Oatmeal is not very photogenic!

It wasn’t until I started taking pictures of food, just for fun and long before this blog ever came into being, that I really began paying attention to the minutiae of the visual appeal of food. I always new that food could be beautiful, that the colors and shapes that you can create with food are amazing and that it is in part so fantastic because these artistic creations are fleeting, generally being consumed within only a few minutes or hours of their being finished. I mention this hear because I wanted to write a post about a new breakfast I’ve been eating over the last couple of weeks, well not really new because I’ve eaten it before, but just breaking out of the routine of the same peanut butter and banana sandwich that I have been absolutely wedded to for probably two years now. That’s not to say that I don’t still eat that sandwich, just that I have incorporated a new option into the breakfast repertoire and it seems to be working out well. So the dish in question is called “Apple Oatmeal Pudding” and it is definitely warm and satisfying. But, as with many of the dishes I realize that I make at home, it is not very photogenic. Obviously the restaurant industry can expend a lot more time, energy, and even money into the presentation of the food they put on their plates. They are, after all, trying to tantalize their customers. This is not to say that we should not attempt to do this at home, but more to comment that it is the first thing to go when we’re time crunched and have other priorities, but still want to make time to cook for ourselves. As long as the food is tasty, healthy, and filling, then that’s all I really care about at this juncture. I’d say I rely more on the plate or bowl that the food is served in to amplify its appearance, than any sort of garnish or architectural construction made of food. Again, these are accoutrements I’d definitely consider if there were other people involved in the bargain, but since it’s just me, why take the extra effort? (I can, by the way, think of many and justifiable reasons to take the extra effort, but the pressure of productivity on my dissertation wins out.) I wonder also if I am detecting a trend in my food preferences that is at the opposite end of photo-worthy, meaning mushy, soupy, casserole-like foods that must be the stuff of nightmares for food stylists. Perhaps I will question a food stylist the next time I meet one (or I should more accurately say the first time I meet one), about the creative ways in which they work around this general genre of food. What they do to enhance its appeal. In the meantime I will try to keep a better eye out in magazines and such…

So that whole long intro was really a plug for you to give the Apple Oatmeal Pudding recipe a try. If you like oatmeal in the mornings, this is a nice way to bake yourself enough for four days in advance, then all you have to do is microwave it for a few minutes and add some milk to get it to the desired consistency and you’re golden. It’s actually a bit thicker of a consistency because the baking allows the oatmeal to set, but not in that gross “it’s now a huge brick” sort of way, more like a casserole that’s held together with the oatmeal. I love the recipe, which is a hand-me-down from someone in my mom’s office about ten years ago, because it really gives you a warm feeling inside. Let me know what you think! Just don’t be deterred by the photo which, as I hinted above, is not entirely inspiring. We can and do feast with multiple senses, but it doesn’t always have to be with the eyes first.

Vegan adventures

So anyone who has perused this blog at any juncture is well aware of the fact that I am clearly not a vegetarian or vegan or any facsimile thereof, I mean have you seen the pictures of the deer heads and suckling pig? But even though I work with animal bones on a daily basis and am not at all afraid of meat on any level, I also am not on the carnivorous end of the omnivore spectrum. I do not eat a great deal of meat, but I don’t make an extra effort to cut it out of my diet either. I am equally happy to have chicken or tofu for dinner. For me, at least at this stage of the game, it is more about the experience of different flavors, textures, and cultural traditions, than it is about other aspects of food choices. (And believe me I am also well aware of the arguments for vegetarian and vegan dietary choices and I definitely support those people who decide that these lifestyles suit their personal goals and moral and political stances.) I, personally, am trying to move as far away from any sorts of restrictions or defined boundaries when it comes to foods as I can and so I choose to eat whatever might appear on my plate and to be more intrigued by the story behind the food.

