A very brief history of
EARTH
APPLES,
LOVE APPLES, KANGAROO
APPLES,
MAD APPLES
And WOLF
PEACHES
What keeps a cook cooking?
For me, it has always been a
fascination with the produce.
No other group
of plants has changed the way cooking has evolved as significantly as
these. From suspicion to seduction, from
mad apple to love apple, the story of the development and spread of these
wonderful food plants is a trip to the red zone, but beware one false move
and it’s the shades of night forever.Whenever the question of
fusion cooking has been discussed I have usually sided with the reactionary
‘old fogey’ tribe that maintains that it is risky to mix too many ingredients
from different cultures. This is probably because I grew up with only one type
of cooking—Hungarian, with its heart expressed by that vibrant spice Paprika.
Of course it was a bit of a shock as I started
to read about food and its origins to realise that Paprika had arrived in Hungary from Turkey via Spain from the Americas in the
sixteenth century but did not feature prominently in Magyar kitchens and
restaurant menus till the nineteenth century!
How about Asia
without the chilli? Italy
without a tomato? Spain
without a pimento?
When the Spanish conquerors started
to return to Europe in the late fifteenth century with the looted treasures of
the Americas, they also brought back many edible nightshades, and with them, a
wealth of new foods that were to have a much more profound effect on the Old
World than mere gold.
If you think that telling a
Hungarian that capsicums come from South America
is a challenge, how many Italians could care to admit that pasta with tomato
sauce is an Etruscan-American or Sino-American hybrid?
It is hard to imagine Irish,
Russian or indeed any European cooking without the potato? But of course these seemingly seminal ingredients
arrived in Europe only with the discovery of
the New World.
Potatoes, Solanum tuberosum, native to the Andes, were
feared and deemed inedible by early religious fundamentalists as they were not
mentioned in the Bible.
Paradoxically, potatoes have
been transformed in Europe from an anti-famine
food to one that caused one of the most devastating famines of all in Ireland. A sad
lesson as to the dangers of monoculture that is still relevant today. The
humble spud also changed the way that America was populated with the vast
numbers of Irish fleeing the effects of the famine.
Potatoes have sadly changed
from being a healthy, naturally- nutritious and inexpensive food into one of
the most expensive processed foods and universal carriers of fat in the form of
fries. More please.
The potato was one of the
first foods to be genetically engineered and it may yet again seduce farmers by
providing income from genetically modified crops that will produce a type of
plastic. It could be said that that’s what some potato products taste like
already.
Dried potato made its debut
[sorry] high in the Andes several thousand years ago in the form of
chuño, where the sudden drop in overnight temperature was used
to freeze-dry potato that could be stored for years providing
insurance against famine. Chuño was also used to feed the Spanish
fleets on their return voyages.
When all these new plants
first appeared it would have seemed like the original “Attack of The Killer
Tomatoes” as most nightshades or solanaceae
previously known or native to Europe were
poisons surrounded by superstition, black magic and witchcraft.
Wolf bane, Mandrake, Devil’s
Apples, Sodom’s
Apple, Henbane and of course Deadly Nightshade all belong to a group dangerous
enough to frighten even the man who eats everything.
Deadly nightshade, Atropa belladonna [cruel and beautiful
lady]: its name comes from an early Italian practice where women would place a
drop of its juice into the eyes to dilate the pupils. A sign of beauty at the
time. One of its active ingredients is atropine, still used to dilate the pupil
for eye tests. Atropine was used as an antidote to a deadly nerve gas during
WW2; it also formed the basis of the legendary truth serum that was used to
extract confessions for many show trials hmmm.
All American journalists in Bagdad have phials
of atropine in their press kit. Please let’s not have a comeback here.
Huckleberries Solanum nigrum are an edible [when ripe]
form of what we often mistakenly call deadly nightshade, a weedy plant
that finds its home in any nook or cranny. It has a variable form but quite
a useful friend, when food is scarce for a poor man’s pie. The cooked leaves
are also eaten in India
and Indonesia. Did
Mark Twain allude to the sweet blueberry or the black nightshade for that
precocious rascal by naming him Huck Finn?
