I’m in a medieval mood, mostly because I’m reading a delightful manuscript by Felicity Pulman. Just wait til it gets published, then you, too, can be in medieval mode. Or… maybe you don’t have to wait. Maybe I can introduce you to a couple of the Medieval cooking sites (not the Medieval-diet-that-is-not-Medieval-at-all site) on the internet. Then from you the medievalishness will spiral out and infect the wider world and ten thousand people will find themselves unexpectly making pomesmoille one day.

Got medieval has very little food history on it but lots of marginalia. This means lots of reproductions of interesting pictures from manuscripts, which are, themselves often food history primary sources (plus a great deal of fun). Which means that I was wrong, Got Medieval has heaps of food history. It simply doesn’t often acknowledge it.

The Old Foodie doesn’t have much Medieval either, but it has lots about food over time and is a really handy source of information about recipes and cookbooks. Janet has recently published a book about pies and one about menus will be out soon.

Plants and gardens and related notions (seasonal food!) can be found at The Medieval Garden Enclosed, the blog of The Cloisters. European gardens in a US museum – it’s interesting stuff.

Then there’s Medieval Cookery itself. Despite the title, the food ranges to quite late in time, with a recent post concerning the seventeenth century. Its main concern is the Middle Ages, and it was the owner of this site who did those great links to A Forme of Cury.

And that’s it for my little list. There are other sites, but that’s enough for one day. Enjoy exploring!

I did try to make golden syrup dumplings once. I got as far as buying the jar of golden syrup at the local shop and carrying it home. I dropped the shopping bag at the front door, shattering the jar and spreading golden syrup far and wide across the landing. Never tried again.

My own list of favourites, foods to give you a sense of me, would run more like this: caeser salad, chicken soup, beef, black olive and fetta pie, chicken pie, pad thai, Anzac cake, butter chicken, any kind of tagine but I always leave out the prunes, Greek potatoes and roast chicken, spaghetti alle zucchini and prawn curry. This is my favourite prawn curry, inspired by the local Suva restaurant Singh’s Curry House.

Kaaron’s Singh’s Curry House’s recipe for Prawn Curry

Grind 4 tablespoons coriander seeds and 4 tablespoons cumin seeds.
Mix with 2 tablespoons paprika, 1 teaspoon turmeric and 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper.
Fry that for two minutes, or until fragrant, as they say.
Add 8 finely crushed cloves of garlic, 1 grated onion, some ghee or butter, a piece of grated ginger, a pinch of salt and 4 finely diced tomatoes.
Add a litre of coconut milk. That’s easy here because I make my own coconut milk.
Simmer for ten minutes.
Add a heap of peeled and deveined prawns. How many depends on how many you are and how much you like prawns!
Squeeze some lime juice over.
Sprinkle some freshly chopped coriander over.

After all that cooking, and after a hard day’s writing and book-launching, there’s nothing better than a lovely glass of “Tail of the Monkey”, a drink from Chile.

6 cups milk
1 cup sugar
2 cinnamon sticks plus a pinch of cinnamon
¼ cup instant coffee
2 cups tequila
1 teaspoon vanilla essence plus a bean if you have it.

Boil milk, sugar and cinnamon. Dissolve coffee in the milk. Add vanilla. Cool for an hour or two, then add tequila.

I think it’s important to separate yourself from your character in many ways to ensure you aren’t writing yourself, unless you are, then go for it.

My character Steve has an almost adversarial disinterest in food, which is very, very, very different from me. It’s part of her character. I do tend to judge people in part on the way they deal with food. I don’t think this is shallow. I remember winding a friendship down when a woman refused to eat nuts because they were fattening. She wouldn’t even eat one nut and she loved them, because she wanted to stay a size 10 for her husband. All this was stated clearly. We had nothing in common beyond our sons, so it wasn’t a friendship lost with sadness, but it was certainly one I never bothered building on. By contrast, my husband and I spent our first year or so eating out, and those many hours of food and conversation built a deep and abiding friendship.

Later today (or early tomorrow, if you’re somewhere otherwhere) Kaaron will tell you more about her writing and her food. Don’t miss the cocktail recipe!

My first guest writer is Kaaron Warren. I’ll let her introduce herself.