With that information as a backdrop, I will admit that I definitely have an interest in vegetarian and vegan cuisine as such. I am very interested to experiment and experience the kinds of flavors and textures created with non-meat products. Following along this path, I and a few of my friends went to Horizons for dinner this evening. It was a special prix fixe menu that was a terrific deal and a wonderful opportunity to taste a few of the foods coming out of this well-known and well-loved Philly vegan hot-spot. Our menu included:

Jamaican bbq seitan with green jerk cabbage and scotch bonnet crema

Pan roasted tofu with exotic mushroom paella, english pea sauce, and tomato salad

Bittersweet chocolate cheesecake with balsamic strawberries
(ummm, yeah, so as is my wont, I got too excited when dessert came and I’d eaten the whole slice before I remembered that I was supposed to have taken a picture of it, but you know what cheesecake looks like, so just imagine it) ☺

The seitan appetizer, and this was the first time I’d ever had seitan, was a very unique texture. I described it as almost like a very fatty pork belly or some similar cut, but without the distinctly stringy texture of the meat and the overly disgusting feel of a big wad of fat in your mouth (I abhor chewing on large chunks of fat). The seitan was chewy in the way that pork belly is, but without all the associated guilt. The bbq sauce had a great punch, which was well balanced with the crispness of the cabbage and the crema sauce. The hot seitan also contrasted well with the cool cabbage and sauce.

Though the pan roasted tofu was a simple dish in and of itself, just add some seasoning on top and you’ve got your dish, the accoutrements were wonderful. The mushroom paella was more like a smooth creamy risotto and the pea sauce was fantastic! It added both a bright green color and an extremely fresh and bright flavor.

The chocolate cheesecake was also quite good, very light and fluffy. Not much to say there since I obviously liked it so much I forgot to take a photo. Chocolate in a dessert and I’m one happy woman.

Like so many others before me, I was quite impressed with the food at Horizons. The presentation was really nice, the colors were vibrant, and the flavors and textures were really well-balanced. The ambiance of the restaurant is also very pleasant and the staff were extremely congenial. At the very least I will have to make a return visit to try their mango crème brulée because it’s on the list of the top 5 crème brulées in the city (according to Citypaper), which I’m trying to, but doing a very poor job of, working my way through. But I’d want to go back anyway, this is a place you can take your vegetarian and vegan friends for sure, but also people who just like to eat these sorts of foods, to see, taste, and experience what is out there in all the various arenas of the culinary world.

Baking in the middle of the night

In delving more into historic recipes over the last couple of months, and by delving, I mean actually making, I have been struck by the fact that many of the older recipes require a lot more time in the kitchen, or at least are not nearly as instantaneously ready as most of those that we are used to today. This is in part because of the central focus of food in the lives of people in times when it was not readily available in restaurants, take-out joints, all-nite mini marts, and basically around every corner. When you have to plan ahead, and sometimes months ahead for your meals, then the fact that preparation of a particular dish might take you several hours or days, seems like small beans, as long as you have food on the table at the end of the day.

The first time this fact became obvious to me was when I recently made a plum pudding using a recipe from Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747). The recipe had been translated by a group of culinary historians (the Past Masters) into modern-day measurements and directions, though still meant to be prepared in a pot of boiling water that was placed over the fire in a large fireplace. The batter is placed in a “pudding cloth” (a piece of linen, which I didn’t have, so used a cloth napkin that I didn’t feel much attachment to) and is simmered in the boiling water for 5 hours.

Being someone who doesn’t spend a great deal of time in my apartment, what with school and extra curriculars and spending time with friends, etc., I don’t often have 5+ hours in which I’m home at a stretch, except, of course, when I’m sleeping. Thus began a growing trend where I start multiple-step or time-consuming recipes that require getting up in the middle of the night to do the next step or monitor the progress in one way or another. I can’t say that this is the best way to get a good night’s sleep, obviously, but it can be fairly entertaining to wake up at 2:30 in the morning and pull a cake out of your oven.

