Food History

If you want to book for the banquet even before the booking form goes on the web, give me an email address and I’ll send you the form. I’ll post a link to it here soon, too, plus a bit more information about the food.

I ought to be struggling with international finances ($130 worth) and instead I’m writing a blog entry. This means I’m conceding defeat on the international finances issue, I guess. I’ve written an email asking for help at the US end of payments for several encyclopedia articles, since the Australian bank has already said “Of course we can cash a cheque – we’ll take most of it in the process, of course.” My scanner refuses to communicate with my computer, so I can’t scan contracts and send then – the publisher will have to wait for the post, and I will then get another cheque that will fuel my banks prosperity. I’m kinda hoping the publisher will be gentle and nice and decide it’s possible to pay me using paypal, but I bet they don’t have that facility.

Anyhow, all this is why I have no food history to tell you about. Instead (once all the forms get back to the publisher) I will have a lovely and rather controversial big article in a new encyclopedia.

The closest I can come to food history tonight is a stray remark that a stranger made to me when we were queuing for pancakes at the market this morning. She said that the pancakes were for the solstice.

I wanted to ask her what kind of background she had and if it was a regional custom or had to do with New Ages stuff. We got talking and it sounded very much as if she meant it to be one of those ancient customs that were invented in the last twenty years. Except… what if I’m letting my biases get in the way of me learning a new bit of food history? If anyone out there ahs a history of eating pancakes on the morning of the solstice, please tell me! I would especially like to hear if your traditions can be clearly attested back at least a hundred years.

Today is another report on my attempt to turn everyone I know into an alcoholic. In other words, it’s time to update you on the testing of drinks for our Prohibition banquet.

I’m still waiting for the last few drinks testers to report in. There’s one that was on its way but got detoured by illness. That report will be all the champagne-based drinks and the verbal summary was “they’re all good.” I’m now very curious about which drink was what and how they tasted.

Today’s drinks don’t fuel the alcoholic soul. In fact, it’s the second report of the non-alcoholic drinks. I want to sing “Second verse, same as the first,” because the two groups testing these came up with very similar results. I need to introduce them to each other at Conflux, so they can admire each other’s taste. Todays report si from Rachel.

Drink One:
I couldn’t get hold of proper carbonated water, so used soda water instead. This is boring as all get out. Perfectly palatable, but it’s just lemonade. Don’t bother.

Drink Two
I wasn’t sure how much a “bottle” of ginger ale is, so I used a highball glass and that worked well, proportions-wise.

This is my new favourite drink. Yum, yum, yum. And flexible! I can see it served very cold, on ice during summer, or in a tall glass with a straw for winter. Different garnishes would also change its personality - berries to emphasise the sweetness or a twist of lemon for extra “bite”. Can you garnish drinks with ginger? Because that would work too. The ginger ale is warming, but tempered by the sugar and the lemon gives a lovely twist. On pouring it develops a fun foam which quickly disperses - looser bubbles than a beer head, but more dramatic. It must also be medicinal as I am using it as a cold remedy at the moment. At the very least it improves one’s mood. A must have!

Our conception of food and its availability has been shifting for nearly two centuries. Refrigerated carriages in trains so that produce could be carried across the continental United States, canning, bottling plus older preserving methods such as candying, slating, drying and smoking – these have all expanded our ideas of what food can be eaten when. The biggest changes are those from the last two hundred years. And yes, I just repeated myself. It must be swelling on it severely, so say something twice!

This last few years, it has been fresh food that has changed. We have longer seasons for our favourite fruit and vegetable as new varieties have extended seasons and as slow freight is replaced by air travel for chunks of the market.

What I was thinking today, though, was that for some of us, we’re taking careful steps backwards. If we don’t take those steps backwards then we’re in danger of losing favourite apples or bananas with real flavour. This is because the newer varieties have been bred to travel and for size and for ease of handling. A few varieties can dominate the market in a given area. Here, it’s four varieties of oranges: seville (for maybe two weeks every summer), navel, valencia and blood. So our food choice diminishes.

