Just a quick note from the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. As this year’s theme was Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods, I got to try lots of unusual preparations from around the world, the most striking of which was Swedish surströmming. Food science maven Harold McGee spoke about it in his Plenary presentation titled [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Food History’
The Infamous Surströmming of Sweden
Posted in Food History, Food Safety, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, Traditional Foodways, Travel, tagged Fermented Herring, Food History, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, Surströmming, Swedish Food on July 12, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Cured, Fermented, and Smoked
Posted in Food as Anthropology, Food History, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, Traditional Foodways, Travel, tagged Cured Food, Fermented Food, Food History, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, Smoked Food on July 7, 2010 | 3 Comments »
The highlight of my food history year is coming up this weekend. I’ll be attending the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in the UK. This annual gathering of food historians includes both professionals and enthusiastic amateurs and focuses on a specific theme. This year we’ll be exploring cured, fermented, and smoked foods. These are [...]
From the Emergency Baking Department: Pound Cake
Posted in Food History, recipes, Traditional Foodways, tagged cooking with a scale, cooking without a recipe, Food History, pound cake, recipe on June 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Pound cake is the workhorse of the tea cart, able to withstand drowning in fruit syrups and whipped cream, or it can be easily tarted up with a citrus glaze. It’s the perfect thing to toss in the oven when you find out the new vicar is coming to tea in a couple of hours. [...]
Raclette, No Fancy Equipment Needed
Posted in Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, recipes, Traditional Foodways, tagged cheese, Food History, Raclette, Raclette without a machine, Swiss Food on June 23, 2010 | 5 Comments »
In the past, I have expressed my withering disdain for single-use kitchen gadgets like garlic presses, shrimp de-veiners, and pineapple slicers. Today I’m adding another one to the list, the Raclette Machine. I’m bowled over that people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for an appliance that makes a dish created by Swiss livestock [...]
A Mixture of Several Things in No Particular Order: Chimichurri Sauce
Posted in Food History, Ingredients, recipes, Traditional Foodways, tagged argentinean food, Chimichurri sauce, Food History, recipe, using leftover parsley on June 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »
It has happened to all of us. You buy a bunch of parsley so you can chop up about a tablespoon of it to use for garnish, and the rest languishes forgotten in the fridge, where it eventually turns to sludge. Well, dear reader, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. The gauchos of [...]
Baked Cucumbers with Cream
Posted in Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, recipes, tagged Baked Cucumbers with Cream, cooked cucumbers, Food History, Julia Child, Julie Powell, Julie/Julia Project, recipe on June 18, 2010 | 2 Comments »
You know those recipes you hear about and then tuck away in your mental “must try that” file? Today I’m pulling one out from way back in 2003. At that time I was an avid reader of Julie Powell’s groundbreaking blog, the Julie/Julia Project, in which she cooked all 536 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering [...]
The Kind of Pickle You Want To Get Into
Posted in Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, recipes, Traditional Foodways, tagged cucumbers, Food History, homemade pickles, jewish food, kosher dill pickles, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, recipe on June 15, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Next month I’ll be attending the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in the UK. Each year, this conference on food, its culture, and its history focuses on a different theme; this year it’s Cured, Fermented, and Smoked Foods. Living in a New York City apartment, the temperature and humidity of which is difficult to [...]
Fresh (and Fashionable) English Pea Soup
Posted in Cocktails, Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, recipes, tagged English Pea Soup, English peas, Food History, garden peas, green peas, recipe on June 10, 2010 | 1 Comment »
What was the latest fashion at court of Versailles in 1696? Why English peas of course, hadn’t you heard? The ladies of Versailles knew a good thing when they tasted it. In the late 17th Century fresh, green English peas were all the rage. It may seem odd to us, since today peas are seen [...]
Is Slow Food Really Slow?: Granola
Posted in Food History, recipes, tagged Food History, granola, history of granola, recipe on June 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“Is Slow Food Really Slow?” is a series here on Comestibles in which we explore the hypothesis that some of the processes many modern home cooks have declared too time consuming are a lot easier than the admen would have us believe. If your house is anything like ours, you’ve got a pantry full of [...]
It’s a Potluck and a Talent Show: A Brief History of the Picnic
Posted in Food History, recipes, tagged Food History, history of the picnic, James Gillray, London Pic-Nic Society, picnic loaf, recipe on May 27, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Prior to the 1860s a pic-nic (yes, that’s how they spelled it), was not the ant-filled, outdoor revelry many of us will enjoy this coming holiday weekend. The original meaning is closer to what we would call a potluck meal, with each guest expected to bring a dish; and it was held indoors. In 1802 [...]
