Wagashi: Peruse a Digitized, Centuries-Old Catalogue of Traditional Japanese Candies

in Books, Food & Drink | October 30th, 2018

If you’ve been to Japan, or even to any of the Japan­ese neigh­bor­hoods in cities around the world, you’ve seen wagashi (和菓子). You’ve prob­a­bly, at least for a moment, mar­veled at their appear­ance as well: though essen­tial­ly noth­ing more than sweet treats, they’re made with such strik­ing vari­ety and refine­ment that you might hes­i­tate to bite into them.

First cre­at­ed in the 16th cen­tu­ry, when trade with Chi­na made sug­ar into a sta­ple in Japan, wagashi have devel­oped into one of the coun­try’s sig­na­ture del­i­ca­cies, appre­ci­at­ed for their taste but beloved for their form. You can browse and down­load a three-vol­ume cat­a­log of wagashi designs, itself cen­turies old, at the web site of Japan’s Nation­al Diet Library: vol­ume one, vol­ume two, vol­ume three.

The site also has a spe­cial sec­tion about wagashi, though in Japan­ese only. The cat­a­log itself, of course, also con­tains text in no oth­er lan­guage, but wagashi isn’t about words.

Even with­out know­ing Japan­ese, you can flip through each vol­ume’s pages (vol­ume one — vol­ume two - vol­ume three) and rec­og­nize the look of dozens of sweets you’ve seen or maybe even sam­pled in real life, where their col­ors may well look even more vivid than on the page.

Like most realms of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese cul­ture, wagashi demands painstak­ing crafts­man­ship. Often brought out at fes­ti­vals and giv­en as gifts, it also cel­e­brates dif­fer­ent aspects of Japan: its sea­sons, its land­scapes, chap­ters of its his­to­ry, and even its works of lit­er­a­ture. Some wagashi designs do this abstract­ly, while oth­ers lean toward the rep­re­sen­ta­tive, repli­cat­ing real sights and sym­bols in a form both rec­og­niz­able and edi­ble.

Many wagashi, as Boing Boing’s Andrea James writes, “still look the same as they did hun­dreds of years ago when the art form flour­ished in the Edo peri­od” of the 17th and 18th cen­tu­ry. Insta­gram, as she points out, has proven a nat­ur­al online home for not just the kind of tra­di­tion­al wagashi seen in these cat­a­logs but designs that pay trib­ute to fig­ures of more recent vin­tage, such as Rilakku­ma and the aliens from Toy Sto­ry.

And though Hal­loween may not be an orig­i­nal­ly Japan­ese hol­i­day, it has­n’t stopped mod­ern wagashi-mak­ers from bring­ing out the ghosts, skulls, and jack-o-lanterns in force.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Down­load Clas­sic Japan­ese Wave and Rip­ple Designs: A Go-to Guide for Japan­ese Artists from 1903

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How the Ancient Mayans Used Chocolate as Money

in Economics, Food & Drink, History | October 8th, 2018

We’ve had hun­dreds and hun­dreds of years to get used to mon­ey in the form of coins and bills, though exact­ly how long we’ve used them varies quite a bit from region to region. Of course, some spots on the globe have yet to adopt them at all, as any­one who’s heard the much-told sto­ry of the Yap islanders and their huge lime­stone discs knows. But the his­to­ry of mon­ey is, in essence, the his­to­ry of bar­ter­ing — trad­ing some­thing you have for some­thing you want — becom­ing more and more abstract; now, with dig­i­tal cryp­to-cur­ren­cies like Bit­coin, it looks like mon­ey will ascend one lev­el of abstrac­tion high­er. But to imag­ine what a tru­ly non-abstract cur­ren­cy looks like, just look at the ancient Mayan civ­i­liza­tion, the mem­bers of which paid their debts with choco­late.

“The ancient Maya nev­er used coins as mon­ey,” writes Sci­ence’s Joshua Rapp Learn. “Instead, like many ear­ly civ­i­liza­tions, they were thought to most­ly barter, trad­ing items such as tobac­co, maize, and cloth­ing.” Thanks to the work of archae­ol­o­gist Joanne Baron, a schol­ar of murals, ceram­ic paint­ings, carv­ings and oth­er objects depict­ing life in the Clas­sic Maya peri­od which ran from around 250 BC to 900 AD, we’ve now begun to learn how choco­late took on a major, mon­ey-like role in the Maya’s econ­o­my.

