Traditional Technologies of Food Production Based on Sheep Breeding
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CULTURE AND NATURE: THE EUROPEAN HERITAGE OF SHEEP FARMING AND PASTORAL LIFE TRADITIONAL TECHNOLOGIES OF FOOD PRODUCTION BASED ON SHEEP BREEDING RESEARCH REPORT FOR GREECE by Eleni Liva, Dr. Sotiris Chtouris December 2011 The CANEPAL project is co-funded by the European Commission, Directorate General Education and Culture, CULTURE 2007-2013.Project no: 508090-CU-1-2010-1-HU-CULTURE-VOL11 This report reflects the authors’ view and the Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 3 SHEEP/GOAT as a FOOD GIVER 4 a) Myths and history: the collective imaginary 4 b) Tradition: how the present reconstructs the past 6 SHEEP/GOAT as FOOD 11 a) The role of sheep breeding in the socio-economic life and nutritional habits of people (in Poland, Hungary, Estonia, France, Greece, Bulgaria, UK) during the last century 11 b) Tracing the path: from raw material to food via traditional practices 18 c) The shifting status of the cheese: from a god’s gift to a local or world market commodity 35 CONCLUSION 39 National origin hand in hand with European designation 39 NATIONALISM, PASTORALISM and the EUROPEAN VISION: an example from Greece 41 BIBLIOGRAPHY 43 2 INTRODUCTION The thematic on which we are going to work is Traditional Technologies of Food Production based on Sheep Breeding. What we are called to do as synthesis is to try and see, based on seven European national reports, a) what kind of food products people take from the sheep and/or goat and b) how they process the primary mater with an end result to market it as food stuff. Given the fact that precise guidelines have been given to all partners in advance, so that the issues worked on would be more or less the same, it is interesting to observe that each one of the national reports chooses to focus on and develop quite different elements on the same thematic. This choice is not arbitrary. On the contrary, it reveals that both sheep breeding and processing techniques possess a different place in each national culture. Technology is inextricably linked with social processes, thus revealing the different angle from which different European people value sheep breeding, both in its physical and symbolic nature, together with all kinds of products that derive from this livestock. With the term technology we mean all these techniques that intend to transform raw material (meat, milk, or in some cases blood) to food products. Moreover, traditional conservation techniques were invented and developed, because of the need to preserve this foodstuff in a good condition, for the longest possible periods of time. Throughout the centuries, human beings were constantly on the search for new methods to transform simple raw material to an increasing complex range of foodstuff, giving proof of their inventiveness and creative spirit. A useful tool to proceed in this task, namely to forge a synthesis of all these views, is content analysis. Our main concern is, initially, to highlight the main traditional practices in relation to sheep, goats and manufacturing of their products, as well as the way each one of the European partners values these practices, giving them a special meaning, and finally transfers them (as an agent of national culture) to the other partners. Finally, we hope to be able to highlight all common components of a long chain, which begins on the summer pastures of the European mountains and, after going through a lot of adversities, ends up on our festive or everyday table. This will, hopefully, help us to realize that despite our different traditional background, we all share a common European culture. The European partners who have dealt with this thematic are the French, Bulgarians, Polish, Hungarians, Greeks, Estonians and British. 3 SHEEP/GOAT as a FOOD GIVER a) Myths and history: the collective imaginary The geographical, geomorphologic and climatic characteristics of Greece are particularly favourable to sheep farming. The mountainous terrain of the country, which proves difficult for other stock-raising, like bovine production, and the climatic conditions that allow for long periods of grazing have made sheep breeding a most important sector of animal husbandry in Greece since ancient times. In Greece, there are plenty of mythological references to the benevolent existence of the Goat and its divine gifts. According to ancient Greek mythology, Amaltheia (Fig 1) was the goat nurse of Zeus who suckled the infant-god in a cave in Cretan Mount Aigaion ("Goat Mountain"). (Fig 1) Amaltheia and god Zeus being fed through her horn (Source:Wikipedia) When the god reached maturity he created his thunder-shield (aigis) from her hide (aiga is the greek word for goat) and the ‘horn of