THE HISTORY OF THE CULINARY ART IN EUROPE UNTIL THE RENAISSANCE

• The Pre-Historical Period:

- The discovery of fire and the fermentation.

- The conservation of food and drinks, traditionally perishable in short-term.

- The use of cooking utensils (flat stones, leather goatskins…), increasing the methods of cooking and reducing the burning of food.

- The apparition of salt, fat, flour and cereals (cakes).

• Greco-Roman Period -2000/470:

- The organization of food and the cooking by mythological criteria.

- Meals ritual dimensions: Dionysian festivals (great use of wine and sexual excess).

-  Food presentation: food are chopped or pureed, but the staple is unknown.

-  Practice of diluting the wine with multiple products such as sea water, lime, resin…

- Preference for fish, shellfish and vegetables. Salted, sweet and spicy cooking.

- Pottery on the fire, it allows the apparition of two fundamental culinary techniques: soups and gruels.

- New products: beer, bread, cakes, olive oil, wine, cheese, pudding, omelet (sweet and drooling), the garum (fish sauce).

• Middle Ages 470/1350 :

- French service consisting of 3 to 6 courses, each with a starter, main course and dessert.

- There are no plates, but the use of a thick piece of bread (the chopper), no glasses but chalices, and no forks. Instead of the knives, there were daggers or dredgers.

- The guests eat with their fingers and towel off using the tablecloth.

- The Apparition of braised cooking: meat is boiled before being roasted, which was a technical and hygienic advantage. The meat is softer, compensating its low maturation and avoiding aromatic denaturizing due to a significant microbial growth.

-  The sauces are spicy and acidic (verjuice grape) associated with egg yolks and soaked bread.

- The use of sugar and honey. No use of fat because it sets too much the volatile aromas.

- Spices have 3 functions:

* Social distinction.

* Camouflage dishes.

* Prolipheratic.

- Extensive use of game meat, swans, peacocks…

•  The Renaissance xv-xvi

- The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the arrival of new products. The use of products coming from the New World such as tomatoes, corn, potatoes, coffee, artichokes, peppers, beans, chocolate… 

- Significant Italian influence on the culinary art due to the marriage of Catherine of Medici with the future Henry II and Marie of Medici’s marriage with Henry IV. Italian influence: the apparition of the two-pronged fork, the usage of the individual plate (ceramic of Faenza), and the chalice is replaced by crystal glasses of Murano. This refined the table manners; hand washing is systematic…

-  The discovery of the Italian pasta, jellies, marzipan, ginger bread and nougat.

- Apparition of pin machines in the kitchen.

REAL GOLDMINE

Argan Oil

For centuries the Berber tribes of south western Morocco have used Argan oil as a basic component of their diet and as a traditional medicine. In the earlier nineties, chemical researches confirmed the valuable nutritional and dermatological properties of the Argan oil (including its use as a treatment for acne, wrinkles and wounds).

Argania Spinosa

Argan (Argania Spinosa), also known as thorny olive tree, has characteristics of Sapotaceae family, leathery leaf, small, with yellow flowers, and the fruit as dates...Argan is of slow growth, taking five to six years to bear its first fruit. 

Argan tree is heat resistant and can withstand temperature up to 50ºC. It can reach 8m to 10 m in height. The trunk is short and tortuous. The fruit is the size of a walnut, yellow or sometimes red. It consists of a fleshy husk that covers the hard bone.

Goats climbing Argan tree

The fruit of this tree, from which oil is extracted, begins to mature with the first warm days of June, and is traditionally collected in a very original way: it is harvested by goat.

When the grass is scarce, goats climb the trees to eat their leaves, its sprouts and fruit. At night, animals begin to chew and spit the bones of the fruit; big as acorns and hard as almonds. The pastor then collects them without being stuck even once. Another method is to collect them under the tree when they have fallen ripe and let them dry, to later peel and remove the bone.


Dermatologists recommended Argan oil for sunburn relief and to combat skin diseases such as neurodermitis and psoriasis.

In modern cosmetology Argan oil is applied to the skin for its regenerative effect. French scientists from the university of Metz have succeeded to prove that the oil causes a rejuvenation of the cells. According to the German physician Dr. Peter Schleicher, taking two tea spoons a day of the oil is sufficient to enjoy its healing effects.

The extraction of this oil is totally handmade; there are no factories for industrial extraction. 100 Kg of ripe fruit is composed of 50 litres of water, 22 Kg of dry pulp that the cattle use, 25 Kg of shells that serve the fire and only 3 Kg of pipes, where oil is extracted by a really handmade and Neolithic method. Each bone is cracked, a task performed by women ad children, and contains 3 pipes similar to those of pumpkins. These are roasted until they begin to blacken, then crushed and grinded in a rustic stone mill until a thick and opaque honey starts to drip from the mouth of the mill. It has the consistency of a sesame cream. During one week, it rests in a cool dark place until it dries. Women form balls they will tighten until, little by little, the oil of that semi-dry past begins to dry. The oil is light and transparent, lighter and more digestive than the olive's, brown and strong, with sweet flavour.