I’m an Australian writer living in Fiji. We’re nearly finished our three-year stint here and it’s been very inspirational for my writing. I have two children and a husband and at the moment we have five cats, but at three grand each to take them home, I believe we’ll be going home without any. I’m talking about the cats, of course.

“Slights” is my first published novel. It’s the story of Stevie, who accidentally kills her mother in a car accident and almost dies herself. Her vision of the afterlife is terrifying; she doesn’t see a golden path, her mother and father waiting for her with welcoming arms. She sees everyone she’s every slighted, waiting to slice her, flay her, destroy her. The thing is, she is so lonely in her real life, so out of place, she goes back to this place because at least there she is centre of attention.

She’s strong, though. She believes in herself and the decisions she makes. She is confident to the last that she is right. She’s funny; some of the things she says and does still make me laugh.

My publisher is Angry Robot Books, a new imprint from Harper Collins. Their website is here.

You can download a sample of the first chapter there. I blog my Fijian adventures and some writing stuff at my livejournal and I blog mostly writing stuff, including interviews, reviews etc over at wordpress

I’ve made a list of all the food I mention in my novel “Slights”. It’s a long list, and includes: chicken breast with camembert, salad with blue cheese dressing, golden syrup dumplings, fried sandwiches, scones, lemon biscuits, chicken drumsticks, chocolate slice, baby quiches, prawn cocktails, Beef Wellington and fried rice. I’m fascinated by the fact that cold rice can harbour as much bacteria as raw chicken. Food poisoning is a bit of a thing with me, and once Gillian posts her research on ergot, the hallucinogenic mould on bread, I may well write a story about it.

Does that list make you hungry? It doesn’t me, because I deliberately avoided choosing my very favourite foods, in order to separate myself from the character. Mind you, I’d happily eat all those things, but they are not my cravings. Mind you, chocolate slice is a something we eat a fair bit of in this house. My friend calls it “cupboard slice”, because you sneak bits of it in the cupboard when the kids aren’t looking. I call it Three Piece Slice, because you can’t possibly eat only two. I love this recipe because it has melted butter. I hate that whole ‘cream the butter and sugar’ part of cooking.

Three Piece Slice

½ cup plain flour
½ cup self-raising flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2/3 cup caster sugar
¾ cup desiccated coconut
125g butter, melted
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg, lightly beaten.

Get your oven light to turn off at 180 degrees. Prepare a slice tin of some kind with melted butter and line the base with baking paper.
Sift flours and cocoa, then stir in sugar and coconut. Make a well, then add cooled melted butter, vanilla essence and the egg.
Press the yummy mixture into the tin. Don’t eat any off the spoon until the slice is in the oven. Smooth the top a bit unless you like it bumpy, which I kinda do. Cook for about 15 mins for a nice chewy slice, 25 for a crunchy one.

Top with chocolate icing and sprinkle with coconut, if you like. You’re supposed to toast the coconut, but I burn it every time so I gave up.

The Receipt of him who wrote at Marchena, is this: Of Cacaos, 700; of white Sugar, one pound and a halfe; Cinnamon, 2. ounces; of long red pepper, 14. of Cloves, halfe an ounce: Three Cods of the Logwood or Campeche tree; or in steade of that, the weight of 2. Reals, or a shilling of Anniseeds; as much of Agiote, as will give the colour, which is about the quantity of a Hasell-nut. Some put in Almons, kernells of Nuts, and Orenge-flower-water. Concerning this Receipt I shall first say, This shooe will not fit every foote; but for those, who have diseases, or are inclining to be infirme, you may either adde, or take away, according to the necessity, and temperature of every one: and I hold it not amisse, that Sugar be put into it, when it is drunke, so that it be according to the quantity I shall hereafter set downe. And sometimes they make Tablets of the Sugar, and the Chocolate together: which they doe onely to please the Pallats, as the Dames of Mexico doe use it; and they are there sold in shops, and are confected and eaten like other sweet-meats. For the Cloves, which are put into this drinke, by the Author aforesaid, the best Writers of this Composition use them not; peradventure upon this reason: that although they take away the ill savour of the mouth, they binde; as a learned Writer hath exprest in these verses:

Foetorem emendat oris Cariophilia foedum; Constringunt ventrem, primaque membra juvant.

Cloves doe perfume a stincking Breath, and Bind The Belly; Hence the prime members comfort find.

