Eat This Newsletter 145: Mixed bag
Hello
No pictures, no preliminaries; let’s just have at it.
A long noodle story
Miranda Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan has a long and complex article on the long and complex history of noodles. It pulls together many different threads, not least the crossroads of eastern and western agricultural domestication, where maybe, just maybe, the Chinese mixed wheat with millet to make early pasta.
The whole thing, with all its detours and byways, is well worth your time. I’m going to focus on one aspect that really struck me. Part of Miranda Brown’s story focusses on sopa de fideos, “an intense tomato-based soup with short strands of wheat vermicelli” that originates in Spain. You might imagine that a noodle soup in Spain started life in nearby Italy, but Brown says that it was brought to Spain from the Levant by Sephardic Jews. And the crucial thing about sopa de fideos is how you prepare the noodles.
You “sauté[e] the strands with oil (dry heat). Only after they turn brown [do you] add modest amounts of tomato liquid. The result is something more than a soup. It’s a stew”.
This method of preparing noodles (and rice) is common across the Islamic world, part of Miranda Brown’s argument about Chinese primacy in the great noodle debate. But here’s the thing. I have a friend from Sanremo up on the Italian Riviera. And he cooks spaghetti in exactly the same way, frying it first in olive oil and then adding small amounts of light stock a bit at a time, along with a succession of julienned vegetables, rather like making a risotto. I’m pretty sure I remember this being a speciality of Sanremo, and it is exceedingly delicious, but is it an independent discovery, I wonder, or did the method perhaps travel up from Sicily with Genoese sailors, as Anthony Buccini hypothesises for lasagna?
p.s. I should note that Prof. Brown’s entire site is a delight.
A short noodle update
That buccatini shortage? Seems it will all be over soon. De Cecco and the Food and Drug Administration seem to have settled their differences and shoppers in the US will once again be able to find supplies of the world’s most useless pasta shape. No word though on who ratted out De Cecco or, indeed, whether they were even ratted out.
Not so strange bedfellows
Were you as surprised as I was when the news emerged that the horned seditionist refused to eat standard prison food?
His Mum, bless, explained. “He gets very sick if he doesn’t eat organic food—literally will get physically sick.” That prompted a new newsletter writer to ask Why Are Some Organic Farmers Turning to Reactionary Politics?. It’s an interesting enough read, although somewhat parochial and entirely ahistorical. The left, progressives, whatever, has never had a monopoly on either eco-consciousness or eating right.
For more on that, you maybe want to read Cory Doctorow’s hot takes
Milk with less meat
Milk requires us to appropriate the food a female mammal produces for her offspring, which means removing the offspring. The great problem for conventional milk production is that half of those offspring are male. As a result, especially for highly-selected milk breeds, a surplus of males needs to be liquidated. Even females can’t all find a home as replacements for older animals. There is, however, an alternative.
Modern Farmer tells the story of Jean-Yves Ruelloux, a French goat farmer who has quietly developed a system that allows his goats to give birth to a single kid and then be milked for years and years. Far fewer “surplus” kids and “spent” adults need to be dealt with, and apparently overall production is not affected. Ruelloux has shared his methods with aspiring small-scale goat farmers, who say that this is a way for them to achieve their farming ambitions without having to get on the productivity treadmill.
Cows, too, can produce milk during an extended lactation, and that raises some interesting possibilities. According to a review, extended lactation gives the same economic return as traditional lactation and
leads to fewer calvings and thereby expected fewer diseases, fewer replacement heifers and fewer dry days per cow per year. … [Extended lactation] also leads to reduced total meat production at herd level. … At farm level, [it] can contribute to a reduction in the environmental impact of dairy production, mainly as a consequence of the reduced production of beef.
Of course nobody expects industrial agriculture to pay any attention at all, but it will be interesting to see whether this approach catches on among small-scale farmers right or left.
A little light reading
Ali Dunworth has published a list of her favourite fiction that involves food. I confess, I have read only one of them, which I enjoyed hugely. You can guess, but I might not say.
And Rachel Laudan has published a very thought-provoking piece on Diplomats and the Rise of “Foodism” in the 1960s and 1970s. So many questions, so many potential answers, and the comments confirm that Rachel has tapped a rich seam.
Too much progress
Those Chinese boffins are at it again, creating a new breed of duck and a nu-food to fatten it.
The new duck variety is set to become a gourmet delight.
Alas, that’s all that’s actually newsworthy in this piece of puffery.
Take care, and stay safe.
Jeremy