“Fat Tuesday” has passed, and we are in the forty days of Lenten fast. Our medieval ancestors in all Catholic countries dug out all possible recipes for fish, when meat was forbidden. We will go again to Germany, for a glimpse of how they “fasted.”...
This month’s column takes us a bit farther afield, with a recipe from Germany. The recipe is for a starch side-dish, since I have been concentrating on rather meaty main dishes for some months....
This month’s column begins our exploration of recipes from areas we don’t usually visit in our culinary quest. I will also take a look at some of the origins and possible sources of inspiration among cooks, and willingness to adapt techniques when religion and other considerations get in the way of producing good eating. Our first look is from a collection which MAY BE from France, but I have included it in this unfamiliar category because it was found bound in a Latin codex which contained essays on many other subjects including hunting, medicine agriculture and the natural sciences, not cooking alone. It is a reminder that cooking interacts with many other concerns, and is not separately categorized, the way we modernly do....
What joy the diligent farmer has now that all his work is done for the time being, there is plenty in the barns and household, and good neighbors to celebrate it with. Thomas Tusser describes “Christmas Husbandlie Fare” in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry.”...
November draws swiftly on. Frost is here and the grass is no longer plentiful for the cattle. The thrifty farmer must now make the hard choice of which stock to nurture through the lean winter. Thomas Tusser advises the farmer, in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry” that, “At Hallontide slaughter time entereth in, and then doth the husbandmans feasting begin: From now until Shrovetide kill now and then some, Their offal for houshold the better will come.” Hallontide is another word for the holiday we know as “Halloween”, or “All-Hallows”, and Shrovetide is the beginning of the meatless Lenten season, so animals slaughtered then would go to waste....
October’s chill is in the air, and the fleeting year draws quickly to a close. This month the farmer begins to think of the health of both himself and his stock, to get them through the long winter ahead. Therefore, this month we will look at both medicine and nourishment, since both were brewed in the kitchen, Therefore, please bear with me as I go through both history and medicine to trace the historical companions of this month’s recipe....
Hot August has blasted the springtime color, but the Autumn chores beckon apace. Thomas Tusser advises in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry” that the farmer or housewife should “Pare Saffron between the two S. Maries daies, or set or go shift it, that knowest the waies: What year shall I do it ( more profit to yield) the fourth in the garden, the third in the field.”...
September begins the farmer’s year. The harvests are largely in, and the bills paid, so the provident farmer can look to the future of his farm. Thomas Tusser, with an eye to good eating as well as good tillage, in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry” bids “Wife, into thy garden, and set me a plot, with strawberry rootes, of the best to be got: Such growing abroade, among thornes in the wood, wel chosen and picked proove excellent good.”...
July is the busy month that looks to the harvest about to roll in. Thomas Tusser recommends in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry” that the farmer should “Get grist to the mill, to have plenty in store, lest miller lacke water, as many do more.”...
By June most of the crops are in, and time comes for repairing and building around the farmstead. Thomas Tusser recommends in his “Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry” that the farmer build sheds and other less permanent structures. “So likewise a hovell will serve for a roome. to stack on the peason when harvest shall coome. And serve thee in winter, more over than that, to shut up thy porklings thou mindest to fat.”...