War and food, a timeless tale. Unfortunately. Today’s story is about beef, the meat – as we all know – that become synonymous with Britain and went on to become a major force in the American economy in the nineteenth century, as well as providing for a rather mythological view of the American West. (Hint:…
Tag: Southern cooking
Is Barbecue Barbaric? A Small Treatise on a Large and Controversial Subject
The All-American favorite cooking method, “barbecue,” sounds uncannily like “barbarism.” When warm nights and hotter days rev up cooks’ tempers as summer suddenly seems interminable, cooks turn to the trusty (and maybe rusty) BBQ grill and primal techniques of searing meat over an open flame. Age-old these methods are, indeed. And frankly barbaric, to the…
Grits on the Menu: A Short Treatise on a Global Favorite
Big Hominy Grits (Photo credit: James Bridle) These days, when you drive through the endless piney woods of low-country Georgia and South Carolina, you will see fields of corn, and not so much cotton. And, if you’re lucky when you stop for breakfast, there will be grits on the menu. Not just any old grits,…
Thinking About Rice in America: The Black Rice Theory – Mysteries, Myths, and Misconceptions
Note: My point here, and elsewhere, on my blog and in my work, is to present information in as truthful a manner as I can, in order to raise questions and, hence, awareness. The truth is that there are more than ways than one to look at issues. Blindly accepting points of view only serves…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #13
Throughout history, cooking shows up again and again as primarily women’s work. As a reviewer of Richard Wrangham’s thought-provoking Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (2009) summarizes, “Here, too, Wrangham apologetically explains, is probably where the global subjugation of women began. Women, he observes, do most of the cooking in most societies (he describes…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #12
When I first propped open this massive, and glorious, paean to the history of British food, I came upon “Ryse Of Flessh” (Rice of Flesh). Blumenthal remarks that he had no clue “how early rice had become a part of the English diet. More than a hundred before The Forme of Cury was written, rice was already…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #9
One of the most interesting things about the two National Trust cookbooks on this extended “Elves’ Shelves” list is the lack of major curry dishes like Chicken Tikka Masala or Balti dishes. In the British countryside, the old ways do appear to remain front and center, as opposed to the more urban areas where curry houses…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #8
There is, as you may have noticed, a huge gap time-wise between the first seven books on this list and the last six. That’s because there’s a time period where you see the beginning of the cult of the modern celebrity chef/cook, with a tremendous focus on innovations and experimentation in recipes and, well, celebrity. Television. Italian food….
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #7
Today you have Jane Grigson again, this time in full force behind the idea that British food is good and worthy of respect. History plays a larger role in this book than in Good Things, making it a delightful read as well as a valuable resource for study. It is one of several books worth looking at…
