Food city area

Appetizing Slide Show

I'm done with my recent little reading project on the history of Latin American and especially Mexican food -- but I loved this slide show on the <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/10/02/dining/20131002-HUNGRY.html">New York Times: Seeking Tacos in their Purest Form</a>. </i>Doesn't this look good?<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqTVQaPytaAnF9N15eEu9pcsDPBnfpg5Hqs_qofHiBz60kvAjTXaV2ZpIpT1m6dgH-QtMSPRP52KkskcrYAWtORSAeCR8ynWIPUuy20UD_k6TBMsVOgy5wFr9GbhzX3hdtz9oH5OZ7KRUU/s1600/tacos-NYT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="393" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqTVQaPytaAnF9N15eEu9pcsDPBnfpg5Hqs_qofHiBz60kvAjTXaV2ZpIpT1m6dgH-QtMSPRP52KkskcrYAWtORSAeCR8ynWIPUuy20UD_k6TBMsVOgy5wFr9GbhzX3hdtz9oH5OZ7KRUU/s400/tacos-NYT.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the slide show--<br />"Tacos from Reyes Deli: left, the chorizo taco,<br />subtle but with steadily mounting heat; right, the carnitas taco."</td></tr></tbody></table>My own experience eating in little taco places like this is mostly in California, but I can just taste those tortillas and the "mounting heat."

Appetizing Slide Show

I'm done with my recent little reading project on the history of Latin American and especially Mexican food -- but I loved this slide sh...

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05.43

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My blogs will no longer accept anonymous comments as I have been receiving many offensive efforts to post spam comments. If you are a friend...

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17.42

Cuisine without Food: Addendum

Cuisine without Food: Addendum

Book of Tasty and Healthy Food by Anastas Mikoyan, translation pub. 2012 Anya Von Bremzen, in her memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cookin...

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08.37

Cuisine without Food

Cuisine without Food

I read the Kindle edition, so I never actually saw this dust jacket. In Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing, A...

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17.22

Agriculture and cuisine: different subjects or the same?