plenty’ (cornucopia) from her horn. Sheep breeding played an important role in ancient Greek economy as Homer and Hesiod testify in their writings. Indeed, during the Homeric age, meat was a staple food: lambs, goats, calves, giblets were charcoal grilled. Apart from meat, cheese making in Greece has also a centuries old tradition. Diodorus Sicilius (1rst century BC), the Greek historian from Sicily, wrote that Aristeus, son of Apollo and grandson of Zeus, who had learnt the art of cheese-making from his nannies, the nymphs, was sent by the Olympian gods to teach the Greeks how to make cheese. Given the value of cheese as a staple foodstuff, it is not surprising that ancient Greeks considered cheese as a divine invention and gift to the humans. The first written evidence we have on cheese and milk products is in the Homeric epic poems, more specifically in the Iliad (Rhapsody Λ: 637-641), where there is mention of a slave offering dry cheese to Patroclus, and in the Odyssey (Rhapsody I: 216-249), where Homer describes succinctly Polyphemus, a shepherd and a cheese maker of the 12th century BC, giving a full description of the cheese-making process of that time, which archaeological excavations have proved to have been in practice all over the Aegean islands. 4 Mythology and history become heritage in various ways. Myths and traditions become appropriated by particular ideologies and values, when they re-enact the past in present forms of production and technologies. These mythological and historical references are often projected by the Greek people in an effort to highlight their ancient heritage of sheep and goat breeding in Greece. Each society constructs its identity and negotiates its position in the wider world through references to its past. A characteristic example of this is the way the ancient Greek civilization is used as a most significant point of reference on the basis of which the contemporary Greek nation negotiates its position in the world system. The impulse to preserve the past is part of the impulse to preserve the self. The past is the foundation of individual and collective identity. The question is not whether or not we should preserve the past, but what kind of past we have chosen to preserve, and what that has done to our present. In this context, any references to the ancient Greek mythology and history are most useful when they come to validate the traditional way of the Greek Feta cheese manufacturing as it is inherited to contemporary Greeks from their gods and ancestors. The cheese described by Homer is the ancestor of Feta and it has been the most popular cheese manufactured in Greece from ancient times till today. Indeed, in recent times, the Greek Feta cheese has been recognized as significant national cultural heritage. Another legendary sheep product is the Scottish haggis. Haggis is a dish containing sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally simmered in the animal's stomach for some hours. It has a long history and it is one of the few dishes with special traditions attached to it. The haggis is a traditional Scottish dish memorialised as the national dish of Scotland by Robert Burns' poem Address to a Haggis in 1787. The need for the construction of a national identity finds its ways through many paths. A dish that embodies both nutritional values and traditional characteristics is exactly what people need in order to communicate through this with their national heritage. An early printed recipe for haggis appears in 1615 in “The English Housewife” by Gervase Markham. It contains a section entitled Skill in Oate meale. It goes like this: “The use and vertues of these two severall kinds of Oate-meales in maintaining the Family, they are so many (according to the many customes of many Nations) that it is almost impossible to recken all”. And then proceeds to give a description of oatmeal: “Mixed with blood, and the Liver of either Sheepe, Calfe or Swine, maketh that pudding which is called the Haggas or Haggus, of whose goodnesse it is in vaine to boast, because there is hardly to be found a man that doth not affect them”. Maintaining the Nation and Family virtues, the quality of goodness and the extraordinary influence it exerts on every man –all these give the Haggis legendary properties and urges the scholars to look for further evidence in the long past. Food writer Alan Davidson goes back further, stating that the Ancient Romans were the first people known to have made products of the haggis type. Even earlier, a kind of primitive haggis is referred to in Homer's Odyssey, in book 20, (towards the end of the 5 eighth century BC) when Odysseus is compared to "a man before a great blazing fire turning swiftly this way and that a stomach full of fat and blood, very eager to have it roasted quickly".