Elmo
RETIRED MOD
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2009
- Messages
- 3,010
- Reaction score
- 0
Two pieces that came back to back in the Economist. Something like shikwa and jawab-e-shikwa ... 
Ottoman Yolk
Jun 25th 2009
From Economist.com
What would a politicised east European menu look like?
Whats Cutlet Carpathian Style?, your columnist asked innocently in a restaurant in Budapest recently. Youre halfway through eating it when the Ukrainians take it away and say the rest belongs to them, came an instant quip in return. The rest of the world may have forgotten, but Hungarians still remember the time when a large chunk of what is now Ukraine (and a lot more besides) was part of their old imperial kingdom.
The encoding of menus is a fascinating byway in gastro-linguistics. Any mention of Hawaiian means that chunks of pineapple have been added to the dish. Similarly, Provençale signals tomatoes and black olives. Napolitano means with basil and mozzarella; Niçoise is anchovies and eggs, Veneziana means onions. More generally, traditional usually means indigestible or overcooked. Organic means it costs more.
A sprinkle of hope and a dollop of sadness
But rarely if ever do the menu terms have any political meaning. Londons best restaurant for real English cooking, Wiltons, serves a dessert called Guards Pudding, invented in the trenches of the first world war (ingredients include breadcrumbs and raspberry jam). The officers who survived the wartime mincing machine apparently longed for the dish in peacetime London. The French Macedoine salad could be the big exception: it is a mixed fruit salad that some say was named after the ethnic confusion in Macedonia 100 years ago. But serious scholars have not endorsed that theory.
So it is tempting to try to create a menu with east European historical overtones. The starter might be Ottoman salad. That would be lazily prepared and slovenly served, and crowned with the yellow part of a boiled egg (the Ottoman yolk). Its unlikely ingredients range from sharp Balkan paprikas to gelatinous Levantine sweetmeats. It would stay on the table for ages, and some guests would end up picking bits out in order to create their own dishes (Bulgarian crudités, perhaps). Random offenders would be hauled off to the kitchen to spend a lifetime washing dishes, Janissary style.
The Hapsburger Auflauf (stew: but Hungarians would call it a goulash) would be equally varied but rather more successful, with Czech dumplings nestling quite snugly next to wisps of sauerkraut and paprika.
Romanov rissoles would be raw (and bleeding), prepared with extraordinary incompetence and bashed about by a madman. But they would be delicious compared with Steak a la Soviet (often known colloquially as Lenins Revenge): this would be a revolting mixture of gristle and animal fodder, enough to keep you alive but wishing that you were dead.
Diners would hastily turn to the more appetising part of the menu. Prague Spring Rolls would be a temptingly modern variation on traditional Czech cuisine, half-baked yet cooked with delightful enthusiasm by a kitchen crew of idealistic youngsters and hard-bitten types who have embraced nouvelle cuisine. Sadly, a jackbooted waiter stamps them to smithereens before you have begun to enjoy them. You then spend the next 20 years cleaning the restaurant windows.
Diners are told that Baltic Surprise is off the menu forever on seemingly dubious health grounds. Old people insist that it used to be delicious, involving herring and fresh herbs, eaten at midsummer with a lot of beer and dancing. Even trying to order it brings the threat that you will be locked in the cellar for life. But diners who persist will find it served with a flourish, having been cooked secretly in the kitchen from a recipe bravely preserved in the attic. Conversely, Kasha Putina (Putins porridge) is not on the menu either, though something is clearly cooking. Russians maintain that they love it, but the neighbours find the smell a bit overpowering.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Food for thought
Jul 2nd 2009
From Economist.com
Adding deliberate culinary insult to unintended injury
Last weeks column has aroused offence where none was meant. The aimperhaps a bit fanciful, but it is summer after allwas to imagine menu items with names that reflect eastern Europes history and politics. Münchner Klöße [Munich dumplings], for example, would be a noxious dish cooked by Germans and force-fed to Czechoslovaks by Brits.
But readers saw it as a patronising outsiders attack on east European cuisine in general. How dare a newspaper published in a country that invented the chip butty and the deep-fried Mars Bar mock the rich and varied cuisine of half a continent?