Some images depict cups of choco­late itself, which the Mayans usu­al­ly enjoyed in the form of a hot drink, being accept­ed as pay­ment, and oth­ers show choco­late trad­ed in the coin-like form of “fer­ment­ed and dried cacao beans.” In many scenes, Maya lead­ers receive their trib­utes (or tax­es) most often in the form of “pieces of woven cloth and bags labeled with the quan­ti­ty of dried cacao beans they con­tain.”

Cacao beans even­tu­al­ly became such a valu­able cur­ren­cy “that it was evi­dent­ly worth the trou­ble to coun­ter­feit them,” writes Smith­son­ian’s Josie Garth­waite in an arti­cle about the ear­ly his­to­ry of choco­late (a sub­ject about which you can learn more in the TED-ed video above). “At mul­ti­ple archae­o­log­i­cal sites in Mex­i­co and Guatemala,” she quotes anthro­pol­o­gist Joel Pal­ka as say­ing, “researchers have come across remark­ably well-pre­served ‘cacao beans’ ” that turn out to be made of clay. “Some schol­ars believe drought led to the down­fall of the Clas­sic Maya civ­i­liza­tion,” Learn notes, and accord­ing to Baron, “the dis­rup­tion of the cacao sup­ply which fueled polit­i­cal pow­er may have led to an eco­nom­ic break­down in some cas­es.” That may sound strange­ly famil­iar to those of us who — even here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, among the many who have gone near­ly cash­less and may soon not even need a cred­it card — have break­downs of our own when we can’t get our choco­late.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mar­velous Health Ben­e­fits of Choco­late: A Curi­ous Med­ical Essay from 1631

Mak­ing Choco­late the Tra­di­tion­al Way, From Bean to Bar: A Short French Film

The Ups & Downs of Ancient Rome’s Economy–All 1,900 Years of It–Get Doc­u­ment­ed by Pol­lu­tion Traces Found in Greenland’s Ice

Mod­ern Artists Show How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Coins, Vas­es & Arti­sanal Glass

Bit­coin, the New Decen­tral­ized Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy, Demys­ti­fied in a Three Minute Video

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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MIT Students Solve the Spaghetti Breaking Mystery That Stumped Richard Feynman

in Food & Drink, Physics | September 3rd, 2018

Even thir­ty years after his death, Richard Feyn­man remains one of the most beloved minds in physics in part because of how much atten­tion he paid to things oth­er than physics: draw­ing and paint­ing, crack­ing safes, play­ing the bon­gos, break­ing spaghet­ti. But a physics enthu­si­ast might object, and rea­son­ably so, that all those activ­i­ties actu­al­ly have a great deal to do with physics, giv­en the phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na they all demon­strate and on which they all depend. In recent years, con­sid­er­able sci­en­tif­ic atten­tion has even gone toward spaghet­ti-break­ing, inspir­ing as it did Feyn­man — and com­put­er sci­en­tist Dan­ny Hillis, who hap­pened to be in the kitchen with him — to pose a long-unan­swer­able ques­tion: How come it always breaks into a mil­lion pieces when you snap it?

Maybe spaghet­ti does­n’t always break into a mil­lion pieces, exact­ly, but it nev­er breaks in two. Dis­cov­er­ing the secret to a clean two-part break did require a mil­lion of some­thing: a mil­lion frames per sec­ond, specif­i­cal­ly, shot by a cam­era aimed at a pur­pose-built spaghet­ti-break­ing device. The results of the research, a project of stu­dents Ronald Heiss­er and Vishal Patil dur­ing their time at MIT, came out in a paper co-authored by MIT’s Nor­bert Stoop and Uni­ver­sité Aix Mar­seille’s Emmanuel Viller­maux, just pub­lished in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. The team found, writes MIT News’ Jen­nifer Chu, “that if a stick [of spaghet­ti] is twist­ed past a cer­tain crit­i­cal degree, then slow­ly bent in half, it will, against all odds, break in two.”

