Quotulatiousness

April 21, 2019

British Ration Week Episode 4: The National Loaf

Filed under: Britain, Food, History, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

InRangeTV
Published on 23 Jan 2018

One of the major initiatives of the Ministry of Food was ensuring the availability of bread and the supply of wheat to the British Isles. To help stretch the use of wheat, a national bread recipe was instituted, using minimally processed brown flour. This was not a particularly appealing item to most of the British populace, used to highly refined fluffy white bread – but they accepted it as a necessity of war. Interestingly, the National Loaf was not that unlike today’s whole wheat breads which are so popular for their better nutritional value than WonderBread.

Day 4 Menu:

Breakfast: Cheese toast, tea
Lunch: Cheese and Tomato Sandwich, pickle, leftover split pea soup
Tea: Beetroot pudding, tea
Dinner: Leek and Hamburger Gravy over toast

InRange is entirely viewer supported:
https://www.patreon.com/InRangeTV

March 26, 2019

Food Rationing – How to Make Woolton Pie – WW2 Homefront 001 – April 1940

Filed under: Britain, Food, History, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 24 Mar 2019

Rationing of goods in Europe started immediately when the war broke out. Lord Woolton, British Minister of Food came up with one of the first substitute dishes… a vegetable pie that was promptly named after him. Our team chef Joram shows you how to do it. To find out how it tasted go here: https://youtu.be/quB0yH8Qhlo

Recipe can be found here: https://the1940sexperiment.com/2016/0…

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Hosted by Joram Appel and created by Wieke Kapteijns

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

In about a month’s time (yes, I have my 1:00am and 2:00am posts lined up that far in advance), there’s an eight-part video series from Ian at InRangeTV on British rationing in WW2 that includes a slightly different Woolton Pie recipe.

August 21, 2018

Celebrity chef accused of cultural appropriation

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Food, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tim Worstall explains why, despite jerk chicken being something like the national dish of Jamaica, accusing Jamie Oliver of culturally appropriating it makes no sense whatsoever:

Well, here’s a recipe for that jerk chicken which does seem to be close to being the Jamaican national dish.

    Ingredients
    8 -10 pieces of legs and thighs
    1 lemon/lime
    Salt and pepper to season
    ½ tablespoon cinnamon powder
    1 sprig of fresh thyme
    3 medium scallions (green onions) chopped
    1 medium onion coarsely chopped
    2-4 habanero pepper chopped
    1 1/2 tablespoon Maggi or soy sauce
    1 tablespoon bouillon powder optional
    3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
    6 garlic cloves chopped
    1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
    1 tablespoon allspice coarsely ground
    1 1/2 tablespoon fresh ginger chopped
    1 tablespoon coarsely ground pepper

As far as I can tell those ingredients coming from, in order – the chicken, SE Asia via land cultural exchange to Europe and then the Americas by the Portuguese and Spanish. Sure, some evidence of Polynesian delivery but on West Coast only. The lemon, SE Asia, salt everywhere, pepper India or perhaps Indonesia. Cinnamon, SE Asia but introduction to European thus Caribbean cuisines through Ancient Egypt and thus into Greece. Thyme, the Levant and Ancient Egypt, scallions at least as far back as Ashkelon and further east than that. Onions, definitely Eurasian, habaneros definitively Latin American. Soy sauce, think we’ll allow Nippon to claim that, maybe China. Bouillon powder, industrial civilisation somewhere. Sugar, Indian subcontinent, garlic central Asia we think. Nutmeg and allspice the Spice Islands, now Indonesia. Ginger, South and SE Asia.

So, someone who makes this is accusing us of cultural appropriation if we make it?

Oh Aye?

All of which is, of course, to misunderstand the basic point about human beings. We’re apes, ones with a special and remarkable talent. We’ve this readin’ an’ writin’ stuff meaning that when we spot something that works we’re able to tell other people about it. In a manner rather more efficient than just teaching junior to do what we’ve learned to do. This is the secret of our success. That things once learned can be passed onto millions, billions, of other people. If we had to go reinvent the wheel each generation then we’d not all be rolling around in cars now, would we?

The very essence of our being the successful tool using species we are is that we copy. Appropriate that is. So insistences that we don’t “culturally” appropriate are demands that we stop being us, stop being human. Well, you know, good luck with that, however delightful the concept of cultural appropriation is as a method of having something else to shout about.

March 4, 2018

The dirty secret of a lot of “traditional” family recipes

Filed under: Food, Humour, Randomness — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Atlas Obscura, Alex Mayyasi spills the beans about a lot of secret family recipes:

When Danny Meyer was gearing up to open his barbecue restaurant, Blue Smoke, there was one recipe he knew he had to have on the menu: his grandmother’s secret potato salad recipe.

“I told the chef, ‘My very favorite potato salad in the world was the one my grandmother made,’” Meyer recalls.

That’s a big statement coming from Meyer, a successful restaurateur who has earned Michelin Stars and founded the fast-casual chain Shake Shack. At the time, his grandmother had already passed away, but Meyer remembered that she kept recipes on three by five index cards. After a search, he found the right card and handed it to the restaurant’s chef, who invited Meyer to try it in the Blue Smoke kitchen.

When Meyer arrived, the sous chefs had a big bowl of potato salad that brought back memories of his grandmother. He tried it, smiled, and told the chefs, “That’s exactly right.” They grinned back at him mischievously. Eventually, Meyer broke and asked, “What’s so funny?” A chef pulled out a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise and placed it on the table. Meyer looked at it, then realized that the secret recipe his grandmother had hoarded for years was on the jar. It was the official Hellman’s recipe for potato salad.

This actually seems to be a common phenomenon. The television show Friends even features a similar discovery, when one character, Phoebe, realizes that her grandmother’s “famous” chocolate chip cookie recipe came from a bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips.

Two months ago, we asked Gastro Obscura readers to send in accounts of their own discoveries. We promised a (loving) investigation of grandparents lying about family recipes. But instead we got a delightful look at the power of imagination, the limitations of originality, and the halo effect of eating a dish or dessert made by family.

March 1, 2016

BrewDog releases all their beer recipies

Filed under: Britain, Business — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lester Haines on the recent decision by BrewDog to open source their entire beer recipie list:

From humble home-brewing origins, James Watt and Martin Dickie have grown BrewDog to an international craft beer operation. Along the way, they’ve claimed the “world’s strongest beer” title twice, firstly with the 41 per cent ABV Sink The Bismarck!, and then with the liver-bashing 55 per cent ABV The End of History.

The recipes for both (albeit with somewhat less lethal ABVs) are available on BrewDog’s “DIY Dog” PDF (see here), along with other tempting tipples such as Tactical Nuclear Penguin and Albino Squid Assassin.

BrewDog - Sink the Bismark

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