Food History

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.

On Saturday I went to see an exhibition of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts at the State Library of Victoria. There were some great books on show, and many I had met already, in other place, at other times. None of them were cookbooks. This reminded me of things I know, but that I don’t articulate nearly often enough.

Just because more of a certain book survives, doesn’t mean that this book is more important in people’s lives. It might have survived because no-one read it. Think of the book that you get given as a present and cant get rid of because it reminds you of someone. As your favourite cookbook gets dog-eared and torn and loses ages and eventually gets replaced, the gift endures, unchanged and in perfect condition.

In the manuscript exhibition, most of the displayed books were religious. Yet there was an example of a cheap medical guide (cheap t produce, relatively speaking) which represented a zillion lost everyday manuscripts.

We don’t have many books of recipes for the Middle Ages. In fact, they are incredibly rare and special. This doesn’t mean that people didn’t cook. It might mean that recipes weren’t written down, or it might mean that what they were written on didn’t survive the ravages of time. Think of the zillions of community cookbooks that exist in there here and now (I have wise friends who have added to their number for my birthday): these cookbooks don’t survive easily. When I was trying to find one last surviving volume of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia Cookbook (the original one, from fifty plus years ago) none of the women who had owned it could find a copy, nor could any library. Yet it had been printed and loved and used and quoted.

I’m trying to say that we can’t judge the importance of a cookbook by how many of them there are. We have to look for more evidence. I’m not saying it very well because my mind is still pondering those amazing Medieval manuscripts.

Sharyn’s children are all christened. I couldn’t be there, because seventh day Passover and christenings really don’t match, but my thoughts were with them all.

She says that she has a couple of posts to take us through the missing food elements and then that’s it: we will have a complete documentation of a rural Australian christening with stories. Although I admit, I wasn’t expecting the Mayan aspect of today’s post.

“Perhaps this one should be called ‘Recipes from before a Country Christening,’ because when you have a wedding, 21st, christening etc in rural Australia, you have people coming from all over the place, and you are never catering for just the one meal. We already have friends here, from both interstate and overseas, more family and friends are expected today, although precise numbers are unclear. So, not being one hundred per cent certain of how many I’ll be feeding, I decided late last night, while roasting the chicken for the ‘Chicken, Leek, and Tarragon Pie’, to make pumpkin soup, and get the makings out for a casserole.

It then made sense, while I had the oven on, to prepare the bread cases for the ‘Smoked Salmon Tartlets’, and one of my houseguests decided to pitch in with her own favourite recipe, what she calls her ‘Sinking Mud Muffins’, so we’ll have something to offer with coffee & tea today. And after all, doesn’t everyone make muffins at midnight?

But she couldn’t have chosen a better comfort food for me. Chocolate has been used as important parts of people’s social and religious lives, since the Mayans grew it in Mesoamerica (250-900 AD). Modern studies have proven what is in it that makes us feel so good, and as a child, my best friend’s mother used to make the darkest, moistest, absolute best chocolate cake. She knew I was somewhat partial to it, so weekends when I stayed over there would always be a big slab of frosted chocolate cake to have with our morning tea mugs of Milo.

As a teenager I moved to Wodonga for work, and my friend moved to Benalla. Whenever she came home, even unexpected visits, she’d ring me, and I’d head straight out to see her. It took me half an hour to get out there and I’d walk in the door, just as her Mum would be removing a freshly baked chocolate cake from the oven. “I knew you were coming”, she’d grin, “so I made you a cake.” It’s not really any wonder I named one of my daughters after this woman.

So today, while I raise a glass in honour of the Anzac’s, make ‘Frangelico Truffles’ as gifts for my boys god-parents, eat chocolate muffins, and my house fills with more of the people I love, I’m sharing my recipe for the truffles. To my mind, nothing else could quite say thank you, to those people for making the commitment they have chosen to make to my children, like handmade chocolate.