As for why spaghet­ti breaks into so many pieces with­out the twist, a ques­tion tak­en on by the Smarter Every Day video just above, French sci­en­tists Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch won the Ig Nobel Prize by fig­ur­ing that out in 2005: “When a stick is bent even­ly from both ends, it will break near the cen­ter, where it is most curved. This ini­tial break trig­gers a ‘snap-back’ effect and a bend­ing wave, or vibra­tion, that fur­ther frac­tures the stick.” If you twist the stick first, “the snap-back, in which the stick will spring back in the oppo­site direc­tion from which it was bent, is weak­ened in the pres­ence of twist. And, the twist-back, where the stick will essen­tial­ly unwind to its orig­i­nal straight­ened con­fig­u­ra­tion, releas­es ener­gy from the rod, pre­vent­ing addi­tion­al frac­tures.”

So now we know. But the fruits of what might strike some as an obses­sive and point­less quest could well fur­ther the sci­ence of frac­tur­ing, which Patil describes to the Wash­ing­ton Post as an out­ward­ly “chaot­ic and ran­dom” process. This research could lead, as Chu writes, to a bet­ter “under­stand­ing of crack for­ma­tion and how to con­trol frac­tures in oth­er rod-like mate­ri­als such as mul­ti­fiber struc­tures, engi­neered nan­otubes, or even micro­tubules in cells.” That’s all a long way from the kitchen, cer­tain­ly, but even the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary advance­ments of knowl­edge grow out of sim­ple curios­i­ty, an impulse felt even in the most mun­dane or friv­o­lous sit­u­a­tions. Richard Feyn­man under­stood that bet­ter than most, hence sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of sci­en­tists’ desire to pick up what­ev­er piqued his inter­est — even bro­ken bits of Bar­il­la No. 5.

via MIT News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

The Draw­ings & Paint­ings of Richard Feyn­man: Art Express­es a Dra­mat­ic “Feel­ing of Awe”

Learn How Richard Feyn­man Cracked the Safes with Atom­ic Secrets at Los Alam­os

Richard Feyn­man on the Bon­gos

What Ignit­ed Richard Feynman’s Love of Sci­ence Revealed in an Ani­mat­ed Video

A Free Course from MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Free Course from MIT Teaches You How to Speak Italian & Cook Italian Food All at Once

in Food & Drink, MIT, Online Courses | August 13th, 2018

At MIT, Dr. Pao­la Rebus­co usu­al­ly teach­es physics to fresh­men. But, on behalf of the MIT Exper­i­men­tal Study Group, Rebus­co has devised an appeal­ing course — Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full — where she com­bines teach­ing two things many peo­ple love: learn­ing to speak Ital­ian and cook­ing Ital­ian food. The course sum­ma­ry reads:

The par­tic­i­pants in this sem­i­nar will dive into learn­ing basic con­ver­sa­tion­al Ital­ian, Ital­ian cul­ture, and the Mediter­ranean diet. Each class is based on the prepa­ra­tion of a deli­cious dish and on the bite-sized acqui­si­tion of parts of the Ital­ian lan­guage and cul­ture. A good diet is not based on recipes only, it is also root­ed in healthy habits and in cul­ture. At the end of the sem­i­nar the par­tic­i­pants will be able to cook some healthy and tasty recipes and to under­stand and speak basic Ital­ian.

As Rebus­co explains in a short video, this course has the advan­tage of mak­ing the lan­guage lessons a lit­tle less abstract. It gives stu­dents a chance to apply what they’ve learned (new vocab­u­lary words, pro­nun­ci­a­tions, etc.) in a fun, prac­ti­cal con­text.

Above, we start you off with the first lan­guage les­son in the sem­i­nar. It begins where all basic cours­es start — with how to say your name. Below, you can watch the class learn to cook fresh pas­ta. Along the way, the course also teach­es stu­dents how to make espres­so, risot­to, home­made piz­za, bruschet­ta, and bis­cot­ti. Lec­tures for the course can be found on the MIT web site, YouTube and iTunes. Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons and 1200 Free Cours­es Online. Buon Appeti­to!