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHfpocGA9xHFNyjaPqTZ8oWlC6URcsIBzBHin_8z3hocEHYaecJjANkLKvir4qwQUkiJldi3XMJSmdUZ9HU5q8Cvki3FAybOtq4zyjDe-R-An1e0plZW_obsG2HY2Rkl-CqwC3dVaLA957/s1600/Royal_Gardener_John_Rose_and_King_Charles_II_-_Hendrick_Danckerts_1675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="514" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHfpocGA9xHFNyjaPqTZ8oWlC6URcsIBzBHin_8z3hocEHYaecJjANkLKvir4qwQUkiJldi3XMJSmdUZ9HU5q8Cvki3FAybOtq4zyjDe-R-An1e0plZW_obsG2HY2Rkl-CqwC3dVaLA957/s640/Royal_Gardener_John_Rose_and_King_Charles_II_-_Hendrick_Danckerts_1675.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hendrick Danckerts: "Royal Gardener John Rose Presenting a Pineapple to King Charles II," 1675 (Wikimedia)</td></tr></tbody></table>I've been reading about the introduction of European and Asian food plants and many domestic animal species to the Spanish colonies of the new world, and about the introduction of new world plants and a few animals to old world diners and farmers. I've read quite a bit on this subject in the past as well. In general, there are two approaches: either authors concentrate on agriculture, and with it sometimes on nutrition, or on cuisine.<br /><br />Agriculturally focused histories treat the development and spread of agriculture in the new world and eventually beyond it. Some authors describe the initial process of domestication of certain plant species (like corn or vanilla). Some study the biochemistry of ancient species and compare them to archaeological finds or to wild native plants. Others focus on the current state of food production, use, and availability, viewing the origin and spread of plants or animals as at most background material. The timing of the spread of each food plant into new areas, its nutritional value to the population that consumed it, commodity or market issues, and the plant's adaptability to growing in new areas are critical factors.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE4UMKiw3pbLu5LkkVzA_npsHlQnX5fSSVmQvLx_Db9QoqObyL7r56vA2KWCo-gleoNtOGZmt5UU0yBfS8Q3_p0KxQ6XsAwcyj_Z4kpcHRuZsIh7UWSKFpPhFdikCtlW2s414aW5XJ5g9-/s1600/gardens-dunmire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE4UMKiw3pbLu5LkkVzA_npsHlQnX5fSSVmQvLx_Db9QoqObyL7r56vA2KWCo-gleoNtOGZmt5UU0yBfS8Q3_p0KxQ6XsAwcyj_Z4kpcHRuZsIh7UWSKFpPhFdikCtlW2s414aW5XJ5g9-/s320/gardens-dunmire.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What I've been reading</td></tr></tbody></table>Books that cover the topics of agriculture and its effect on food ways include these:<i> Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas Gave the World,</i> a collection of essays edited by Foster and Cordell; <i>The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 </i>by Alfred Crosby; and <i>Gardens of New Spain: How Mediterranean Plants and foods changed America</i> by William Dunmire.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx4M91gjlnl5F1rA2DKtLCri-JsBlGZinvjhslJmp0_n-qkohBrF6dbyRqlxpyMod2cMWmleUVLB41qPwnMntDjr6Syu6gp1lEFhj57INKzdTeRov57sHPqyPLmFwXO_4P1NolxBTA5af8/s1600/chilies-to-chocolate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx4M91gjlnl5F1rA2DKtLCri-JsBlGZinvjhslJmp0_n-qkohBrF6dbyRqlxpyMod2cMWmleUVLB41qPwnMntDjr6Syu6gp1lEFhj57INKzdTeRov57sHPqyPLmFwXO_4P1NolxBTA5af8/s320/chilies-to-chocolate.jpg" width="188" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">More of what I've been reading</td></tr></tbody></table>In the epilogue to <i>Chilies to Chocolate</i> Gary Paul Nabhan acknowledge the division that I'm exploring here. He wrote: "Perhaps the complexity of crop evolution makes us lose sight of the concurrent cultural evolution of culinary traditions: changes in grinding, roasting brewing, baking,  and curing techniques, not to mention customs of spicing and serving prepared foods."