Food city area

Aromas of the day

Aromas of the day

Warsaw Farmers Market: Herbs Dill: the whole farmer's market smelled like dill, and it flavors much of the food we have eaten The other ...

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07.59

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbSy8MfrpBflZisLovrJKuK2e802WuetvH0Z_LsiTOXU2HFNfiWAbdExqJ4EpfzHQ25StR1l81revoV_j0iVCFb_XCspSZ7cz5bmTDqTY8zSdZKvnTl4tBP6969h7QZkBQkZ7-g0eH4HRP/s1600/soupdumplings4132.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="355" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbSy8MfrpBflZisLovrJKuK2e802WuetvH0Z_LsiTOXU2HFNfiWAbdExqJ4EpfzHQ25StR1l81revoV_j0iVCFb_XCspSZ7cz5bmTDqTY8zSdZKvnTl4tBP6969h7QZkBQkZ7-g0eH4HRP/s640/soupdumplings4132.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Yesterday I walked around Old Warsaw (<a href="http://maetravels.blogspot.com/2013/10/old-warsaw.html">see this</a>) and ate lunch in a very picturesque restaurant. I tried the beetroot soup with "ravioli" -- I would have called them dumplings. Also a salad. Very delicious. I have also eaten pirogies. Last night, Len's small conference hosted dinner at a castle owned by the Polish Academy of Science -- one of the several courses was a broth with dumplings -- so lots of dumplings here. It may be several days before I manage to post photos from that.<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/AVvXsEiumWH-kMp8IK5YbjTehE3Y4kAm9x73iHjs_NaTG2GB-ocSK4pYiFO-7Q3Nnh5KAAsn63KoS6YuOunM2gRi8FRfbZ4WzhwE7MLcd_m6gtk9Lwr7pCzCg5SWdFty-Igbe4ijvFWpt7p5swrC/s1600/soupdumplings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumWH-kMp8IK5YbjTehE3Y4kAm9x73iHjs_NaTG2GB-ocSK4pYiFO-7Q3Nnh5KAAsn63KoS6YuOunM2gRi8FRfbZ4WzhwE7MLcd_m6gtk9Lwr7pCzCg5SWdFty-Igbe4ijvFWpt7p5swrC/s320/soupdumplings.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beetroot soup with "ravioli"</td></tr></tbody></table><br />

Lunch in Old Warsaw

Yesterday I walked around Old Warsaw ( see this ) and ate lunch in a very picturesque restaurant. I tried the beetroot soup with "ravio...

