Adam Balic

I can't think of the first thing I ever cooked (most likely scones with grandma), but I remember the first full meal I did. Mum had a hugh early 1970's gourmet book of Australian and New Zealand cooking. When I was about 12 (early 80's) I decided that I wanted to cook a braised rabbit dish and a dessert. So after shooting the rabbits I made: Braised rabbit with prunes and pinenuts Chocolate mousse. The latter was put into wine glasses and to make it classy I put a coffee bean on the top. I think I remember this well because shooting the rabbits was fun and I amazed myself with the new knowledge that chocolate mousse could be made at home.

Lovely looking food and thanks for the write up. The Cock's comb dish looks very interesting, like something an early 18th C. French Chef would put together. Quick question. How was the wood pigeon cooked? 90% of the time I have had it, it has been cooked as per directions for domestic squab and there for has turned out to be tough as old boots.

Ah, well this exaplains how Boccaccio managed to roll his macaroni down the mountain of Parmesan then.

I agree entirely about the terminology. Sadly, I'm not sure that 'noodle' helps either as then you run into trouble with confusion with gnocci and Northern dumplings etc. I must say that I have enjoyed this discussion very much and it has been a particular pleasure to discuss the topic with the person who's book I most often consult on the topic. re: Historical crops. There is some fancinating data reported by John Letts in the UK. Not quite as early as we are discussing and the wrong part of Europe, but you might find this of interest. Medieval crops

I am often confused, all part of the learning process (I hope). I have no doubt that ancient flours differ from modern types, for instance I doubt that ancient crops were a monoculture, most likely they were a mixture of different grain species or an mixture of different strains of the same species. This seems to be true of medieval crops and exant crops where traditional methods are used. A logical consequence of individuals storing grain to use in next years crops. Even modern flours have hugh amounts of variation. This is one issue rarely discussed by cookbook authors. "All purpose" flour varies quite a bit and a single Italian producer may produce multiple types of "00" flour that have protein content ranges of 10.5 - 14%, obviously this is going to effect the final product. But, the point is that all these flours will produce pasta, the important bit (as I see it) is that pasta made from durum wheat can be dried, stored and traded. I think that my science background makes me concentrate on the physical properties of the product, but obviously this isn't the entire story. If it were simply a process of recognition of the superior properties of durum wheat pasta, why didn't fideos explode out of Spain? I have heard of “Fidelanza/Fedelini” in Northern Italy (I assume they are related to fideos and ultimately Fidawsh?), but that is about it. What was the status of durum wheat pasta in areas where it spread to early on, was it a high status produce or was it more something that was useful to trade as a travelling supply, like hardtack?

OK these are the ingredients published originally in 'La Cuisine du Comte de Nice' (1972) by the mayor of Nice, mentioned above (this book is published in English by Grub Street Publishing under the name of "Cuisine Nicoise". tomatoes, hard boiled egg, anchovy fillets or tinned tuna, cucumber, green pepper, spring onions (scallions), broad beans or globe artichokes, garlic, black olives, olive oil, basil, salt and pepper. He has a few other things of interest to say. Tuna (canned) was very expensive and reserved for special occasions, normally anchovies were used. No dressing other then olive oil is used and finally; "But what ever you do, if you want to be a worthy exponent of Nicoise cookery, never, never, I beg you, include boiled potato or any other boiled vegetable in your salad nicoise." Strong words.

Almonds and the kernels from the fruit contain amygdalin which is harmless, but on contact with various water soluble enzymes you get benzaldehyde (C6H5-CHO) and hydrocyanic acid (HCN). Both smell similar, but the latter will kill you. Almond essence has the latter removed and hence it still contains the bitter almond flavour, but will not kill you. Sweet almonds and bitter almonds are the same species, but the former (through chance or human selection) contains less amygdalin, so you can chop away on them and not die. Mahaleb Cherry (Prunus mahaleb) used in the middle east and Greece as a flavour, don't seem to contain large amounts of amygdalin, but to contain coumarin derivatives which have a similar bitter almond flavour (hence the smell of tonka beans).

