vermin posted:

The eggplant is an elaborate prank Chinese peasants played on nobility that got out of hand.

rgocs posted:

I always thought tomatoes originated from Mexico. Google says turns out they grow wild in Peru but the Aztecs in Mexico were the first to cultivate them. The more you know.

The Midniter posted:

How accurate is the "common wisdom" that tomatoes were seen as poisonous, and how long did that last?

SubG posted:

Current evidence suggests that all the Solanaceae originated in South America. Tomatillos propagated throughout South and Central America before European intervention and tomatoes are descended from tomatillos, but if pick you a tomato in Mexico today you're holding a fruit whose descent has to be traced through Spanish colonisation rather than directly from the tomatillos that grew natively in Mexico millions of years ago (although if you go further back still they all have a common ancestor in South America).

The earliest written records for Spanish interaction with tomatoes are complicated by the by the fact that they (the Spaniards) were operating under the misconception that the Nahuatl word tomatl referred to tomatillos rather than fruit in general and so their records appear to confound (what we would now call) tomatillos, the larger fruit grown in the Andes which are the ancestors of our modern tomato cultivars, and capsicum peppers.

That's a somewhat difficult question to answer. A hundred years from now when someone asks how accurate the common wisdom is that people in 2017 believed that gluten is poisonous, what's the answer?

It was clearly the case that in the Old World plants recently imported from the New World were often looked at with suspicion. In many places tomatoes were grown purely for ornamental purposes. But there's evidence that they were in regular culinary use despite this---the earliest surviving written recipes involving tomatoes are from the end of the 17th Century, but they seem to refer to an earlier tradition...Italian recipes referring to tomatoes prepared in the Spanish style, despite no such written Spanish recipes surviving to the present day. There are also numerous depictions of tomatoes in art that suggest they were seen as a culinary ingredient well before the first surviving written recipes appeared.

It's also appears to be the case that some communities were more willing to adopt the use of the tomato than the larger societies in which they lived. The UK, for example, continued to be suspicious of tomatoes longer than most of Europe, but there's evidence that British Jews were happily cooking with them (and presumably being regarded with suspicion themselves as a result of it) long before they became a universal commonplace.

bloody ghost titty posted:

I've got to get some recommendations on culinary anthropology from you- I spend most of my time reading about alcohol.

GrAviTy84 posted:

is it a prank if it's delicious tho?

Brawnfire posted:

I got a spaghetti squash randomly handed to me. Is there anything fun to do with this?

Baloogan posted:

Brawnfire posted:

I got a spaghetti squash randomly handed to me. Is there anything fun to do with this?

therattle posted:

How much fun do you want, and how much lube have you got?

poop dood posted:

You could gently caress it.

Brawnfire posted:

I got a spaghetti squash randomly handed to me. Is there anything fun to do with this?

Baloogan posted:

Brawnfire posted:

I got a spaghetti squash randomly handed to me. Is there anything fun to do with this?

Baloogan posted:

Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:

Especially Ethiopians.

Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:

Especially Ethiopians.

Brawnfire posted:

I got a spaghetti squash randomly handed to me. Is there anything fun to do with this?

Squashy Nipples posted:

Ethiopian is SO good though! Fun to make at home, too.

The collards and farm cheese with spiced butter is super popular in my house. ("ayeb be gomen", I think?")

Liquid Communism posted:

I generally just bake it and serve with butter and liberal application of salt and pepper.

vermin posted:

African food's uncharted territory for me. When I looked it up the first recipe I came across was an uncooked dough ball that was supposed to be dipped in a sauce and swallowed as quickly as possible because it's not meant to taste good.

vermin posted:

African food's uncharted territory for me. When I looked it up the first recipe I came across was an uncooked dough ball that was supposed to be dipped in a sauce and swallowed as quickly as possible because it's not meant to taste good. The second recipe I came across was shakshuka which turned out really good but don't ask me to judge when an egg is at the runny but cooked stage.

Brawnfire posted:

Probably just going to do that. Every recipe I see is just "roast it! Now, put in a bunch of things that actually taste good"

vermin posted:

African food's uncharted territory for me. When I looked it up the first recipe I came across was an uncooked dough ball that was supposed to be dipped in a sauce and swallowed as quickly as possible because it's not meant to taste good. The second recipe I came across was shakshuka which turned out really good but don't ask me to judge when an egg is at the runny but cooked stage.

Doh004 posted:

We use it as an alternative to spaghetti whenever we get it. Cut in half, take out seeds, olive oil, salt, pepper the cut side, place cut side down on a 425 oven and roast for ~30 minutes.

Holds up well with a meaty ragu.

Squashy Nipples posted:

Ug, I disagree. Per my namesake, I enjoy ALL squashes. But spaghetti squash makes a terrible replacement for pasta. As was previously said, just treat it like any other squash.

All Squashes Matter.

Jeb! Repetition posted:

I'm thinking of making Chef John's 1:3 butter mashed potatoes but I'm scared.

vermin posted:

African food's uncharted territory for me. When I looked it up the first recipe I came across was an uncooked dough ball that was supposed to be dipped in a sauce and swallowed as quickly as possible because it's not meant to taste good. The second recipe I came across was shakshuka which turned out really good but don't ask me to judge when an egg is at the runny but cooked stage.