Not your father's peasant food
At the risk of adding deliberate insult to unintended injury, the complaints do provide a peg to look at the regions culinary highs and lows. Two big tests of national cuisine are whether the locals like it, and whether it exports. A simple way of measuring that is the incidence in a Google search of phrases such as Albanian culinary classics and Estonian gourmet recipes (zero in each case). That gives a rough guide to the level of interest in the English-speaking world in those countries national kitchens. Another Google test is compare the profile of each kind of ethnic restaurant in a big international city such as New York. So italian restaurant + new york brings up a mighty 2m hits, against 20,000 hits for russian restaurant, 33,500 for polish, 7,500 for Hungarian and so on. (Just for the record, British restaurant gets only 5,860.)
The presence of immigrant populations has an effect (you can find Lithuanian restaurants in Chicago, if rarely anywhere else). But the undeniable fact is that Italian (and French, Chinese, Indian, Tex-Mex, etc) cuisine has established itself as part of the global culinary landscape whereas the offerings from east European countries largely have not.
One reason is the isolation caused by 50 years of communism. (That also may explain the popularity of Georgian food within the Soviet Union, where it was the most exotic and tasty ethnic cuisine available.) Another is most countries recent roots in peasant farming. This created a need for cheap food that could support arduous manual labour: plenty of calories, fat and protein where possible, but not so well suited for a modern diner in search of taste sensations and a healthy diet.
A partial exception is Hungarian cuisine, which is not for those following a low-fat diet, yet still redolent of Hapsburg-era sophistication. But even that suffers from the biggest hole in the region's traditional repertoire: the summer menu. Hearty and delicious soups and stews are all very well when the wind is howling outside. But in the sweltering heat, a cold cabbage salad doesnt quite do the trick. Two delicious summer soups, the Lithuanian/Polish cold borscht and Hungarian wild cherry soup, both require dollops of sour creama no-no for the cholesterolly challenged. Estonias kama (a mixture of ground and roasted grains, including pea flour) added to chilled buttermilk or kefir is healthier and a taste well worth acquiring.
The best summer option is probably fish: during a recent visit to Vincents in Riga, one of the priciest (and best) restaurants in the entire region, your columnist enjoyed an exquisitely presented starter of smoked and fresh halibut, salmon, trout, salmon caviar and herring. Sashimi, Baltic-style.
Even more striking was the dessert, concocted out of the lurid and astringent juice of the sea-buckthorn berry. This costly and vitamin-packed elixir was mixed before our eyes with liquid nitrogen, creating an instant sorbet with explosive effects on the tongue. Did someone say that east European food was boring?
Ottoman Yolk
Jun 25th 2009
From Economist.com
What would a politicised east European menu look like?
Whats Cutlet Carpathian Style?, your columnist asked innocently in a restaurant in Budapest recently. Youre halfway through eating it when the Ukrainians take it away and say the rest belongs to them, came an instant quip in return. The rest of the world may have forgotten, but Hungarians still remember the time when a large chunk of what is now Ukraine (and a lot more besides) was part of their old imperial kingdom.
The encoding of menus is a fascinating byway in gastro-linguistics. Any mention of Hawaiian means that chunks of pineapple have been added to the dish. Similarly, Provençale signals tomatoes and black olives. Napolitano means with basil and mozzarella; Niçoise is anchovies and eggs, Veneziana means onions. More generally, traditional usually means indigestible or overcooked. Organic means it costs more.
A sprinkle of hope and a dollop of sadness
But rarely if ever do the menu terms have any political meaning. Londons best restaurant for real English cooking, Wiltons, serves a dessert called Guards Pudding, invented in the trenches of the first world war (ingredients include breadcrumbs and raspberry jam). The officers who survived the wartime mincing machine apparently longed for the dish in peacetime London. The French Macedoine salad could be the big exception: it is a mixed fruit salad that some say was named after the ethnic confusion in Macedonia 100 years ago. But serious scholars have not endorsed that theory.
So it is tempting to try to create a menu with east European historical overtones. The starter might be Ottoman salad. That would be lazily prepared and slovenly served, and crowned with the yellow part of a boiled egg (the Ottoman yolk). Its unlikely ingredients range from sharp Balkan paprikas to gelatinous Levantine sweetmeats. It would stay on the table for ages, and some guests would end up picking bits out in order to create their own dishes (Bulgarian crudités, perhaps). Random offenders would be hauled off to the kitchen to spend a lifetime washing dishes, Janissary style.
The Hapsburger Auflauf (stew: but Hungarians would call it a goulash) would be equally varied but rather more successful, with Czech dumplings nestling quite snugly next to wisps of sauerkraut and paprika.