Tuna has been packed in olive oil before the 300 Spartans held Thermopylae against the Persians. There are truly excellent Greek, Italian, and even Korean tinned tunas. And I would never poach tuna. It would make me cry. If I don't use tinned tuna for a standard nicoise, I'll sear a block of tuna and serve a few thin slices atop a mound of fingerlings and haricot verts mixed with anchovy aoli and topped with tomato concasse and a quail egg or two. ← Fresh tuna, potatoes, green beans in salad nicoise make Jacques Medecin cry .

Thank you for the detailed reply, it has been very interesting and informative. Let me see if I can address some points: Hard wheat flour as special properties that that make it's use attractive. I don't think that taste/texture is an issue as these are very subjective and exact preferences change both geographically and temporally. I would list these specific properties that are important to the success and use of hard wheat flour for pasta production as: Elasticity, water absorbtion, the ability to make a paste which can be dried without cracking and the ability to be stored for long periods. Most of these properties are shared to a lesser or greater degree by other grains. But I feel that this ability to easliy make, dry and store hard wheat pasta is the important point, because I think that these abilities make it a very attractive product for scale-up, commercial production and trade. It is possible to make a pasta-like product from rivet/poulard (Triticum turgidum) or even soft wheat. It may not be as good a product or store as well, but it will taste fine and people will and have developed food based on these (or at least in the case of soft wheat, rivet seems to be more suited to gruel/puls type preps). But you can't trade these products effectively. Mlinci are a great solution to a the problem of local storage and transport, but useless as a major trade item, so not important in the big picture. I would imagine that the development of early hard wheat pasta must have spurred the improvement of milling technology as well. Once mills capable of producing quality hard wheat flour were developed, I can't seen the resulting pasta remaining a non-trade item for very long. "pasta-like product" is tricky as it can pretty much include anything. As a personal definition I would say that it included the range of idems "Dumpling to gruel". Obviously, this isn't very precise or useful to others. However, while I think that while it is very useful to define pasta as the product of Triticum turgidum var. durum to differentiate it from soft wheat products and to actually help define what is being discussed (food writers still seem to treat "Pasta" as a monolithic idea, hence the Marco Polo story which will not die), I think that some interesting angles are lost. For instance, this pretty much excludes soft wheat products from the North of Italy which most likely evolved quite seperately and are worth considering in their own right, although I can see how a pre-existing product was altered/changed by the introduction of hard wheat flour. Lasagne is still made from soft wheat flour in some areas for instance. Comparing the Northern and Southern uses and history of this pasta would most likely prove very interesting. I wonder if supermarket durum wheat pasta is replacing the soft wheat pasta fresca in the North and if this is an old cycle being newly repeated?

Tastes are personal and I haven't got a issue with that, but I am glad that to be the tuna bellies preserved in olive oil in those hugh cans you get in Italy/France/Spain taste fantastic.

Not sure why you dislike all canned products (does this include in glass), some are very good and it gives you an increased range of products. Anyway, the classic recipe contains canned tuna, never fresh according to "Cuisine Nicoise" by Jacques Medecin, former mayor of Nice (before he had to go to Brazil....). And ships biscuits I think. Will check on the latter. Before canning there was drying, salting (you can still buy dried salted tuna in Sicily, Liguria and Andalucia) and preservation in oil, which is essentially the canned product. Medecin has this to say: "salade nicoise is one of those dishes that is constantly traduced. At its most basic -- and genuine -- it is made predominantly of tomatoes, consists exclusively of raw ingredients (apart from hard-boiled eggs) and has no vinaigrette dressing: the tomatoes are salted three times and moistened with olive oil." Also, anchovies or tuna, but not both and fava beans an artichokes when in season. Personally, a bastard version sounds OK to me, but I like the idea of the salted tomatoes.