My latest adventure in this vein was the making of a baba au rhum or rum cake. For whatever reason, in this day and age where you can so easily be overwhelmed by the sheer number of recipes that fit your criteria once you decide what you plan to make, I find myself making decisions about which recipe I’m going to use without even having read through the entire set of directions. That’s how I ended up setting my alarm multiple times last night to get up and do various different steps in this cake recipe. I made the mistake of trusting that it would take roughly the amount of time that the recipe claimed it would, which we all know is total bollocks, I usually multiply it by 1.5 to get actual estimates. But the recipe promised a finished product in 2 hours and I started at 10pm, so I figured I’d be done a little after midnight at the worst. HA! That’s where I got the 2:30am cake comment earlier in this post, cause that’s when I pulled the baby out of the oven, and it wasn’t even done then, ‘cause you have to wait for it to cool and then pour rum syrup into it, which takes another 20 minutes. So you can see how accurate of an estimate that turned out to be. I suppose I should have been suspicious from the get go because of the fact that there was yeast in the recipe, hence rising time (this being one of the main reasons that I hardly ever make recipes which involve yeast), but, like I said, I made a snap decision on the recipe because it was recommended and I had the ingredients and it sounded good.

So at the time I wrote the above I couldn’t actually comment on how said rum cake turned out since I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to taste the fruits of my night of interrupted sleep’s labor, but I will do so now… There are definitely no complaints on the eating end about the amount of rum in this cake! It is soaked to the brim and then some, leaving excess pooling on the plate at the bottom. This recipe is definitely different than what you might think of for your typical rum cake because of the yeast bread, which I actually really liked. I have to say that the top part was a little bit more cooked than I would have liked ideally, but I was asleep and I’d set the timer for 10 minutes shy of what the recipe said, because I was using a different pan (a loaf pan), but next time I’ll know it needs even a little less time. I am a big sucker for anything gooey or mushy and this recipe absolutely has some of those qualities because of the added liquor in the bread. Above all it’s just a fun / funny experience to be baking and sleeping simultaneously. Not that I’m suggesting this as another area of our lives where we should start to multitask, well maybe every once in a while.

Choosing your dinner guests wisely…

In this day and age we, as people who like to entertain and serve good food to our friends, may feel that it is a daunting task to cater to all of the varying dietary requirements and preferences of our dinner guests. It can be difficult to ensure that everyone is satisfied by the end of the meal, but also that you do not feel stifled as the cook. I don’t entertain nearly as much as I would like to, but this is a conundrum that I know plagues a lot of families and dinner parties (particularly when there’s a mix of vegetarians and omnivores). Vegetarianism is certainly a lifestyle that we think of as relatively modern, but you might be surprised to learn that it has been around for a very long time indeed, that even Benjamin Franklin himself took a stab at going meat free for several years of his life. So you can see that these sorts of personal preferences likely have always played an important role at the dining table, whether it boils down to meat or no meat or other issues like a preference for the taste of garlic or not.

To illustrate this, I wanted to share a passage from a book I’m reading published in 1867 by Thomas De Voe, a butcher by trade in New York City, called The Market Assistant. He clearly shows that these considerations have been frustrating hosts and guests alike for years!

“An amusing article on diet, written above one hundred years ago, is found in a London paper called St. James’ Chronicle, dated November 6, 1762, and thus reads: - ‘There is no affectation more ridiculous than the antipathies which many whimsical people entertain with respect to diet. One will swoon at a Breast of Veal; another can’t bear the sight of a Suckling-pig; and another owes as great a grudge to a Shoulder of Mutton as Petruchio, in the farce. How often does it happen in company that we are debarred of a necessary ingredient in a salad because somebody, forsooth, cannot touch oil! And what a rout is made, whisking away the cheese off the table, without our being suffered to have a morsel of this grand digester, if any one should happen to declare his dislike of it! There are others of an equally fantastic disposition, who, as we may say, choose to quarrel with their bread and butter. These are eternally suspicious that their food is not sweet. They bring their plates up to their noses, or their noses down to their plates, at every thing that is put upon them. Their stomachs are so delicately nice that they descry a fault in all they eat. The fish is stale, the mutton is rank, or the suet in the pudding is musty.’”