And because they are binding (and hot and dry in the third degree) they must not be used, though they help the chiefe parts of Concoction, which are the Stomacke and the Liver, as appeares by the Verses before recited. The Huskes or Cods of Logwood, or Campeche, are very good, and smell like Fennell; and every one puts in of these, because they are not very hot; though it excuse not the putting in of Annis-seed, as sayes the Author of this Receipt; for there is no Chocolate without it, because it is good for many cold diseases, being hot in the third degree; and to temper the coldnesse of the Cacao; and that it may appeare, it helpes the indisposition of Cold parts, I will cite the Verses of one curious in this Art:

Morbosus renes, vesicam, guttura, vulnam, Intestina, jecur, cumque lyene caput Confortat, variisque Anisum subdita morbis Membra: istud tantum vim leve semen habet.

The Reyns, the Bladder, throat, & thing between– Enatrailes and Liver, with the Head, and spleen And otherParts, by [C] it are comforted: So great a vertue’s in that little seed.

Today, however, you get two posts. First, the translator’s introduction, then a random but interesting excerpt from the pamphlet itself.

THE TRANSLATOR, To every Individuall Man, and Woman, Learn’d, or unlearn’d, Honest, or Dishonest: In the due Praise of Divine CHOCOLATE.

Doctors lay by your Irksome Books And all ye Petty-Fogging Rookes Leave Quacking; and Enucleate The vertues of our Chocolate.

Let th’ Universall Medicine (Made up of Dead-mens Bones and Skin,) Be henceforth Illegitimate, And yeild to Soveraigne-Chocolate.

Let Bawdy-Baths be us’d no more; Nor Smoaky-Stoves but by the whore Of Babilon: since Happy-Fate Hath Blessed us with Chocolate.

Let old Punctaeus Greaze his shooes With his Mock-Balsome: and Abuse No more the World: But Meditate The Excellence of Chocolate.

Let Doctor Trigg (who so Excells) No longer Trudge to Westwood-Wells: For though that water Expurgate, ‘Tis but the Dreggs of Chocolate.

Let all the Paracelsian Crew Who can Extract Christian from Jew; Or out of Monarchy, A State, Breake `all their Stills for Chocolate.

Tell us no more of Weapon-Salve, But rather Doome us to a Grave: For sure our wounds will Ulcerate, Unlesse they’re wash’d with Chocolate.

The Thriving Saint, who will not come Within a Sack-Shop’s Bowzing-Roome (His Spirit to Exhilerate) Drinkes Bowles (at home) of Chocolate.

His Spouse when she (Brimfull of Sense) Doth want her due Benevolence, And Babes of Grace would Propagate, Is alwayes Sipping Chocolate.

The Roaring-Crew of Gallant-Ones Whose Marrow Rotts within their Bones: Their Bodyes quickly Regulate, If once but Sous’d in Chocolate.

Young Heires that have more Land then Wit, When once they doe but Tast of it, Will rather spend their whole Estate, Then weaned be from Chocolate.
The Nut-Browne-Lasses of the Land Whom Nature vayl’d in Face and Hand, Are quickly Beauties of High-Rate, By one small Draught of Chocolate.

Besides, it saves the Moneys lost Each day in Patches, which did cost Them deare, untill of Late They found this Heavenly Chocolate.

Nor need the Women longer grieve Who spend their Oyle, yet not conceive, For ’tis a Helpe-Immediate, If such but Lick of Chocolate.

Consumptions too (be well assur’d) Are no lesse soone then soundly cur’d: (Excepting such as doe Relate Unto the Purse) by Chocolate.

Nay more: It’s vertue is so much, That if a Lady get a Touch, Her griefe it will Extenuate, If she but smell of Chocolate.

The Feeble-Man, whom Nature Tyes To doe his Mistresse’s Drudgeries; O how it will his minde Elate, If shee allow him Chocolate!

‘Twill make Old women Young and Fresh; Create New-Motions of the Flesh, And cause them long for you know what, If they but Tast of Chocolate.

There’s ne’re a Common Counsell-Man, Whose Life would Reach unto a Span, Should he not Well-Affect the State, And First and Last Drinke Chocolate.

Nor e’re a Citizen’s Chast wife, That ever shall prolong her Life, (Whilst open stands Her Posterne-Gate) Unlesse she drinke of Chocolate.

