Salaric Cooking

Well I tend to get up at 7 in summer and winter and find the time taken up with getting a small person off to school personally so there is no time for breakfast roll dough making etc :/ And this is with me and my husband both pitching in.

IF, AS WE HAVE SAID, THE QUALITY OF EARLY RISING be of the first importance to the mistress, what must it be to the servant! Let it, therefore, be taken as a long-proved truism, that without it, in every domestic, the effect of all things else, so far as work is concerned, may, in a great measure, be neutralized. In a cook, this quality is most essential; for an hour lost in the morning, will keep her toiling, absolutely toiling, all day, to overtake that which might otherwise have been achieved with ease. In large establishments, six is a good hour to rise in the summer, and seven in the winter.

HER FIRST DUTY, in large establishments and where it is requisite, should be to set her dough for the breakfast rolls, provided this has not been done on the previous night, and then to engage herself with those numerous little preliminary occupations which may not inappropriately be termed laying out her duties for the day. This will bring in the breakfast hour of eight, after which, directions must be given, and preparations made, for the different dinners of the household and family.

In the luxurious ages of Grecian antiquity, Sicilian cooks were the most esteemed, and received high rewards for their services. Among them, one called Trimalcio was such an adept in his art, that he could impart to common fish both the form and flavour of the most esteemed of the piscatory tribes. A chief cook in the palmy days of Roman voluptuousness had about £800 a year, and Antony rewarded the one that cooked the supper which pleased Cleopatra, with the present of a city. With the fall of the empire, the culinary art sank into less consideration. In the middle ages, cooks laboured to acquire a reputation for their sauces, which they composed of strange combinations, for the sake of novelty, as well as singularity.

As I think I’ve mentioned on here before the honey bees seem to be decline rapidly and this could leave us cooks with some very real issues so we need to think carefully about our use of honey and were it comes from.  Here is a fantastic project set up to help the bees and ultimatly the entire planet The Global Bee Project of course we want to eventually have our own hives but you don’t need to do that to help the bees!  Besides even for us the hive this is far in the future.

(This waffles a bit and she does like her long sentences! So take a deep breath.)

EXCELLENCE IN THE ART OF COOKERY, as in all other things, is only attainable by practice and experience. In proportion, therefore, to the opportunities which a cook has had of these, so will be his excellence in the art. It is in the large establishments of princes, noblemen, and very affluent families alone, that the man cook is found in this country. He, also, superintends the kitchens of large hotels, clubs, and public institutions, where he, usually, makes out the bills of fare, which are generally submitted to the principal for approval. To be able to do this, therefore, it is absolutely necessary that he should be a judge of the season of every dish, as well as know perfectly the state of every article he undertakes to prepare. He must also be a judge of every article he buys; for no skill, however great it may be, will enable him to, make that good which is really bad. On him rests the responsibility of the cooking generally, whilst a speciality of his department, is to prepare the rich soups, stews, ragouts, and such dishes as enter into the more refined and complicated portions of his art, and such as are not usually understood by ordinary professors. He, therefore, holds a high position in a household, being inferior in rank, as already shown, only to the house steward, the valet, and the butler.

Well I was so impressed with my husbands Graze box that I signed up for my own which I have been loving 🙂 And they’ve given me a code for people to get a free box 🙂 So here it is!

http://www.graze.com/p/KTV38LQ

Yes really Mrs Beeton explains metric! (Or rather says where you can get the measures and what they mean though a bit of maths sort of wonders in at the end! Though the French it turned out were actually slightly out with this but Mrs Beeton didn’t now that – plus you can’t actually work this out as it depends on your world model.)

Graduated class measures can be obtained at any chemist’s, and they save much trouble. One of these, containing a wine pint, is divided into 16 oz., and the oz, into 8 drachms of water; by which, any certain weight mentioned in a recipe can be accurately measured out. Home-made measures of this kind can readily be formed by weighing the water contained in any given measure, and marking on any tall glass the space it occupies. This mark can easily be made with a file. It will be interesting to many readers to know the basis on which the French found their system of weights and measures, for it certainly possesses the grandeur of simplicity. The metre, which is the basis of the whole system of French weights and measures, is the exact measurement of one forty-millionth part of a meridian of the earth.

