Archives

Boeuf Gras, or, Fat Bull = Fat Tuesday

March 3, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In 2011, the event takes place on March 3, thanks to a personal message from the Office of Tourism in Bazas. The day before Lent descends. With a litany of names. Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. Boeuf Gras. Shrove Tuesday.* Boeuf Gras? Symbol of the fattened ox, the last meat devoured before Lenten stringency took hold. With roots in the Minotaur and Labyrinth myth. What really drove the Lenten fast? And how did Boeuf Gras begin? During the Middle Ages, and […]

Categories: Festivals, French Cooking • Tags: Boeuf Gras, Bugnes, Carnival, Cooking, Fat Tuesday, Food, Lent, Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday

Russia Ivan_the_Terrible_begs_to_become_a_Monk

From Mother Russia with Love: The Domostroi

March 29, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Cabbage soup and gruel are our food. (Shchi da kasha, pishche nashe.) ~~Russian peasant proverb Trying to ferret out tidbits about Russian food history can be tough going. Aside from the language barrier, anyone interested in Russian culinary history suffers from a major weakness: there is a terrible lack of written material contemporaneous with Forme of Cury and other such books found in the Western culinary history lexicon.* Happily, however, there’s Carolyn Johnston Pouncy’s translation of the sixteenth-century Russian household […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Lent, Methods, Reference, Russia • Tags: Carolyn Johnston Pouncy, Domostroi, Ivan the Terrible, Lent, Russia

From Mother Russia with Love: A Fish in Every Pie

March 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The kulebyaka should be appetizing, shameless in its nakedness, a temptation to sin. ~~ Anton Chekov, “The Siren” Fish dishes abound in Russian cuisine, in large part because of the Russian Orthodox Church’s strict rules on fasting during Lent other times of the year. But we cannot ignore the simple fact that fish thrive in the thousands of rivers and lakes crisscrossing the face of that immense land mass, bordered by twelve seas. Again we see the impact not only […]

Categories: Fish, Menus, Pies--Savory, Russia • Tags: Cooking, Fast days, Fish, Kulebyaka, Lent, Pies, Russia, Sturgeon, Vesiga

From Mother Russia with Love: Meaty Mushrooms and Relentless Lent

March 25, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit’ po gribi (looking for mushrooms). Fried in butter and thickened with sour cream her delicious finds appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was in the quest. ~~ Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory Nabokov hits on something many of us reading his words cannot really sense, cannot really feel. For those of us who grew up on canned […]

Categories: Beef, Cookbooks, Cooking, Lent, Mushrooms, Russia • Tags: Beef Stroganoff, Classic Russian Cooking: A Gift to Young Housewives, Cookbooks, Cooks, Elena Molokhovets, Joyce Toomre, Lent, Mushrooms, Recipes, Russia, Vladimir Nabokov

From Mother Russia with Love: A Monster of a Stove and Tolokno

March 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

You can’t cook porridge with a fool. ~~ Russian Proverb ~~ An example of Russian Lenten food, tolokno or oat flour with liquid, demonstrates the use of the astonishing Russian stove. Streamlined in the 15th century, the Russian stove incarnates the old adage, “The kitchen is the heart of the home.” Much of Russian peasant folk culture and ritual derives from these massive stoves. Taking up anywhere from a fifth to a quarter of the living space in a peasant […]

Categories: Lent, Oats, Russia • Tags: Lent, Oats, Russia, Russian stoves, Tolokno

Cooking Fish — Let Us Count the World’s Ways: Asia 1

March 11, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In Asia, cooking fish presents no problem to thousands of ingenious cooks. The abundance of fish and the surfeit of ingredients ensures that fish cookery scales heights far beyond scorched fish fingers, dried-out fillets, and mushy tuna-noodle casserole.

