Food - learning from the poor’s blog

At this wonderful time of Autumn (or Fall) when we are enjoying the fresh fruits of the land, it occurs to me that out diet and enjoyment of food would be much reduced without the whole technology of preserving.

How many ways can you make flour and water into delicious food? Well, here's a few more ways chickpea flour and water are made up around the Mediterranean.

South Indians love rasam, their digestif, the spicy, aromatic “soup” which is saved for the end of a meal. It is little more than water and a mixture of spices. There are many varieties, involving tamarind, garlic, tomato, pepper, chilli and numerous other herbs and spices.

For many of the poorer inhabitants of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu ragi is the staple grain. In the morning, it is more likely to be porridge, but the favoured form for the main meal of the day often is ragi ball, rolling it in sambar or rasam. Sambar is a lentil based, vegetable curry, but if money is tight, rasam may well be the only source of taste to add to the relatively bland carbohydrate.

The sheer innovation of families to use the ingredients available to them is encouraging and the results are wonderful, although I have to admit to overdosing on rasam in the past! Anyone got their own recipe?

But Ricky Stein suggests that the origins of pasta lie in North Africa where they create cous cous from semolina flour.  Sitting in an inland town of Morocco, watching a lady massaging the grains into the tiny balls that could easily be mistaken for pasta, he passed on this nugget of contentious information.

Doesn't seem like quite the same thing to me, but it does underline the creativity of mankind (mainly the poor) with the simple ingredients flour and water. When did we discover that when you grind all sorts of grains it creates such a fascinating and sustaining raw material. It certainly explains why mills have been such vital pieces of social infrastructure.

Any more claims or ideas out there!

If we are looking for diversity and creativity in the use of flour and water, then why look further than Italian pasta? I hesitate to address a subject on which almost every Italian is so passionate. All input welcome, I would love to learn a whole lot more.

“It is all about making a little go a long way” - Matthew Fort.

Simplicity and imaginative use of simple ingredients; poor people’s food.

Some add egg, but basically pasta is flour and water. Just count the variations, spaghetti, lasagne, fusilli, etc, etc. In the world of cooking there are around 350 different types of pasta, and probably approximately four times as many names for them.

Pasta comes in many different shapes and sizes. There are simple string-shaped pasta like spaghetti and vermicelli, ribbon-shaped ones like fettuccine and linguine, short tubes like elbow macaroni and penne, decorative fancy shapes like farfalle and rotelle, large sheets like lasagna, and hollow pasta stuffed with filling, like ravioli, manicotti, and tortellini.

History

Did the Italians invent pasta? Or was it the Chinese? 

Well, it seems that the Chinese were eating noodles as long ago as 2000. The familiar legend of Marco Polo importing pasta from China is just that—a legend, whose origins lie not in Polo's Travels, but in the newsletter of the National Macaroni Manufacturers Association. The works of the 2nd century CE Greek physician Galen mention itrion, homogenous compounds made up of flour and water. The Jerusalem Talmud records that itrium, a kind of boiled dough, was common in Palestine from the 3rd to 5th centuries CE. A dictionary compiled by the 9th century Syrian physician and lexicographer Isho bar Ali defines itriyya as stringlike pasta shapes made of semolina and dried before cooking, a recognizable ancestor of modern-day dried pasta.

Lasagne

One form of itrion with a long history is laganum (plural lagana), which in Latin refers to a thin sheet of dough. In the 1st century BCE work of Horace, lagana were fine sheets of dough which were fried and were an everyday food. Writing in the 2nd century CE Athenaeus of Naucratis provides a recipe for lagana which he attributes to the 1st century Chrysippus of Tyana: very fine sheets of a dough made of wheat flour and the juice of crushed lettuce, then flavored with spices and deep-fried in oil. An early 5th century cookbook describes a dish called lagana that consisted of several layers of rolled-out dough alternating with meat stuffing and baked in an oven, a recognizable ancestor of modern-day Lasagne.

Some have attributed the innovation of dried pasta, in the form of long thin noodles we use today (spaghetti) to the Arabs who populated Southern Italy (i.e. Sicily) around the 12th Century. Prior to this, Italians are said to have eaten their pasta freshly made (pasta fresca) in a gnocchi like form.

Anyone out there can add to this discussion? Love to hear from you.

Musing even more about the role of various forms of flour and water, it occurred to me that the good old Yorkshire Pudding was another example of the poor making us of these ingredients imaginatively to make the most of the food they had available.

How better to make a small piece of meat go a long way further? Make use the heat from the oven already in use, make sure there is plenty of gravy and you have a filling meal for a whole family.

 Anybody tell me about other uses of flour and water?

India breads have been a source of wonderment for me now over twenty years. The diversity is phenomenal; how many ways can you mix and cook flour and water?

The indigenous breads of India are unleavened breads known as roti, made from ground whole wheat (aata), millet (bajra) or sorghum (jawar). The latter two are eaten in rural Western and Central India, while wheat is the main cereal of Northern India and most of urban India. The Muslim influenced breads of India are leavened, like the naans which are so well known from Tandoori Restaurants, and Khamiri rotis with the various other kinds of roti breads of Mumbai. 

The universal name appears to be the chapati. The dough is made with the ground cereal and tepid water. Some add a little ghee (clarified butter) or oil to make the dough softer. In restaurants, some breads have eggs added to make the large roomali roti.

Almost all flour in India is whole grain and some families will even send grain to a specialist grinder on a regular basis to get the right grade and also to ensure nothing is added.

The whole cooking process is carefully standardized; the temperature of the water, the time of kneading, covering with a damp cloth, the temperature of the cast iron griddle or tawa, the pressing with a damp cloth to separate the faces of the bread, and the exact right time to turn. At first sight it seems so simple, yet it is so hard to replicate; as I know from many disastrous attempts.

Phulkas - some people prefer their chapatis puffed up, for this you need an open flame beside the griddle; the bread is put on the flame to finish and it separates and puffs up.

Pooris – are fried breads, eaten for breakfast in the North along with a potato preparation. The heat causes the bread to puff up into a thin, crisp envelope.

Parathas are enriched chapati, sometimes with chopped mint leaves  and perhaps a little salt and paprika. It is also possible to stuff the parathas with vegetables, potatoes and spiced radish. The variations are virtually innumerable. 

Panelle is a staple of Sicilian food. It is basically chickpea flour (farina di ceci) and water, with seasoning and added parsley. The mixture is boiled and then, formed into a flat dough, it is fried.

Franco, tell me about this wonderful staple food from your culture. Anyone else from Sicily, feel free to contribute.

To watch someone prepare the "daily bread" with the immense, but subtle skill, passed on by mothers over innumerable generations, is a thing of great joy. To eat the bread so produced is an even greater joy; for me nothing compares to the soft, pliable texture of unleavened bread straight from the tawa or hotplate.

My observation is that the poor have created many, of not all of the great dishes of world cuisine. I am amazed at the sheer diversity of foods which are produced from mixtures of flour (of many different grains) and water; maybe with a little salt added.