Until recently, too, the land was reshaped (in Australia at least) to fit our new society. Lots of fine quality produce. Not sustainable, but quite amazing. Now we’re beginning to look at sustainability and feeding people in a hundred years time and dealing with the resources we have rather than trying to push the land beyond its limits. I don’t know what the wider effects of that it, but I do know that where I can I’m buying meat that is produced using a form of farming that helps the land rather than killing it slowly.

Where does this leave us?

In food history terms. We’ve reached one of those pivotal moments when things are going to change. I don’t know if the change will be increased problems with food supply, increased or diminishing varieties, or something quite different. Right now, what we’re seeing is lots of approaches. One is new types of farming. Others include genetic engineering.

I don’t know if living during interesting times is good, but these time are most certainly interesting.

I was doing fine tonight until a moment ago. I have a half dozen interesting topics to choose from for posts. And my neck is close to better. And life was looking pretty good. Then the last two days caught up with me and I need medicine and an early night. Which means you need more recipes from 1950s Melbourne. You can tell just how tired I am by the fact that I’m not even tempted to make the chocolate cake, and when have I not been tempted by chocolate?

Strawberry Tea Cake
1 tablespn butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg ¾ cup milk 1 ½ cups flour,2 level teaspoon baking powder, pinch of salt 1 cup strawberries, extra sugar. Cream together butter & sugar when very light add beaten egg & then milk, sift flour & BP & salt. Add & beat well. Crush strawberries which have been washed & dried with flour & fold them into the batter. Sprinkle with sugar & bake in patty pans.

Steamed Fowl
Put foul onto steam add carrot parsnip & onion. When cooked have white sauce & boiled egg (hard) chopped. Place fowl on platter & pour white sauce all over it seeing all is covered, then sprinkle egg over. Cut carrots & parsnip in rounds and arrange on edge of platter.

Ginger Pudding
1 tablespn butter, 2 tablespns each of sugar & treacle or syrup, 1 ½ cup p flour, 1 teaspn soda (small) 1 teaspn each ginger & spice & a small ½ cup milk. Beat butter, sugar & syrup, dissolve soda in milk & then add to butter mixture, add flour which has been sifted with ginger spice. Put in a greased steamer for 2 hrs. Serve with sweet white sauce.

Chocolate Bake
1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 cup of milk, with ½ teaspoon soda 2 teasp cocoa, 2 cups SR flour. Mix sugar & butter add milk & soda then flour & cocoa. Same for ginger omitting cocoa add 1 teaspn ginger & teaspn cinnamon.

A link to BlogCatalog (because I want to know how it works): http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/food_drink

Winter came early this year, but the winter fruits have only just truly arrived. Medlars and persimmons have been decorating my kitchen and lounge for a couple of weeks, taunting me with the cold.

As a child I learned how to be patient with persimmons, how to wait for that precise instant when all the foul astringency has magically transmuted into fragrant patterned jelly. This year I couldn’t wait. We’ve had below zero temperatures for a month and I wanted the fruit to match the weather. The result was a mouth that puckered for a day and a half and a brain that wondered how the transmutation happened.

Medlars don’t go sweet. They go spicy. Date and apples and cinnamon, all together. My first medlars are only a day away and there’s only a small bowl of them. The rest are doing a different kind of transmutation, into liqueur for 2009 and beyond.

I don’t understand why the fruits of the bitter dark are so much more bright and tempting than then ones of summer. I adore stone fruits, and one of the great joys of the hot season are the melons. The persimmons of this world are more evocative, though, and make me feel that winter really is worth it. As long as my toes and fingers and ears are warm and there is a bowl of gold fruit, gently softening and sweetening, I’m happy in this season.

My secret might be the liqueurs I made last year. Or they might be the secret stash of summer-dried plums I have waiting for the bitterest and darkest month of all. Or it might just be that certain foods make me very, very happy.

Today is day #1 of a special two day post. The Food Network kindly sent me a DVD of the first episode of the next season of “The Next Food Network Star.” I have some thoughts on its value for food history, but I’ll get to them tomorrow. Today I have two quite particular things to say.

The first was that the review DVD did not include the final few minutes of the session (for obvious reasons), where I would have found who was thrown out that day. May I put in a plea to at least one of my US readers to let me know what happens? I so want to know who leaves the show and why!!

