The New World
Bacalao con huevos
COD WITH EGGS: Make a sauce from eggs, parsley, garlic, and breadcrumbs; once it is cooked, stir into the sauce, cod pieces and fry in butter. Is it possible for a recipe to be too simple? I bought the parsley for this – which would have looked LOVELY – and left them in the refrigerator. [...]
Mole poblano guajolote: The secret to enjoying turkey
A thousand years ago the Aztecs knew something that Norteamericanos are still struggling with, at least once a year: Turkey just isn’t very good. Sure, deck it out with mom’s stuffing, aunt Carol’s squash soup, some candied carrots, a metric ton of mashed potatoes, a couple of pies and plenty of liquor, and it will [...]
Bad for the Liver, Kills Dogs (from Gerard’s Herball)
Of Ginnie or Indian Pepper: Gerard is a little less certain that chile’s newness pose some threat to England, but he does note that it has none of the virtue of Calcutta pepper, damages the liver and other entrails and possibly kills dogs.
Grasshoppers, Cactus and Fish Tacos at Tu y Yo
Since I’m loath to cross the river, I hadn’t heard of Tu y Yo until they recently opened their Needham location – now I wouldn’t normally write about a restaurant, but their array of pre-Columbian delicacies is well worth the mention and the trip: We started out with the miniature grasshopper tacos (Tacos de chapulines) [...]
Introducing the Tomato: Madde Apples and Love Apples
Like with corn, the origin of the tomato had already been lost less than 100 years after it was discovered. Gerard cautions against eating the “Raging Apple” as he calls what I believe we’d refer to as a “Roma” tomato because they can be poisonous (because the tomato is in the same family as belladonna [...]
Happy Dindon Day from the Comte de Buffon
Despite being thought insipid, turkey was the first New World food to be accepted in France. I’m making mole poblano de guajolote for tomorrow, so insipid can meet me out by the woodpile…
Turkey Wheate from John Gerard’s Herbal
The first in a series of posts celebrating Gerard’s 1597 masterpiece The Herball or Generall historie of plantes. Gerard’s Herball was one of the first publications to discuss the New World food basket that had been imported over the last century. Gerard, like most European farmers, was skeptical: These kinds of Graine were first brought [...]
Chile Sauce Recipe found in 1836 cookbook
I found this recipe for chile sauce inside my well-used copy of The New England Cookbook or Young Housekeeper’s Guide (New Haven, 1836). You’ll notice the recipe calls for two “sweet” spices (and sugar – though not human flesh), cloves and cinnamon, as well as two cups of vinegar (which seems like a lot of [...]
Chiles verdes rellenos (picadillo)
Recipe taken from Encarnación’s Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth-Century California itself a translation of Encarnación Pinedo’s, El cocinero español (San Francisco, 1898), the first Spanish language cookery text published in California. Pinedo presents her recipes as Spanish (despite the profusion of Mexican ingredients) and in the European tradition traced from Apicius (whom she names) through [...]
Golden Apples, Crimson Stew
1534: A Spanish trader is returning to his ship in Seville after another unsuccessful attempt to sell his carefully tended hull full of tomato plants. The actual tomatoes that he’d brought had long ago rotted en route, and he’d had a hell of a time explaining to his customers what, precisely, the tomatoes were for. [...]
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