Frangelico Chocolate Truffles

Ganache
8 oz (230 g) dark sweet chocolate
2/3 c. heavy cream
2 Tablespoons Frangelico.
Dipping
16 oz. (450 g) dark sweet chocolate
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Garnish
2 cups chocolate shavings.

When chocolate and cream ganache have cooled to room temperature, stir in sherry before refrigerating. Roll dipped truffle in chocolate shavings. “

I’ve been eating birthday cakes. Mine. Plural. My mother made me one for the day nine family members got together for a birthday dinner. She made me another one for today, since it’s my actual birthday. The first was a chocolate sponge made with potato flour (since it’s still Passover) and the second was an orange-hazelnut cake.

Friends and relatives have been drifting in and out for the last few days, too.

No, I’m not having a major birthday, although turning a prime number is a rather cool thing. I’m just lucky enough to have a birthday that coincides with an Australian public holiday and (this year, though not most years) Passover.

It’s family time and a long weekend and everyone is slowing down a bit and my parents’ place is good to visit. This means I’m having a gentle but prolonged happytime.

There is food history involved. Of course there is. How could there not be? Not just Sharyn’s lovely posts (more to come, by the way, but tonight is about birthdays), but friends and family remembering fruit past and recipes present. Sometimes they remembered fruit present and recipes past.

Between us we have eaten amazing amounts of food (I shall roll home quite soon, I think, even though home is hundreds of miles from here) and spun so many stories and made so many jokes that I can’t remember the half of them.

Anywhere, that’s where I’ve been. In a smaller world than usual, celebrating Passover and my forty-seventh birthday and remembering the past. Some of the past hasn’t been happy – ANZAC Day is not really a happy history, after all, but it’s all worth remembering.

The best thing about a birthday? The more of them I have the more I have learned and the better I understand the past.

PS I haven’t forgotten presents. In fact, at least one needs blogging, one day soon.

Culcairn is heating up, as you can see from this post. By Saturday, there will be enough food in that town to feed double the usual number. Enjoy Sharyn’s latest post!

“Recipes from a Country Christening

My childhood memories of food at parties may well be different from people the same age in other areas. With the migrant camp at Bonegilla http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/national/sites/bonegilla.html introducing a wide variety of people to our region, we had an incredible amount of choice.

Pot-luck dinners run by the CWA might have French style ragouts; sweet and sour sausages & rice (the rice was always cold and gluggy); stroganoff; homemade pizzas on scone dough; homemade spring rolls; kransky; tuna mornay; and my favourite, lasagna. Big, solid layers of meat and tomato sauce, nutmeg flavoured cheese sauce and homemade pasta. Sweets could range from platters of fairy bread and honey joys; bread and butter pudding; to fresh apple strudel. I have fond memories of watching the strudel pastry being made.

Making fresh pasta, and tomato sauce, for a lasagna always takes me back to the aromas of my friends mum’s kitchen, when I was a kid. It takes a bit extra time, but the flavor is always well worth the effort.

Home-Made Pasta Dough

INGREDIENTS

400g plain flour (strong/bread flour is best, but you can get passable results with ordinary plain flour)
4 whole eggs, lightly beaten
salt to taste
METHOD

Place flour onto the work surface, and make a well. Add eggs, salt and gradually work into the flour until a soft and pliable dough forms. Knead the dough until smooth and consistent - 5 minutes should do.
Allow dough to rest for an hour, covered in cling wrap, in the refrigerator. Divide dough into 4 balls. Flatten each ball into a disk and pass through the pasta machine on the widest setting, Fold in half lengthways and repeat. Keep rolling twice on each setting until you reach the narrowest setting.
Cut pasta if it gets too long.

* To roll by hand, divide mixture into manageable balls. Roll each portion evenly onto a well-floured board. A marble rolling pin is best for this job.
Dust rolled pasta with extra semolina and allow to rest for 10 minutes before using, or air dry the pasta until required.