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22.29

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

Comments

Comments

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

<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/AVvXsEjD0ZHIzhfmHJjhUo091ajylQr7a8-Bz5poy_qYQgv8QypvdIjK8UMSn74nylPUF3GbsvUsnnGbNdAC0gkYqCdFWReCmgIPT1lbCtYOCxG34k5JMyTSu74gg4ffj1lcjJL87ehOEj0TZfNk/s1600/AnyaVonBremzen.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/AVvXsEjD0ZHIzhfmHJjhUo091ajylQr7a8-Bz5poy_qYQgv8QypvdIjK8UMSn74nylPUF3GbsvUsnnGbNdAC0gkYqCdFWReCmgIPT1lbCtYOCxG34k5JMyTSu74gg4ffj1lcjJL87ehOEj0TZfNk/s320/AnyaVonBremzen.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I read the Kindle edition,<br />so I never actually <br />saw this dust jacket.</td></tr></tbody></table>In <i>Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing, </i>Anya Von Bremzen compresses the last 100 years of Russian history into a few representative meals. Tales of eating are punctuated by descriptions of several eras of scarcity and outright famines.<br /><br />Unlike childhood memories in the majority of food memoirs, the most vivid memories of this book were not of tastes that the writer experienced, but rather of dishes from literature and news reports that she and her family only imagined. If their pizza was a miserable piece of bread “smothered in ketchup and gratings of Sovetsky cheese” they imagined the original from their contraband copy of <i>Family Circle</i>. (p. 134)  <br /><br />One huge irony of life for all the decades of Soviet history was how the communist leaders were eating incredible luxury food while the poor starved. The disasters of harvests ruined by foolish policies and the war years were the extremes, but there are many other examples. Soviet candy, for example, came in two identically packaged versions made by the Red October Chocolate Factory. Candy that you bought (sometimes, if you waited in line) in ordinary stores was vastly inferior to the same brands sold in stores for communist <i>nomenklatura</i>. (p. 172)<br /><br />Even the title "Mastering the Art..." of something that wasn't much of an art, but mainly the act of a desperate person, is ironic, riffing on the Julia Child title.<br /><br /><table align="center" 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/AVvXsEgbZNJxkis35la4KBw0CzcEIF-jCiaboyA-lePGWYkWtWT-wUL1gUY34jhutL4j62RkiZ5SUWWwDbKvxUPDtoRvB0_xCpRAhzzuyuYXY4V92jJ-9UpyTBMkvnJUZOqdaN3cd4ftTeYUAJO3/s1600/cosco-madeleines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbZNJxkis35la4KBw0CzcEIF-jCiaboyA-lePGWYkWtWT-wUL1gUY34jhutL4j62RkiZ5SUWWwDbKvxUPDtoRvB0_xCpRAhzzuyuYXY4V92jJ-9UpyTBMkvnJUZOqdaN3cd4ftTeYUAJO3/s200/cosco-madeleines.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thinking of my own madeleines from<br />Costco: not Anya's poisoned madeleines,<br />not the cliche of  many other writers,<br />and also not quite like in France.</td></tr></tbody></table>Cliches from food memoirs here take on new twists, made ironic by hunger and longing. Proust’s madeleine memory has been used so often that many writers' references to it hardly use the actual source. Von Bremzen doesn’t bother too much with the original – she calls her own preface “Poisoned Madeleines.” She uses this term to capture the “epic disjunction” and “unruly collision of collectivist myths and antimyths” of her Soviet childhood (from birth in 1963 to emigration in 1974) and the life of her mother who was born in 1934. Through irony the author consistently dodges any sort of self-pity or whining.<o:p></o:p><br /><br />She also refers specifically to rather formula-driven Russian emigre memoirs: "My First Supermarket Experience was the anchoring narrative of the great Soviet epic of immigration to America. Some escapees from our socialist <i>defitsit</i> society actually swooned to the floor (usually in the aisle with toilet paper)." The author relates various amusing first-supermarket experiences of the Russians she knew, wrapping up. "Mom ... roamed Pathmark's acres with childlike glee. 'She-ree-ohs ... Ri-seh-rohnee ... Vel. Vee. Tah ... " She murmured these alien names as if they had been concocted by Proust, lovingly prodding and handling all the foodstuffs in their bright packaging, their promiscuous throwaway <i>tara [i.e. packaging and receptacles, of which there had been a shortage in Russia]</i>."(p. 199)<br /><br />Her discussions of Soviet-era "Provansal" style mayonnaise and the jars (<i>tara</i>) that it came in are priceless: "If, as Dostoyevsky supposedly said, all Russian literature comes out of Gogol's story 'The Overcoat,' then what Gogol's garment was to nineteenth-century Russian culture, the Provansal mayonnaise jar was to the domestic practices of Mature Socialism." (p. 183)<br /><br />Of course she also discusses that other cliche of Soviet mayonnaise memories: Salad Oliver, which can never be understood in America because it features not only mayo but also canned peas. "A precious heirloom of our non-idyllic socialist pasts, the Olivier recipe gets pulled out from the memory drawer to commemorate a particular moment in life." (p. 176)<br /><div class="separator" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; clear: both; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: center; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: left; font-family: Times; letter-spacing: normal; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-right: 1em; orphans: auto; padding: 6px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNbYCXLAuL1xwnRXgClTEqX6pW8OrfPiyErrpDWnyYix-mYZSr-d0_e1fbPOZxYWjjcf8qRKu9MxvKhYms4PWQEy_9R_tfI4LpbngGdUv7A_CxaYncuU0eXGUPKuctZ4Viuex3f9-FMZ5v/s1600/malevich-still-life.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNbYCXLAuL1xwnRXgClTEqX6pW8OrfPiyErrpDWnyYix-mYZSr-d0_e1fbPOZxYWjjcf8qRKu9MxvKhYms4PWQEy_9R_tfI4LpbngGdUv7A_CxaYncuU0eXGUPKuctZ4Viuex3f9-FMZ5v/s320/malevich-still-life.jpg" width="298" /></a> </td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">A still life by Casimir Malevich: Von Bremzen names<br />him as one of the cultural contributors to Soviet Russian<br />life in the 1920s.<br />The author's cultural and social descriptions<br />add to the liveliness of the book.</td></tr></tbody></table>Von Bremzen uses her own memories of food and events as well as her mother’s memories and political opinions along with impressive historical detail characterizing each decade of the past century starting in 1910. She uses the experiences of her relatives,  such as her grandfather who was a spy during World War II and her father whose job for many years was as a member of a huge lab responsible for constantly restoring or re-embalming the corpse of Lenin.<br /><br />Because her mother's family were Jewish and her father's family not, the book encompasses both Jewish and non-Jewish Russian experiences -- including some of course ironic (of course) remarks about gefilte fish. In this respect I can also relate the stories to those of several Russian emigre families I have known.<br /><br />I learned an amazing amount of history from reading this book. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that this book made somewhat familiar history come alive for me, by linking to the many personal stories of Anya Von Bremzen's family, her conflicted feeling about Soviet heros like Stalin and Lenin, and her adventures in returning to the disintegrating Soviet Union and its successors several times in the 80s, 90s, and 00s.<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/AVvXsEhMi78cxQ3K9f3sGR69KVUh7EfHef7X0AEmi4mItSFYzUQ8S30OpCTbHbsdPISuufQAfs___Bd2sOisfmVR2g42PRgb0i5VNxZ1VuwnHw2e04iqasK9VA53UfCzw3ZoYdOnGvkIG-CxbP7d/s1600/anya-blini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMi78cxQ3K9f3sGR69KVUh7EfHef7X0AEmi4mItSFYzUQ8S30OpCTbHbsdPISuufQAfs___Bd2sOisfmVR2g42PRgb0i5VNxZ1VuwnHw2e04iqasK9VA53UfCzw3ZoYdOnGvkIG-CxbP7d/s640/anya-blini.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Von Bremzen has had a long career writing cookbooks, magazine articles, and<br />published recipes, such as this one from <i>Food and Wine. </i><br />Her first cookbook, an enormous tome titled<i> Please to the Table, </i>appeared around 20 years ago.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />

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 />

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