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About Peasant Cooking |
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Page 2 of 7
All the classical cuisines of the world including those of France, Italy, and China have their roots in peasant dishes. The same is true for most of the bourgeois, or urban middle class, dishes.
Some peasant dishes that a nation thinks of as their own actually originated in a foreign land. Take stuffed vine leaves, a Greek staple. Though the Turkish version, yalanci dolma, is the original, you can't blame the Greeks for thinking that stuffed vine leaves are their creation. When one's grandmother's grandmother made them, how could anyone think otherwise?
Because dishes do cross borders, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to determine with any degree of certainty the true homeland of some peasant creations. Scant evidence exists because ethnic groups migrate and frontiers change. just as important, written records are rare on this subject. Peasant cooks seldom, if ever, jotted down recipes, and the ancient scribes in the city almost never chronicled for posterity the dishes that peasants ate.
The onion family, of course, has always been a universal flavoring agent. But foods like carrots over recent centuries have become commonplace virtually everywhere. And where the French settlers have been, I see thyme in the native marketplaces.
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I hope you find my web page about peasant cooking helpful ©2008 HQP / Hillman Quality Publications
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Heritage
Culinary roots