Nor dost the Levite any Harme, It keepeth his Devotion warme, And eke the Hayre upon his Pate, So long as he drinkes Chocolate.

Both High and Low, both Rich and Poore My Lord, my Lady, and his — With all the Folkes at Billingsgate, Bow, Bow your Hamms to Chocolate.

Don Diego de Vadesforte.

Happy thousandth posting!

Rather than give you a recipe (which is what I intended to do) I want to chat a bit. I guess I’m in a chatty mood.

I blame Jenny Blackford (who will be one of my writer guests, soon – the first writer guest post is on July 1, and you’ve met her before, too – the amazing Kaaron Warren. Right now there are twenty guest fiction writers whose posts will appear over the next year, and I rather suspect the number might grow). I was tossing up between Apicius, showing how the Five Books of Moses contain a bunch of viable recipes (my mother and I discussed the socio-economics behind that one earlier today) and seeing just what the very oldest recipe I possess is (and how reliable it is ie whether the history behind it is good or not) when she told me about a blogpost of her where she talked about chickpeas.

What it got me thinking about was how the basic taste of a cuisine starts with the ready-to-hand ingredients. Think local. Not local now, but local at different times. Tomato is local in Canberra now and is essential to Canberra cooking. It was not around 300 years ago.

Food styles change with agriculture, but the basic taste of a cuisine tends not to depend on imports. Except…

The obvious exception is seasoning. Peppers and salt and soy sauce all travel far distances. Seasoning travelled in the Roman Empire and pepper voyaged further than most people knew exited in the Middle Ages.

The trick is, with every single cuisine, in every single place and time you examine, to find out exactly what people ate, and how they ate it and where they sourced their food. Most of it was local. I think of core flavours as being local plus. The plus helps us see how those basics, that mouthfeel, fit into the different elements of society.

It’s complex. I can’t explain it simply. It’s important, however. Desperately important. You can’t understand food history without understanding that ingredients are not automatically stable across space and time. Just because it’s possible to eat something, doesn’t mean that foodstuff was eaten. Just because we make a recipe using ingredients that were available in southern England in the Middle Ages, or in Ancient Sumer, doesn’t mean that people in England in the Middle Ages or in Ancient Sumer ate that same recipe.

Continuity is not a given, especially with food. Just because the ingredients have the same botanical name doesn’t give them the same taste or feel. We change our food and change our palate with the food. Modern Lebanese cucumbers re crunchier and sweeter and less garlicky than their older counterparts. Iceberg lettuce has lost all the bitterness of some of the older lettuce variety.

I’m using my thousandth post to remind myself that I should not make assumptions. The healthiest diet for an historian is one full of questions.

I’m going to have to check the numbers, but this is either post 998 or post 999. That means you get something ancient either tomorrow or Monday. In the interim , please get something to me so I can give away cheese. I don’t go giveaways with charm or style, but I want two addresses to be able to forward to the Perfect Italiano people and I want more recipes to share with all of you.

On matters more substantial, today I’m introducing you to a book. I took it from the precise centre of my never-decreasing stack of books that you really need to meet.

It’s much-loved. Someone has used masking tape to bind the spine together and very insecure binding it is. It’s from Melbourne. It has a fading reddish cover and is so soft and flexible and crowded that my first reaction to it was “I bet this was published during World War II.” There were paper shortages in Australia in World War II, you see. Publication continued, but lots of book appeared on cheaper paper and with every page chockers with joy. Less luxury. Fewer blank pages.

I was right. 1943. By someone called “Miranda”. In fact it’s titled ‘”Miranda’s” Cook Book.” Inside we find out that it’s compiled by her and she is of the “Weekly Times.” Also that the recipes are all signed. “Western District Lover.” “Hard Up Mother of Two (N.S.W.).” “Scotty Bob.” “Dollar Bird.” “Mimosa.” “Mother of Seven.” “A Mere Aussie.” “Cooee Lover.” Miranda’s correspondents give just as much information about Australia of the time as the recipes.

There’s infinite joy in this book and I do want to share a recipe. Which one? There are over a thousand and they are all loved by the original donor, and compiled by Miranda and used for sixty years by previous owners of the book. “Broken Gum Nut” has a recipe for coffee essence (p. 210) that looks interesting, so I’ll give you that and one other, sort of related, from “Dinah” who I rather suspect lacks taste buds.