<br /><br />Nabhan cites a number of recipes and culinary techniques known to have characterized pre-Columbian cuisine. However, most books seem to focus on one area at a time -- how crops are grown, how foods are used in recipes, how they are adopted for nutritional value, how they spread from culture to culture, and how new flavors were added to familiar ones.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6sLhM4z5bkW6qMSC1QCDCKBHW2YvI2lZUdDH_CCN7aZj_K_OIgpxwwEzX4cwegTFzAUiIz1Bt8COaEZAkA9i-vVD8K9TVP4-TEp-_49GJfrLo_08kF_UyNMNsyh4FX8aW0UPEZgXawwOR/s1600/coe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6sLhM4z5bkW6qMSC1QCDCKBHW2YvI2lZUdDH_CCN7aZj_K_OIgpxwwEzX4cwegTFzAUiIz1Bt8COaEZAkA9i-vVD8K9TVP4-TEp-_49GJfrLo_08kF_UyNMNsyh4FX8aW0UPEZgXawwOR/s200/coe.jpg" width="131" /></a>Nabhan has written many books on food, cuisine, agriculture, and ethnobotany of the American Southwest. His point of view is political as well as scientific -- he's very concerned about the loss of biodiversity among native American plants, about climate change, and about mistreatment of native peoples worldwide. An author with a complementary point of view is Sophie Coe, who wrote two books about the sources, uses, and transmission of new world foods: <i>America's First Cuisines </i>and<i> The True History of Chocolate</i>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgINq58rRcnvtrP4nve77otMarWOpJunk7EMWn_tstP4rDUEYVMepADu5-r80H06V3QoIBNHQHrBY4H8UnE05qgdmciiP8UihmGEjUoqyGLym_MA45QNa5KmRtMtON5Mp9xFjzacZBTQQ/s1600-h/somelikehot.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="200" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5053668798495652146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgINq58rRcnvtrP4nve77otMarWOpJunk7EMWn_tstP4rDUEYVMepADu5-r80H06V3QoIBNHQHrBY4H8UnE05qgdmciiP8UihmGEjUoqyGLym_MA45QNa5KmRtMtON5Mp9xFjzacZBTQQ/s200/somelikehot.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;" width="131" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I reviewed this book <a href="http://regional-food.blogspot.com/2007/04/book-review-why-some-like-it-hot.html">here</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="line-height: 1.5;">As do Coe and Nabhan, authors interested in cuisine trace influences on food preparations such as the use of spice blends in East Asian, Middle Eastern, North African, Spanish, and later Mexican cooking (which I mentioned in an earlier post). They explore how taste and familiarity of species determined which plants or animals were readily integrated into regional concepts of food, such as the rapid acceptance of corn or the reluctant acceptance of tomatoes. </span><br /><span style="line-height: 1.5;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 1.5;">An important element of several essays in <i>Chilies to Chocolate</i> is to show how diners and cooks at various points in history believed that foods should be cooked, presented, and eaten and thus what new foods could fit into their view. For example, n</span><span style="line-height: 1.5;">ew world chile peppers satisfied the original explorers' quest for spicy flavor, so they spread very readily as an addition to familiar cuisines in the old world. The nutritional value of the potato was obvious to some Europeans, but its unfamiliarity and ugly appearance made its spread difficult at first -- then of course it became too common in some places, notoriously in Ireland. Tomatoes and to some extent avocados now appear in virtually all produce markets worldwide, but required still longer to be accepted as part of European/American cuisine.</span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-BOJtOvqj3BAzcjVjsSrr9m3w1Ta5eBhxFHCLXPAqPkTXeVs159Yntj6FCyZAGcjohnQ60qSW4P3xGPknF_tfk24VLbhhMoTN6KWc1ak8tFLfGhPOIhs5giOHSC4SO7h9JjziK0yyKnLh/s1600/potato+eaters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-BOJtOvqj3BAzcjVjsSrr9m3w1Ta5eBhxFHCLXPAqPkTXeVs159Yntj6FCyZAGcjohnQ60qSW4P3xGPknF_tfk24VLbhhMoTN6KWc1ak8tFLfGhPOIhs5giOHSC4SO7h9JjziK0yyKnLh/s320/potato+eaters.