And Don't Get Me Started On Cacao

[bloodyrosemccoy]

MY SISTER: Dinner was nice, but what about dessert? Anything good?

MOM: There’s cake mix in the pantry! You could make cookies or brownies or cake!

AMELIA: And if you cook the cake mix with a Super Shroom Shake you’ll get Shroom Cake, and it’ll restore 30 of your HP!

MY BROTHER: Dammit, you’re playing Super Paper Mario again.


I don’t know why, but I love the hell out of the stupid cooking feature of that game. I can’t really put my finger on it, but I think it distills one of my cherished beliefs: that cooking is MAGIC.

Okay, not quite, but something even better—a testament to human creativity. I mean, I can sort of understand how someone may have figured out that if you get the food hot for a while it becomes tasty and less likely to kill you from the inside, but on a larger scale, it’s baffling. Which one of us little monkeys figured out how to combine the food? How did they figure out how eggs relate to flour and water and oven heat? Who came up with flour? And what in god’s name led to the invention of cheese?* Was it deliberate trial (and error), or just some lucky accident?** And who thought their discovery was good enough to share it around to the point where it became common place?

There’s always a little of that going through my head when I crush some garlic or whip a cake mix or make some banana nut bread. Taking something necessary for survival and adding so many bells and whistles denotes a brilliance almost staggers me at times—as with so many of the things we humans do. It’s commonplace and everyday, but it’s amazing all the same.


*I firmly believe that my love of cheese renders any right I thought I had to point at other cultures and say that they eat WEIRD or GROSS food invalid. There is nothing more disgusting than cheese. I tried describing it to my host family in Kaloleni and they were with me as far as “Well, you start with some milk,” but after that they assumed decidedly Do Not Want expressions. Can you blame them?

**While discussing the origins of leavened bread, ironychan once theorized that a lot of great breakthroughs in cooking were probably precipitated by the words, “I dare you to eat that.”

Comments

[beccastareyes]

Cheese is both delicious and something that makes you wonder who the hell came up with it. Something like paneer at least sounds less gross than most cheese-making processes* (and I say that as someone who loves her cheese), but that's not even a Western cheese.

Baking is especially amazing, because of all the chemistry and the way the ingredients interact. So is cooking meat, for that matter.

* From what I understand (from Wikipedia), you sour hot milk with vinegar, drain off the liquid, cool it, and then put it under something heavy. No bacteria, digestive enzymes or molds involved.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I can almost believe in a process that led to MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE, but MAN BASTE MEAT WITH CRUSHED HERBS AND SEEDS AND OIL SQUEEZED FROM SEEDS AND THEN PLACE IN ENCLOSED OVEN TO HOLD IN HEAT AND THEN MAN ADD TANGY SAUCE seems a little bit complicated.

And yeah, baking ... you want a chemist, I'll get you a baker. Definitely takes brains.

[beccastareyes]

One of these days, I need to take some of the 'Food Science for Newbs' courses while I'm hear at Cornell. There's apparently some good 'cooking for geeks' classes that discuss things like that.

[shadesofmauve]

Expirimentation out of nessecity, in part. People spiced meat to hide the fact that it wasn't quite as fresh as it ought to be.

"Well, I could dare Ogg to eat that, but maybe if I cover it in plants he just won't notice..."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

"You know, Thag, this meat tastes off."

"That's the garnish, Ogg!"

"Oh. Gotcha."

[shadesofmauve]

Ogg not eat parsley!

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Vinegar or lemon juice, either works.

Westerners just skip the extra draining and pressing step--quark is fresh soft cheese, as is cream cheese (not the stuff in the foil packages, the real stuff, mascarpone, and a few other varieties.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

Both of these are going to be off the top of my head, but: cheese may have first been created when desert nomads carried milk in animal stomachs (camel milk in camel stomachs, I guess?) which caused the milk to mix with the stomach enzymes (rennet) and curdled the milk, and they were probably like, eh, it's still edible! And subsequent generations elevated it into an art, or something.

Similarly, sushi was originally not meant to have rice in it - fish were preserved in fermented rice, and when it was time to eat the fish you'd throw away the rice because, duh, it's spoiled. And then someone came up with the bright idea of adding vinegar to the rice, because it was the sourness of the rice that kept the fish safe from microbes, and then once you had sour vinegar you didn't really need to spoil the rice, and so you could eat the fish and the rice at the same time - and if you wrap the whole thing in seaweed, it's so much less messy to eat! So it became kind of like finger food for the Japanese ("like hot dogs", was the analogy in the article I'd read this in) till they elevated that into a fine art.

Re: breakthroughs> Also, if you observe the more interesting bits of Chinese cuisine, it can also originate in "dude, we're starving, anything looks edible."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* You're right--"I gotta eat SOMETHING" is definitely another reason for cooking breakthroughs.