Coffee essence

Put ½ lb. good ground coffee into a saucepan with 3 pints of water, and boil it until there is only 1 pint of liquid left; cool, and put into another saucepan and boil again; as it boils, add enough sugar (white) to make a thin syrup. Strain through muslin before boiling second time. Bottle when cold, and seal the bottles with sealing wax.

Coffee, Wheat (Delicious)

Wash 3 cups wheat and dry in oven; then mix in 3 large tablespoons black treacle, and bake slowly until what absorbs treacle; then stand in tins. It looks all burnt and lumpy like toffee. Take a piece as big as 2 walnuts and cover with boiling water, and boil half an hour. Strain this into as much boiling milk as you like. Result, a beautiful beverage, far better for you than coffee, although it tastes the same.

PS In case you were wondering, Miranda lives. I neeed to blog her story, some day.

A bit of an announcement right now, and I’ll do you a proper post later in the day.

The banquet is all ready for booking. I have forms. Just send me an email address (use the comments or the contact me button if you don’t know my email address) and I’ll send you one right away. It will be held on the first Saturday in October. Fancy dress is optional and there will be vegetarian choices (yummy ones, too).

You DON’T have to attend the Convention to come to the Banquet.

“Secrets of the Bayou”

“Dr Gillian Polack is planning a fascinating banquet experience this year! As always, the recipes and menu are authentic to the time periods. Pre-dinner drinks will be set in 1945 – the first Mardi Gras after the war. Cocktails set the scene! Then for the dinner we move back in time to the culinary delights of the 1880s.

You have been invited to this Mardi Gras celebration by the great hostess Severine Sallier. Miss Sallier is upholding the old ways - she knows they’re going to fade. The railway has come to Lake Charles, it could soon be just another town on the line from New Orleans to Houston. Contraband Bayou’s pirate past and its pre-war elegance will be forgotten. This last dinner is her fight against mediocrity.

The Bayou is full of mystery and secrets – perfect for our Convention theme. There are many excellent horror and mystery novels in this exotic setting. Creatures from the Black Lagoons, Vampires, dark family secrets, and pirates’ hidden treasure all have resonance on Contraband Bayou in 1883.

The Banquet will be held on Saturday evening at the Marque Hotel Canberra, commencing 7pm with pre-dinner drinks. Tickets are $52 per person (drinks extra).”

I promised that tonight I would give you something a little more interesting than stray announcements. What I did with the time I should have spent writing you a scintillating post, was explore the new online offerings from the John Rylands University Library.

Why was this so distracting? Well, it’s a low resolution facsimile (complete, including end-papers, which are distractingly blank) of a Forme of Cury, one of my favourite cookbooks. It’s been up for a little while, but I was totally defeated by the interface, mainly because my browser blocks up pop-ups and I couldn’t disable that for long enough to access the right pages. Then someone incredibly nice created a page with direct links to each and every part of the manuscript.

My evening has been spent looking at exactly how the manuscript appears.

The thing is – the very important thing is – that manuscripts are way more individual than modern books. Good editions are wonderful to work from, but until you see what the words are on the page – how they’re formatted – what abbreviations are used – what emphasis is given to which elements – you don’t really know how to interpret them fully. I don’t, anyhow.

Three things really struck me. First, that there was a table of contents. Second, that some of the instructions were for things that I consider fairly basic. Third, that there are abbreviations.

OK, so lots of manuscripts have abbreviations. Even the most elegant literary hands are likely to erupt in occasional flourishes, which are just shrinkages according to form. I just wasn’t expecting it here. As far as I know, there was no tradition of cookbooks in the Middle Ages, and so there were (at least in theory) no special set of culinary abbreviations the way we have today, or the way twelfth century legal texts had.

In fact, they’re stock abbreviations. Nothing hard to read. Nothing specific to a text. This says a bunch about the scribe and it suggests that I’m right – that there was no specialist trade in cookbooks. Only suggests, though. I need to look at more actual manuscripts and do some thinking and cross-comparisons and make lists of abbreviations and check the patterns they make.

That’s in an ideal world. In the real world, I have no time. All I can do is note here, that the cookbook abbreviations really need exploring.