archestratus - thank you for the very detailed critic. I read the book and found it interesting, but obviously I don't have enough knowledge to pick up on the errors that you did. This may be one question that may not be answered in full. I recently attended a lecture on looking at the grain production in Medieval England, at which the author mentioned that even experts have difficulty with identification of ancient grains(mostly or charred or water logged gains). One thing that was mentioned was that monocultures seem to be quite rare, multiple grains seem to have been sowed in the same patch. This blend of grians seems to have varied from location to location and also temporally. In the UK, true monocultures seem to have only developed in the 18th century. As an aside the author mentioned that he also did much research in Turkey at one point and he mentioned that this model was formally true in Turkey as well, traditional blends were; Rye, Trivet wheat, Soft wheat, Emmer. And often these strains were 'land-races' (local strains developed for local conditions). This traditional practice seems to have stopped as the agricultural ministry has been keen to modernize and has supplied/encouraged the use of modern varieties in monoculture. I guess the point of this is that if this model is true of historical farming practices, then to get a pure or mostly pure crop of hard wheat, then people would have had to make a very deliberate decision to grow the crop as a monoculture. Or through chance they farmed in an area where hard wheat is the dominant crop. If the former is that case then it suggests not only recognition of the special properties of hard wheat for pasta (or pasta related products), but also considerable organisation. This also suggests to me that the production of pasta like products must have pre-dated the use of hard wheat to make pasta. Although hard wheat is obviously very suited to making pasta that can be stored and dried for long periods of time (an obvious selection advantage for the use of this grain), it isn't the only model. In the Balkans soft wheat flour is rolled out into flat sheets of pasta, then baked until crisp, slightly browned and blistered. The product is called Mlinci in croatian (from the Indo-European root word for 'mill' I have been told), no idea of its true origins, but it can be stored for long periods of time (months) and is used much like hard wheat pasta. I know that you have very correctly defined 'pasta' as a product of hard wheat, but would it be also be possible to define 'pasta', not only on what it is composed of, but its property of been able to be stored. I know of this example because through chance my grandmother makes it, I'm sure that there are many such examples. So I wonder if scholars have looked at the development of pasta in too much of a linear way. Hard wheat pasta may be indroduced as a completely new product, replaced a pre-existing product or transforming a pre-existing product (replacing mlinci with hard wheat pasta sheets doesn't change the fact that a pre-existing pasta dish did exist). As you can most likely guess I am very interested in the topic, so thank you for your imput.

I have both, while I love the microplane I hate using it to grate ginger as getting rid of the fibers is such a pain. I know the problem that you mention with the ceramic ginger grater (japanese, has a specific name), but I don't worry about it too much. This grater purees the ginger, rather then shredding it, the fibres do trap some of the 'juicy bits', but if you change the orientation that you grate in, these mostly come out. Also, when enough fibres accumulate, they can be lifted off in a wad and squeezed to drain every last drop. The best thing about this thing is that to clean, you just run it under a tap. The two graters are different tools that produce different results.

The same Latin root that gave us the word fascism. ← The same (or very similar) food item are called "fegatelli" which comes from the Italian for liver (and orginally comes from the latin root for "fig", the best livers were from fig fed birds I seem to recall). Infact, my guess would be that the English name for the sausage is derived from the Italian word, not from 'bundle' etc, but I haven't seen any other support for this. fegatelli The images of the concert look fantasitc BTW, makes me realise how rubbish Edinburgh is in comparision.

Singapore satay with peanut sauce and cabbage salad: "Poor Knights of Windsor" with the first of the Scottish raspberry crop (somewhat early). I love raspberries, but try not to eat them out of season. As the Scottish grown ones are so good and this makes eating them a double treat.

