Thanks for the votes – I think I won more by verbiage than by culinary skill for this.
I enjoyed researching Jamaican history to support the simple but tasty peas and rice for the last challenge. So, keeping with 8Bit's history theme but widening the net, how about looting the whole of human history for authentic cuisine?
Do you have a penchant to taste the medieval world? Roast pig stuffed with pork, egg, brie and chestnuts, perchance? Or a filling bowl of blawmanger? "Tak þe two del of rys, þe thridde pert of almoundes; wash clene þe rys in leuk water & turne & seth hem til þay breke & lat it kele, & tak þe melk & do it to þe rys & boyle hem togedere..." More here.
Or what about dishes enjoyed by the short, saucy Latin successors to the Etruscans, the Romans? Was oyster garnished with fresh lark's vomit really a thing, or just a Monty Python sketch obfuscating the truly delicious delicacies a Roman domus might serve? Poached eggs in pine nut sauce washed down with spiced wine? Esurisne adhuc? More here.
How about proper Celtic iron age pork and beans? (Extra points if you slaughter the beans yourself.) More here.
Ancient Greece? Egypt at the height of her powers? Persian royal banquets? Han dynasty China?
There are dozens of curious sites collecting ancient recipes. Pick an era, pick a dish, and bring history to life in your mouth. Tell us how it tasted. Extra points for intriguing historical facts.
How about two weeks for this one – i.e. midnight PST 8th of March, which is also when daylight savings time starts. That's two weekends to research a bit and then unleash an ancient historical dish on your friends (and see if you keep them).
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For this challenge, I present you one of the oldest Dutch dishes that I could Google find: Hachee.
Pronounced hash-hey, this dish goes back to Medieval times. One thing you need to know about the Dutch is that we don't really have a great cuisine history. I think this is because we're a nation of traders. Our Golden Age was when we had the first global trade organization. Trade is our heritage. As a result of this, we've imported our cuisine. For example, we stole most rice dishes from Indonesia - there's even an "Indonesian" dish that we have, that Indonesia doesn't.
The only dishes that can actually be called Dutch are potato dishes. After the Golden Age, most farmers became potato farmers. We've never been able to get rid of the potato since. Hachee is no different: it's a stew of chopped beef blocks served with mashed potatoes and red cabbage. The name's from the French hacher, the verb 'to chop'. The brown-colored, spiced end result is almost certain to look horrible. But hey, if it's survived through 500 years of swamp dwellers it's gotta have something going for it, doesn't it?
One starteth with the chopped beef pieces. In my case, half a pound of good quality meat.
Give them some spice and bake 'em brown. Then, add onions. I can't take onions well so I've replaced them with leek. Add water so it's submerged. Either add more spices or be lazy like me and add a bouillon cube:
Let this slowcook for two hours. Since I've never slowcooked before, I found myself having to put the gas much, much lower after just twenty minutes. Lesson learned.
[cue time-passing action montage]
Prepare the mashed potatoes and red cabbage. It's starting to look like a dish!
Finally, serve and enjoy. I didn't expect it but the meat turned out to be very tender and perfectly spiced. Much more delicious than I expected! Especially with apple sauce. Here's the end result:
I'd give it at least a 8 out of 10, a 9 if I'm generous. The only downside: it does actually look like shit.
posted 3344 days ago