Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Gherkins & Tomatoes
A Writer's Musings on Nature and Culture, Since 2008
With a name like that, of course, I couldn't resist the recipe. "Mulacolong." What on earth did that mean? It seems that no one else knew either, thanks to a Google search and more. So I decided to split up the word, to look at components rather the whole. One tantalizing bit of information kept…
Continue reading ➞ Mulacolong, from Sarah Rutledge’s The Carolina Housewife:
I'd like to introduce you a most interesting woman, Sarah Rutledge. Call her Miss Sally, as did her kin and her friends. She wrote a cookbook, The Carolina Housewife, published in 1847, which tells a most remarkable story. Unlike Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife (1824), which tended to focus more on the victuals cooked and…
Absolutely delicious, served with freshly baked bread: See recipe and discussion HERE. This is the kind of recipe you can make by following instructions and hints found in "A Hastiness of Cooks".
If you've ever tried to read Chaucer in the original language, you know what you're up against when you tackle a recipe dating from the poet's time period. Actually, when you read The Canterbury Tales, you have it fairly easy, for there's a multitude of resources to help you as you plunge through Chaucer's Middle…
Continue reading ➞ What’s That You Say??? Medieval Culinary Terminology Unmasked*
Fans of the popular TV series “Game of Thrones” must be feeling bereft. And why shouldn’t they? The curtain finally fell on the last episode of that long-running megahit. Unless they love reruns, that’s it for those fans. I, on the other hand, have barely made it through the first episode so far, “Winter is…
Continue reading ➞ Keep on Feasting! For Lovers of “Game of Thrones”
Paleography refers to the situation in which an historic cookbook is studied,* and perhaps converted to script that a modern reader can understand. The process is highly complicated and experts spend years, even whole careers, devoted to just this subject. So the following discussion is more like a scratch on a grain of sand, small…
Continue reading ➞ Culinary Manuscripts, or, Deciphering the Code
In my latest book, "A Hastiness of Cooks", I deliberately skimmed over France and her culinary heritage. Not because I thought her culinary heritage not worth acknowledging, but because I wanted to savor that heritage in a different medium or venue. With that sentiment in mind, I pulled Terence Scully's treatise - The Vivendier -…
Continue reading ➞ Pignagoscé sur chapons (Pignagoscé on Capons), Plus Some Words on Paleography
Did you know that you can cook from hundreds of historic cookbooks without spending a lot of money, except perhaps for your monthly internet fee? Or maybe even for free, if you use the computers at a public library? There are vast digital collections of historic cookbooks and manuscripts just waiting for you to use.…
His quirky, pixy eyes belie his prolificity as a writer, one that some dub the first so-called hack writers in modern history, and possibly the first to import an Arabian horse into England.** And possibly one of William Shakespeare’s rivals? Some writers such as Robert Gittings, in his tepidly received Shakespeare’s Rival (1960), suggest that…
Martha Bradley's The British Housewife (1756) has long fascinated me, for all her detail and precise instructions. And, most of all, for her emphasis on local foods, long before Alice Waters or Michael Pollan were gleams in the eye of God. Of course, the other point I want to make here is this: the English were quite…
Continue reading ➞ Before There was Martha S., There was Martha B.*
“Just like in the movies, when the hero finally gets up to the ticket window and the clerk slams it shut.” That thought ballooned in my mind when I walked up to the doors of the Museo del Prado in Madrid on a Monday morning. CLOSED. No Velazquez. Of course, Monday. Here's something mnemonic for…
Purple bougainvillea flowers hung thick and rope-like over the sand-colored walls, their little white hearts nearly pulsating in the blazing noon heat of Rabat, Morocco. The door of The English Bookshop stood half-opened. The stern English proprietor stood behind the counter, his thin pale fingers reaching into scuffed cardboard boxes, filled with the newest shipment of books…
Continue reading ➞ In the Scent of Cinnamon, a Whiff of Medieval Humoral Theory
In my forthcoming book - with illustrations by Courtney Nzeribe - I discuss Hannah Glasse's cookbook. (And much more, of course!) Poor Hannah Glasse. Literally. Except for Martha Stewart, she may be the only cookery book writer who did hard time for financial woes. Author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy,…
Continue reading ➞ The Eels of Hannah, Or, Hannah Glasse’s Lenten Recipes
You're probably wondering what "A Hastiness of Cooks" means. Read the following definition and you'll see why the phrase inspired me in writing my new book, "A Hastiness of Cooks": A word game, popular in the great households of late medieval England, had at its heart the creation of collective nouns. In the lists of…
You're not supposed to begin a piece of writing with a question. Why not? No idea, except that the "experts" seem to think that it's an easy way out. "You can do better," they say. So what was my question? Oh yes. Why is traditional French food so terribly unpopular at the moment? Many authors…
Continue reading ➞ Speaking of France …
Several months ago, thanks to a series of bleeds in my right eye due to ROP*, I underwent a vitrectomy to clear up all the blood still pooling throughout my eye. When my surgeon finished, I learned that I'd suffered a retinal detachment as well, hidden by the immense amount of blood. A gas bubble…
Continue reading ➞ How Julia Child Rescued Me from the Darkness
A recipe analyzed in my upcoming book, A Hastiness of Cooks.