Jack - the food blog is great, thanks for the detailed and informative posts. You live in a very beautiful area and it has been great to see you discribe the seasonal produce that you have coming along. One question: can you eat marsh mallows and if so, are there any particular British dishes that you would use them in?

Very interesting discussion. How is 'tagine' pronounced in North Africa (is it pronounced differently in different parts of the region?). I have assumed that the English transliteration "Tah-geen" is not right, is "T'gen" better?"

The green veg in the basket is mostly okra and green lemons (also possibly some pickly pear fruit). Looking at the photo again I am remined that the quinces (bottom right just behind the gourds) used here are unrips and very green.

Beats me. Adam, what do you know about summertime Elizabethan finger food? ← Not much, too early for me. But this might help: King Henry IV, part 1, I, 2: POINS Good morrow, sweet Hal. What says Monsieur Remorse? what says Sir John Sack and Sugar? Jack! how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good-Friday last for a cup of Madeira and a cold capon's leg? Romeo and Juliet, IV, 4: LADY CAPULET: Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse. NURSE: They call for dates and quinces in the pastry. The Merry Wives of Windsor, V, 5: FALSTAFF: My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here. Strawberries were most likely of the small wood/wild type as modern strawberries are a hybrid of these and a South American type. I think that Elizabethan food my be a bridge too far, but you could do period booze, which is easier (and less face it, more likely to be popular with students). Is a wassail a Cambridge thing? That is a bit to Xmassy maybe.

Thanks chefzadi - I made this mixture for making the medieval Mrouzia that we discussed a while back.

Four random images of the souks in Fez (2000). The images are not very good due to the camera at the time and few in number unfortunately. The old town in Fez is an amazing place, narrow mazy streets leading to souk upon souk. I mostly hung around the food and spice souks, trying to avoid being trampled by donkeys and stop myself from saying to my friends "Its just like Medieval Europe" for the 100th time. Unsuccessfully, in both cases. This is a small intersection in the medina, selling a range of fruit and veg. It is difficult to see clearly, but these include: Green quince, grapes, okra, plums, gourds, melons and mint. Preserved lemons, olives, onions and peppers. The brass/copper souk, where I chickened out of buying a couscous steamer, which I still regret. Just to the left of the donkey you can see a very large copper item, consisting of a upper and lower chamber. This is a very large couscous steamer ("kiskis") that are used for weddings. If you are hosting a wedding it is your responsibility to make sure the guests are well fed (an no doubt it reflects on you status too), these giant couscous steamers are part of this. A more sobering image. This is the very famous leather working souk in Fez. This is an image that appears on almost every tourist guide to Fez. The skins are stripped of wool by immersion in fermeting pigeon shit, then cured and finally dyed. Our guide appologised to us because there were 'no blue vats today', but it did mean you concentrated on the poor buggers that spend their working day half immersed in reeking vats of caustic pieon shit.

They don't taste like black pepper, but the have some 'heat' so that is why they were used as a replacement. They are aromatic, but also a bit bitter, so you have to be careful with them. Is that were Algeria is? Who knew....

The word comes from Latin roots (frumentum = grain/corn) and is proberly French or Norman-French at least. The Romans ate puls which is a boiled mush of grains (ancestor of polenta?) and was a staple of the legions, but I would hesitate to make a direct connection, as boiled mushed grains must be common to a lot of cultures and is likely to have evolved independently I would think. Also, I don't think that it is healthy to credit the Italians with inventing everything..

Grains of paradise are the reddish seeds directly below the green cardamon pods. They were used as substitute for black pepper in Medieval France, and also for spicing wine. Grains of Paradise

Dessert was an unusual dish stretching no doubt back to antiquity: wheat berries with grape must. Kevin in England this dish would be know as "FRUMENTY", although I imagine it is practically extinct. It was traditionla to eat it with venison, the recipes varied but were basically spiced wheat berries, with fruit and cream or milk. Also, thanks for the blog I really enjoy seeing what you are up to.