New answers tagged food
43
Short Answer
Garum production and consumption declined because increasing instability in the late Western Empire disrupted production and trade (and not just of garum). Further, a key ingredient - salt - became too expensive and pirates undermined the trade routes. Note also that garum was far from the only thing that declined or disappeared along with the ...
10
Alas, this dish is extinct now.
I don't know when & why garum disappeared. But I do know it is widely used, be it in a different part of the world. Garum is highly popular in Asia. It's widely used a.o. in Thailand, where it is made and sold as pla ra (ปลาร้า). The Vietnamese like it too, as do other Asian cultures. Yes, it still stinks to the skies.
If ...
5
You don't need to put a pot on the fire to boil water or make soup. You can put a clean stone in the fire and then put the very hot stone into the water in the pot. This way has been traditionally used in the Basque Country to boil milk to in a wood pot that would be quickly damaged if put in the fire. Basque language has even a word for those stones: esne-...
0
You don't need metal pots and pans for cooking. It's possible to cook, if need be, in wooden vessels. As @jwenting said: clay works excellent. In other words, pottery. The invention of pottery predates metallurgy by millennia.
pottery from China
pottery from Japan
pottery timeline
2
if you have the option, make one out of clay as it's the most durable alternative.
If you don't, wood will do. Or if you're near a beach there may be large shells. The skull of a decent sized animal may also be available to you. If you're lucky enough to have a good sized piece of leather, some sinew, and an awl, you could make a water pouch with that.
Don't ...
3
The series is rather nondescript about this stuff, and I did not find any recipe that is really described as 'instant pottage'.* As such I preliminarily infer that this is a humorous but not totally inadequate but interpretative description by Jones and his writers.
For recipes and practices from medieval cookery in England that approach such an imaginative ...
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