sharp_man: (Default)
Hannibal Lecter ([personal profile] sharp_man) wrote in [community profile] fandomhigh2019-10-04 07:06 am
Entry tags:

Cooking Through History, period 2

"Welcome." Today, class would step into a wooden house, brightly painted. "There are any number of ancient cuisines we could discuss once humans got the hang of further techniques. Today we will be making Babaofan - Eight Treasure Glutinous Rice - a Chinese food that has been documented from around 1000 BCE, or three thousand years ago.

"It is a type of congee, or rice porridge. Rice was first domesticated in China around ten thousand years ago, and has fed more people over a longer time than any other crop in human history. There are several legends as to how this particular dish came about, and it is still eaten today, mostly upon special occasions. Eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture. It is made from glutinous rice and a combination of eight "treasures", traditionally fruits and legumes. Some of the commonly used ones are dried dates, lotus seeds, candied plums, sweetened winter melon, red bean paste, assorted nuts, vegetables, meat, or potatoes. Since we're replicating the ancient foods as much as possible, we will be using ones that were most likely available then: lotus seed, red dates, longan, goji berries, winter melon, apricots, and lily bulbs. These are meant to balance tastes and medicinal properties - each ingredient has a different taste and different properties."

He waved to the wood-fired stoves awaiting them. "We will be cooking the rice and ingredients in pots, steaming and boiling. These were the earliest attested cooking methods; frying was not known until much later, when the materials in use allowed for higher heats. So, cook your food, and let me know if you have any questions; I will be making my own."
hashtag_chocobro: (and that's how it's done)

Re: Sign in!

[personal profile] hashtag_chocobro 2019-10-04 01:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Prompto Argentum
mylandmyrules: (Default)

Re: Sign in!

[personal profile] mylandmyrules 2019-10-05 12:33 am (UTC)(link)
Nell Ingram
hashtag_chocobro: (fiddling)

Re: Cook your food!

[personal profile] hashtag_chocobro 2019-10-04 01:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Prompto had been bouncing a little, as expected, and listening carefully, which meant that he was building himself to be more nervous about making the food than he should be, but, really, that was just par for the course for Prompto. It shouldn't be hard, but he remembered sometimes messing up simple things like rice because had got so in his head, which, of course, just put him more in his head about messing it up again, but he just had to focus, that's all, just focus, he had this.

And he he did, just..well, it went fine, but it probably could have gone better, especially since, by now, it wasn't like it was his first rice rodeo.
mylandmyrules: (Default)

Re: Cook your food!

[personal profile] mylandmyrules 2019-10-05 12:42 am (UTC)(link)
Nell had been cooking on wood fire stoves since she was old enough to hold a spoon, so this was easy. And it's not like cooking rice was anything new. Adding all of the different items was actually rather fun.