This year my little girl and husband were out with an elderly relative so I made my own meal of Goats Cheese and Sweet Pepper Pizza, Pepparoni and Baby Plume Tomato Pizza with cheesy garlic bread and baby leaf salad.

And of course triple chocolate cake – though Jean did help with that bit 🙂

This was very tasty and was washed down with pure orange juice 🙂

Unfortunatly I had an art project on the dinning table so we ended up on the settee but it was so easy that I am concidering making my own pizzas for future parties!

I will cover each of the recipies seperatly over the next few weeks!

My husband found this wonderful company Graze Nature Delivered – they deliver healthy snacks to your desk 🙂 I am very impressed with the first box that arrived:

It contained olives which my daughter now has in her lunch box, dried fruit, fiery nuts (which will be for my husband) and vanillia coated pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds – these are mine!

They each come with a health recommendation and they are sanctioned by the NHS 🙂 I’ve claimed the seeds as they are good for the immune system and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact they are one of the tasty-est things I have ever eaten!

I infact want to get hold of more of these seeds to top some whole meal muffins – I think their sweetness would be a lovely contrast.

But basically we recommend them 🙂

A DESSERT-SPOONFUL is the half of a table-spoonful; that is to say, by it is meant a measure or bulk equal to a quarter of an ounce of water.

A TEA-SPOONFUL is equal in quantity to a drachm of water.

(Drachm is a dram and is apparently one eighth of a fluid ounce)

A DROP.–This is the name of a vague kind of measure, and is so called on account of the liquid being dropped from the mouth of a bottle. Its quantity, however, will vary, either from the consistency of the liquid or the size and shape of the mouth of the bottle. The College of Physicians determined the quantity of a drop to be one grain, 60 drops making one fluid drachm. Their drop, or sixtieth part of a fluid drachm, is called a minim.

Mrs Beeton on Cooking’s place:

AS IN THE FINE ARTS, the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilization is marked by a gradual succession of triumphs over the rude materialities of nature, so in the art of cookery is the progress gradual from the earliest and simplest modes, to those of the most complicated and refined. Plain or rudely-carved stones, tumuli, or mounds of earth, are the monuments by which barbarous tribes denote the events of their history, to be succeeded, only in the long course of a series of ages, by beautifully-proportioned columns, gracefully-sculptured statues, triumphal arches, coins, medals, and the higher efforts of the pencil and the pen, as man advances by culture and observation to the perfection of his facilities. So is it with the art of cookery. Man, in his primitive state, lives upon roots and the fruits of the earth, until, by degrees, he is driven to seek for new means, by which his wants may be supplied and enlarged. He then becomes a hunter and a fisher. As his species increases, greater necessities come upon him, when he gradually abandons the roving life of the savage for the more stationary pursuits of the herdsman. These beget still more settled habits, when he begins the practice of agriculture, forms ideas of the rights of property, and has his own, both defined and secured. The forest, the stream, and the sea are now no longer his only resources for food. He sows and he reaps, pastures and breeds cattle, lives on the cultivated produce of his fields, and revels in the luxuries of the dairy; raises flocks for clothing, and assumes, to all intents and purposes, the habits of permanent life and the comfortable condition of a farmer. This is the fourth stage of social progress, up to which the useful or mechanical arts have been incidentally developing themselves, when trade and commerce begin. Through these various phases, only to live has been the great object of mankind; but, by-and-by, comforts are multiplied, and accumulating riches create new wants. The object, then, is not only to live, but to live economically, agreeably, tastefully, and well. Accordingly, the art of cookery commences; and although the fruits of the earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea, are still the only food of mankind, yet these are so prepared, improved, and dressed by skill and ingenuity, that they are the means of immeasurably extending the boundaries of human enjoyments. Everything that is edible, and passes under the hands of the cook, is more or less changed, and assumes new forms. Hence the influence of that functionary is immense upon the happiness of a household.

….

Of course we now have foods made in vats and grown from solution, synthesised foods which were never alive in the first place – the impacts these have had on life style and health are many fold (good and bad) and complicated.

This is also interesting in light of cooked food being now thought to predate ‘modern’ humans and being an instrument in our evolution. Seeing as we get more nutrition from digesting cooked foods – hence whole foods helping modern society in loosing weight!