The second was that food TV is becoming an increasing part of our food history. Sometimes it plays the same part as the 1920s detailed instruction manuals I was reading earlier in the year. Sometime it gives teaching techniques to the novice, and fills part of the role of nineteenth century writers like Francatelli. Sometimes it has that star factor and gives us the temper tantrums and joyous antics of the famous chef or gourmand (I’m hoping that they follow Escoffier in this and not Apcius).

Food TV doesn’t meet just one aspect of our food needs – it covers a whole range of them. So what about the “The Food Network Star”? What roles does it fill?

See you again, same time, same station, where all will be revealed.

PS I’m still open to additions to my list of topics to explore here over the next six months. Speak up, and speak often, which is way more ethical than voting early and often.

Tonight is devoted to the fine art of class preparation. I have 16 hours of teaching in two days, so I have to do every scrap in advance.

What does this mean for food history? First of all, it means that I shall be doing my first review post for a new food program tomorrow night my time, and maybe the second (if there is a second) the night after. This is of special interest to US readers who are interested in Food Network programs, because it’s my thoughts about the forthcoming (incoming? upcoming?) program from them. At this moment the only thing I can tell you is that I wouldn’t make their shortlisting. They assume formal culinary attainments or truly impressive teach-yourself stuff: PhDs in history are not the right qualifications.

I’m going to leave you with a question, in lieu of a proper blog post. You can answer in the comments or send me an email (and Laura, that travel soup recipe is already in the answers). What I want to know is what you want more of over winter/summer. Retro recipes? Ancient recipes? Information about books? Information about ingredients? Bad jokes? Interviews of luminaries? All of the above? Something else entirely? Giveaways? More bad jokes?

The more people who tell me what they want to see, the more likely it is that the blog will be exactly what you want it to be. No answers mean that Laura gets her soup recipe and I talk about what I feel like talking about each and every day. Well, maybe she doesn’t get her soup recipe each and every day. Once will be enough for that, I should think.

I’m taking a break from drinking. I promise to get back to it, though, and write more curiously influenced posts.

Today I have two things to talk about: search terms and one of the community cookbooks. They are in no way linked, nor is the fact that I spent this morning looking at stoves.

Normally search terms for this blog aren’t at all interesting. Everyone who comes is practical and sensible and looks for good stuff. This time, when I checked the stats, things were a bit different. That’s why I’m sharing. Everyone else gets strange terms to chuckle over so it’s about time we had some, too.

Right up the top is ‘brad and butter pudding’. I do wonder what Brad tastes like in a pudding, but I don’t want to kill him to find out. A few entries under Brad is ‘pleasure revenge food’ – if it was the same person who used both search terms and you are that person, please own up. There has to be a story in it.

Just for the record, photography was invented in the nineteenth century. This means that the poor soul who looked for ‘medieval beef photos’ was entirely out of luck. I hope that the person who keyed in ‘middle evil times people how to cook food’ had better success, though I can’t promise anything for ‘names of a Jewish butcher.’ I have met a Jewish butcher and I don’t think I called him names at all.

The rest is pretty sane and sensible. I’d really love to know what the person who googled ‘jewish herb garden’ found out. Why should a Jewish herb garden be any different from a non-Jewish one? Colour me mystified.

The next cookbook on my little pile of must-reads is The Tried-and-True Cookbook. It has a lovely blue cover and was put out by the Wesley Deep Creek Uniting Church in order to help primary school children at risk. It comes from the bottom end of mainland Australia rather than the top end, but it’s still about children and their needs.

Melbourne has a Mediterranean climate, and its food has a Mediterranean influence. Instead of tropical flavours, there is minestrone and Chinese barbecue pork, pilaf and lasagna. There is, however, also macadamia chicken, tomato curry and some truly wonderful-looking desserts that could be from anywhere European. In other words, the cookbook doesn’t reflect Melbourne, it reflects the congregation of that particular branch of the Uniting Church.

To celebrate that congregation and its efforts in helping children, how about a recipe? This one calls itself “Impossible Pie” and, despite the name, it looks delightfully simple.

Impossible pie

4 eggs
½ cup butter
½ cup plain flour
2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1 cup coconut
2 tsp vanilla

Blend all ingredients together and pour into a 25 cm greased pie plate.

Bake at 180 degrees C for about 1 hour or until centre is firm.

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.

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.

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.

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. “