Mini-FAQ
on cooking and
eating this stuff
How spicy are these recipes?
They're not spicy-hot, just flavourful
from the addition of herbs and various spices. Many of the herbs used can
be easily found in modern Mediterranean cooking (flat-leafed parsley, marjoram,
thyme,...). The spices themselves are ones we normally have on desserts
(ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg,...) but also in oriental cooking and in various
sauces. If in doubt, play it safe by adding small quantities or leaving the sauce on the side.
Why is there sugar in so many dishes?
They loved it. And to their credit,
where proportions are mentioned, it is not an excessive amount of sugar,
and it is tempered by the use vinegar, verjus, unripe grapes or bitter
orange. The result is more akin to eating a sweet and sour oriental dish
than to a dessert proper.
If you are still not convinced,
think that ketchup and many other ready-prepared foodstuffs have sugar
in them, too.
What kind of sugar did they use?
Sugar was expensive but less so in the Iberian peninsula, because both
Portugal and Spain had plantations in rapid expansion. So yes, they did
have sugar in this period (late 15th century) and it was cane sugar (see
Encyclopaedia Brittanica). As to the question of how refined it was...
It must have been pretty much white, otherwise they could not have used
it to make manjar blanco (blancmanger). I would guess, though, that the
leftovers from the refining process would probably be cheaper and used
in recipes where the colouring didn't matter.
What is this flat-leafed parsley stuff?
The parsley used in modern Spain and
Italy (and probably the whole Mediterranean basin) is not as nice-looking
as the pretty kind normally seen in Great Britain or the USA. But it is
far tastier, actually changing the character of the recipes in which it
enters. It also has useful properties, like off-setting the taste of garlic,
leaving your mouth with a much cleaner palate. If you are serious at all
about eating in a Mediterranean manner (modern or period), get some flat-leafed
parsley, even if you have to plant it yourself (you will then also have
parsley roots for a soup I have a recipe for). Parsley is rich in vitamin C and a wonderful thing all around.
What do you fry things with? Or life
beyond lard and bacon.
The recipes almost always specify
lard or something containing lard (like bacon) as the fat of choice. It
is also used to keep the meat moist (when roasting, for example).
If you can not, or
do not wish to, eat lard, I suggest you use olive oil (or some other
quality single-seed vegetable oil).
This is somewhat justified as Nola gives "sweet oil" (sweet as opposed
to rancid, I suppose) as an alternative to lard in his recipe for Morisque
Aubergine, "because moors won't eat pork fat". Also because on fast days
and throughout Lent animal fats were forbidden. This may also be the way
to go for people with converso or late moorish personas.
For Lent Nola also suggests substituting meat broth with water with
some fine oil and salt. Using this would leave us with a wide variety of
vegetarian dishes.
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