Pasta Sauce

INGREDIENTS

10 large tomatoes
1 heaped tablespoon dried basil, or half a bunch of finely chopped fresh basil leaves
1 teaspoon butter
1 onion, finely diced
1 cup stock (chicken or vegetable)
½ cup red wine

METHOD

In a medium sized stockpot (you can use a deep-sided saucepan) melt the butter, and fry onion til soft. Add roughly chopped tomatoes and stir for several minutes. Add stock, basil and wine. Bring to the boil, and stir while tomato flesh breaks down. Season to taste, and simmer for approx half an hour, or until sauce has reduced. For a smooth sauce, blend for a few minutes with a stick blender.”

More from Sharyn Lilley. I’m so going to make that entree when Passover is over!

“For a while in the 50s my father drove trucks for a living. The highway was tarmac, but most other roads weren’t, and air conditioning was of the ‘roll your window down for cool or up for warmth’ variety. This method was also used to control the dust intake.

Drive through service hadn’t been heard of, but there were a few twenty four hour cafes where they offered sit down meals of steak, eggs and onions; pies, chips and peas; fish, chips and salads; hearty soups and thick bakery bread. In Victoria, trucks were not permitted to drive between midnight Saturday night, and midnight Sunday night.

Today’s first recipe gives a nod to the cafes of old, with steak, onions and homemade bread.

Steak and Caramelized Onion Entree

Slice a whole loaf of wholegrain bread, I prefer it to be about as thick as toast loaf and cut each slice into quarters. Line a baking tray with silicone paper, lightly brush both sides of bread with oil, and toast under a grill. (The cheats version is to buy packets of mini toasts)

Heat a non-stick fry pan, add a tablespoon of oil. Add two thick pieces of rump steak, sear each side, and then add ½ cup red wine and mixed herbs to the pan, simmer until steak cooked to your preference. Set steaks aside, cover loosely with foil.

Slice two large red onions thinly. Fry gently in half a tablespoon of butter until soft, then add one tablespoon of brown sugar, and one tablespoon of red wine vinegar. Cook, stirring, until caramelized, remove from heat.

Spread toasts with seeded mustard. Slice steaks thinly, and cut to fit the toasts. Top each toast with half a teaspoon of onion; garnish with chopped fresh parsley leaves.

Makes roughly 40 toasts.

Smoked Salmon Tartlets

400 grams smoked salmon
1 tub cream cheese
Two spring onions thinly sliced
1 loaf white bread
Sprigs of fresh dill

Using a fluted biscuit cutter, cut rounds from the bread. Lightly grease two mini muffin trays. Line trays with the rounds of bread, and lightly toast in the oven. Set aside to cool.

Slice the spring onions finely, mix well into the cream cheese. Fill the bread cases with cream cheese mixture. Top with small amounts of the smoked salmon, and fresh dill.”

More from Sharyn. She’s writing us a series, in fact, so you can get a real sense of what catering and family and family foodways are in her tiny corner of rural Australia. Don’t forget to visit her at Eneit Press and find out what she’s up to when she’s not cooking!

“A christening might not be what most people associate with the Anzac weekend, but it has both sentimental and practical reasons for being chosen. Practical, because a long weekend allows our interstate guests to be able to get here; sentimental, because amongst the letters and keepsakes I inherited from my grandmother, is a post card, with a beautifully hand embroidered flower, and a robin redbreast in flight. The chain-stitched letters spell out To My Dear Father, and a brief message, scrawled on the back was the first indication my great-grandparents had that their eldest son had survived Gallipoli. It seems fitting that his youngest great-grandsons should be christened on that weekend.

My grandparents were married in 1920, Granddad had returned from the war ill, and wounded, and used his Soldiers Allotment to purchase land at Leneva. When they married they ran a poultry farm there. Which leads me to today’s recipe – one of the main meal dishes I’ll be preparing next weekend.

