Cooking Is Art |"Cooking Canterbury"

Source :huffingtonpost.com

Category : Cooking Is Art

Posted By : Maite Gomez-Rejon

Cooking Is Art

A few months ago I was asked to develop a class around a group of stained glass windows at the J. Paul Getty Museum from the Canterbury Cathedral. (They're now at The Cloisters in NYC and totally worth seeing before they head home). I was stumped. The windows were stunning, but fine dining doesn't exactly come to mind when thinking of medieval England.

With the end of the Roman Empire, the culture responsible for the first western cookbook with the 5th century's De re coquinaria (On the Art of Cooking) attributed to Apicius, the widespread understanding of high cuisine and fine dining was destroyed. The influence of Apicius may have lingered in modern day Italy and Spain, but not in England. That said; the rich, heavily spiced dishes and bizarre sauces that flavor the Middle Ages weren't the absolute norm, even among the upper classes. I was surprised to learn that simple salads and vegetables were common fare among all classes of society, even though in many ways they were considered an inferior menu item. Vegetable dishes are hardly ever mentioned in medieval cookbooks because the pure simplicity of their preparation - raw tossed with oil and vinegar - often meant that precious vellum or parchment (expensive in an age before paper and the printing press) wasn't wasted on recording the recipes. Some cookbooks go so far as to point out that "the ability to prepare vegetables is common knowledge and further instructions are not necessary". Raw salads were considered an excellent way to begin a meal.This Shaved Root Vegetable Salad is inspired by those stained glass windows. Its preparation is simple but the outcome is as gorgeous as stained glass.

Shaved Root Vegetable Salad

For the salad:

1 red beet

1 golden beet

1 celeriac (celery root)

3 carrots (preferably colorful heirloom)

1 fennel bulb

1 bunch red radishes

1 apple, unpeeled (Gala, Braeburn or Fuji are good options)

For the dressing:

1 anchovy 

1 garlic clove

juice of one lemon (or more to taste)

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

¼ cup olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

1. Scrub vegetables, remove peel from carrots and beets. Cut fronds and bottom of fennel, discard. Cut fennel in half lengthwise, remove outer layer and discard. Remove tops from radishes and wash the radishes well. Cut apple in half and de-seed.

2. Using a large knife, remove all out layer of the celery root and discard. You should just have the white flesh showing.

3. Using a mandolin, carefully slice all vegetables except for radishes, into paper-thin slices. Slice radishes individually to the same thickness of the rest of your veggies. Place in separate bowls and make the dressing.

4. In a mortar and pestle, mash the anchovy, garlic and a pinch of salt to a paste. Squeeze in the lemon juice and stir to break up the anchovy paste. Beat in the mustard. Whisk in the olive oil, a little at a time. Season with the pepper.

5. Dress each vegetable pile separately to keep the beets from turning everything red, or toss them all together in a bowl. Beautiful and delicious either way! This salad is better the longer it sits in the dressing.

Source : huffingtonpost.com/maite-gomezrejon/cooking-art-history-cooki_b_4900386.html

Breakfast & Brunch Recipes

Cooking Is Art

Breakfast and brunch (its weekend counterpart) can be the most important (and delicious) meals of the day. At least they are when you choose your menu from our wide-ranging collections. You can start with the basics, from how to boil an egg to how to make a berry smoothie (and more breakfast shakes). Go sweet—with waffles, pancakes or banana bread—or pick the perfect omelet, quiche or frittata. For brunch that celebrates a special holiday or events, you can always add a dessert to the menu.

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Cooking

Cooking  Is Art

The term "cooking" encompasses a vast range of methods, tools, and combinations of ingredients to improve the flavor or digestibility of food. Cooking technique, known as culinary art, generally requires the selection, measurement, and combining of ingredients in an ordered procedure in an effort to achieve the desired result. Constraints on success include the variability of ingredients, ambient conditions, tools, and the skill of the individual cook. The diversity of cooking worldwide is a reflection of the myriad nutritional, aesthetic, agricultural, economic, cultural, and religious considerations that affect it. Cooking requires applying heat to a food which usually, though not always, chemically changes the molecules, thus changing its flavor, texture, appearance, and nutritional properties.^[27] Cooking certain proteins, such as egg whites, meats, and fish, denatures the protein, causing it to firm. There is archaeological evidence of roasted foodstuffs at Homo erectus campsites dating from 420,000 years ago. Boiling as a means of cooking requires a container, and has been practiced at least since the 10th millennium BC with the introduction of pottery.

Cuisine, Regional cuisine, and Global cuisines

Food Is Art

Many cultures have a recognizable cuisine, a specific set of cooking traditions using various spices or a combination of flavors unique to that culture, which evolves over time.

Food Is Art

 Other differences include preferences (hot or cold, spicy, etc.) and practices, the study of which is known as gastronomy. Many cultures have diversified their foods by means of preparation, cooking methods, and manufacturing. This also includes a complex food trade which helps the cultures to economically survive by way of food, not just by consumption. Some popular types of ethnic foods include Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, American, Cajun, Thai, African, and Indian cuisine. Various cultures throughout the world study the dietary analysis of food habits.

While evolutionarily speaking, as opposed to culturally, humans are omnivores, religion and social constructs such as morality, activism, or environmentalism will often affect which foods they will consume. Food is eaten and typically enjoyed through the sense of taste, the perception of flavor from eating and drinking. Certain tastes are more enjoyable than others, for evolutionary purposes.

Food

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells in an effort to produce energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth.

Food Is Important

Historically, people secured food through two methods: hunting and gathering, and agriculture. Today, most of the food energy consumed by the world population is supplied by the food industry.

Food safety and food security are monitored by agencies like the International Association for Food Protection, World Resources Institute, World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization, and International Food Information Council. They address issues such as sustainability, biological diversity, climate change, nutritional economics, population growth, water supply, and access to food. The right to food is a human right derived from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), recognizing the "right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food," as well as the "fundamental right to be free from hunger."