[bkwrrm-tx.livejournal.com]

I love, love, love cheese of all types and tastes. I grew up making home-made cottage cheese and have gotten to where I can make my own paneer (http://thepauperedchef.com/2009/11/how-to-make-paneer.html#more-5024) and ricotta.

I'm convinced that whoever first thought eating a giant sea cockroach (aka lobsters) was either very very hungry or certifiably insane.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

I was going to paraphrase this but then remembered where I'd heard it... essentially, lobsters used to be considered cruel and unusual punishment when fed to prison inmates.

[bkwrrm-tx.livejournal.com]

I'd read that before (LOVE cracked.com) and even heard Alton Brown mention it on one of his shows. :-)

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

and snails

[bkwrrm-tx.livejournal.com]

Oh, ghods yes. That was a desperate, desperate person.

Of course, now I *love* escargot and the only time I get really good snails is when I go on a cruise. :-)

[shadesofmauve]

A lot of interesting delicacies where once pauper food. French peasants couldn't afford actual meat, but they could pluck 'wall fruit' (snails) for free.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, soul food came about as an attempt to make the scraps and lousy garbage food given to slaves palatable. And on a less oppressive note, Japanese food seems to consist a lot of taking whatever was lying around and trying to make it edible becasue there's not a lot of agriculture you can do in Japan.

[glaikery.livejournal.com]

This post: it makes me very happy. Essentially, all I have to say is yes, but this is worthy of saying. I really never appreciated cooking properly until this past year - it's amazing.

Cheese is also both disgusting and utterly wonderful at once, which is really quite a feat for a food. (I love cheese. I never thought of it phrased quite that way, but I think it is the right way to think about it. I imagine a Douglas Adams!description of tea, except for cheese...)

"I dare you to eat that": without a doubt, yes (though I don't expect it to become a worldwide delicacy, there is peanut butter batter that tastes damn good with hoisin sauce. No...really). And cooking with other people, especially someone else of a similarly experimental mind - is so much fun.

Awesome, awesome.

[luinmir.livejournal.com]

When I visited a game reserve in South Africa, we had our meals outside on a little veranda. They brought all the usual things - sugar for tea and coffee, butter for bread, et cetera. But the butter and sugar specifically were in heavy stone containers with heavy stone lids. They did that because if the butter and sugar were in lighter containers, the vervet monkeys would sneak in, steal both items, take them down next to the river, mix the two together, and then eat it. So, the desire to mix things to make it better seems to go back to pre-human primates at least - the monkeys - at least those specific monkeys in South Africa - clearly know that the fat and the sweet are much tastier (and probably easier to consume) when combined.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I did not know that! That's great! (And I believe it of those darn vervets. Little bandidos.)

I did know that certain troops of Japanese macaques have developed a taste for fruit seasoned with hot spring mineral water. This came up in an anthropology class discussing cultural transmission in primates; apparently an individual in one group discovered it and showed it to the others. No monkey outside of that population has figured it out, though.

So yeah, it seems to be inborn--but damn, human cooking gets ridiculously COMPLICATED.

[viizou.livejournal.com]

I completely relate. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and I'm still amazed by so many things. Especially bread. Who the hell thought to mix yeast with water and flower and let it rise? How did they know it would rise?

If you look at the history of food, you find that a lot of specific recipes came to be through mistakes. Like the Bakewell Tart, where the cook misunderstood the instructions and put jam inside the tart instead of over it. Or potato puffs, which are basically chips gone wrong (deliciously wrong). But the origins of the basic recipe concept (such as the concept of the pie itself) remains a mystery.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Well, sourdough-style breadmaking usually uses a starter, which is a bit of the dough from a previous loaf that you add to the new dough. At some point somebody must have figured that there must be something in that stuff that makes it work, and set out to find it.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the development of Yeast has more to do with beer than with Bread, and it was only after the Brewers had their act together that the Bakers got in on the act. I'm not really sure of the details, though.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the development of Yeast has more to do with beer than with Bread

Words cannot express how very not surprised I am.

[shadesofmauve]

Oh, wizard-of-gluten-free, tell this poor seeker-of-knowledge what to substitute for flour in a gluten-free birthday cake!

The new player in our D&D group is gluten intolerant, as we found out (suprise!*) as dinner was being served last week. Next week is the DMs birthday, and I'd really love it if *everyone* could eat the cake!

*Normally I'm good about asking about dietary restrictions, but I totally forgot, my boyfriend made delicious stew thickened with flour, we had delicious crusty bread... yeah. I scurried around and found her Emergency Taco Supplies, and all was well.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Betty Crocker is your friend.

Before cooking anything GF be sure and SCRUB the kitchen down, cross contanimation is what usually gets me. Some people aren't very sensitive, others ( like me ) can be done in by some toaster crumbs.

[shadesofmauve]

Thank you!