Romanov rissoles would be raw (and bleeding), prepared with extraordinary incompetence and bashed about by a madman. But they would be delicious compared with Steak a la Soviet (often known colloquially as Lenins Revenge): this would be a revolting mixture of gristle and animal fodder, enough to keep you alive but wishing that you were dead.
Diners would hastily turn to the more appetising part of the menu. Prague Spring Rolls would be a temptingly modern variation on traditional Czech cuisine, half-baked yet cooked with delightful enthusiasm by a kitchen crew of idealistic youngsters and hard-bitten types who have embraced nouvelle cuisine. Sadly, a jackbooted waiter stamps them to smithereens before you have begun to enjoy them. You then spend the next 20 years cleaning the restaurant windows.
Diners are told that Baltic Surprise is off the menu forever on seemingly dubious health grounds. Old people insist that it used to be delicious, involving herring and fresh herbs, eaten at midsummer with a lot of beer and dancing. Even trying to order it brings the threat that you will be locked in the cellar for life. But diners who persist will find it served with a flourish, having been cooked secretly in the kitchen from a recipe bravely preserved in the attic. Conversely, Kasha Putina (Putins porridge) is not on the menu either, though something is clearly cooking. Russians maintain that they love it, but the neighbours find the smell a bit overpowering.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Food for thought
Jul 2nd 2009
From Economist.com
Adding deliberate culinary insult to unintended injury
Last weeks column has aroused offence where none was meant. The aimperhaps a bit fanciful, but it is summer after allwas to imagine menu items with names that reflect eastern Europes history and politics. Münchner Klöße [Munich dumplings], for example, would be a noxious dish cooked by Germans and force-fed to Czechoslovaks by Brits.
But readers saw it as a patronising outsiders attack on east European cuisine in general. How dare a newspaper published in a country that invented the chip butty and the deep-fried Mars Bar mock the rich and varied cuisine of half a continent?
Not your father's peasant food
At the risk of adding deliberate insult to unintended injury, the complaints do provide a peg to look at the regions culinary highs and lows. Two big tests of national cuisine are whether the locals like it, and whether it exports. A simple way of measuring that is the incidence in a Google search of phrases such as Albanian culinary classics and Estonian gourmet recipes (zero in each case). That gives a rough guide to the level of interest in the English-speaking world in those countries national kitchens. Another Google test is compare the profile of each kind of ethnic restaurant in a big international city such as New York. So italian restaurant + new york brings up a mighty 2m hits, against 20,000 hits for russian restaurant, 33,500 for polish, 7,500 for Hungarian and so on. (Just for the record, British restaurant gets only 5,860.)
The presence of immigrant populations has an effect (you can find Lithuanian restaurants in Chicago, if rarely anywhere else). But the undeniable fact is that Italian (and French, Chinese, Indian, Tex-Mex, etc) cuisine has established itself as part of the global culinary landscape whereas the offerings from east European countries largely have not.
One reason is the isolation caused by 50 years of communism. (That also may explain the popularity of Georgian food within the Soviet Union, where it was the most exotic and tasty ethnic cuisine available.) Another is most countries recent roots in peasant farming. This created a need for cheap food that could support arduous manual labour: plenty of calories, fat and protein where possible, but not so well suited for a modern diner in search of taste sensations and a healthy diet.
A partial exception is Hungarian cuisine, which is not for those following a low-fat diet, yet still redolent of Hapsburg-era sophistication. But even that suffers from the biggest hole in the region's traditional repertoire: the summer menu. Hearty and delicious soups and stews are all very well when the wind is howling outside. But in the sweltering heat, a cold cabbage salad doesnt quite do the trick. Two delicious summer soups, the Lithuanian/Polish cold borscht and Hungarian wild cherry soup, both require dollops of sour creama no-no for the cholesterolly challenged. Estonias kama (a mixture of ground and roasted grains, including pea flour) added to chilled buttermilk or kefir is healthier and a taste well worth acquiring.
The best summer option is probably fish: during a recent visit to Vincents in Riga, one of the priciest (and best) restaurants in the entire region, your columnist enjoyed an exquisitely presented starter of smoked and fresh halibut, salmon, trout, salmon caviar and herring. Sashimi, Baltic-style.
Even more striking was the dessert, concocted out of the lurid and astringent juice of the sea-buckthorn berry. This costly and vitamin-packed elixir was mixed before our eyes with liquid nitrogen, creating an instant sorbet with explosive effects on the tongue. Did someone say that east European food was boring?