America Eats! - Part I

This is going to be a two-part post because I want to just get a few thoughts out there for the moment and then, in the later post, provide you all with useful links and more factual information. I have been intrigued and excited by the America Eats! project ever since I first read about it probably four years ago when I first started getting into food research and culinary history. America Eats! was a WPA sponsored project organized by Katharine Kellock just prior to the second world war. The goal was to send writers around the country to record group meals and food-related public events in “images of a resilient people working to common and joyful purpose in the teeth of the Great Depression.” Most of the writing generated by this project was never published because it was not compiled and edited before the start of WWII, it got lost in the ensuing shuffle, as it were. A few culinary historians and other researchers have used bits and pieces of the writings from the project for research since that time, but it is not even known where all the materials are because many are still housed in local community libraries and archives, though there is also a good deal in the Library of Congress. Over the last several years interested scholars have banded together to try to encourage a return to this work, to try to relocate all of the writing and to utilize this unbelievable resource as a window into the American culinary past. I can tell you that I would love, love, love to be able to do just that.

(An image from the original America Eats! project archives - removing the barbecue beef from the pits at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Barbecue.)

What I wanted to react to in this post was an article that appeared in a culinary history newsletter that I get called Food History News written by Patricia Willard, a woman who has gone back and looked at a great deal of the America Eats! papers and then followed up by revisiting the sites that these writers recorded their community events at in the 1930s to see whether these sorts of traditions continue today. She has some extremely insightful comments about American food which I hope to be able to explore in more detail in the later post as well, but I want to latch on to one particular point that she made in this short introduction. She writes “Somewhere in my travels, though, I came to realize how accurately Kellock had gauged our cooking. By talking about our food within the context of social engagements, the Federal Writers were able to uncover something very important about our cuisine: it’s not actually the taste of our food, but the use of it that’s been important in our cooking’s development. Even at the most food-centric gatherings, emphasis was less on the dishes than in how they supported the reason for people to meet.”

This statement reminded me of something I know all to well, and I’m sure you do too, that a meal is not special unless it has meaning, and it often gains meaning because of the people that we eat that meal with. Now that doesn’t suggest that every meal will be special if it is consumed with others (afterall America Eats! focused on community-wide social events, not an everyday occurrence, though certainly more frequent in the 1930s than today), but that perhaps we need to think a little bit less about the food itself, to take a step back from analyzing in minute detail the flavors and textures and visual appeal of the foods which are placed in front of us, and to just appreciate the event for what it is, an opportunity to form or reassert relationships with people. Certainly the analysis of food for food’s sake has its place and I do a lot of it myself, it can be a communal activity that draws people together in and of itself, but at its heart I think we should keep in mind that food is mearly the vehicle or the excuse for a gathering, that is the shared experience which is what we all benefit most from in the end, which will last us longer than the last bite of dessert or the last sip of coffee. Even as you embrace your foodie side, focusing more on the ingredients and becoming increasingly interested in new and varied cuisines, presentations, etc., never forget that there is a whole lot more going on beyond the edges of your plate, that though the flavors may take you to distant lands and far away places, the people sitting right next to and across from you are the ones with whom you are sharing the experience of that meal and that is, I would argue, more important than what you’re putting in your mouth.