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Van Gogh "The Potato Eaters" <br />Native American food that became a European staple</td></tr></tbody></table>Staple new world foods, such as the potato and corn, rapidly made major changes in the diets of Europe, Africa, and Asia; by the sixteenth to eighteenth century these became standard in cuisines of Europe or the totally Europeanized American settlements. New world beans evidently spread readily but silently, joining the few bean species that existed in Europe so effectively that their origin had to be rediscovered in the 19th century.<br /><br /><span style="line-height: 1.5;">Some exotic foods from the new world actually changed European tastes rather than moving into a niche in what was already being cooked. Vanilla, chocolate, and pineapple were like nothing in existing old world cuisine. The latter was very slowly accepted in Europe, first grown in royal hothouses as illustrated above; eventually becoming a curiosity and then a luxury food, but never a staple and never integrated the way that corn, chiles, or potatoes were.</span><br /><br />Agriculturally oriented writers ask, how could new world species be cultivated in the old world? As with acceptance into European or Asian diets, adaptability of plants for old world agriculture varied. Potatoes, native to the high Andes, turned out to be extremely flexible; the potato, with its many varieties, adapted to many climates. Chiles and corn could adapt to a range of temperature, day-length, and rainfall and now grow in places as diverse as India and Michigan. Chocolate now grows in many tropical climates while vanilla is extremely picky about the latitude where it grows and needs special insect pollinators. Finding new places to cultivate vanilla was difficult, though most of the world's supply of vanilla today grows in the old world, not in Mexico. Early horticultural interest in the pineapple, which I perversely think of as Hawaiian, was to see who could get it to grow fruit in a greenhouse: not a sign that it would go native in England! (<i>Chilies to Chocolate</i> p. 35 and p. 4)<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixY4CFJ-IkhBgTeQ0LeUxfTSUhMYuvQ_Kj64Jw3lqVsj8HIZt3_h4SMQFynTLIoCU_wWsegifh-FKep7TyDDxmHkZoPlm_dkboxYQh1THw13JSdiQUGs1XXRSGjhLl0USYfZ6af_BtqvtQ/s1600/sugar-factory-West-Indies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixY4CFJ-IkhBgTeQ0LeUxfTSUhMYuvQ_Kj64Jw3lqVsj8HIZt3_h4SMQFynTLIoCU_wWsegifh-FKep7TyDDxmHkZoPlm_dkboxYQh1THw13JSdiQUGs1XXRSGjhLl0USYfZ6af_BtqvtQ/s640/sugar-factory-West-Indies.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early West-Indian sugar mill -- old-world crop, new world resources, African slave labor (<a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Sugar-Masters-in-a-New-World.html#">Smithsonian</a>, no artist named)</td></tr></tbody></table>The same questions of cuisine and agriculture concern writers who look at the introduction of old world foods into Mexico and other parts of the Spanish new world. Dunmire's <i>Gardens of New Spain </i> provides detailed documentation of each conquest, exploration, or colonizing move, and the plants that were introduced. He includes complete lists and descriptions of the transported plants, and mentions imported livestock and how the Spaniards introduced them to New Spain.</div><br />Rather than representing an interest in the new or the exotic, plants and animals that were brought to the Americas often represented European colonists' effort to preserve their former food ways; for example, the introduction of pigs, fruit trees, or wheat. Some introductions were motivated by desire to produce exports for the European market, like sugarcane.<br /><br />A few old world plants like bananas and watermelons were immediately popular with the native population. Their cultivation resembled already existing species (watermelons can be cultivated in the same way as new world squashes). So they spread seamlessly, eventually seeming to be native to the Americas, Dunmire points out. Other writers, Nabhan, especially, stress how the remarkable variety of plant species in the Americas, and biodiversity at all levels down to individual farms and fields, was negatively disrupted by the introduction of European plants and growing methods.