- Governing Agrobiodiversity by Regine Andersen. Anyone read it and want to review it for us?
- Louise Sperling on assessing the security of seed systems.
- Ike inflates Cohiba prices?
- Kibera slum goes very green. Via.
- “35 years ago, I was bringing seeds from France to California. Now I’m bringing seeds back to my friends in France.”
- John Innes Centre maps out a future for peas.
- Pictures from my recent trip to CATIE in Costa Rica, including some agrobiodiversity.
Nibbles: Art, Fish, Nut, Potato, Mellow fruitfulness, Camels, DNA chips, Agroecotourism, Urban ag
- Art of biodiversity (some vaguely agricultural).
- Genebank for sturgeon. What the fish?
- Aromatic Green Dwarf. It’s a coconut.
- For the first half of his life, Gregorio Huanuco farmed to a rhythm that dictated the survival of his grandparents and ancestors for thousands of years.
- Fall foods.
- Camels have a hub.
- Genetic GPS.
- Taiwan pushes farm tours.
- The 100-yard diet.
Blogging the OSFC Day 2: First Cherwell Studentship
After a meal and a performance that will take some time to digest (metaphorically) here we are waiting for the start of the Sunday sessions. Lots to look forward to, and a gem while we do so: Janet Clarkson’s blog The Old Foodie. A lot of people here are keeping wonderful web sites; next year I hope the organisers will gather these together. Or maybe an independent personage should do so …
Ray Sokolow exlains that a mystery man, possessed of a mysterious fortune derived from a mysterious TV show that he devised, has endowed a bursary to allow a student to research a topic and travel to the OSFC. And this is the first Cherwell Studentship. Goes to Allyson Sgro a chemist who develops microtools for neuroscience. A nanotechnologist, no less.
The Origins of Cockaleekie Soup
The simplest cockaleekie soup is chicken soup, no leeks, with prunes in the broth; you can leave ’em in or take them out, according to taste. No mention of vegetables in Scottish history prior to 1600s. From then to 1700, a gradual switch from meat to dairy and oats. But there are a lot of reports of gardens, including vegetable gardens, around this time. “The diet is devoid of vegetables,” until the 1670s, 1680s. Seems to be that the Scots are growing lots of vegetables, but they aren’t in recipes or lists of dishes. But they must be there in the diet. “They’re eating them, but they’re not celebrating them.”
Scotland seems to maintain a medieval mindset towards dishes long after the sweet and savoury combinations have been abandoned in France and England. Not until early 18th century does Scotland “modernize”. 1737 marks the first recognizably modern recipe for cockaleekie soup.
“Who put the leeks in cockaleekie soup? It was the Scots. They finally decided they really liked vegetables and they should start celebrating them a bit.”
Budding young food historians in search of financial sustenance: go to the OSFC web site and follow the instructions.
The first, best, gardening manual
William Rubel is talking about how a French garden manual, translated into English by my hero John Evelyn, is the first really useful gardening book, and is still relevant. If you were to bring together the cookbook literature, the herb books, and the gardening books of the 18th century you would find described the golden age of vegetable gardening and cooking. “The lettuce had a poetic space around it,” and this is increasingly relevant as we move to local, fresh sourcing and eating.
Andrew Marvell’s The Garden is perfection.
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
We tend the garden, “and the poetry of Eden was on the plate, of everyone who at a vegetable”. The English way of cooking was green and tender, and the French way was green and crisp.
The French intensive system of raised beds was not invented in France. What the French added was an unlimited amount of fermented manure, and hot beds. “The French remade the world, they were masters of the seasons, they had asparagus in November.”
“If you were a certain kind of snob, you would serve asparagus in November, but if you were interested in taste, you would serve frost-kissed broccoli.”
Utica greens
Utica is a town in upper New York state where, some time ago, a dish called Utica Greens started appearing on the menu of Italian American restaurants and on home tables. How did it get there? Naomi Guttman and Roberta Krueger are telling us. Chefs say they invented it, and then households adopted it. Cooks say it was a home dish that chefs adopted.
Utica used to be an industrial powerhouse, with lots of Italians, then crashed, now growing again with new immigrants from Asia. The researchers started talking to old time Italians from the neighbourhood. Many were from Frosinone, south of Rome, and almost all had packed vegetable gardens behind their houses. They imported their food culture, with very strong connections between gardening and cooking. Old informants all talked about fried greens as a part of summer. For them, the dish went from table to restaurant. Some informants said that it went to the restaurants with the third generation immigrants, when the guys who played golf forgot how to cook, and their wives forgot how to cook, “they went to restaurants to eat what they remembered”.
The chefs had a different view. They said it started as a special, not on the menu, then appeared on on the menu at one restaurant, The Chesterfield. And from there, it spread.
‘Mkay.
The audience is saying that there’s nothing special about this recipe, and that everybody knows someone else in Italy who does this, or at least something similar …