Cooking is good for the soul…

Cooking is good for the soul. I’m sure you’ve heard that before, but I can attest to it. Sometimes, when I have a moment to breathe, I have this unstoppable urge to cook till I drop, to make all the recipes that I’ve been thinking about for weeks or months, and sometimes more. When I really tune into the cook within, there is a lot of energy and knowledge that I have yet to explore. So I find it really fulfilling when I have the opportunity and the inclination to just set aside a big chunk of my time to cook, and cook, and cook, and cook. Which, you’ll no doubt guess, is what I’ve been doing for the last few days. I have made, in the space of two afternoons / evenings, three different soups, two kinds of green beans, a berry crumble, a puttanesca sauce, and a butternut squash, pancetta, and porcini mushroom ravioli. I have enough food to feed an army, thank goodness for the freezer; I mean I live on my own for crying out loud. I practically have to have a dinner party now to get some of this food eaten, though I’m sure I could manage it on my own if need be. I really don’t know what has gotten into me to be honest. For one thing, I often find it frustrating to try and prepare particular recipes in Philly because you invariably have to go to three or four stores, in at least two parts of the city, to procure all the necessary ingredients. If you don’t have the foresight to plan ahead for ingredients you’ll need for recipes you want to make, or the time / patience to run around to all the different places, then a person can be easily deterred from making something. But when everything falls into place and for whatever reason you have the time and energy to really spend in your kitchen, my what fun it can be. I have to say I love playing with food, I do it all the time now, whether out at a restaurant (my parents have been embarrassed to be seen with me on several occasions in recent memory) or in my own kitchen. But it’s such a tactile and, I would argue, intimate experience, the relationship we have with our food, or at least we can have if we choose to be aware of it. This is in part why I am so enthralled by food as a topic in general, what it means to people, how they see it as a part of their lives, and how they reflect who they are off of their food choices. But what I really wanted to advocate here was indulgence in the love of food through a closer connection between you and what you eat. I know that cooking up a storm in my kitchen is completely comforting and enjoyable, time that I feel I am taking care of myself. Just some things to think about the next time you step into your kitchen to whip up a new recipe or two.

Fruit Sticker Art

Ever think for more than a second about those stickers on the fruits and vegetables that you buy at the produce market or grocery store? Well neither did I until I happened to be watching the Food Network one evening and in an episode of Unwrapped with Marc Summers they had a segment about a guy who actually makes artwork with these colorful sticky circles. The artist in question’s name is Barry “Wildman” Snyder who is known as the “Almost World Renowned Food Sticker Mosaic Artist.” Here’s his website so you can see some of the amazing stuff he does:

http://stickermanproduceart.wordpress.com/

And YouTube has the segment of Unwrapped with his segment here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myqkf638gFQ

The Wildman even has a foundation called the S.O.S. Foundation for “Save Our Stickers.” This got me to thinking about these stickers and how I’d known people to have decorated their entire lunchbox with them growing up. It also got me to wondering what saving the stickers might reveal about where a lot of my food is coming from, whether it’s local or even produced in the United States at all. So I started saving my stickers this past summer (2007), and I’ve finally reached a point where I feel like I have enough of a critical mass that it’s worth sharing this with you all. Here’s a photo of the stickers:

I just tacked up a couple of pieces of paper on my wall in the kitchen and started sticking the puppies up there whenever I took a fruit or vegetable out of the fridge for use. I did the one on the left first, so you can see it’s a little less well organized.

Here’s some of thing things that I can tell you from this experience:
• I eat a heck of a lot of fruit and not too many vegetables, though it’s not as if I needed a sticker wall to tell me that. I have always been more of a fruit person. If you look closely there are probably 90-95% fruit stickers.
• There are a heck of a lot of stickers that simply denote that the fruit (I’m just going to call a spade a spade here) is from the USA, no further information provided as to specific state. Some of them say things like Washington apples, or California or Florida citrus, but we could probably guess that. I guess I had always imagined that the state would be identified on the fruit so you could know how far, roughly, it was traveling. Just goes to show you how closely I’ve been paying attention, and how far the stickering industrial powers are going to mask the transport costs.
• There are a large number of non-US stickers including: Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Costa Rica, Columbia, Ecuador, Canada, and New Zealand. Now I buy a lot of bananas, so it’s of little surprise to me that these warmer climes appear, but there sure are a lot represented and they’re not only shipping bananas, New Zealand was there for the kiwis and organic apples.

If I really wanted to break it down, there is a lot of information stored up (& hidden behind) these little stickers that we generally throw away, and admittedly sometimes take an unwitting bite of. I learned a lot from this little exercise and though I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll send the stickers on to the Wildman, maybe you should consider starting to save your stickers, just to learn a little bit more about where your food is coming from.