<br /><br />European colonists actually spread some of the foods of Mexico and South America into North America, Dunmire shows. For example, Spanish settlers (along with many Indian and mestizo family members or employees) pushed quickly into New Mexico, later to California and Texas. These colonists not only brought with them European animals and plants but also such Mexican foods as chiles. Potato cultivation on the east coast of North America was introduced by Europeans as well.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJsHBqwNe-AOTf6gfx8UqFCY6WwYk3S_pzG8Kl4vch2iG7RIh-sqOm6Ull9YrmAukkkfN1CjhYhfKSwsfhdVpNs9dUBmijGwPGbav6H2_svmPOcsvdG6h5zWopLZKuNcTDFxLAGFO0Ah9n/s1600/rivera-maize-festival-1924.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJsHBqwNe-AOTf6gfx8UqFCY6WwYk3S_pzG8Kl4vch2iG7RIh-sqOm6Ull9YrmAukkkfN1CjhYhfKSwsfhdVpNs9dUBmijGwPGbav6H2_svmPOcsvdG6h5zWopLZKuNcTDFxLAGFO0Ah9n/s640/rivera-maize-festival-1924.jpg" width="364" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Diego Rivera, "The Maize Festival" (Wiki Paintings)</td></tr></tbody></table>Books books books! An important work on the relationship of new and old world food is Crosby's <i>The Columbian Exchange</i>, first published in 1973, which I mentioned above. Many very specific books cover parts of the topic: just on the potato, for example, one can read <i>The History and Social Influence of the Potato</i> by Redcliffe N. Salaman; <i>Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent</i> by John Reader;  <i>Potato: A Global History </i>by Andrew F Smith; and <i>The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World</i> by Larry Zuckerman. PLUS books about the Irish potato famine and other potato topics. Not to mention incidental information in huge numbers of cookbooks, many of which are dedicated to just potato recipes and lore. Similarly for chile peppers, chocolate, and tomatoes -- you can read about, say, the tomato's history in America or in Italy or else Barry Estabrook's political story of just our time,<i> Tomatoland.</i> I could go on and on.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipK2buADilOLoFOwwUJTfuebh4I9HdG6ZYvkdf3wTzPnNfFq_7k0wYzMOcROpMfJgvS7oVAfP37MKedufS-DuO8XShgPCv6uFaxEyXzRyQBNJwGGgzANoZ-evx7r3a94Mrj8XYsmkIYIfO/s1600/Chocolate_girl-liotard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipK2buADilOLoFOwwUJTfuebh4I9HdG6ZYvkdf3wTzPnNfFq_7k0wYzMOcROpMfJgvS7oVAfP37MKedufS-DuO8XShgPCv6uFaxEyXzRyQBNJwGGgzANoZ-evx7r3a94Mrj8XYsmkIYIfO/s640/Chocolate_girl-liotard.jpg" width="379" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean-Étienne Liotard, "The Chocolate Girl," 1745<br />One more artist's illustration of new-world food's success in Europe.</td></tr></tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZn1aLnB0XT5I2VkvrAD4L7h69cb1ujLSRtEe7QQUkWc-JRQSGGEEYbpnk5FGzuz_VLxq9WD9g3ZLwyg4VheERVSRhrjYJ8plGpIdq60i2dyVlJRor1ac7F8L_fAEbC2tOCizYEJTMw2my/s1600/herbal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZn1aLnB0XT5I2VkvrAD4L7h69cb1ujLSRtEe7QQUkWc-JRQSGGEEYbpnk5FGzuz_VLxq9WD9g3ZLwyg4VheERVSRhrjYJ8plGpIdq60i2dyVlJRor1ac7F8L_fAEbC2tOCizYEJTMw2my/s320/herbal.jpg" width="198" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">17th Century Herbal<br /><div><br /></div></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Finally, an early group of interesting sources of information on food plants, which I often hear about in secondary sources, is Renaissance herbals, early cookbooks, and early books on medicinal plants. These were written before the current distinction between foods and drugs became firm, so the food and medicine could be handled as a single topic, but their combined interest in botany, agriculture, and cooking vastly predates the books I'm discussing.<br /><br />