Luckily, or oddly, my kitchen is a fairly safe place for gluten intolerance, because I almost never bake and, I know this is very, very odd, but I don't really love bread. (Exception made for crusty french bread with fancy cheese). My starches are usually rice and taters, instead.

Of course, both bread and flour-thickened stew the one night we had a gluten-free guest. *facepalm*

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Of course, both bread and flour-thickened stew the one night we had a gluten-free guest. *facepalm*


Well, as we say around my place, "Those are the rules by which we live." ;)

Not that I made steaks for our guests and found out that they're vegetarians, or that one of my friends is allergic to cinnaman and all-spice after I made my cinnaman/all-spice carrots, or that one time...

[shadesofmauve]

Thank you! I had hoped for substituting something into my favorite uber-chocolate recipe, but I can totally work with mix if it means no one will die and the creation is edible.

I'm not a baker, but I do have my I-grew-up-without-processed-food pride. I can damn well bake a cake from scratch.

It usually takes hours longer than it does normal people, and you can't see the kitchen through the fine veil of cocoa powder, and after the first flour explosion it devolves to a kind of ingredient war of attrition, but out of the wreckage emerges cake!

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

I'm only gluten free ( well, carrot free too ) praise *insert deitie(s) of choice here*.

Udi's GF bread has been a godsend to me.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

We make some Gluten-Free stuff at work. I've been tempted to recommend that we shift those bakes to midnight and include the sacrifice of a Black Rooster as part of the recipe ;)

Actually, I think Voodoo makes more sense than Gluten-Free Baking.

[shadesofmauve]

You have to sacrifice roosters? I had no idea gluten-free baking had so much in common with the Mystic Art of Bra Measurement.

You're allowed to use hens for the latter, though.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, but I've heard from Networking Techs that it works there, and GF Baking is about as nonsensical as that, so I figure it's worth a try ;)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hee, wow. I have a tough enough time navigating PCOS cookin'.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Stuff like almonds amaze me. Wild almonds are poisonous, all teh almonds we eat are descended from one mutant tree that didn't kill someone.

Who kept going around and tasting these things?!?


As far as gross goes, I'm pretty open minded and will try things. But some stuff just tastes nasty. Uni, aka sea urchin roe is just foul. It's the flavor left behind when happiness dies.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Almonds were probably eaten like buckeyes were by Native American groups: made into a mash and rinsed until it was no longer toxic. Then agriculture got into the game and bred for almonds that didn't have to be rinsed so much.

Also, uni isn't roe. It's the gonads. Sea urchin balls. (I agree with the horribleness, though.)

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

From my favorite source for questionable information, wikipedia: [almonds]"The fruit of the wild forms contains the glycoside amygdalin, "which becomes transformed into deadly prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) after crushing, chewing, or any other injury to the seed."[5] (^ a b c Zohary, Daniel; Maria Hopf (2000). Domestication of plants in the old world: the origin and spread of cultivated plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley. Oxford University Press. pp. 186. ISBN 0-19-850356-3.)

Also, that just makes uni even nastier than I thought it was. A friend of mine described uni as "this must be what raw sewage tastes like". I agree, but am not willing to test that hypothesis.

On a tangent... when I was keeping coral, pretty much every species of coral I had (even the primarily photosynthetic ones) would go apeshit when I'd put a little uni into the water. Apparently coral dig the taste of poo, but somehow I'm not surprised.

[sphynxle.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain certain cuisines and foods were brought about by a few different things: "Dude, I'm starving, and hey! we could cook that rat!" and people like my husband. "You're just going to DISCARD THOSE COW BALLS?! Fuck you, we can eat that! Hell, I bet it'll be good!"

I love watching the back stories on how some common dishes came to be. LIke some of the things they cook in China and Japan - soups that are made from bones, skins, and anything that was left over from the meat. To discard anything was considered taboo.

And I agree. Cheese really is a gross, gross thing when you discover how it was made xD Same with any dairy item, really. I mean, look at yougart! "well, this has curdled and SMELLS disgusting . . eh, I'll eat it anyway!"

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I, too, wonder over these things. Actually, I'm not too surprised by most of it. Sure, it's complex, but that's how evolution works, you know? You don't just look at a complex structure like an eye and "OMFG, how did anyone ever come up with this?" You know it happened one little step at the time.

Same with Chocolate Cake. A bit of "this is edible" and "these two things taste better mixed together" and "hey, if you cook this goop, it's even better" and "hey, these bitter seeds actually taste yummy if you roast them with sugar" and so on.

What really baffles the hell out of me is how we ever developed ways to eat things that start out poisonous and require careful and complex preparation just to become edible. Like olives. And blowfish. I mean, seriously, how many people died before someone figured out just how to make these things nontoxic? And what level of desperation even compelled people to keep trying?

I suspect a great deal of gone-bad milk got thrown away before anyone decided that things like sour cream and cheese were edible, though.