Adam Balic

There you go, now all you have to do is to keep the meat on the bone and not make the pease so sloppy!

Buggered if I know why and a hole in a piece of toast with an egg put in there.

Steve - there is a big blue wobbly thing at the bottom of Europe full of fish, most people who make fish soup here use tomato, olive oil and garlic. The ancillary bits are what makes a BB different from all the other fish soups. Oh, and he cooking technique, that bit is important too. But that's not important. Do you favour peasant cooking as the key origin of more developed cuisine or do you beleive that specific dishes may have evolved from a number of different sources?

It's a good point Steve, and difficult to answer. If we just stick to the BB example, firstly what is BB. Well, it is a fish soup (or stew, that bit doesn't matter). There are plenty of fish soups in the Med. The Med being full of water, this makes sense. OK, many parts of the Med. have a fish soups, what is special about BB that seperates it from all other fish soups. That bit goes on forever, as even the locals can't agree. But let's say the distinguishing feature of a BB is that is a fish soup made with saffron, fennel and orange peel (well, these are my choices) and it has to be made of certain fish from a particular region. Everything about this dish is OK with the peasant origin theroy except the saffron. It's just to expensive for peasants to use. So I have no problem with these peasants having a fish soup of their own, just not with saffron, and with out saffron I don't think that is can be called a BB. The area where this soup comes from has a major trading port, it is just as likely that the dish came from an outside source (for example Venetian, traders with a history of using saffron, with fish dishes and they have their own fish soup), as to have developed locally. Local: "hey what's that you are eating?" Visitor: "Fish soup" Local: "It doesn't look like fish soup" Visitor: "Well we make it like this at home, have a taste" Local: "Hey, that's good! What's that interesting taste? Visitor: "Saffron" Local: "From now on I'm going to make my fish soup with saffron" The evidence just isn't there to surport a peasant origin, it could have many sources. Saffrom was used quite a bit by the well off as a seasoning, why could not BB be a decendent of this tradition? In all likelyhood the truth is something quite else, and BB is a fushion of several culinary traditions, one of which is regional peasant cooking. But only one.

"Gammon" is a type of British ham (can also be the lower end of a joint of side of bacon), names comes from the Middle French for "Leg", as does Jambon, Ham etc. You can bake them (the joint version) or fry slices, but I like to boil, then bake so you get the lovely stickiness of the gelatin, plus a crispy skin. I like the skin. "Pease" are a type of dried pea, which have quite a meally texture. Yellow is most common, but I sometimes use the green type as I prefer the flavour. Pease pudding is a very old British recipe. You take the peas wrap them in cloth (loosely) and add them to the boiling joint of gammon. They take up the flavour of the ham. When they are done you take them out of the cloth and season them, add anyother ingredients (some mix in an egg to help the binding) then put them back into the cloth (tightly this time) add cook them again. In the end you have a round pudding/dumpling of pease. Pease porridge is just a more slopy version. They go very well with ham (think of pea and ham soup) and I like the slightly granular texture they have. Here is what they look like. http://www.foodsubs.com/Peas.html scroll down to "yellow peas'.

In other words, it was a two-way street and, with the most popular dishes, it's virtually impossible to separate the class origins of the various elements.'xactly, so lets not hear anymore about the peasant origins of dishes, no matter how obvious or logical this theroy seems, in most cases there simply isn't any evidence to show that it is so. And as John and Oreganought have shown, origins are a complex issue. I see little mention of monastic origins of some of these dishes? I'm sure a good case could be made for this in several instances. If they are the originators of several wines and cheeses, why not other foodstuffs?

True, true, but could the cassoulet as we know it be said to have peasant origins or just another bean stew that the was kicking around in South-western France at the time that a chef formalized the "idea" of a cassoulet. Would not peasants have used broad beans, rather then haricots? Is that dish the ancestor or is a Spanish white bean stew the ancestor? The dish is named after the vessel it is cooked in, but this is not evidence that all cassoulet are infact CASSOULET, in much the same way that Tunisa and Morocco both have Tajine/tagine, (dishes named after the vessel again), but a Tunisian Tagine is not a TAGINE as most people would think of it and the origins of the TAGINE cannot be traced back to the Tunisian version.

"Cassoulet" yeh that positively reeks of being a chef dish. OK, fine there are many varients using various ingredients (salt pork, pork rind, goose confit sausage, game, salt cod, pork cuts etc). But what is cassoulet, and how would a peasant cook it? With whatever they had to spare, inwhich case the more modern versions could just as easily be from a chef who tissied up a pretty basic bean stew and "standadized", rather then being a peasant dish as such. I can really see those peasants folding in the crust seven times.

