get lost. I promise I will put the requisite work in to find the actual written recipes for the forlorn ones - I just won’t have time to do it for a bit.

While you wait, let me introduce you to one of the new ones, which comes from Lox, Stocks & Bagels. Australian Gourmet Kosher Cookbook (Women Caring for Women Australia, 1994)

Special Honey Cake

500 g honey
1 cup oil
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
500 g walnuts
1 packet mixed peel
1/2 cup sultanas
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tbs rum
juice 1 lemon
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 cup boiling water
3 1/2 cups plain flour

Mix the first four ingredients thoroughly. To the mixture add the walnuts, mixed peel, sultanas. mixed spice, rum, lemon juice, bicarbonate of soda dissolved in boiling water. Mix well, Gradually add plain flour. Bake for 1 hour in greased paperlined tin at 350 degrees F.

This is a variant of the same cake that I gave earlier in the week - my mother has gravitated towards a recipe that’s like a family recipe, which is interesting. The other possibility is that the two recipes come from an ur-recipe. They’re both products of the Melbourne Jewish community, after all. If I ever find that ur-recipe, I promise I’ll tell you all about it.

The theory was fine, but I’ve lost my grandmother’s recipe. In fact, I’ve mislaid my whole secret notebook of amazing recipes from all round the globe. IOU another honeycake recipe. And I need to find that notebook when life normalises.

Instead, let me share with you my family’s favourite evil honeycake trick. It works for all varieties. When you do this to small cubes of cake they can last for months… as long as you hide them somewhere cool and dry.

Make square cakes. Cut them into cubes maybe an inch or two inches square. Get the very best dark kosher chocolate and melt it gently in a double boiler. Dip the cubes of cake in the chocolate, turning them over with toothpicks. You want to leave no holes. Leave to dry on greaseproof paper on a tray in the refrigerator.

If you make these, your year will be very good and very sweet indeed!

honey cake, Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, chocolate

At dusk tonight, it’s Jewish New Year. As I type this I feel as if I’ve stepped into a time warp. I know that for the next 2 days I’ll have not a moment to blog. Right now (in reading time, not real time) my mother and I are probably shoping for the vast family, or cooking. One of the things we will be cooking is honey cake.

The family has about half a dozen recipes for honeycake. When I was in my teens my favourite was a rich and sweet Israeli one. Now I like my maternal grandmother’s recipe, which is so very Australian. I add extra chocolate and coffee and put all my favourite dry fruits in until it resembles my other grandmother’s Christmas cake, except it’s seeeter and richer and far more addictive.

I’ll give you my other grandmother’s honey cake tomorrow. If you like the thought of more recipes still, speak up in the comments and you can get a whole series of honey cake recipes from different parts of the Jewish world. Today’s and tomorrow’s, however, are strictly Australian.

May you all have a good and sweet year, with much wondrous food and food history.

New Year Honey Cake

Ingredients:
500 g honey
1 cup sugar
1 ½ cups plain flour
1 ½ cups SR flour
juice and rind of one orange (a nice big one - but you can replace some of the juice with brandy or other alcohol)
two heaped tbs. good, rich cooking chocolate
1 dessertspoon instant coffee
approx. 1 cup salad oil
3-4 extra large eggs
½ tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda
1 cup boiling water
about a cup of your favourite dried fruits and nuts (chopped)
1 tsp. of cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg and a taste of cloves (NOT 1 tsp. of each)

Method:
Beat eggs, sugar, oil and honey. Add orange rind and juice. Add spices. Sift both flours with soda. Add to liquids. Add chocolate, coffee, vanilla, fruit and nuts. Mix well. Add boiling water.
Pre-heat oven to 500°F. When you put the cake in, reduce heat to 350°F. After and hour, reduce heat again, to 300°F until the cake is done (normally another 15-20 minutes).

food history, honey cake, Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah

Les likes browsing reference books. His selection of books makes that immediately obvious. His first book was a herb reference book. His second, is another reference book, except that this one has recipes. It’s Judy Ridgway’s Sprouting beans and seeds (Century Publishing, 1984).

The reference section is very practical, focussing heavily on growing the spouts and over 2/3 of the book is recipes. You can test a recipe for yourself, to find out just how good this book is.

Tomato and yogurt

4 lare tomatoes, sliced
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
50 g sprouted green peas, chopped
25 g sprouted alfalfa, chopped
150 ml yogurt
1/4 tsp thyme
salt and pepper

Arrange the sliced tomatoes on a large serving plate or on four individual plates. Mix the onion with the choped sprouts and sprinkle over the top of the tomatoes. Mix the yogurt with thyme and seasonings and pour over the salad.