Agriculture and cuisine: different subjects or the same?

Hendrick Danckerts: "Royal Gardener John Rose Presenting a Pineapple to King Charles II," 1675 (Wikimedia) I've been reading a...

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17.05

Following a Clove

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHFAHfgcBgxB9WGP0SFmcVoPfu9qjS_2eJsnh1cDElJ8-vJT2mY-5kRdKmMhGIu7TYe9oKhJ0ramAou3oQArvqYcMuXyCovEp5DQufkRAZzmYqy9tY1zrPpmIEGVBnizZgR-yEOcd0VJJd/s1600/wikimedia-cloves-color.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHFAHfgcBgxB9WGP0SFmcVoPfu9qjS_2eJsnh1cDElJ8-vJT2mY-5kRdKmMhGIu7TYe9oKhJ0ramAou3oQArvqYcMuXyCovEp5DQufkRAZzmYqy9tY1zrPpmIEGVBnizZgR-yEOcd0VJJd/s400/wikimedia-cloves-color.jpg" width="306" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Syzygium aromaticum</i>, the clove plant</td></tr></tbody></table>Cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, ginger, cumin, nutmeg -- spices from the east -- once sold for enormous prices; possession and use of spices was a status symbol for medieval men and women who could afford them. From ancient times Europeans imported Asian spice via land and water. Prior to the fifteenth century Europeans had little or no idea of where these spices grew or what kind of plants and climates produced them.<br /><br />"Spices as a link to Paradise, and the vision of Paradise as a real place somewhere in the East ... fascinated the medieval imagination," wrote Wolfgang Schivelbusch in <i>Tastes of Paradise</i>. "The exorbitant price of spices ... further enhanced this fascination." (p. 6)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK1eYZA77gMA9HbtCPpZS4rGrGZwr5SnNlAvLxgSzk5wnzRZFLytgjR999fXoqzkUn4Fyx8ROEUXImSOV7-jSvRQC3FDTLWbu6U7fphCHFkIkKHpI9g3VaeC8URfKQC2hY_ZnlbMvM7U2I/s1600/Mauritius_-_Detail_uit_Het_uitzeilen_van_een_aantal_Oost-Indie%CC%88vaarders_van_Hendrick_Cornelisz_Vroom_(1600).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK1eYZA77gMA9HbtCPpZS4rGrGZwr5SnNlAvLxgSzk5wnzRZFLytgjR999fXoqzkUn4Fyx8ROEUXImSOV7-jSvRQC3FDTLWbu6U7fphCHFkIkKHpI9g3VaeC8URfKQC2hY_ZnlbMvM7U2I/s320/Mauritius_-_Detail_uit_Het_uitzeilen_van_een_aantal_Oost-Indie%CC%88vaarders_van_Hendrick_Cornelisz_Vroom_(1600).jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom, Dutch Galleon, 1600-1630</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>During the fifteenth century, European voyagers took a more practical view of the spice trade. They sought new routes to the far east, hoping through conquest and discovery to control trade in spice and other goods, especially gold and silver. As the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch competed to monopolize the spice trade, there was a crossover point where spices were no longer the food of paradise, but became a mundane, though highly valuable, luxury commodity.<br /><br />Columbus provided Spain with a vast new territory. Magellan showed a new way to get to the supplies of spice. Portuguese voyagers of that era, having found a route around Africa, explored Southeast Asia, discovering that cloves and pepper grew only in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands. Cinnamon trees grew more widely, including in Ceylon and the Philippines.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMnjgWpDnj_ZTdV2KlSn80DrWtFgcTlR-oAEJTgsQBqTnIcp4YgEFF4-x6vkXtHx5F_UoFwRsATfLO4LGpAOyvJkK_WqBs4GlMCvdAplsE5MhIYdOQRwbIbmDieIPFdmsHh1EJe8ti8lU/s1600/magellanship.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMnjgWpDnj_ZTdV2KlSn80DrWtFgcTlR-oAEJTgsQBqTnIcp4YgEFF4-x6vkXtHx5F_UoFwRsATfLO4LGpAOyvJkK_WqBs4GlMCvdAplsE5MhIYdOQRwbIbmDieIPFdmsHh1EJe8ti8lU/s320/magellanship.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Magellan's Ship</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">By the mid-1500s, Spain had colonized the Caribbean, Mexico, and parts of South America. Vast quantities of silver from mines in Peru were being minted into pieces of eight -- the new money supply was already changing the economies of the Old World. They transported silver from the now-Spanish mines by ship to the isthmus of Panama, across to a Caribbean port, and then to Spain where they could, among other things, buy spices from the long-established spice trade.<br /><br />Spain also wanted better access to the products of the far east, but the Dutch and Portuguese dominated trade routes for Southeast Asia, especially the Moluccas. Further, the Spanish settlements in the New World were full of newly-rich Spaniards who wanted the luxuries of East Asia.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgunE9sXI8DflpyM8qk56IN-LIrCpsXW8PsFHdgC9okQX8II21aRVXdwvzNsjVsozB0YQdLU5vuXmIfdhS6TYV0zDI0YSior44ghtFNPv5airwi8bci7PJD8rQgPRqEbbr6e_y2-IRYLaAA/s1600/Urdaneta-wikimedia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgunE9sXI8DflpyM8qk56IN-LIrCpsXW8PsFHdgC9okQX8II21aRVXdwvzNsjVsozB0YQdLU5vuXmIfdhS6TYV0zDI0YSior44ghtFNPv5airwi8bci7PJD8rQgPRqEbbr6e_y2-IRYLaAA/s1600/Urdaneta-wikimedia.