The Food Culture of Portugal Part 1— a Unique Corner of Europe
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VOLUMEVOLUME XVI, XXXII, NUMBER NUMBER 4 4 FALL FALL 2000 2016 Quarterly Publication of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor The Food Culture of Portugal Part 1— A Unique Corner of Europe Photo: http://pasteisdebelem.pt/ Custard tarts called pastéis de Belém, available commercially since 1837, are one of the famous “convent sweets” of Portugal. These here are about to be devoured at the historic Casa Pastéis de Belém, a café in Lisbon that guards its secret recipe. REPAST VOLUME XXXII, NUMBER 4 FALL 2016 WHY PORTUGAL CAPTIVATED GEORGE ESTABROOK November 24 marks five years since the passing of George would observe and F. Estabrook (1942-2011), a CHAA member and Repast writer analyze centuries-old whose years of work in Portugal were the inspiration for this farming techniques to theme. My full obituary article about him was included in our identify practices, some of Winter 2012 issue. I really miss George’s energy and erudition, them ingenious, that and I’m dedicating these two issues in his memory. foster sustainability and that might be adaptable to George was a longtime professor of botany at the Univ. of more industrialized Michigan, where his two basic courses were “How People Use countries. For example, he Plants” and “Biology of Human Nutrition”. He also gave public studied how the fertility talks about “The Roots of Soul Food” and other topics, and for of shale soil is maintained the CHAA he spoke about “The History of Citrus Fruit” (Jan. by such traditional 2006) and “The Domestication and Spread of Bananas” (Jan. techniques as rotating 2009). food crops with giesta (a leguminous shrub), In the 1980s George became interested in the ecology of the grazing sheep, and using countryside in Portugal, where he had been giving talks and living-grass ditches for doing research for many years. He spent Summers and irrigation. He learned to Photo courtesy of the Estabrook family. sabbaticals at the University of Coimbra, serving as an Invited speak fluent Portuguese and, Professor of Anthropology there and carrying out fieldwork on more impressively, the rural mountain dialect, so that he could talk traditional agriculture in the remote mountainous interior. He with both farmers and scientists. Once, when an interviewer back at UM kept asking George how he was planning to “help” the Portuguese by teaching them what he knew, he made clear who was learning from whom: “I’m not there helping farmers at all. I’m there learning from farmers ISSN 1552-8863 how they’ve managed to pull this off for the last 800 years.” Published quarterly by the He collaborated with Virginia E. Hutton— a UM Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor (CHAA) anthropologist who would become his second wife— on fieldwork http://culinaryhistoriansannarbor.org/ and research in Portugal. They purchased an apartment in the town of Torres Vedras, in the west central region of Estremadura. An archive is available at http://cooks.aadl.org/cooks/repast Alongside their work, they also enjoyed observing the citrus harvest and sampling the excellent home-style food and local wine Editor……………….…….…..……Randy K. Schwartz of the region. CHAA Presidents……….Joanne Nesbit and Judy Steeh CHAA Program Chair...……………Laura Green Gillis George and Virginia liked participating in CHAA’s semi- CHAA Treasurer………..…………..……Dan Longone annual participatory theme meals. The arrangement was that CHAA Membership Secretary ……….Marionette Cano George would make main dishes, and Virginia would make CHAA Website Editor…..………………….Judy Steeh desserts. For our July 2007 meal, “Sandwiches from Around the CHAA Founder and Honorary President…Jan Longone World”, George prepared bolo de presunto e quiejo, literally a “cake” of ham and cheese, a substantial pastry served at holidays and special events in the Douro region of northern Portugal. The material contained in this publication is copyrighted. Passages may be copied or quoted provided that the source is credited. Adapting a recipe from Maria de Lourdes Modesto’s Cozinha Tradicional Portuguesa (Lisbon, 1982; also published in English For submissions or inquiries about Repast, contact: translation, Traditional Portuguese Cooking, in 1989), he made a Randy K. Schwartz yeast-leavened dough, placed it in a pan greased with olive oil, and 1044 Greenhills Drive filled it with slices of dry-cured ham and fontina and mozzarella Ann Arbor, MI 48105-2722 cheese. Then he baked the cake at high heat for 30 minutes, until tel. 734-662-5040 the crust was browned. [email protected] George once mentioned to me that he hoped to write an article Subscriptions are $20/year. To subscribe to Repast or to for Repast about some of his Portuguese experiences. But not long become a CHAA member (which includes a subscription), afterward, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and this contact one of our Co-Presidents: ultimately felled him. M. Joanne Nesbit and Judy Steeh tel: 734-213-2412 / 734-665-5813 This issue includes three articles