Modo Mio - Italian food ‘perfection-style’

I had a nearly perfect meal for dinner last night at Modo Mio on Girard Ave. in Philadelphia. Everything about the meal made for a fantastic evening at this small, homey, welcoming restaurant in Northern Liberties. We went there on a recommendation of one of our dining partners who had heard nothing but rave reviews about the place and boy were those people right. I would really urge anyone who is looking for a great meal out on the town to head in that direction immediately. Now I know certain people who don’t think that going out to eat Italian food makes a whole lot of sense, yes you can make pasta at home, but there is no way you will be able to reproduce the quality of meal that you’ll enjoy at Modo Mio without a gargantuan amount of effort on your part, and unless you really want to go to all that trouble, why not let the experts do what they do best?

The restaurant has a prix fixe menu for $30 where you can order an antipasti, pasta, secondi, and either a dolce or contadini, they’ve christened it the “menu tourista.” I would really recommend this option. Not only do you get great value for your money, but there are no restrictions on the options, you can literally order anything on their menu when you choose the prix fixe. They have between 6 and 8 options in each of the categories and several specials each night. The menu also changes every six weeks.

I’m not going to get too much into the details of the actual meal here since I tried some of everything that landed on our table and every single dish was amazing, but I will give you a little run down of my own meal choices and then include the pictures so you can see for yourself the kinds of beautiful food they’re bringing out of the kitchen at this place. For antipasti I had an octopus salad with white beans, raisins, and slivered almonds. For both the pasta and secondi I ordered the specials which were a torteloni stuffed with broccoli rabe and some wonderful cheese, also served with raisins and then a lamb stew served with feta. The range of flavors that we experienced during the course of the meal was really wonderful. Everything from the little amuse buche at the beginning – their homemade bread with gorgonzola cheese, prosciutto, and aged balsamic vinegar – to the sambuca at the end was perfectly flavored and just danced on your palate.

Now we all know that any good meal out at a restaurant is not due solely to the powers of the chef, the ambiance and the serving staff are also critical players in how much you enjoy the night. Well you should have no complaints at Modo Mio. The staff were so friendly and welcoming and made you feel very comfortable, a great deal of laughing was done by all. Our waiter was particularly charming and made the meal that much more memorable because of his attentiveness and lighthearted conversation throughout the evening. The timing of the plates coming out of the kitchen was also quite well orchestrated, with pauses between courses to allow you to take a break and to get into some good conversation. The point of the prix fixe menu and the entire way the restaurant is set up is to allow friends to come out for a nice, leisurely meal and to enjoy the food, ambiance, and company of their dining partners. They have succeeded absolutely in this goal as far as I’m concerned, I have not had a more impressive or pleasant meal in recent memory. We even shut the place down on a Tuesday night and were able to meet the chef, Peter, who was born locally and extremely nice. He and our waiter, Ernesto, really made the night. As I said, you really should get yourself out to Modo Mio as soon as may be, you deserve to treat yourself to such a fantastic dining experience!

Modo Mio
161 West Girard Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19123
ph: 215-203-8707
http://www.modomiorestaurant.com/home

An 18th Century Meal

I don’t know about the rest of you, perhaps my imagination isn’t as good as it could be, but I learn best by doing, through experience. For this reason, I have recently decided that it is imperative that I actually prepare some of the recipes that I read all the time in the cookbooks that I use in my research. A perfect opportunity to do just that presented itself this past weekend when my sister came to visit for the first time since I moved to Philly almost five years ago. What better way to welcome her to city and to introduce her to my friends, than to throw a party with an 18th century theme to the menu? I was a bit hesitant to suggest it to her since she is not known for being the most adventurous of eaters, but when I did she said full steam ahead, and I jumped into party-planning mode. I was definitely pleasantly surprised by how many of my friends were ready and willing to attend a meal that they knew so little about, but then they’re all pretty adventurous and certainly very tolerant, after all they put up with me.