Caraway seeds were a mistake, but I was of slim means and didn't have any red cabbage. Wilfrid - ah, but you haven't had my pease pudding (Hot, please pudding cold, pease pudding in the pot nine days old!).

In some recent "discussions" much has been made of the peasant origins of various, now famous, dishes. The assumption has been that these dishes are based on a more primative dish of humble origins. Is there any proof for this at all? Peasants, being peasants tend to have little excess to spend on luxuries, and in my own families experience, they tend to sell the best of their crops and keep the leavings for their own consumption. Can great cuisine come from these origins? For instance the famous Bouillabaisse, a dish of humble fishmen who had to do some thing with the leavings of the daily catch? Really, if these fishermen were so damn poor, how did they afford saffron. No, saffron = no bouillabaisse , just fish soup. Is there any reason why these dishes could not have been invented in a chefs kitchen, then be transfered back to the humble classes? Are there any other examples of dishes with suspiciously humble origins? Below is a link to some information on the history of bouillabaisse by award winning author, Clifford A. Wright. http://www.cliffordawright.com/history/bou...uillabaisse.htm

No, it is something I made up when I had less then five quid to last two days and my wife was out of town. It was also served with some savoy cabbage that I blanched and finished off in the pan with some caraway seeds. I think that pease pudding and gammon joint is pretty common in the UK?

Sorry, yes quite right, marrowfat not marrowbone. I like them cooked with the boiled gammon then made into a pudding, whilst the gammon hock gets glazed and finished off in the oven. But, fish fingers? Really?

I like marrowbone peas. .

prosciutto with toad in the hole? Bahahaha (Wipes tears of laughter off face). Isn't that piggy-in-the-blanket-in-the-hole-with-the-toad then? Cool, how very Gen-X Muppeteskh!

Cumberland sausage, mashed potato and peas with mint. Oh, and dead horse, obviously.

As big as you hand? Do you have a micro-hand or are these big mushrooms? The largest shiitake I have seen are about two-three inches in diameter. Are these a special type?

Jinmyo - Hua gu is Shiitake, no? If so, dried or fresh and if dried the one with the cracks or the smooth capped type and does this make any difference?

Melon and serrano ham pan fried duck breast (spread with salt and chinese five spice and Ras el hanout (moving house, not enough of each spice alone)). Risotto with chanterelle, guinea fowl stock and peas (no cream). baby turnips, steamed, braised in butter/brown sugar. pears poached in muscat/cardamon.

Steve - my understanding is that those wines stored for 20+ in screwcaps do undergo changes associated with aging (changes in the structure of the phenols etc etc), so they don't taste like a new wine twenty years later. but yes if a certain amount of oxidation is required then cork would seem to be a better choice.

Don't do it man! Back away from the batter! Jamie Oliver does a version in one of his books, it may even have a picture. It kinda looks like sausages (British, mostly cereal) imbedded in Yorkshire pudding. Fun for kids though.

Use rice type with a higher starch content to increase "creaminess". Porchini risotto with a fruity (hoegarten white) beer/ale stock works well.

Adam, I have only ever seen the pomegranate concentrate in bottles and tasted it in certain Middle eastern dishes. It find it more sweet than sour. And also used often for coloring. I simply used dried seeds that are crushed. They are not sweet and amazingly sour. Most Indian stores will sell them as Anaardana. Try them, they are easy to use and would never make a dish too sweet or dark. Different brands of pomegrante concentrate vary greatly in flavour, sweetness, colour and sourness. I mostly use Iranian brands as they tend to have a more fruity flavour and more sweet/sour balance then the Turkish versions I have tasted. In Persain cooking, the dark colour from the concentrate is highly prized. Unfortunately it does burn easily, which is how I ruined a meal recently, I busy drinking cocktails, not enough attention being paid to the cooking. Strangely, it is quite nice when used to make caper sauce (a hot brown butter vinegette) to go with boiled salt beef.

Well there are quite a few followers of Calvin in the area, so I imagine they have numerous hair shirts, dunno about coats. Most likely not, smacks of excess having two hair coats.

If you look at the link I posted, you will find information on just about any breed of cattle you might be interested in. Galloways are weird and hairy, historiaclly in literature people from this area were also described in the same way.

Yes, I was making a deliberate generalization.