Argan oil is the most expensive oil in the world, hence it is also called the liquid gold of Morocco. A 20 cl of extra virgin Argan oil can easily cost a whopping 17€ .

CHOCOLATE

Theobroma Cacao

Chocolate is a food which stems from the cocoa beans. it is a common ingredient in many candies, ice cream, cookies, pies, cakes and desert.

The chocolate is obtained by fermentation, roasting and drying of the bitter beans that come from the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) originally from Central America.

Mucilage

As soon as harvested, the pods are broken with a club or a machete to extract the beans which are coated with a white pulp, called 'Mucilage'. This process is called 'pod breaking'. Each pod contains 20 to 50 seeds, and twenty pods provide 1Kg of dried beans.

Fermentation
Process

The beans are sorted, cleaned and subjected to fermentation 

4 to 6 days in wooden boxes covered with banana leaves, in order to develop an early aroma as a result of natural chemical reactions. This first fermentation permits to liquefy the pulp surrounding the beans. During the second fermentation, the alcoholic pulp is transformed into vinegar. The beans are cleaned and the fermentation is stopped. these beans are aerated then dried.

Sun Drying Process 

After that, the agglomerated packets of beans are burst to later be sorted. To reduce the moisture rate from 60% to 8%, the beans are placed on racks in the sun or in artificial dryers. This process requires 1 to 2 weeks, and it shouldn't be too slow (moulds) or too fast (acidity).

After that process, the beans are mixed with hot air; this is called calibration;

The flat beans are faulty, so they are set aside for powder or cacao butter.

Roasting Process

The plump beans are bagged and sent to the roasters. They are then roasted between 120ºC and 140ºC. The degree and roasting time will vary depending on the origin of the beans, the type of cacao or chocolate that is sought. Each type requires the cacao roaster to graduate the roasting time and degree of heat.

The beans are then passed to the 'crushing' to later be processed until getting the crane, the bitter cacao paste.

Aztec holding
Theobroma
 bean

Aztecs Preparing Chocolate

The Aztecs pounded the cacao beans on there knees, using a mortar half wood half iron slightly heated on a flad stone. The beans were roasted and then crushed with spices, pepper, cinnamon, and achiote, then it is served.

Once crushed, the cacao beans are transformed into liquid paste called cacao mass, or pulp, or cacao liquor. It is from this dough that we can prepare cacao powder, cacao bar, or chocolate,.

After the cacao pulp is crushed it is pressed in hydraulic presses equipped with filter cloths and we obtain two products:

• A liquid, cacao butter, will be deodorized then poured into moulds where it will solidify; this represents about the half of its weight.
• A solid, the meal which be crushed to give cacao powder.

Conching Process

Cacao pulp is used to make chocolate by adding sugar, cacao butter, and optionally, milk. The cacao pulp is mixed with other materials in a fix. For example, a bitter chocolate should never contain more that 40% of sugar. The pulp must undergo 'conching'; a mechanical shaking during 12 to 48 hours under 80ºC of temperature. the Crystallization of the chocolate butter will bring it all its brilliance...once cast.

The whiter the chocolate is, the more it contains cacao butter and less chocolate powder. It is said that the true fans only like dark chocolate...in fact there is no white chocolate in the chocolate lovers gourmet clubs tasting.

SPICES

 The story and the scent of spices

The variety of the spices makes its definition very complicated. However, all of us can determine spices. We spontaneously recognize them, although some of them are less famous, such as the Chinese Fagara, practically unknown out of its native land.

The spices are parts of some aromatic plants, which have a strong and unique flavour. People use spices in small quantities in cooking as preservatives, for seasoning or as a food-coloring. The spices are almost exotic products. They were one of the most expensive commercial products during the middle ages and the medieval period. A very great number of spices was used in medicine.

The origin of spices:

Myrtaceae

The spices do not belong to one unique vegetable family, even though some of them pertain to the one determined specie: ginger, cardamom and turmeric belong to the Zingiberaceae or ginger family; myrtle, clove and allspice to that called Myrtaceae or myrtle family; cumin, caraway, coriander and ajwain on the other hand are called Apiaceae or unbellifers. 

Zingiberaceae

Apiaceae

    The benefits of Spices: 

    Do spices stem from the same part of the plant?

    

      No. There are spices that are seeds, like mustard, juniper or sesame, but cinnamon is a bark; clove, a bud; saffron, a stigma; pepper, a fruit; and ginger, a rhizome (the underground part of the plant which is the junction of the stem and the root). 

 

 Bud  

Stigma

     

Seed

Rhizome

    

Bark   

Fruit

                                   

       During the medieval period, the spices made reference to merchandising or trading (spices) coming from the East, along with silk, cotton and metal. Progressively, the meaning of this term has become more restricted by designating only the edible substances that nowadays we call spices.

      In general terms, we agree with the fact that spices come from plant excluding salt, give off flavours, that they add colour to food sometimes, and that are subjected to a preparation after their picking, which differentiates them from herbs.


      

Condiments

Spices cannot be eaten as they are; they participate in the elaboration of the dish, which distinguishes them from condiments, served aside. therefore, mustard served on the table is a condiment, but the seed of the mustard is a spice. Although, spices do not embrace all the plants which perfume our kitchen, we also have garlic or onion.

