FOOD EVOLUTION ON TELEVISION

You can track food evolution from your TV watching schedule.

Some shows have their people shoveling in grub.

The Last Kingdom was a shovel-fest with royalty sitting down to a bowl of gruel fit for a king.

Follow that with an episode of CHOPPED to complete the circle.

In the first instance the people eat to stay fit enough to survive the onslaught of Viking raids and fight back.

In the second, chef’s confront a box of mixed ingredients no one in their right mind starts with.

If the Chopped chefs had been cooking in the 800’s what would they have faced?

As well as bread, the people of Medieval England ate a great deal of pottage. This is a kind of soup-stew made from oats. People made different kinds of pottage. Sometimes they added beans and peas. On other occasions they used other vegetables such as turnips and parsnips. Leek pottage was especially popular – but the crops used depended on what a peasant had grown in the croft around the side of his home.

How would it compare to modern cooking?

You Are Chopped?

I’m a cooking fan with a kitchen way beyond my expectations.

It started big when we all moved in.

From cook-top on the opposite side of a JennAir grill, a gas oven AND electric oven.

Add in a microwave, toaster oven, and a slow cooker, rice cooker, and a Cuisinart for the complete line-up.

Don’t forget the spoons, spatulas, ladles, strainers, steamers, and turkey baster.

In spite of all the gear, I favor medieval cooking techniques, especially the recipe that calls for boiling water and adding whatever is on the verge of spoiling in the fridge.

Dave’s Chili Recipe:

Cook up some ground beef and ground chicken, adding seasoning like Costco taco and onion powder along with usual chili powder and cumin.

Set it aside and add vegetables into the meat pan, the vegetables on the edge of ruin.

You may need to trim off pieces if they’re too far gone.

Once the veggies look softened, add the meat, spaghetti sauce, and diced tomatoes.

Let it simmer, then get a big spoon.

Be sure to crumble tortilla chips in your bowl for an extra crunch.

Is this anything like medieval meals?

Food Evolution With An English Mother In-Law

My mother in-law grew up in a small English town called Strete.

It had one road through town. Her father was a baker.

She was raised, along with a younger brother, like every English child.

Then she went to college, earned a Domestic Science degree, and taught high school Home-ec.

This was a woman raised with English manners, then educated in applying said manners.

She knew when things were wrong, but had the decency not to mention it.

Like the time her daughter married a dork.

I bring her up in this cooking post because she was a south England girl raised in the country who morphed into a Los Angeles lady with a house on Hill Road.

And she loved to cook. Sometime we all cooked together, which is an advantage in a kitchen bigger than one butt.

She had her standards like lamb and twice baked potatoes, but really shined with the basics.

I’ve said it before: If you want to eat authentic English cooking you have to go to England, or my house.

Her food evolution ranged from defending British cooking, to walking us through French sauces.

Would she have enjoyed my scrappy chili?

I like to think so. Better than a sturdy pottage?

Let’s not go too far.

What’s your favorite food to eat?

To make?

Me: Do you know what pottage is?

Wife: I forget.

Me: It’s a soup-stew made with oats and vegetables.

Wife: You’d be perfect in that era.

Me: Thank you, dear. I’ll make dinner.

Wife: Not tonight.

Me: What, you’ve got a headache?

Wife: No, but I don’t want a bellyache.

Me: I’ll see what I can fit into a pot.

And that, Dear Readers, is food evolution.

Something’s got to change if you get tired of the same old, same old.