Huckleberries or Wonder
berries provided one of the best food scandals or hoaxes of the early 20th
century, nearly ruining the reputation of that great plant breeder Luther
Burbank. Promoted to be a new miracle berry it fizzled with much public
embarrassment to become the Blunderberry
Mandrake has a history linked to debauchery and has been
said to cure anything except death, which it was also conveniently known to
cause. It was used to fool the Romans during Crucifixions and some have said
that because Jesus bled on the cross he was not dead but in a deep narcotic
sleep leading to a heretic’s view of the resurrection. Juliet may have taken
mandrake as her poison only to be resurrected
later in a tomb. On awakening she fears the shriek of the mandrake.
In the second Harry Potter
film, there is a nice episode where the students are re-potting mandrakes. Because the shriek of a mandrake as it is
being pulled up causes madness and death, the old herbals show how to use a dog
to pull it up. In the film, all the
students wear earmuffs.
Tobacco [that other infamous
nightshade] has become the real Montezuma’s or, to be more geographically
accurate, the Mohican’s, revenge.
Tomatoes, Lycopersicon esculentum [the name translates to edible wolf peach],
have had a very hard time getting to
the dinner tables of Europe. Even the
exquisite aroma of the green leaves was abhorrent to the early European
sensibility.
Although native to South America around Ecuador and Chile, it was
in Mexico
that the tomato was first widely developed for food. The common name tomato
also comes from the confusion between it and the name for the Mexican husk
tomato tomatl or tomatillo Physalis ixocarpa. The tomatillo is
itself often confused for green tomatoes in recipes. Tomatillos and another physalis, the Cape gooseberry, have
wonderful exotic scented flavours that are slowly appearing in contemporary
dishes: they hold great promise in this climate.
Tomatillos are one of the most interesting flavoured and most simple to grow members of the nightshade family. With all the interest in Mexican cooking that hasbeen like a tsunami of taco its a wonder that the markets are not full of these wonderful fruits. Tomatillos are members of the Physalis or husk tomato family. There is a detailed story in an earlier blog entry from 2007 here.
From Mexico the
tomato arrived in Spain
where it initially attracted little attention. The earliest botanical reference
for tomato comes from the herbal of Matthiolus in 1544 and historian Vernon
Quinn[1942] records its early passage from Seville to Morocco and then from
Tangier to Italy. Which might explain its first Italian name of Pomo dei mori
or Moor’s apple? Matthiolus named it pomi d’oro or golden apple, perhaps
because the early forms were orange and yellow?
Pomi d’oro becomes pomodoro and then pomme d’amour on its arrival into France. Sex is
a sure seller even back then.
Tomato seeds have even been
to space and back in a seed promotion that rivals Don Burke’s efforts. The
seeds were sent up on the Columbia
spacecraft to see if zero gravity had any effect on germination. It didn’t. But
feeding tomato seed to tortoises has added to the theory that Galapagos Island’s
early forms of Wolf Peach were distributed by the slow digestive qualities of
the tortoise.
The most common mistake
gardeners make in growing flavourful tomatoes is to over-water them. Just as
with grapes a little struggle adds a lot of flavour.
Eggplants or melanzana
[translating as mad apples] are the only significant edible nightshades that
did not originate in the Americas.
They have been in use in Europe for a very
long time. Eggplants are native to India, some
research credits Africa as a source, but
central Asia also have naturalised or even
native varieties. The form is so variable that it is hard to pinpoint is true
origins. The shorter white ones look just like eggs.
The crossover to Europe has been said to have come from Goa
with the Portuguese who incidentally are said to have introduced chillies,
olive oil and olives to the East. Fair swap I reckon. A good example of this exchange is found in
the kasoundi relish where 3 worlds meet with eggplant, chilli and olives.
Until chillies were brought
back from the Americas
it was Pepper that provided the spice that ‘hurts so good.’ Most of us like it
hot, and of all the new nightshades the chilli received the most enthusiastic
welcome, especially in Asia.
Columbus went out with pepper on his shopping list and
came back with the chilli that made it possible to provide a hot spice with a
great variety of flavour.
Pepper was hard and
expensive to grow, but chillies requiring less exacting climatic conditions
brought the world a cheaper thrill.
The excitement of chillies
is in the way that the active ingredient capsaicin
at first burns, then as our natural endorphins kick in they give us the
equivalent of an athlete’s high.
