Food History

No new drink tests today. I don’t know whether this makes me very happy (return to normal posting!) or terribly sad (after all, watching other people get drunk at my behest isn’t something that will happen often in my life) but I’m resigned. Expect more reports when they appear.

Tonight’s normal posting is a cook book. I wanted it to be a meme; there’s a fun one going round asking everyone to say one word about the person blogging – I thought it would be cool to ask everyone to say amazingly over-the-top wonderful things about my blog, then evilly use them for promotional purposes – but this would be very wrong and so there is no meme tonight.

I have made up for my disappointing virtue by selecting a community cookbook that has a picture of a cannibal boiling a balding man. It suggests novelties that don’t eventuate inside the book, but it satiates the obviously evil inner Gillian that has emerged tonight. (I know where it’s come from, too – today was migraine day.)

This is a celebratory cookbook, despite the cover. It was put out last year to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Gymea North Public School (NSW, Australia, for anyone who needs to know). Initially the school had four teachers and 118 pupils. Right now it has 300 pupils, but it doesn’t say how many teachers. Or if any of the original four are still active.

The book is an important aspect of the social history of the school. All of the recipes are from students (part and present) and teachers. They were selected to show us the family recipes linked to the school and, as such, they show us an important element of the foodways of this particular community. This sort of book is a godsend for helping understand the culture of a particular community group. All primary schools have foodways, and outsiders very seldom get to see what they look like.

What I like particularly about this book is the chapter dedicated to 1967 recipes. I was at primary school in 1967, and some recipes are very familiar (French Onion Soup) and some are very alien (Portmanteau Steak).

My second favourite bit of the book is the advertisement on the back inner flap. It gives a recipe for File Cake (cake specifically created to smuggle a file into prison). I do hope that this doesn’t suggest that the any student of Gymea North Public School might have need of such a thing.

You want a recipe from the book, don’t you? The best one of the lot is one that almost every Aussie primary school child has made at one time or another. Some of us lost teeth over these delicacies. Some saucepans were burdened. Some fingers and hands were burned. It’s good to know that the recipe for toffee hasn’t changed since I was a child.

Old Fashioned Plain Toffee

2 cups sugar
¾ cup cold water
1 tablespoon vinegar

Place all ingredients in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Bring to boil – do not stir. Cook until syrup is golden brown. Remove from heat and let bubbles settle. Pour into small paper patty pans. Sprinkle with 100s and 100s. Refrigerate until set.