Planning a menu was certainly a bit of a stretch for me, first because there were so many dishes that I wanted to make I didn’t know where to start, second because we had a few vegetarians in the group, so I had to make sure that they were sufficiently fed (despite the main course, which I’ll get to in a second), and third because I’d never entertained for such a large crowd before and I absolutely didn’t want people to leave hungry. To address the first problem I turned to a couple of my favorite historical sources for the recipes that I ended up making. All of the recipes I chose would have been made in Pennsylvania and the surrounding states in the past. Not all were specifically regional foods, but they would have appeared on the tables of people who lived in this region, whether or not they also appeared elsewhere in the country. The first cookbook I is one published by the Past Masters in Early American Domestic Arts entitled The Pennsylvania Housewife: English Household Receipts of the Middle Colonies. This book was written by a group of individuals who actually cook these historic recipes in period kitchens using period kitchen implements or reproductions. Knowing several members of the group, I can comment that they are a reliable source for tips on the best ways to prepare these foods, for they are the ones who have made them the most recently and accurately and have given the receipts (recipes) the most scrutiny. In the cookbook each recipe starts with the original as copied from the 18th century cookbook and then is followed by more modern instructions, including measurements of ingredients (which didn’t become popular until the 19th century) and step-by-step instructions as to how to prepare the dish. Because members of Past Masters typically prepare these recipes on the hearth, they do not include oven temperatures or exact cooking times, but any relatively well-informed or logical cook can figure these out. Two other cookbooks I utilized in preparing the menu for this meal were both compiled by William Woys Weaver, a well-known culinary historian of the Pennsylvania Dutch and author of a number of books on their cuisine and history in this area. They included Pennsylvania Dutch Country Cooking (1993) and Sauerkraut Yankees: Pennsylvania Dutch Foods & Foodways (2002).

The main course was a big question because not only was it necessary to feed a large number of people, but it was also an opportunity to potentially add to the collections in the zooarchaeology lab, something I’m always trying to work into my meals. In the end my advisor and I decided that a suckling pig was the way to go. I have archaeological examples of suckling pig and therefore wanted some comparative materials to know what size and age range I’m dealing with, besides the fact that it’s also an extremely impressive meal to present on the table. A meal that would have been a community-wide celebration during the 18th century, something that was highly appreciated by the Pennsylvania Dutch, and something that many people in the modern world do not have much exposure to. You’ve seen me comment before on this blog about the ever-expanding distance between modern consumers and our meat sources, how the animals that our protein is derived from are becoming less and less recognizable in the cuts they purchase in the supermarkets as more and more become boneless, skinless cuts. Having a whole roasted suckling pig at this party would bring people to the absolute other side of the spectrum and force them to literally come face to face with their meal, to own up to the fact that they were eating part of an animal, and even a cute young one at that. These are all lessons we should consider and, I think, test ourselves on if we are to continue to eat meat and to support modern animal agribusiness which focuses on meat production above all else. If we cannot face the prospect of eating meat when we can see exactly where it comes from, then can we really justify eating it? On top of this fact, the 18th century fully embraced the display of heads and other very recognizable body parts on the table. Not everything was served up in smaller cuts cleansed of their animalistic qualities. People in the 18th century took pride in their ability to serve an entire animal on the table, it demonstrated wealth and prosperity, generosity and bounty. Yes, to serve a truly 18th century meal, I did feel that a whole pig was, in fact, the perfect main-course to serve.

As far as the vegetarians at the meal were concerned, this was not a problem per se, but it did take some careful consideration. If you look at printed menus in cookbooks from the 18th century, you’ll see that meat was always the star of the meal, it appeared in almost all of the dishes on the table, and vegetables were served as sides to or garnish on these more prominent dishes. In order to prepare a meal to appeal to the modern sensibilities where vegetables are the healthier and more desirable aspects of the meal for many, I needed to switch around the focus of the meal from the meat dishes to the sides. This is not to suggest that the number of sides prepared for the meal was more than typical during the 18th century, simply that they played a larger role in the overall proportion of the meal than did the meat dishes. If I had been preparing a strictly 18th century meal, there would likely have been several meat dishes on the table in addition to the suckling pig, and on top of the sides.