This excitement translates
to a heightened sensation of taste. The flavours of various chillies are also
quite distinctive when you get past the pain barrier. These subtle differences
are what add to the nuances in cooking of Mexico, Thailand and indeed any cuisine
that has a strong tradition of using chillies.
The combination of chocolate
and chilli goes back to the very ancient times and finds its peak in the Moles of Mexico.
It is possible to date dishes by charting the
spread of this rather tasty form of ‘global warming.’ Pepper crab and Chilli
crab provide a clear example.
In Australia we have more
than 130 varieties of native Solanaceae and more than 60 varieties that have
been naturalised.
There
was widespread use of native solanaceae by Australian Aborigines for food as
well as for hunting and ceremonial use. The most widely known is Pituri, a
confusing name as it refers to many different native tobaccos: one of these
Pituri, Duboisia hopwoodii, contains
a very potent form of nicotine. It is rarely smoked but is used as a type of
patch and is highly addictive; it is sometimes used to stun prey while hunting
as is another native tobacco, Duboisia
myoporoides. Less potent forms of
naturalised nicotiana are preferred for stimulation.
I have seen eggplants
grafted to Australian native tobaccos to produce vigorous and also perennial
forms. Talk about fusion...
Those of us that subscribe
to the Gondwanaland theory can put Australia right into the middle of
the spread of this family of plants.
Many native nightshades
resemble the early forms of tomato, eggplant and peppers and may yield some
exciting new vegetables in the future.
With the popularity of bush tucker native solanaceae like bush tomatoes
have started to appear on our menus. Bush tomatoes are the original sun dried
tomato as they are only edible after drying.
We may find it hard to grow a really good tomato because the right
variety has yet to be bred for Australia,
and it may come naturally from a native stock.
Two other native nightshades
the Kangaroo apple Solanum
laciniatum and the closely related S.
aviculare are only edible when perfectly ripe and should not be tried by
the amateur. These native plants, from which we receive the least benefit, are
among the world’s major sources of steroids used in the manufacture of oral
contraceptives.
Like the macadamia nut they
are mainly grown overseas. We do not have a local industry that utilises their
properties that include pharmaceuticals used in the treatment of menopausal
disorders and infertility.
The pomme d’ amour may yet
become true blue as the kangaroo
apple also contains alkaloids that are used to treat impotence.
But what does this
historical trivia mean in the context of modern Australian cooking?
I believe that because we
are in the middle of it, we cannot see that Australians are developing a
really new way of looking at food. This new movement is not just coming from
the frontline big time restaurants. There is a very fine sense of balance
emerging.
Coriander and parmesan
cheese type combinations are giving way to fine simple dishes. But while we
have access to some quite good ingredients, I believe we have to face some hard
facts.
Most of the produce in our
mainstream markets is of a very mediocre standard if judged by its taste.
While Australian produce may not be radioactive as in some parts of Europe, the flavours just do not come up to scratch.
Unless you are plugged into the top of the food sourcing chain you may never
know what a tomato tastes like.
Figs, melons peaches indeed
almost any fruit are accepted under- ripe and tasteless. We would never accept
a warm beer in a pub but why do we put up with flavourless food? All of our first quality produce is exported.
Ripe food should not be a luxury item but try to get a banana that tastes like
a banana, a simple cheese that has been matured properly. These foods are only
for the wealthy, the home producer or the gardener.
In Europe
we find a different dilemma. The markets are full of some great flavours, ripe
cheeses and well grown and graded vegetables but inside the restaurant, that is
often, right behind the market, time has stood still. The same old dishes
without regard to season are monotonously offered. In Europe
home cooking still rules.
Surreal jelly fluffs and prawn brain juice
coming out of dada restaurant/laboratories are sexy enough for young cooks
to include the foam gas bottle and pipette into the kitchen kit, but where
are the role models for the next generation of growers without whom cooks are
stranded?
Self
righteous Sermon? maybe so, but if we
can encourage young people to question the origins and pathways that give us
flavour, this exciting free movement that is Australian cuisine can
develop; if not, the ideas and cooks will go to where the flavour grows.
Once you have tasted
home grown and in season, there is no turning back.
Anyone for a wolf peach
sanger?
