Hannibal Lecter (
sharp_man) wrote in
fandomhigh2019-09-13 12:08 pm
Entry tags:
Cooking Through History, Period 2
"Good morning and welcome back," Hannibal told the students once they were seated. The Danger Shop today looked like a grassy plain, forest bordering it on one side, and several good-sized firepits scattered around. He wandered as he spoke. "When we start with the history of cooked food, we should likely begin with why ancient humans would have wanted to cook their food. Cooking is as old as civilization, after all; human ancestors may have been cooking as far back as two million years ago, and there is evidence of it for at least half a million years.
"The earliest people were hunter-gatherers; that is, they did not grow their own vegetables or raise their own animals for food. They sought out what they needed from the area around them. At first, this would naturally have been raw plant materials and meat.
"However, food is easier to digest when cooked, and often more nutritious. There are theories that human brain capacity increased strongly once food began to be cooked. The first method of cooking was roasting, taking meat and placing it onto a stick and holding it over an open fire, or placing it in coals. Early cooked foods would most likely have been meats and root vegetables, along with nuts.
"Today, therefore, we will be making wild boar, scallop, and mushroom kebabs - if you choose to make this on your own later, pork would be an acceptable substitution - and acorn bread."
He pressed buttons on the console by the door and called up several tablets (iPads, not stone) with the recipes on them, which he handed out. "When you get to the step that says to leave the acorns for three days, call me over. I will ensure you have prepared it correctly to that point, and we will simply ask the room to speed things up. If you have questions at any time, please feel free to ask. Meanwhile, I have coffee and tea to share as we cook."
(Recipes from here, copied to Gdocs to avoid you having to scroll through the whole page.)
"The earliest people were hunter-gatherers; that is, they did not grow their own vegetables or raise their own animals for food. They sought out what they needed from the area around them. At first, this would naturally have been raw plant materials and meat.
"However, food is easier to digest when cooked, and often more nutritious. There are theories that human brain capacity increased strongly once food began to be cooked. The first method of cooking was roasting, taking meat and placing it onto a stick and holding it over an open fire, or placing it in coals. Early cooked foods would most likely have been meats and root vegetables, along with nuts.
"Today, therefore, we will be making wild boar, scallop, and mushroom kebabs - if you choose to make this on your own later, pork would be an acceptable substitution - and acorn bread."
He pressed buttons on the console by the door and called up several tablets (iPads, not stone) with the recipes on them, which he handed out. "When you get to the step that says to leave the acorns for three days, call me over. I will ensure you have prepared it correctly to that point, and we will simply ask the room to speed things up. If you have questions at any time, please feel free to ask. Meanwhile, I have coffee and tea to share as we cook."
(Recipes from here, copied to Gdocs to avoid you having to scroll through the whole page.)

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Listen to the lecture
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Hannibal handed him a tablet with the recipes. "Perhaps not up to your friend Ignis's standards, but we do have ignis - it's the Latin for 'fire'."
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Pause.
"Or not cool, because, you know, it's fire, but...you know what I mean."
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If they had a friend named Scopos or Intendo, Hannibal would be incredibly amused.
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"Really?" he had to laugh again. "I mean, I guess that's pretty true, I'm pretty much ready for anything!"
....no, he wasn't.
"Hey, does, um...does Noctis mean anything, in this language? What did you call it? And what about Gladio? Or..." Insert small snort here. "Gladiolus?"
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Beat.
"Team! That's the word I was looking for!"
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Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Not a big fan of having to handle the scallops, though, which would explain his face during that whole part and trying to get through it quickly, but he did enjoy grinding the acorns an awful lot. Hard to not like something that put the guns to good use, right?
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
"Well, if it helps, these are likely dead already; they die quickly after harvesting," he pointed out.
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
"Awww," he said. "I mean, it's good that they're dead already, before we eat them, but still, that's kind of sad. I mean, I know, like, food's alive and stuff before we eat it, and that's, like, the circle of life and all that stuff, but still."
He shook his head, looking down at a scallop still in its shell in his hand. "That's just what you get for being so tasty, I guess, little dude," he commisserated.
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Or become vegan, maybe. But not in this class.
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
She ground it well, then put it in the sack in running water before calling over the professor. While she waited for him she began putting together skewers of scallops, mushrooms, and wild boar.
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
"Never had boar's meat, but it ain't - isn't - too much different from pig. Gamier, but similar."
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
He smiled. "The genius of kebabs is that you can use most any foods you have, so long as they go together. The technique remains the same."
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
If he ever ran out of the saffron Jono had bought him.
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Re: Cook your food/eat Hannibal's!
Talk to Hannibal!
OOC!