Chicken, Leek, and Tarragon Pie

Filling:
50g butter
2 tbs plain flour
1 leek, ends trimmed, washed and thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups chicken stock (I use Oxo cubes if I don’t have fresh stock – that’s just a personal favourite)
1/2 cup cream
1 tsp dried tarragon.
Pinch of white pepper
1 large ready cooked chicken, (again, just because it’s homemade doesn’t mean cheats aren’t available) skin and bones removed, meat shredded

Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat until foaming. Add leek and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until the leek softens. Add flour and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until mixture bubbles. Remove from heat. Gradually add stock, whisking until smooth.
Whisk the cream, tarragon and pepper into the flour mixture. Season with salt, and stir in the chicken. Set aside to cool completely.

Thaw out three sheets of frozen short crust pastry. Line a 22cm (base measurement) springform pan with silicone baking paper, and then line with two sheets of the pastry, allowing sides to overhang. Spoon the chicken mixture into the pan. Shape the remaining sheet of pastry to fit the top, and then enclose the filling by folding down the overhang of the base. Cut vent holes in the center, brush lightly with either an egg wash, or milk, and bake on lowest shelf of oven for 35 minutes or until crust crisp and golden. Set aside to cool slightly. Can be served cold or warm, but at this time of year, and with this being for an evening meal, mine will be served warm.

Dad tells me Grandma used to make a similar version topped with potatoes; I might have to try that one day. ”

Sharyn Lilley of Eneit Press is also in memory mode because she’s preparing for a big country christening. When she offered to write it up for me I raced in with my ‘yes please’ before she could change her mind.

“In 1941, my Grandmother’s sister married, and celebrated afterwards at Strahan’s Rendezvous with an afternoon tea comprising:
Assorted Sandwiches
Mixed Savories
Cream Cakes
Trifle & Cream
Jellies & Cream
Fruit Salad & Cream
Dried Fruit
Sweets
Nuts
Tea and Coffee and Soft Drinks

Fairly standard fare for a Country Wedding in those days, although I look at the menu keepsake my Grandmother left to me, along with various other papers she’d collected over the years, and can’t help but wonder what sort of sweets you’d need after all those cream cakes, trifles and jellies!

Anzac weekend 2008, my husband and I will be having our three boys christened, I’m doing the catering, and decided to share the menu with Gillian’s readers. Again, it’ll be pretty standard fare … for a party at my place.

Today’s recipe is for the nibblies table, and is a savoury adaption of palmiers. Palmiers are variously known around the world as: palm leaves, elephant ears, pig’s ears, butterfly crisps and even kanapee (Finnish). The food dictionary at Epicurious has a definition of Palmiers here: http://www.epicurious.com/tools/fooddictionary/entry?id=3771

Honey Ham Palmiers
&
Cheese and Mustard Palmiers

1 packet (6 sheets) frozen puff pastry (just because it’s homemade, doesn’t mean you can’t cheat.)
¼ of a kilo of shaved, smoked ham
Pouring honey (make sure it’s clear and running easily, makes the job much easier.)
Seeded Mustard (I’ll be using tarragon mustard from Milawa Mustards, because that’s a favourite of mine)
2 cups grated tasty cheese.

Separate the frozen sheets of pastry, lay flat on a work surface and spread three of them with a thin layer of ham. Spread the remaining three with a thin layer of mustard. Drizzle the honey over the sheets of ham covered pastry, and sprinkle the cheese over the mustard.

By now the pastry will be fully thawed, so roll up each sheet of pastry in two rolls that meet in the middle. Cut into finger-width slices, lightly squash the double rolls together to get the palmier shape (vaguely heart shaped) and lay flat onto a baking tray lined with silicon baking paper. Bake for 10 minutes at 180 Degrees C, or until golden and crisp.

One of the beauties of this particular recipe is it can be prepared ahead, and put into the freezer, layering with baking paper for ease of separation when needed, and just baked on the day.”

A few weeks ago I thought I had suddenly aged ten years. Maybe twenty. I kept dreaming of flavours of Passover past. This is one of the reasons I gave you those posts about my notebook (they will return, when I have time to get back to them). “I’m getting old and grouchy,” I told myself. “Even dried fruit was different forty years ago.” Maybe it was time to buy that walking stick I joke about?