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Andrés de Urdaneta</td></tr></tbody></table>In 1565 a navigator named Urdaneta achieved the goal of finding a reliable sailing route for trade from the far east to the colonies of Mexico. Westward winds had blown Magellan and others across the Pacific towards Asia. As hoped by the Spanish authorities who sent him, Urdaneta established a manageable eastward route. This crossing was long and difficult, as the winds from Asia to the Americas required ships to sail far to the north, arriving at the location of the current California town of Mendocino. Here, at the time, no Europeans had explored.<br /><br />At Urdaneta's suggestion,  a regular shipping route was established between Manila, the Spanish colony in the far east, and Acapulco, which he considered the best port on Mexico's west coast. Large and very seaworthy Spanish galleons were  built to make the annual voyage. <i>The Manila Galleon</i> by William Lytle Schurz, first published 1939, documents the story of these galleons. They began their regular route across the Pacific shortly after Urdaneta's discovery and continued until early in the 19th century. In my story that follows, a small bag of cloves begins in the spice orchards of the Molucca islands, I have used details from Schurz's book, especially concentrating on the situation as it was in the early 1600s.<br /><br />Imagine how, in the early 1600s, a clove tree in the Molucca Islands produced its crop of dried flower buds. Workers gathered these valuable spices -- which at that time grew nowhere but this obscure set of islands. Small sacks or bundles of cloves were packed in chests and put on small trading boats heading in several directions. Peppercorns and nutmeg along with the cloves probably gave an irresistible aroma to the inside of the sea chest, but it had to be shipped onwards; no treats for the workers!<br /><br />Once the cloves were packed and laded, the boats delivered their cargo to Manila, then a trading port in the recently acquired Spanish colony of the Philippines, named for the Spanish King Philip. In the harbor also would have been junks from China and Formosa, as it was then called, bringing silks and Ming porcelains for the Spanish trade. Ming China made much use of the Spanish pieces of eight in their commerce, thanks to this trade. Other trading ships delivered cotton cloth from India and other goods from Ceylon, Siam, and Indo-China, as it was then called. Slaves, especially women, were another element of the cargo of the ship, as well as passengers with commercial or government business in the Spanish Empire.<br /><br />Urdaneta's route had been established for an annual trade in order to consolidate the riches of the East and deliver them across the oceans. Spaniards posted to the new colony of Manila organized goods to be loaded on the scarce and much-desired space in the Galleons. Many individuals had the right to ship one or several chests of goods. The Chinese traders knew how to fill each chest so tightly that more silks could fit than anyone thought possible -- the chests were much heavier than those the Spaniards packed for themselves. And among these goods were the little packet of cloves that had been harvested in the Moluccas.<br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwIT66FbXpUALOxzul4JRin7K-uBep4G4SMly_EVj3bF7C52OJu5HfQvlSeom8RwTuNVvVX-YT1yTS0Yyp_DcFCWnWeRuxfdQl0Dz1-RdRulB89LkDzRxOoczBJtyxLDcywjnRcIHyRiwG/s1600/Spanish_Galleon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwIT66FbXpUALOxzul4JRin7K-uBep4G4SMly_EVj3bF7C52OJu5HfQvlSeom8RwTuNVvVX-YT1yTS0Yyp_DcFCWnWeRuxfdQl0Dz1-RdRulB89LkDzRxOoczBJtyxLDcywjnRcIHyRiwG/s320/Spanish_Galleon.jpg" width="233" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spanish Galleon</td></tr></tbody></table>The longest part of the voyage for the little packet of cloves was from Manila to Mexico. Though the ship's hold contained the most expensive of foodstuffs, spices, the sailors and passengers often came close to starvation -- scurvy affected them on almost every voyage. The authorities knew how much food was needed, but the merchants often arranged to replace the ship's supplies and backup equipment with more money-making cargo. Some ships were lost thanks to such behavior. English and Dutch pirates were also a threat to ships along the west coast of Mexico and Central America, though their interest was more focused on silver and other treasure than on spice.<br /><br />Like Manila, Acapulco was a major transshipment port where the cargo from the galleons was redistributed and sent onward towards Panama, Mexico City, and eventually across the Caribbean to Spain. When the ship arrived, the first people to board were clandestine boatmen in the dead of night; they took the undeclared cargo that was forbidden or that was avoiding the customs agents. These agents were the next to board, and they checked each chest -- though they didn't look inside, and often the contents were more than declared.