Starting today and ending when I run out of books or time (maybe a week?), I’m going to bring you a little corner of an individual’s food history library. This is something I intend to do from time to time - introduce you to the favourite foodie books of interesting people. The books they suggest will tell you something about how they encounter food and how they enjoy its past. (more…)

Today I have lots of memories and recipes and thoughts about people and food to start your week off just perfectly. It is, in fact, a very food history edition of Carnival of the Recipes.

Shawn is the co-ordinator and I want to start with her food memory, since I, too, co-ordinate a carnival and it helps me appreciate the work she puts in. She says ” My mother always made it for us - and now it’s become one of my staples too.” Yum! .

That’s the easy bit of presenting peoples’ memories: start with the ones you know. Don’t you do that? When you’re talking with people about food, start with the friends and family and start with the dishes you share?

What works in a live conversation and sparks more memories and ends up with deep discussion into the wee hours over hot drinks or wine doesn’t work so well in a blog, so I’m going to order this post by the tried-and-true method of creating a menu. (more…)

I meant to report all the spring vegetables at the market last Sunday. I forgot because I was too busy contemplating the glory that is goose eggs.

I finally ate one of the eggs today, hard-boiled. The white is a lovely translucent porcelain to look at, but a bit rubbery to eat. The yolk, on the other hand, is almost perfect. Fluffy and fragrant and a little friable. Worth cooking all by itself. It was also extraordinary filling - one goose egg equals at least three hen’s eggs in meal terms.

Tomorrow I fry my other goose egg. I keep wishing I had more so I could make a cake, blow an egg, turn it into an omelette. I have a sudden great need to cook goose eggs in all the ways they can be cooked, just to find out how they work.

food history, markets, goose eggs

I hear a lot of people talking about how cultures blend and fuse and become all the same with the advent of modern communications. From some people I hear that everything becomes American, from others that everything becomes pre-packaged. The dinner I enjoyed tonight suggests that all is not as it seems.

I was visiting a Spanish friend tonight. She was after a dinner that didn’t cause problems with my allergies. We had Spanish asparagus to start and with it, some salad (witlof, tiny tomatoes, Spanish olives). Main course was spag bol and dessert was fresh strawberries. All very international and all very safe for my allergies.

Had my friend found the perfect international meal? (more…)

I’m contemplating search terms today. Not many readers find this blog through search terms and most of the terms that those few use are fairly obvious.

Three days of searches produced 46 people looking for ‘food history,’ for instance. Lots of people look for ‘food history’ and ‘history of food’ and ‘cooking history’ and ‘food in history’ and even ‘food historian’. All this makes entire sense and I might suspect the world is a rational place. Except I won’t - I refuse to fall for such a silly thought.

Some people hunt the history of scones or biscuits. I’m still working on that – I need a lot more scone and biscuit recipes from different times and places before I can do you the map I promised, showing how the terms and the recipes have changed over time.

Quite a few folks hunt for things Medieval, which also makes sense, since I’m a Medieval historian by training, so this is a place where the Middle Ages is likely to sneak in unexpectedly.

The same thing goes for ‘historical Australian food’ and its ilk. I am an Australian, so this is a blog where Australian food over time will appear.

I admit ‘medieval grog recipes’ and ‘ancient rome medicine’ are more curious. I always thought that grog needed rum, for instance, and there was definitely no rum in the Middle Ages (no rum has been proven, anyhow).

My favourite search terms this month I cannot explain at all. If anyone gives me recipes that explain them to future googlers, I’d be very happy. The strings I need recipes for are ‘caper Turkish,’ ‘cartoon wild herbs,’ ‘chocolate alcohol,’ ‘coffee custard history,’ and ‘coriander root virginia beach.’

This post was brought to you by Gillian in a silly mood.

I’ve been thinking about Japan over the last few days, because several of my friends are there, enjoying the World Fantasy Convention. My Japanese friends and I used to have long conversations about food and one thing I realised, very early on, is that even the foodie Australian or American or Brit has a rather limited diet. In the small universe we live in, a lot of those conversations happened in Yokohama and Tokyo, during one of the best fortnights of my life.

This is perhaps not the best way to remind you that there are other foods in the world than the ones we eat, and that not all foods look delicious to all people. In fact, it’s rather an evil way.

Dr Barbara Santich is one of Australia’s leading culinary historians. She is best known for her book The Original Mediterranean Cuisine, though she writes about Australian food history as well. She is Program Manager of Le Cordon Bleu Graduate Program in Gastronomy at the University of Adelaide.

Question 1: How is food history different from other schools of history?

Not ever (more…)

Today I bought two goose eggs at the Farmers’ Market. I’ve never had the opportunity to cook or eat goose eggs before and I’m looking forward to it.

I realised something very important as I bought them. (more…)