Categories: Asia, Asian Cooking, Cooking, Lent • Tags: Asia, Asian Cooking, Fish, Lent

Idylls of Cuisine, #53

March 7, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Italy, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Lent, Rialto fish market, Venice

Mrs. Sherman G. Bonney on Lent and Fish

March 5, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Lent used to be a far more widespread concept in American society than one might think. As Mark Kurlansky made clear in his book, Cod: A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World (1997), cod overfishing led to some radical changes, including Canada’s moratorium on cod fishing in 1992. Dan Murphy of Dunville, Newfoundland created a folk art protest of this state of affairs. But just to show you how prevalent fish eating was in the U.S., here’s some […]

Categories: Fish, Lent • Tags: Fish, Good Housekeeping, Lent

A Bloody Fish Story

March 2, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The price of fish is something nice — for fishmongers through the centuries, that is. And over the years, observers noted the rise and fall in the cost of fish according to the liturgical season and changes in the rules of the Roman Catholic Church.* Because of the price of fish, or even the mere existence of fish in an otherwise protein-scarce environment, people utilized every bit of the fish in the same way they used the carcasses of pigs […]

Categories: Cooking, England, English Cooking, Fish, Lent • Tags: Blood-thickened sauces, Chaudron sauce, Chawdon sauce, Chawdron sauce, English cookery, Fish, Forme of Cury, Lent, Medieval Cookery, Samuel Pegge

Idylls of Cuisine, #52

February 28, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.] *I usually don’t write anything for these “picture-only” posts, but I encourage readers to check out the “Shelf Life” Web site, because of the clever commentary on packaged foods and retro food-product ads. A column, “Shelf Life,” appears monthly in the National Toronto Post as well.

Categories: Art, Lent, Photography • Tags: Food Photography, Lent, Mayonnaise, Miracle Whip, Recipes

A soufflé looking like this one might be OK. (Photo credit: Sharon Mollerus)

Lent, According to American Cookery, the Magazine, That is

February 26, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Lent can be a really interesting time of the year. For some of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, a mere glimpse outside our windows forces the introspection and reflection behind the whole idea of Lent. Who wants to walk around out there in that howling wind and blowing snow? Better to stay inside and contemplate life’s meaning. (Or whatever.) And, as we’ve talked about before, Lent comes at a time where food used to be rather scarce and so […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, American Cooking, Cooking, Lent, Menus, Reference, Spinach, Sweet Potatoes • Tags: Africa, American Cookery magazine, Boston Cooking School, Lent, Menus, Spinach, Sweet Potatoes

Idylls of Cuisine, #51

February 21, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

[A picture, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]

Categories: Art, Carnevale, Lent, Paintings • Tags: Art, Lent, Paintings, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

Shrovetide Pancakes — A Shrove Tuesday Tradition

February 15, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Shriven/Shrove: archaic : to confess one’s sins, especially to a priest* When they heard the “pancake bell,” people flocked to the church to be “shriven” or confessed on Shrove Tuesday, and ready to make the pancakes that date back to Saxon times. If you think of Shrove Tuesday pancakes as stodgy, thick American pancakes, think again. Meant to use up eggs, butter, and milk just before Lent, these pancakes resemble French crêpes and Italian crespelle more than the flapjacks so […]

Categories: Cooking, Eggs, English Cooking, Lent • Tags: English Cooking, Lent, Pancakes, Photo Essay, Shrove Tuesday

The Black Fast, a Mortification of the Appetite

February 10, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

With Lent fast approaching (February 17, 2010), an examination of fasting and other fleshly challenges seems apropos. Religious-based fasting, in the history of English speakers anyway, belies its importance in the commonly used word for the first meal of the day: breakfast or “break fast.” After all, for much of Western European history, almost half the days of the year counted as times of fasting. Locavores and vegetarians today will find much to inspire them in the dishes created to […]

Categories: Bread, England, English Cooking, France, French Cooking, Lent, Middle Ages, Monasteries, Soup • Tags: Bread Soup, Brian M. Fagan, Cod: A Biography, Fasting, Fish on Friday, Lent, Marc Meneau, Mark Kurlansky, Roman Catholic Church

Carnevale Goeth: A Dip into Austerity and Cucina di Magro

February 24, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Thin” kitchen, that’s what the “magro” part means here. No, not a galley kitchen. Not a New York loft kitchen. Not even a Paris apartment kitchen. Skinny food. That’s cucina di magro. Vegetables. Legumes. Fish. Fruit. Shellfish. The bones of the Mediterranean diet. No meat, at least none that walks around on four legs. Or even two. Many years ago, out of sheer curiosity and a strange desire to experience gastronomically and historically what people encountered during the forty-day Lenten […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Eggplant, Festivals, Italian Cooking, Pasta, Recipes • Tags: Cooking, Cucina di Magro, Eggplant, Food, Lent, Meatless Meals, Pasta, Recipes

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life