Ingre­di­ents & Cook­ing Instruc­tion:

Food Prepa­ra­tion

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site way back in 2012.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Bak­ing, Cook­ing & Oth­er Dai­ly Activ­i­ties Help Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness and Alle­vi­ate Depres­sion and Anx­i­ety

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

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What It Would Look Like If Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino & Other Directors Filmed Cooking Videos

in Comedy, Film, Food & Drink, Video - Arts & Culture | July 16th, 2018

I usu­al­ly chafe when direc­tor Wes Ander­son is labelled “twee,” but as an enthu­si­as­tic, sticky-fin­gered gob­bler of bark and ash encrust­ed camp­fire s’mores, I did enjoy a rather row­dy laugh at his expense while watch­ing the above video.

Each entry in film­mak­er David Ma’s #Food­Films series starts with a hypoth­e­sis that pairs a sim­ple, famil­iar dish with a direc­tor whose visu­al style is well estab­lished.

What if Wes Ander­son made S’mores? 

Ma’s ear­ly mar­i­na­tion in the realms of food styling and adver­tis­ing is a recipe for suc­cess here.

Anderson’s beloved God shot has become a sta­ple of online cook­ing videos, but Ma’s atten­tion to sub­tler details would pass muster with a Cor­don Bleu chef.

The for­mal­ly engraved card! The rib­bon motif! The cos­tumes!

The look is more Grand Budapest Hotel than the camp-themed Moon­rise King­dom, but no mat­ter. That more obvi­ous pair­ing start­ed tast­ing a tad over-chewed around the time of the Moon­rise King­dom-inspired wed­ding pho­to shoot.

Ma’s homage to Quentin Taran­ti­no is a butch and bloody take on spaghet­ti and meat­balls.

To para­phrase Jean-Luc Godard, “It’s not blood. It’s red sauce.”

The sound­track sug­gests that Ma’s ear is just as keen as his eye.

45 sec­onds in, there’s a Part 2, as an extra treat for QT fans.

Big bud­get action king Michael Bay and a Grav­i­ty-cen­tric Alfon­so Cuarón round out #Food­Films’ four-course tast­ing menu.

How­ev­er sat­is­fied view­ers may feel with these hijinks, their appetite for the project is far from sati­at­ed. Sequel requests are pil­ing up:

What if Kubrick made Toast?

What if Tim Bur­ton made a grilled cheese sand­wich?

What if Woody Allen made piz­za?

What if Steven Spiel­berg made cup­cakes?

What if Kuro­sawa made scram­bled eggs?

What if Guy Ritchie did a Full Eng­lish Fry-Up?

Gives me a han­ker­ing to see what Sofia Cop­po­la would do with my grandmother’s favorite lay­ered Jell‑o sal­ad.

While we’re wait­ing for Ma to serve up his next dish we can tide our­selves over with some of his oth­er high­ly styl­ized recipe videos, like the Incred­i­ble Hulk’s Smashed Pota­toes.

Read­ers, what direc­tor-dish pair­ing would you order up? Let us know in the com­ments.

via W Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

For­rest Gump Direct­ed by Wes Ander­son: Here’s What It Would Look Like

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Make the Oldest Recipe in the World: A Recipe for Nettle Pudding Dating Back 6,000 BC

in Food & Drink, History, Nature | June 28th, 2018

Atten­tion culi­nary his­to­ri­ans, sur­vival­ists, wild­crafters, and gonzo eaters!

Net­tle pud­ding, Britain’s—and quite pos­si­bly the world’s—old­est recipe, looks like a good bet in the event of a zom­bie inva­sion, or some oth­er cat­a­stro­phe.

The ingredients—sorrel, water­cress, dan­de­lions, nettles—are the sort of thing you can find in a ditch or pub­lic park.

If you’re wor­ried about pulling an Into the Wild, book a pro­phy­lac­tic tour with nat­u­ral­ist Wild­man Steve Brill.

Should bar­ley flour prove in short sup­ply, don’t wor­ry about it! Grind some acorns, like that kid in My Side of the Moun­tain. 

You think ear­ly man sweat­ed sub­sti­tu­tions?

No way! Impro­vi­sa­tion was the name of the game.

Rigid adher­ence to pub­lished ingre­di­ents will have no place in the zom­bie inva­sion! As Cardiff Met­ro­pol­i­tan University’s home econ­o­mist Dr. Ruth Fairchild told The Dai­ly Mail:

You have to think how much more is wast­ed now than then.

Food waste today is huge. A third of the food in our fridges is thrown away every week with­out being eat­en.

