food anthropology | The Rambling Epicure

Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, July 29, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, July 29, 2013 Permalink 0

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by Simón de Swaan

However humble it may be, a meal has a definite plot, the intention of which is to intrigue, stimulate and satisfy.–Margaret Visser

Margaret Visser writes on the history, anthropology, and mythology of everyday life. She lives between Toronto, Paris and Southwest France.

Her most recent book is The Gift of Thanks. “Her previous books, Much Depends on Dinner, The Rituals of Dinner, The Way We Are, and The Geometry of Love, have all been best sellers and have won major international awards, including the Glenfiddich Award for Foodbook of the Year in Britain in 1989, the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Literary Food Writing Award, and the Jane Grigson Award,” she says on her site.

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Simon de Swaan is Food and Beverage Director at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City. He studied at the Culinary Institute of America and has an incredible collection of antique cookbooks and books about food and eating, from which he often posts interesting and unusual quotes. In his column Simon Says, he gives us daily food quotes from his tomes.

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What, no pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce at the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving in 1621?

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, November 7, 2011 Permalink 0

Kathleen Wall, the amazing Colonial Foodways Culinarian at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a living history project sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute, shared this on her Facebook page the other day. It’s a DVD about the true history of Thanksgiving, made by Kathleen herself.

The story of Thanksgiving, with its costumed Pilgrims, turkeys and pumpkin pie, zigzags through American history with some surprising twists. At the iconic Thanksgiving feast of 1621 — no pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce was served, and that event was wiped from the history books for 200 years! In the 19th Century, some southern states thought Thanksgiving was an abolitionist plot and refused to celebrate it. Thanksgiving didn’t become an annual national holiday until World War II! What started as a somber Puritan day of prayer is now about football and food. How did we get there?

Click here to listen to “Miles Standish” talk about the first harvest in Plymouth.

Click here to order Kathleen Wall’s DVD.

Bollywood Cooking: Chicken tikka masala: New Indian or fusion?

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, February 22, 2011 Permalink 0

by here

Chicken tikka masala, New Indian or fusion?

Chicken tikka masala is quite likely one of the most popular Indian dishes the world. The irony of chicken tikka masala, better known as “CTM,” is that what is often enjoyed in restaurants as a traditional Indian dish has very little to do with authentic Indian cuisine. It is closer to “Britain’s true national dish.”

It was former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, who proclaimed chicken tikka masala as the new national dish of Great Britain, in an attempt to set an example of British multiculturalism. The chicken tikka masala Mr. Cook was referring to was in actual fact the gravy-based dish invented in Britain.