The final menu for the meal was as follows:

Pretzel Soup with Peanut Roux
Johny Cakes – the middling sort
Winter Squash Pudding
Spinach with Eggs
Asparagus
Whole Suckling Pig
Dried Cherry Pie

Recipes for most of the dishes will appear on the side bar. The asparagus recipe has been omitted because we simply steamed them and added kosher salt and cracked black pepper. The Whole suckling pig we did not end up cooking ourselves because the animal was too large to fit into my oven, a smaller than standard little affair measuring only 16” wide and deep and 14” tall. With the pig being 18 pounds and longer than 16” even when folded in half (we measured it at the butcher’s), I thought it best all around to allow the butcher to roast it for me, he offered after all. So the pig was roasted in the oven at the butcher’s shop with sage, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper on a spit in the oven for about 4 hours, basting it with butter. Apparently, for those who are interested, this animal was likely between 12 and 15 weeks (3-4 months) old. Animals of this age do not have a whole lot of fat in their bodies yet, so though he saved the pan juices for us, the butcher also included a couple of tubs of pork (as in full grown animal) drippings, to make gravy from. We purchased the pig from the Hollywood Meat Market (1039 S. 9th St.) and actually carried it back to my apartment tied down to a big piece of plywood and covered over in aluminum foil, though apparently this didn’t fool too many people as we got a lot of looks and comments on the street, as well as a couple of car honks. The Hollywood Meat Market specializes in roast pig, so if you’re looking for something similar for an event you’d like to host, I can recommend them as very helpful and accommodating. Ask for Pete if you want something pig-related, he’s the go-to man there.

As for the other dishes, I think the biggest favorites were the pretzel soup and the dried cherry pie. The soup is more like an apple cider soup, thickened with pretzels and served with peanut butter, the flavor combination is unbeatable and it’s amazingly and surprisingly filling (also super easy to make). The dried cherry pie was also delicious and the filling was quite unique, starting with dried fruit rather than canned cherries or fresh. It gave the interior of the pie a very chewy and sweet consistency that was different than any other I’ve tasted, but really fantastic, more like a chewy candy bar than a pie filling (you can play around with the degree of stickiness by altering how much you cook down the filling). I was also very intrigued by the winter squash pudding which had only a few tablespoons of rose water in it, but the flavor became infused throughout the dish and provided a different set of taste sensations than you typically get, especially with squash. I hope you’ll try out a few of these recipes on your own and see if you can incorporate some historic food into your modern life. Until the next food adventure, happy eating!

Oh, and check out some photos from the meal in the slideshow below.

Banana Extinction, What?

Here’s a jaw-dropper for you… Did you know that the bananas we know and love are in danger of extinction? I kid you not! That uniformly perfect fruit that we all rely on and is the favorite fruit of all Americans is being threatened by a fungus called the Panama. A similar set of events led to the eventual extinction of the banana crops which we used to eat up until the 1960s, these guys were known as the Gros Michel. The variety we eat today is the Cavendish, that’s right, only one variety, one single type. Which of course means, if we can’t figure out what how to stop the fungus from killing all the bananas or we can’t find another banana that is resistant to it, then bye bye to our favorite long yellow snack. The reason that Cavendish varieties began to be grown in the first place was because of their resistance to this Panama fungus, but now there is a new strain which is attacking and killing the very plant we thought was safe. Of course there is some research being done, but it would appear that the large banana-growing corporations (Chiquita, Dole, etc.) are not willing to invest in this at the present time, a great shame, since they’ll really feel it when they’re bottom line drops out in the relatively near future. I haven’t come across any estimates as to how long this extinction might take to occur, but here are a few news sources I looked at. This one is a KCRW Good Food podcast, and here’s a news article.