But they would­n’t have wast­ed any­thing, even hooves would have been used for some­thing.

They had to eat what was grown with­in a few miles, because it would have tak­en so long to col­lect every­thing, and even col­lect­ing water would have been a bit of a tri­al.

Yet today, so many peo­ple don’t want to cook because they think of it as a chore.

Stop think­ing of net­tle pud­ding as a chore! Start prac­tic­ing for the zom­bie inva­sion with Antiq­ui­ty Now’s step-by-step recipe and let us know how it tastes.

NETTLE PUDDING (an 8000 year old recipe!)

Ingre­di­ents

1 bunch of sor­rel

1 bunch of water­cress

1 bunch of dan­de­lion leaves

2 bunch­es of young net­tle leaves

Some chives

1 cup of bar­ley flour

1 tea­spoon of salt

 

Instruc­tions

Chop the herbs fine­ly and mix in the bar­ley flour and salt.

Add enough water to bind it togeth­er and place in the cen­ter of a linen or muslin cloth.

Tie the cloth secure­ly and add to a pot of sim­mer­ing veni­son or wild boar (a pork joint will do just as well). Make sure the string is long enough to pull the pud­ding from the pot.

Cook the pud­ding until the meat is done (at least two hours).

Leave the pud­ding to cool slight­ly, remove the muslin, then cut the pud­ding into thick slices with a knife.

Serve the pud­ding with chunks of bar­ley bread.

(Be mind­ful that fire may attract zom­bies. Keep a shov­el beside you at all times. Good luck!)

You can read more about the dis­cov­ery of Net­tle Pud­ding at the BBC and The Tele­graph.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch a 4000-Year Old Babylonian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Harvard

in Food & Drink, History, Yale | June 25th, 2018

Walk like an Egypt­ian, but eat like an ancient Baby­lon­ian.

While cook­books con­tain­ing Mesopotami­an fare do exist, to be real­ly authen­tic, take your recipes from a clay tablet, dense­ly inscribed in cuneiform.

Sad­ly, there are only four of them, and they reside in a dis­play case at Yale. (Under­stand­able giv­en that they’re over 4000 years old.)

When Agnete Lassen, asso­ciate cura­tor of Yale’s Baby­lon­ian Col­lec­tion, and col­league Chelsea Alene Gra­ham, a dig­i­tal imag­ing spe­cial­ist, were invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in a culi­nary event host­ed by New York University’s Insti­tute for the Study of the Ancient World, they wise­ly chose to trav­el with a 3D-print­ed fac­sim­i­le of one of the pre­cious tablets.

T’would have been a shame to knock the orig­i­nal off the counter while reach­ing for a bunch of leeks.

While oth­er pre­sen­ters pre­pared such del­i­ca­cies as Fish Sauces at the Roman Table, Bud­dhist veg­e­tar­i­an dish­es from the Song Dynasty, and a post-mod­ern squid-ink spin on Medieval Blanc­mange, the Yale team joined chef Naw­al Nas­ral­lah and a crew from Har­vard to recre­ate three one-pot dish­es detailed on one of the ancient arti­facts.

Judg­ing by the above video, the clear win­ner was Tuh’i, a beet and lamb stew which Lassen describes as a “pro­to-borscht.”

The veg­e­tar­i­an Unwind­ing Stew’s name proved unnec­es­sar­i­ly vex­ing, while the milk-based Broth of Lamb was unap­pe­tiz­ing to the eye (as well as the palate, accord­ing to Gra­ham). Per­haps they should have sub­sti­tut­ed ani­mal blood—another favorite Baby­lon­ian thick­en­er.

As one of Lassen’s pre­de­ces­sors, Pro­fes­sor William W. Hal­lo, told The New York Times in 1988, it’s unlike­ly the aver­age Mesopotami­an would have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tuck into any of these dish­es. The vast quan­ti­ties of spe­cial­i­ty ingre­di­ents and the elab­o­rate instruc­tions sug­gest a fes­tive meal for the elite.

In addi­tion to the dish­es served at NYU’s Appetite for the Past con­fer­ence, the tablets include recipes for stag, gazelle, kid, mut­ton, squab, and a bird that’s referred to as “tar­ru.”

Next time, per­haps.