I am thrilled to announce that my new book will be out and available for purchase on November 15, 2018. For more information, please go to Turquoise Moon Press. (Working on the pre-order set-up on Amazon)
It's the 4th of July. A day of almost mythical proportions. For Americans. I got to thinking about the stories surrounding this day, a really special day in the history of the world. Consider the facts: A small, rather weak and geographically diverse conglomeration of settlers rises up like David against a powerful giant -…
Continue reading ➞ The 4th of July: Mythology and American History
I forget where exactly I was when I read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. But I'll never forget the writing, the cool depiction of the parade of characters - chefs, waitresses, line cooks, dopers, and so on. Tony, I think he liked being called that, could tramp through the Chaco of Paraguay with the same ease he…
Continue reading ➞ The Death of Anthony Bourdain
I binge watch cooking shows. Instead of reading intellect-stimulating tomes such as Homer's The Iliad (who amongst you can say that you have???), lately I've been spending my precious time on earth transfixed by Paul Hollywood's piercing blue eyes, calmed by Mary Berry's soothing voice, cheering on the indomitable bakers of "The Great British Bake…
Continue reading ➞ Lessons from “The Great British Bake Off”
Bacopa Literary Review Contest submissions open March 1 - May 31, 2018 with a $250 prize in each of four genres plus $25 payment for each published work. $3 submission fee (first submission free formembers of Writers Alliance of Gainesville). If accepted for publication, you agree to grant us First North American Serial Rights. Poetry: We're…
Continue reading ➞ Bacopa Literary Review is Looking for a Few Good Writers
"Anyone can cook anything and make it delicious." That's what chef/teacher Samin Nosrat promises, right up front, page 5, in her stunning debut - Salt Fat Acid Heat. Everybody loves an optimist. And I count Ms. Nosrat among that merry band of people, those who amble through the world with a smile on their faces, their…
Continue reading ➞ A Pinch of Alchemy: Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat
Just a note - life's busy - to share the shortlist for The Gourmand Awards. "What is that," you might ask? Here's their take on it: "The Gourmand Awards are the major Food Culture event in the world. They started in 1995 for cookbooks and wine books, at Frankfurt Book Fair. They now include all…
Continue reading ➞ THE GOURMAND AWARDS
Curry. I can't live without it. And thus it was only natural that I used some of my Santa Claus money to buy myself a copy of Dan Toombs's clever cookbook, The Curry Guy: Recreate Over 100 of the Best British Indian Restaurant Recipes at Home (2017). The cooking found in British Indian Restaurants. Or BIRs.…
Continue reading ➞ The Curry Guy
Memory, fickle memory. To recall the long-ago past becomes a journey into a place where truth flits behind trees or ducks into closets, an exhausting game of hide-and-seek where no player easily becomes “It.” Do you remember going to the Saturday afternoon movies when you were a kid? How you got so engrossed in the…
Continue reading ➞ Pumping Sunshine: Susie H. Baxter’s Rural North Florida Childhood
They're not visible to the naked eye, but I hear their raucous cawing every day, the very second I open the door. Crows, maybe ravens. No matter where I live, these glossy black birds congregate. The only place on earth to escape these intelligent creatures lies far south, in Antarctica. Crows and ravens eat whatever…
Continue reading ➞ A Murder of Crows, An Unkindness of Ravens
Although I'd read her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Yearling (1938), in high school, I came to admire Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's work more via the great unifier - food. I bought a paperback copy of Cross Creek Cookery nearly forty years after Charles Scribner's Sons first published it. Now the spine on my cheap copy splits…
Continue reading ➞ Muses: Cross Creek and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Good morning to everyone. Hurricane Irma came knocking on my door on Monday, September 11, 2017. Her gusty breath took down a kingly live oak in my neighbor's yard and threatened to rip up my back fence. Some of my fellow citizens still wade thigh-high in the muddy alligator- and snake-infested water of Newnan's Lake.…
Continue reading ➞ Weather, Weather, Weather
I, non-Italian, cook a mean roasted pork thing, slathered with ground fennel and coriander seed and white peppercorns, an Italian dish dubbed "Forever Roasted Pork" in Michael Chiarello's Travigne cookbook. And I also see definite correlations between that meltingly soft meat and Southern barbecue, between mechoui and other long-roasted meat dishes from around the world.…
Continue reading ➞ Cooking with Hurricane Irma, Part IV: Going Green: a Riff on Salsa Verde