A friend and I did a market visit a week ago and I found some dried plums. These prunes reminded me exactly of the dried fruit of my childhood. “How is this possible?” I thought. I memorized their details and brought some for my mother to try. I wanted to see if it was all in my imagination, or if there was something to be learned about local food history.

They were sun-dried, with no chemicals. They were angelinas. Fresh angelinas are a very dark purple and crisp and sweet and have a very slight tartness to them. The dried fruit came from a local Canberra orchard (using the Australian definition of ‘local – anything up to two hours drive away’).

My mother tried them. She didn’t speak for a minute. She, too, had been transported back to Passovers past.

It appeared she, too, had bought from a local orchard (except local to Melbourne, not to Canberra) when I was exceedingly young. There was only a little imported kosher for Passover food back then, and very few food choices at all. Everything was supplemented by dried fruit. Mum and Dad knew someone and they grew angelinas and made the most wonderful dried fruit.

And so we repeat the past without even knowing it. This means I’m still middle-aged and can’t justify that cane yet. I can still feel grouchy if I want, but right now I don’t want.

You see, the prunes were only available for a few weeks a year then, and they are now. They’re round at the tail end of summer and the beginning of autumn. This means that, around Passover every year, this particular dried fruit has been available in south-eastern Australia since the first Angelina plum tree was planted by Europeans.

Suddenly I miss the grandmother I never knew. She died before I was three. This is a result of family gathering together, I guess. I’ll get back to my culinary collection next week. It will be quite different to the bits you’ve seen already. When I left home, you see, I discovered similar traditions to my own in terms of enjoying home cooked food, but with quite, quite different recipes. Next week, I promise. And I have other things in store of the rest of this week, not least more about Sharyn’s country christening.

Instead of giving you something from my grandmother’s notebook, today I’d like to do something a little different. As part of a paper I did last year, I compared the recipes she cooked against the recipes in key nineteenth century British cookbooks. My grandmother’s cuisine lacked Sephardi elements and lacked some of the continental cooking, but otherwise there was a significant amount of overlap. I’ve been wondering, since then, who remembers my grandmother’s dishes (or their own versions thereof).

The whole list is far too long for here, but I thought maybe you might like to see a section of it (the As to Cs). Please tell me if it looks familiar, and if you have any family recipes for any of them and you’re happy to share, then please email or post them in the comments.

Almond biscuits
Almond Icing
Almond Pudding
American Shortcake
Ammonia biscuits
Anchovy Eggs
Angel’s food
Apple cake
Apple crumble
Apple Salad
Apple Snow
Apples in Syrup
Apples on sticks
Apricot Sauce
Asparagus Sauce
Austrian apple pie
Bachelors bullions
Baked Eggs & Tomatoes
Banana & nut Salad
Banana Cheese Toast
Banana Cream Pie
Banana Savoury Rolls
Banana Souffle
Berry Sponge
Biscuits
Biscuits
Black Top Pudding
Boiled fruit cake
Bombay Toast
Brandy Butter
Butter biscuits
Butter scotch
Butterscotch Sauce
Caramel Custard
Carmal Sauce (Ice Cream)
Carrot cheesecakes
Carrot pudding
Carrot Soup
Casserole Rabbit
Celery & Marmite
Champagne biscuits
Cheese Souffle
Cheese Straws
Cheese Toast
Cherry ice cream
Cherry rocks
Chocolate Bake
Chocolate Crackles
Chocolate Eclairs & Cream Buns
Chocolate Icing
Chocolate Sauce (ice Cream)
Chocolate Souffle
Chocolate Walnut Sandwich
Chocolate-Walnut roll
Christmas Pudding
Cinnamon Sultana Sponge
Cocoa-nut biscuits
Cocoanut ice
Coffee Sponge
Condensed milk tart
Cornflour cake
Cream cakes
Cream Tea Cake
Cream-de-Menthe Sauce
Crispy biscuits
Crusted Apples
Crystallised cherries
Cumquat preserve
Curried Lobster
Curried Veal

Tonight I’m not really here. In fact, I’m probably eating. Even overeating.