      Spices arouse tropical reveries and vision of opulence. they fill the large caravans running right across the road of silk through the deserts and the mountains of Arabia and Asia. they perfume the wind that blows up the caravel's sails on the oceans.

    

            As a result, the best criterion for characterising the spices seem to be the one of the imagination. Full of exoticism, adorned with myths and beliefs, richly endowed of magic or healing powers as they were attributed in the past, spices are those which make us dream besides flavouring us.

BARBECUE VS. JAFFLE

  
Barbie

   In Australia, the most traditional meals involve around the barbecue, the “Barbie” as they say in Australia.

  Coal or Gas?

The Barbie, as a real science, starts with the purchase of the barbecue itself. Since the models which are available are enormous, there are even specialized stores for that!!! Australian frequently eat barbecue grills, but since those of coal are known to be carcinogen, in Australia they prefer the gas system.

Either way, it becomes almost impossible to make a charcoal barbecue, since it is difficult to find the bags of coal without taking and walking for miles until you can identify where it is.

And what we can eat with all this?

Chicken sausage

Differently the rest of barbecues, the Australian one is much more sophisticated… At the butcher or supermarket, we can find a variety of sausages that will make the choice very difficult!!! Beef sausages with dried tomatoes and basil, chicken sausage with cheese, sausages with honey and ginger, chicken sausage with lime and chili… we will also find several varieties of “balls” of meat called “Rissoles”, honey lamb and cheese, garlic and herbs, traditional beef, etc.

Buying and Australian barbecue recipes cookbook is obviously something indispensable!

   JAFFLE: a toasted sandwich

   The exact origin of this new culinary concept is still uncertain, but all the hints point at Australia where the most probable trace of the jaffle background was found.

Nomadic aborigines of this country cooked their game’s meat of the day by squeezing it between two slices of dough over a wood fire, with a large clip.

However, a slight shift in the manufacture of the mold has transformed this “squeezed” sandwich into a “hermetic sealed sandwich”.

    It was then that two adventurer travelers, great lovers of new culinary discoveries, brought in their trunks the new sandwich from the middle of nowhere and decided to make it known among their fellows…

     But for that, they had to replace the Australian desert fires by means more suited to urban areas. The name of this sandwich stems from the word “waffle”; from the Australian vocabulary.

    Thus after thousands of kilometers and many culinary adaptations and manipulations, the jaffle was born, as a sort of crunches, smaller, more closed and more useful and handy to eat.   

    A marvel of flavors wrapped in toasted bread, a concentration of delight and pleasure to crunch, sweet or salty, which combines tradition, travel and imagination.

    Indeed, that explains why, while crunching natural flavors, one begins to dream of somewhere else.

Molecular Gastronomy

A GASTRONOMIC REVOLUTION: MOLECULAR COOKERY

Do you know about the molecular cookery?

The gastronomy is a creative art from the elaboration of recipes until the tasting of the dish after the selection of products and components. It is an art which does not cease to be innovated since the dawn of time. But the term of “innovation” is not quite strong in describing the present-day revolution in the gastronomic world with the birth of the molecular cookery.

Nicholas Kurti and Hervé This

The term was invented in 1988, by Nicholas Kurti, a physicist of Oxford, and Hervé This, a chemist. The molecular cookery mixes up science and food, uses new ingredients in order to prepare food with gelling agents and liquid nitrogen…which give birth to new recipes like translucent strawberry cannelloni or the English cream without egg. 

THE MAGIC OF THE MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY:

Faux Caviar

Molecular gastronomy experiments have resulted in new innovative dishes like hot gelatins, airs, faux caviar, spherical ravioli, crab ice cream and olive oil spiral. The dishes that molecular cookery suggests to us are real works of art.

Smoke of Nitrogen

They are usually accompanied with quite mind-blowing shows during the presentation: have you ever seen a white cold smoke of nitrogen which, after the gelling of a liquid, transforms it to little spheres? It seems incredible but it is magical to see it live! 

MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY PROCESS:

Actually there are two main processes in this cookery: 

• The gelation: 

A process in which food is deconstructed by extracting its liquid part and presenting this very part in the form of bar of gel, in cube or in cylinder…amazing! 

• The spherification: 

A process in which very small gelled beads are formed by freezing: thus you can get small orange beads with flavor of carrot! 

CAN I EAT THIS? IS THIS SAFE? WHY DON'T YOU TRY IT FIRST?

When people hear molecular gastronomy for the first time they often mistakenly view it as unhealthy, synthetic, chemical, dehumanizing and unnatural. This is not surprising given that molecular gastronomy often relies on fuming flasks of liquid nitrogen, led-blinking water baths, syringes, tabletop distilleries, PH meters and shelves of food chemicals with names like carrageenan, maltodextrin and xanthan. 

Molecular gastronomy attracts by its artistic and incredible preparation. However, critics think that molecular dishes don’t have the flavor expected after such an amazing show of chemistry… I guess it would be up to us to decide once we try it.