Friday - May 13, 2011

A Beginning

For proper context, you always need the back story. What comes before sets the scene for what happens now. And as much as we all love a happy ending, without a good beginning it doesn’t make for much of a story. So here you go, the next post actually started here, long long ago. Let’s let our favorite childhood time travelers show us the way ...

“Sherman?”
“Yes Mr. Peabody?”
“We’re going to explore the origins of cooking. Set the Wayback Machine for 8000 BC.”
“Yes Mr. Peaboy! We will get there in time for lunch?”
“Shut up Sherman.”
“Yes Mr. Peabody.”


Dyoing dyoing dyoing dyoing, fwwwwooosh. Boink!

[ The scene: somewhere outside a cave, around the campfire, near twilight. Ugh and Oog, two early hunter gatherers, are making their usual dinner of scorched animal flesh on sticks and a nice raw mush of grass seeds moistened with water. It is starting to rain. ]

Oog: “Better hurry up with that meat; when the rain comes it always puts the fire out.”
Ugh: “Doing the best I can Oog. Why don’t you go stand under that big leafed tree and stay dry until I’m done.”
Oog: “Ok. Here’s your portion of grass mush. I’ll put it on this nice flat rock here by the fire while you finish up. Too bad we can’t take the fire with us under that tree, huh?”

Ping! and Ping! The seeds of two complimentary ideas have just germinated. I’d use the standard lightbulb visual metaphor, but since those won’t be invented for another 5900 years, imagine little burning torches suddenly popping into existance over their heads.

[ The scene: sometime later. A series of burnt tree trunks surrounds the cave, along with piles of ash made from bark and woven grass. Several collections of soot blackened rocks show that various houses of cards made from stone have collapsed at the worst possible times. Ugh and Oog have obviously been experimenting, but without success. Taking the fire under the tree just doesn’t work. Well, not more than once per tree. But grain mush cooked on a hot flat rock not only tastes better, it lasts longer and is even a bit portable. As the sun rises we see them, smoke blackened and heat frazzled, cooling their scorched hands in the mud by the riverbank. Truly, it is the Dawn of Man. ]

Ugh: “We almost had it that time. I thought for sure that that last stack of flat rocks was going to do it. We set a bunch of them on edge all around the fire, nice and tall, and put a big flat one across the top. That keeps the rain out, and makes a nice place to cook the mush.”
Oog: “It worked just fine until somebody had to go and pull the meat sticks out, and knocked the whole thing down. I tried to grab what I could, and now look at my hands!”
Ugh: “Lucky for us we have this nice thick mud for that. Too bad that when it dries out it’s almost as hard as rock. But it’s fun to play with. Look, I made some snakes and some flat ones that remind me of that cooked mush we eat.”

Ping! and thus pottery was invented. and Ping! again, as Oog puts “ah” and “ah” together in her mind and comes up with “uh” (actual numbers were still far in the vocabulary future). Pretty soon they’d made another pile of “rocks” for the fire protector out of mud, found that they couldn’t be moved while wet, did it again with dry mud but found that their special stack of flat rocks still fell apart when you pulled the meat sticks out, and then had the final Ping! idea of making one big round tall cylinder of mud, tapered at the top a bit to keep the rain out, and rested when dry on a couple of small rocks around the campfire. This did a great job of keeping the rain off, it got even stronger somehow once it had been used once or twice, and the opening at the top was perfect for resting the meat sticks on. You’d think they would have stopped right there, having invented the barbeque, but it still failed for cooking the seed mush. And putting a flat rock across the top somehow made the fire go out. They were at an impasse until one day Ugh, in a fit of frustrated pique, threw a handful of mush against the side of the red hot chimney they’d developed. And the mush cooked up in no time at all, light and bubbly and soft on one side, and toasted and crispy on the other.

And thus the tandoor was born. It would remain that way, essentially unchanged, an open ended fired clay tapered cylinder that fit over a fire, for the next 8000 years. Until an American got his hands on one and started thinking.




Dyoing dyoing dyoing dyoing, fwwwwooosh. Boink!

“Wow Mr. Peabody, that was great!”
“I know Sherman, it was my idea after all.”
“Yup, and for once this one wasn’t half baked.”
“Shut up, Sherman.”
“Yes Mr. Peabody.”

Posted by Drew458     on 05/13/2011 at 09:34 AM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining • History •  
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