about Portugal (pp. 4-9). Our [email protected] second installment (Spring 2017) will focus on the influence of Or download a membership form from the Portuguese foodways globally, in places like Brazil. web address given near the top of this box. —RKS 2 REPAST VOLUME XXXII, NUMBER 4 FALL 2016 leftovers” (Smart-Grosvenor 1970, p. xxxiv). Middle-class food enthusiasts had encountered a handful of these foods, she wrote, such as ham hocks and collard greens, and were HIGH AND LOW portraying them as if they were the standouts of the Black culinary repertoire. At one point, terrapin stew served in the turtle shell became the latest soul-food craze. The stew itself ON THE HOG was, indeed, an old custom on the Atlantic Coast between Maryland and South Carolina (recipe #126 in Abby Fisher’s In conjunction with Zingerman’s annual Camp Bacon last 1881 cookbook). But Smart-Grosvenor said about terrapin: June, Christopher Wilson, one of the presenters, wrote a thoughtful essay for smithsonianmag.com. Wilson, who is Ain’t nothing but swamp turtles. They used to be Director of the African American History Program for the plentiful on the eastern seaboard. So plentiful that Smithsonian museums, cited plantation records as well as plantation owners gave them to their slaves. Now 1930s interviews from the WPA Slave Narrative project to they are the rare discovery of so-called gore-mays. correct some misconceptions about enslaved African American White folks always discovering something … after workers in the South before the Civil War. we give it up.[…] By the time they got to pigs’ feet, black people were giving up swine (Smart-Grosvenor Wilson criticized the notion that slaves had no agency at all 1970, p. 41). in shaping their own lives and that they Smart-Grosvenor, subsisted mostly on who died on Sep. 3 at scraps that their masters age 79 in Bronx, NY, didn’t want— had grown up in the stereotypically, the less- South Carolina desirable parts of a pig Lowcountry, where the such as feet, ham hock Geechee (now more (knuckle), cracklings often called Gullah) (rind), and chitterlings culture represents one of (intestine). Wilson the best-preserved examined the antebellum African remnants in the Hermitage Plantation in U.S. At age 10 her Chatham County, GA, family moved to and estimated that at Philadelphia, and at age slaughtering time, more 19 she went overseas than 200 hogs were and joined the bohemian butchered to produce expatriate arts about 30,000 lbs. of community in Paris. She pork. He concluded: became not only a food writer and a cooking- It doesn’t stand to show host on NPR, but reason that the white Interior of the kitchen at Refuge Plantation in Camden County, GA, also a musical performer and planter family would eat ca. 1880. Photo: Historic American Buildings Survey, via Vlach 1993. an actress. She was in all the “high on the hog” Jonathan Demme’s film parts, because there would just be too much[…] At “Beloved” (1998) and in Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” least in the Lowcountry rice plantations, the (1991), this last a breakthrough in its portrayal of Gullah conventional view of what slaves ate doesn’t stand up culture. Now Dash is repaying the favor by making a biopic to evidence.[…] Where the conventional “soul food” about Smart-Grosvenor’s fascinating life, “Travel Notes of a myth does ring true on Lowcountry plantations is that Geechee Girl”, set for release in 2017. enslaved people were generally allowed to prepare for themselves all the excess pork that couldn’t be References preserved. In other words, the enslaved community was “given” all the pork parts that the “master didn’t Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae, Vibration Cooking: or, the want,” but that wasn’t necessarily all they were Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl (Athens, GA: Univ. of allowed to eat (Wilson 2016). Georgia Press, 2011; first published in 1970). Vlach, John Michael, Back of the Big House: The Wilson’s conclusions are corroborated by more recent Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Univ. of North cultural memories and first-hand experiences. When “soul Carolina Press, 1993). food” was first becoming a fad, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor Wilson, Christopher, “Studying Bacon Has Led One cautioned that the concept tended to pigeonhole the broad Smithsonian Scholar to New Insights on the Daily Life of phenomenon of African-American cooking in the South by Enslaved African-Americans”, Jun. 2, 2016. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian- narrowing it down to a few stock dishes eaten by plantation institution/studying-bacon-led-smithsonian-scholar-new- slaves. As for what those slaves ate, she said, it’s too simplistic insights-daily-life-enslaved-180959288. to believe that whole diets “developed out of master’s 3 REPAST VOLUME XXXII, NUMBER 4 FALL 2016 A CULINARY ADVENTURE IN PORTUGAL by Rita Goss Because the most accessible entrance was under construction, Rita Goss of Grosse Pointe Farms, MI, is a longtime we had quite an adventure trying to find the gardens.