Mamta's Kitchen - A Family Cookbook
Climate and Area affecting cuisine
I was having a meeting with myself the other day while cooling some pasta under running water ! Making my "bait box" (Tiffin, lunchbox etc ) with a mixture of cold pasta, salad and tinned tuna...
It suddenly occured to me that not only does the produce and crops that grow locally affect how a countries/regions cuisine develops but so does the weather !
I know that the weather directly affects which crops will grow so in that way it influences what sort of things will go into dishes, but it goes beyond that. As I was running copious amounts of clean cold water on my pasta it dawned on me that if you didn't have access to water like that then its unlikely you would make dishes that used lots of water in them..
This then led on to other things like if you aren't able to store things in a fridge then again you won't be making things that need to set (like jellies, cheese cakes etc).. chances are you won't make a stock the night before an let it cool, place in the fridge to get the fat off the top when its solid..
Which in turn lead on to things like making aged cheeses if you live where its 40?C most of the year...
Nor would you want to spend hours in the kitchen or over a roaring fire if you lived in that sort of heat, so again any dishes that need constant attention like stirring wouldn't be as likely to be on the menu.
Once you start looking from that point of view it makes regional cuisine make more sense and helps you to understand the basics much more...
It would go a long way to explaining why a lot of English food is stews and slow roasts, as it would keep you near the fire while it snows and rains outside....
Someone once said to truely know a country you need to eat its foods and go to its markets (I think it might have been Keith Floyd) and now thinking about it, you really can learn an awful lot about a place just from know the menu !
Steve
Interesting Steve.
Certainly here in the East End of London there is a long tradition of curry making (long before the Bangladeshi's arrived.) The dockers could not afford any effective form of refrigeration so the odd sack of spice would 'fall off the back of the cart' to be used to disguise meat that was past its best.
An interesting case study would be Greenland where apparently due to the snow melting they are apparently now growing produce they never been able to before.
"I was having a meeting with myself the other day"
LOL
But yes, very good point.
How do you have a meeting with yourself Steve? You mean you were talking to yourself/day dreaming ;-) LOL? I do that a lot, when I am in the kitchen.
You would be surprised how people adapt! In Rajasthan in India, where water is always in short supply, people in dessert often cleaned (probably still do) their pots, pans and metal ?thalies? etc. by vigorously rubbing them with fine sand, found in abundance there. If they ate pasta, I am sure they would have found a way of cooking it without washing it in lot of water. When we cook vermicelli, savoury or as a dessert, we never boil it/wash in cold water. Look at the recipes.
But of course, the weather and what grows where you live does effect the cuisine, absolutely. Most middle class people have fridges these days and make jellies/ Kulfi/ice-creams. I do take your point though, they were not in our cuisine of a long time ago or onkly very rich people had access to them.
Cheese is mostly eaten only as fresh cheese/paneer. Only recently, and only in big cities, one gets the matured cheeses. Mozzarella has become quite popular, due to popularity of Pizzas, but this is only in upper middle classes.
For some reason, Dim-sum have taken off in a big way in India, even street hawkers sell them. They call them Mo Mo?s.
You are quite right, you really can learn an awful lot about a place just from their eating habits !
Steve
"meeting with myself"... when you are half thinking about something, look at the possibilities, not actually going to the full extent of working it all out but get your other self to make mental notes to look at it later etc.. (its a like a brain storming session with a secretary taking notes, only its all you... ) LOL
I suppose if you take things to an extreme it makes it easier to see...
If you were in a land that rained for 11 months and didn't get to warm, then its unlikely the cuisine would have BBQ type dishes...
If it was always 40C and sunshine, then you would expect less heavy stews and hot dishes and more salads, fresh fruits and liquid dishes (cold soups, tossed fruit salads with some juice or other)..
Steve
is this no more apparent than in Indian cuisine? Where is wheat eaten in preference to rice? or coconut milk used instead of yoghurt? Or fresh water fish eaten in preference to salt water.
One small mystery to me was the apparent excessive use of chillies in regions such as Goa, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata, until I realised that these were the places where chillies were first imported into India by the Portuguese and others.
To me, some of the most satisfying Indian dishes are the ones that I can imagine being cooked on open fires with simple utensils, where flavours had to be developed, rather than just added to a dish.
Another major factor must be the soil as to what will thrive in any given area. Even within my birth county, Wiltshire, there is a marked difference between the traditional recipes from the chalk areas (sheep grazing) and clay valleys (dairy.) In fact it is where the expression "as different as chalk and cheese" is supposed to have originated!
I think India has 30 or more climatic regions, all affecting growing conditions.
When I look at a recipe, I use the geography (and climate, what would be sourced in that region) to decide what is proper, and what has likely been added. Strip it bare, and most often, one ends up with a very decent recipe.
I like dhansak, which is Persian, originally. Some of the ingredients of modern day dhansaks would not have been available to the Persians (and certainly not to the Parsi who fled to Mumbai in the 7-8th centuries. I wasn't convinced of aubergine as an ingredient, until I realised it was not of South American origin, and that what was meant was probably the pea aubergine often found in Thai curries, though I source them from Africa, today.
On top of all these points, recipes evolve over a period of time according to what foods become easier to access, migration of people from one area of the world to another and mixing of cuisines. This has never been more obvious as now, when so many ingredients are available thousands of miles from their origin. This is not only because of increased travel and people learning to enjoy a wider variety of foods, but also because more things are grown everywhere. Traditional recipes are very important and must be preserved, but emergence of newer, sometimes mixed recipes is also very important. I don?t remember many chefs in UK using things like ginger, garlic, chillies, spices, coriander, basil, dill and yoghurt etc. in their dishes in the England of 70?s, but everyone uses them now without a second thought. I think that food is enriched by this mixing of ideas.
Lapis, Mamta both very good points/views !
I remember growing up in the 70's and being treated to a "vesta" curry from time to time which added spice and change to our diet.
By the 80's mostly instigaged my older brother (who had an friend who's father was Indian) we had actually been taught how to make a basic curry using a "pataks" type pre-made jar (not bad considering my brother would have been about 16-17 and I'd have been around 10-11..)- Those curries as we didn't have the money to risk making something we couldn't eat tended to be a scrambled egg curry which were prety good (a massive difference in flavour from the vesta ones or our normal day to day food).. I'm sure I owe some of my passion for food back to those days with my brother and other days with my mother and grandmother making and being allowed to take over the kitchen !
I seem to remember we've always had a few spices in the kitchen mainly due to my dad liking Chinese food that he's had while in the Army.
I suppose the more you look into recipes the more changes,differences might have been made back to the original ones.. As said, some because we've now got access to different produce and some will be because its been tweaked around not having certain things. I often use smoked paprika in dishes to give a smokey flavour as I can't actually BBQ it in the rain... doesn't make it wrong.. just makes it as near to the original as I can make it where I am...
Steve
Steve: I have a meeting with myself at least once a day: it helps you to evaluate what you're doing, whether at work or at home. I ask myself questions and reply to my own questions. You can clarify things that way.
I'm sure climate MUST play a role in the way you suggest. It must have affected the way people cook and eat here in the very hot and dry Mediterranean coastal area of the South of France.
Phil