It’s first night Passover (if I’ve got my dates right) and – all going well – I’m in the heart of my family, doing all the traditional things an Orthodox Jewish family in Australia does for Passover. We eat meat and matzah and talk muchly and do many other things that begin with ‘m’.

I’m actually at my computer at home right now, trying to work out what on earthy you need to know about food on Saturday. My mind is in turmoil because there’s so much happening around me, including packing presents and finishing enough work to take the key days off and my historical imagination has somehow dried up. I was wondering – do those of you who have big Christmasses get this sort of intellectual drought three days before Christmas?

Let me tell you a bit about what my family eat. I’ve done that before, but that was for another Passover. Maybe this year I’ll tell you about what we don’t eat?

We don’t eat lamb, though sometimes we might have a lamb shank on the seder plate. Some Jewish families do, some don’t. The ones who don’t, mostly do it out of a tradition that keeps (or intends to keep) the memory of the Temple alive. I had an elderly aunt who had giant food restrictions, so Mum cooked lamb for her, but not for the rest of us.

We don’t eat anything with leavening in, because the yeast didn’t have time to rise for the bread before our ancestors had the flee Egypt. This includes both soy sauce and vegemite, and I just finished the last of my ordinary soy sauce, as a token effort towards good behaviour. I’ll buy more after Passover.

We (Ashkenazi Jews, not all Jews) don’t eat several other things, because of cultural tradition. One year I persuaded the family into trying rice, because we don’t actually know that our ancestry is all Ashkenazi, though some certainly is. The things change depending on background. Our list includes rice, obviously, and I think the rest are all legumes.

Then there are the usual forbidden stuffs- mixing meat with milk being the biggest.

I’ll report on how it all went (and how I yearn for soy sauce) when the real date has caught up with my advance posting. Maybe in day or two by your time. And yes, my mind is not where it should be. This is because I just realized I have tops to take with me, but no bottoms, and I doubt I should turn up half naked.

When I moved out of home I did a lot of overseas travel. When you can cook and you travel, everyone wants you to cook dishes associated with your native country. Some of the recipes in this section of my book of secrets (which now ought to be renamed my book of not many secrets) are because I love them (challah), some because I love making them (macaroons) and some because everyone demanded them (pavlovas). For most recipes, the person who gave me their version is written down – I’m going to include the personal name of the recipe-giver, just in case they happen upon these recipes. If you’re one of these people, it means I remember you fondly, even if we’ve lost touch.

Challah (traditional bread, for Friday nights –from Nancy)

Stir 1 sachet yeast in ¼ cup lukewarm water and let sit 5 minutes.

Mix 4 ½ cups flour, 2 tbs oil, 2 tsp salt, 2 eggs and 1 cup water together. Add the yeast mixture and stir well. Knead until smooth. Let rise one hour.

Thump down. Knead briefly. Break into three pieces. Braid.

Let rise one hour. Beat an egg yolk and brush the top of the load with it. Sprinkle with poppy seed. Bake at 350 degrees F for about one hour.

Coconut Macaroons (from my mother)

3 egg whites
1 cup sugar
2 tsp corn flour
2 cups coconut
vanilla essence
glace cherries to decorate

Beat egg whites until stiff. Add sugar in small quantities, beating well after each addition. Add cornflour. Beat over saucepan of fast boiling water until mixture begins to cook on the bottom of the basic. Fold in coconut and essence.

Place in small heaps on greased trays. Decorate with cherry.
Place in the lower half of a moderately slow over (160 degrees C) for c 25 minutes. Cool.