<br /><br />After the officials did their work, they sent word to Mexico City: the ship could be unloaded, and trading was open. Merchants and traders quickly made their way to Acapulco for the huge fair that vastly increased the population of the otherwise rather dull and uneventful port. Traders from Peru offered silver, often outbidding the Mexican merchants.  Mixed-race local Acapulco residents did their best to participate in the buying and selling, then carrying their purchases onward to Puebla, Oxhaca, or mainly to Mexico City. Many of the dealers were purchasing goods to be sent onward to Spain. Mules carried the sea chests across Mexico to Vera Cruz and then onward across the Atlantic. Of course the ship had to return to Manila -- for the return voyage it was loaded with silver pieces of eight from the mines of Peru, chocolate from Mexico, and a small number of other commodities for the Eastern trade.<br /><br />The Spaniards who ruled Mexico always wanted to buy their share of the rich cargo. Richer people wore the silks and jewels from China; poorer workers wore the plain cotton from India. Chinese dishes and vases decorated tables and homes of wealthy Spaniards. The little packet of cloves, along with many other spices, could have been purchased by one of the locals for consumption in Mexico. Spaniards in Mexico had quickly adopted the new flavors of the New World: allspice, chile peppers, chocolate, vanilla, and combinations of old and new emerged. The chocolate beverages of Aztec nobles tasted good with cinnamon. Medieval spice blends of pepper, cloves, and nutmeg went well with new world turkey. (For more on these influences, see <i>Gran Cocina Latina </i>by Maricel E. Presilla and "<a href="http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200403/the.mexican.kitchen.s.islamic.connection.htm">The Mexican Kitchen's Islamic Connection</a>" by Rachel Lauden.)<br /><br />Spice blending traditions had come to Spain with the Arab conquest, as they had come to Europe with Crusaders who tasted Arab food in Jerusalem. Now the spices were coming across the Pacific directly to the New World rather than through the Arab world that had always handled them on the way to European tables.<br /><br />The legend of the nuns of Puebla who "invented" Mole Poblano, reflects the old-world traditions and new-world luxury, using both chocolate and old-world spice. Thoughtful food writers, such as Maricel E. Presilla in <i>Gran Cocina Latina</i>, however, give no credibility to the idea that these nuns invented the dish because they had nothing else to cook for a visiting bishop. The town of Puebla was definitely a consumer of luxury foods including spices from the East and the best their local sources could supply. Perhaps the little packet of cloves from the Galleon ended up in a convent where the nuns created a spice blend that reflected the traditions of Islamic Spain and Aztec nobility.<br /><br />A particular group of Spanish inhabitants of Mexico were the New Christians; that is, descendants of Jews who had chosen conversion in 1492 instead of the other alternatives: exile from Spain or death. Persecuted unmercifully by the Inquisition, many of these eventually chose another type of exile in the New World, living as less and less well-informed secret Jews, and still watched carefully by Mexican immigrant inquisitors who looked for signs of reversion to their ancestral religion.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8vlAjA7C_QSQvK2vcuFO8KPkyVuX_daZJmj4WrjyV9Q11OWxV0dyzkpWSdmv6gnimBYjVQdmLf3VKH9e0YQsrTCWpSpks6TAUxvuAENxXy3mU2_BPS0hUC44fXIp1ROUfBdnC6OuxRPat/s1600/drizzle-of-honey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8vlAjA7C_QSQvK2vcuFO8KPkyVuX_daZJmj4WrjyV9Q11OWxV0dyzkpWSdmv6gnimBYjVQdmLf3VKH9e0YQsrTCWpSpks6TAUxvuAENxXy3mU2_BPS0hUC44fXIp1ROUfBdnC6OuxRPat/s320/drizzle-of-honey.jpg" width="257" /></a></div>The cuisine of secret Jews in Mexico and Spain attempted to reflect as much of Jewish tradition as they could remember -- and as much as they could include without immediate arrest. <i>A Drizzle of Honey: the Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews</i> by David Gitlitz and Linda Davidson transforms Inquisition testimony about the guilty food choices of accused secret Jews into recipes that can be followed in a modern kitchen. I looked into this book for some possible food preparations in which the cloves that traveled from the Moluccas to Manila and across the Pacific might have ended up.<br /><br /><i>Alfajores</i>, a small almond cookie, "are inescapably one of the Andalucian Islamic contributions to Iberian cuisine," writes Gitlitz." Sixteenth century alfajores (which differ from the modern version) were a popular treat among new-Christians in Mexico in the early seventeenth century." A dough of almonds, walnuts, sesame seeds, honey, bread crumbs and eggs was flavored with cinnamon and cloves; teaspon-sized balls of dough, optionally dusted with more cinnamon, were baked into chewy cookies. (p. 275-276)<br /><br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Note: illustrations (except book cover) are from Wikimedia Commons</span></i><br /><br /><br /></div>