And not to quib­ble with the Bull­dogs, but the BBC reports that researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wales Insti­tute are claim­ing a pud­ding made from net­tles, ground bar­ley, and water is actu­al­ly the world’s old­est recipe, clock­ing in at 6000 BC. (Serve it with roast hedge­hog and fish gut sauce…)

While the Yale team has yet to share its recipes in a lan­guage oth­er than cuneiform, The Silk Road Gourmet has a good guide to var­i­ous Mesopotami­an spices and sta­ples.

via Kot­tke/Yale

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Thurs­day June 28 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Life Lessons from Anthony Bourdain: How He Developed His Iron Professionalism, Achieved Creative Freedom & Learned from Failure

in Food & Drink, Life | June 14th, 2018

Antho­ny Bour­dain was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly good chef. That state­ment comes not as a cheap shot at the recent­ly depart­ed, but a quote from the depart­ed him­self. Bour­dain freely admit­ted it over a cou­ple of Tiger beers with a Fast Com­pa­ny inter­view­er last year. “I was very deserved­ly fired on a num­ber of occa­sions,” he adds for good mea­sure, ref­er­enc­ing his decades of dirty work and drug abuse before he rose to promi­nence in the worlds of food- and trav­el-cen­tric books and tele­vi­sion. But in more than one way, those decades pre­pared him to ride the kind of suc­cess he would even­tu­al­ly achieve into a body of work that could have arisen from no oth­er life or per­son­al­i­ty.

“Most of the peo­ple I’ve met who’ve been in the tele­vi­sion indus­try for a long time, their great­est fear is that they will not be in the tele­vi­sion indus­try next year,” Bour­dain says. “That they’ll say some­thing or do some­thing or make a deci­sion that will be so unpop­u­lar that they’ll lose their gig and won’t end up back on tele­vi­sion again. I don’t have that fear.” He knew, sure­ly bet­ter than any­one who has pub­licly remarked on it, that he may not have shown the genius in the kitchen to attain star-chef sta­tus. But he also knew he had some­thing ulti­mate­ly more impor­tant: the skills to turn out meal after flaw­less meal, day in and day out. “If I have to,” he says, “I’m pret­ty sure I can keep up on an omelet sta­tion.”

Many remem­brances of Bour­dain have high­light­ed his iron pro­fes­sion­al­ism. “He is con­trolled to the point of neu­ro­sis: clean, orga­nized, dis­ci­plined, cour­te­ous, sys­tem­at­ic,” wrote the New York­er’s Patrick Rad­den Keefe in a pro­file pub­lished last year. “He is Apol­lo in drag as Diony­sus.” Bour­dain cred­it­ed that to his lean years in the kitchen: “Every­thing impor­tant I ever learned, I learned as dish­wash­er and as a cook: you show up on time, you stay orga­nized, you clean up after your­self, you think about the peo­ple you work with, you respect the peo­ple you work with. You do the best you can.” This went for mat­ters per­son­al as well as pro­fes­sion­al: “If I say to you I’m going to meet you tomor­row at twelve min­utes after five to see John Wick 7, I will be there at 5:02.”

He would also, he adds, be “hang­ing out across the street, dis­creet­ly observ­ing to see what time you show up. And I’ll be mak­ing some very impor­tant deci­sions based on your arrival time.” Bour­dain’s exact­ing stan­dards, for him­self and oth­ers, allowed him to achieve an unusu­al degree of free­dom for a major media per­son­al­i­ty. “I detest com­pe­tent, work­man­like sto­ry­telling,” he says of his and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ pen­chant for cre­ative risk. “A pow­er­ful reac­tion, in one way or the oth­er, is infi­nite­ly prefer­able to me than pleas­ing every­body.” Yet despite tak­ing books and tele­vi­sion shows osten­si­bly about food in new and unpre­dictable aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al direc­tions, in the kitchen he remained a tra­di­tion­al­ist to the end. “You put chick­en in a car­bonara? You lost me. It’s an unfor­giv­able sin against God.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s Free Show Raw Craft, Where He Vis­its Crafts­men Mak­ing Gui­tars, Tat­toos, Motor­cy­cles & More (RIP)

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

Paulo Coel­ho on How to Han­dle the Fear of Fail­ure

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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