Pavlova (from my mother)

3 egg whites
12 tbs sugar
1 tsp vinegar
2 tsp cornflour
cream
fruit and other toppings

Beat egg whites until stiff and dry. Add sugar in small quantities, beating well after each addition. When sugar completely added and dissolved, add vinegar and cornflour.

Spread or pipe in desired shape on greased and cornfloured tray. Place in slower half of very slow oven (120 degrees C). Leave in oven with door ajar until cold. Fill with cream (whipped with sugar if you prefer it sweet) then top as desired.

It’s about time I opened my book of secrets. Yes, I have a book of secrets. The reason I haven’t mentioned it much is because, like all the best books of secrets, I had temporarily mislaid it. For at least two years I temporarily mislaid it. How this happened in a two bedroom unit is obviously related to it being a book of secrets and not a normal volume at all.

It chronicles some of the major developments in my own personal foodways and was what got me started in thinking that food is part of our history and is not just comprised of nutrition and taste and texture (or poor nutrition, bad taste and odd texture – so much depend son the cook and the culture and the training of the palate). I started it in 1977 and I began adding family recipes and foodways when I left home in 1979. About 50% of my favourite recipes are in it, and another 45% in my brain. I use cookbooks for the other 5%. This means that this old diary is entirely crucial if anyone were to look at my foodways the way I have examined my father’s mother’s family’s.

It’s also important because I didn’t start my scholarly interest with an historical approach. As I keep saying (because I like saying it), I am an historiographer by training, albeit one with some ethnography and archaeology and paleography and codicology. I care as much about how thoughts come together as what they give back to the reader from how they’re formulated as I care for the thoughts themselves. This means it’s important to me to know where a lot of little changes come from and how their expression changes. I always teach the development of how recipes are written to my students, which says something about how important it is to me.

To be consistent, it’s important that I share where I come from so you know my biases and also my favourite recipes (well, the ones I wasn’t sworn to deep secrecy on). I want to share how I read cookbooks and other texts with culinary information in as well as sharing the actual subjects I work with and my thoughts of the day.

If I spent hours writing long blog posts on the theory, it would send you to sleep. This might be good if any of you suffer insomnia, but it’s a tad dull. Instead, for the next few days (excepting Saturday, because I’m playing with time on Saturday) I shall give you a selection of recipes from certain periods of my life, starting from 1978. You can think it through yourself if you want to and discover how things have changed for me since my teens. If you don’t want to do the thinking, then you can just cook some simply wonderful recipes. Does that sound fair?

If you were checking this page at exactly the right second, you would have noticed a timeslip. Saturday’s post appeared three days in advance, and has now gone back to its true home. Sneaky piece of writing.

One of the reasons many people are fond of reconstructions such as the Conflux banquets or those done by those cool people of the Tudor Kitchens project at Hampton Court is because there’s often a feel attached of playing with time.

Instead of stepping into a time machine, we pretend we’re elsewhen. Most of the time it’s not history we’re playing with, but with times that might have been. The history of our perfect dreams. Sometimes those dreams have a certain reality to them and sometimes they’re more like fantasy.

It’s like reading historical fiction and fantasy, except that we walk in the world, nibbling at a meat pie, or snacking on sweets.

For me, this dreaming is something else entirely. Part of me tells stories and part of me analyses them. When I analyse them, it’s to find out about people in the past and to help me to understand people in the present. Understanding is what it’s all about, really. Seeking the patterns of the past and making sense of them for the present. That’s the intellectual side.

Humans, however, are not made of intellect alone. The mouthfeel of a cake that has been five hundred years forgotten – that’s an emotional feel. Harder to analyse, because I’m still developing tools for it. Other people have tools – but I learned the historical styles based on text analysis and sight, not mouthfeel, so I’m working as hard as I can, finding out how I can link my brain with senses of smell and touch and taste.

Human worlds are moderated by our senses. This is why food history is so important. It’s another path to understanding. Added to more traditional approaches to history, it can illuminate and help the heart understand where we come from and maybe, just maybe, where we are going.