Author Taras Grescoe's (Bottomfeeder, Devil's Picnic) quest for ancient flavors. Words @SmithsonianMag @NatGeo @guardian Option: @veltre lostsupper.blog
www.taras-grescoe.com
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The reviews are in, and the reviews are good!
My latest book: The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past
I'm imagining it as a doc series. (@veltre for option)
Here's a round-up of what the critics are saying:
taras-grescoe.com/the-lost-sβ¦
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We succeeded in recreating Neolithic flatbread!
This is about as close as I can figure out how to make bread as it would have been baked in one of the first daily bread-making cultures, ca. 9,000 years ago. Iβll let you judge the authenticityβ¦but the taste is fantastic. ππ§΅
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We succeeded in recreating a Neolithic flatbread!
This is about as close as I can figure out how to make bread as it would have been baked in one of the first daily bread-making cultures, ca. 9,000 years ago. Iβll let you judge the authenticityβ¦but the taste is fantastic.
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A year ago I boarded a train in #Istanbul to investigate one scientist's claim of rediscovering Silphion, a legendary herb thought to have gone extinct 2,000 years ago.
It still grows in the heart of #Turkeyβand it's delicious.
More in my @natgeo feature:
nationalgeographic.com/histoβ¦
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End of an Era.
I went out and bought this, the Dec. 2023 issue of National Geographic. It's the last issue of this venerable institution that will appear on newsstands. π§΅
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It's took a long timeβ4 months of fermentation, in factβbut I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen), under the supervision of the world's leading archaeological authority on the subject. (Looking at you, Sally!) Here's how I did it...
(thread)
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It took 4 months of fermentation, but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen)βthe ancient Roman fish sauce
To avoid botulism, I did it under the supervision of Sally Grainger, the British author of The Story of Garum. Some of the key steps...
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The Daily Grind.
This is how our ancestors ground wheat 8,000 years ago.
I'm using emmer here, an ancient grain that was used in ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk, in what's now #Turkey.
That hollow scraping sound would have been the soundtrack to life in the Neolithic... ππ§΅
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This is a big deal!
Was writing invented once, or was it invented independently in different places, and at different times?
New evidence...βοΈπ§΅
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I should start from the beginning. I went to the ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk site in central #Turkey. A proto-urban Neolithic community, pop. as high as 8,000, inhabited for 1000+ years starting ca 7200 BCE.
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The pores in the basalt were huge, but they quickly filled with flour, providing a smoother surface. Marc found tiny flecks of stone in the first batches of flour, so we threw those out. Ancient Egyptian teeth were worn down by microabrasions, probably for this reason
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The first issue was published in Sept. 1888. My grandparents gave me a year-long subscription when I was 8 years old. It helped open my eyes to a wider world...
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In the excavations, I saw the placement of the beehive-shaped ovens and the storage bins that almost every dwelling had. Helpfully, replica houses showed exactly what these looked like.
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I didn't use any oil. However, I did add a few grams of salt. This is controversial, as no salt storage has been found at ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (and there are many saltflats in the area), so I erred on the side of flavor.
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The technique is pretty intuitiveβback and forth grinding. (Almost like the quern was a set of molars, part of the pre-digestion process.) But it's physically demanding. It worked better when I put it on the floor, kneeled, and put my full weight into the mano-grindstone.
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Silphium + Garum = transcendent. An intensity of flavour, and a synergy, that's hard to describe. We all felt a little intoxicated.
This is the Garum Sally Grainger brought to Istanbul. Made by a Portuguese team, and, to be honest, much better than the Flor de Garum from Cadiz.
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For the full blow-by-blow, you can read more on my Lost Supper blog:
lostsupper.blog/how-to-make-β¦
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What archaeologists did find in abundance at Γatal was wild mustard grains. Descurainia sophia is known in Persian cuisine as Khak-shir. I tracked some down at an Iranian supermarket. Like mustard without the harsh bite, and quite refreshing.
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And watch out for my book The Lost Supper, a deep dive into the culinary detective work being deployed to revive near-extinct and given-up-for-dead foods.
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Not to boast, but I do believe that I was the first person from west of the Bosphorus Straits to have tasted Silphion in 2,000 or so years when I chewed on the (pleasantly bitter) resin from the root-ball in Oct. 2021.
OK, kind of boasting...
Thanks again, Dr. Miski!
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The next step was to find the ancient grain used by ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌkans. This is emmer, which they probably first gathered in the wild, but then grew near the settlement. Latin name Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccum. Italians call it farroβwhich I found at a grocery store near my home.
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Lacking though was the means of grinding the bread. This was a saddle quern, which consists of a slab of andesite and a (usually) oval-shaped grindstone. This I found in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in #Ankara.
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Miski, Grainger and I were privileged to be able to test the taste of this plant; it was part of the confirmation process. There is not enough F. drudeana for humans to eat. Weβll need to propagate it for years. This is an opportunity for study, not another extinction event.
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It took me four hours, in two sessions, to grind enough for a βdaily breadβ make. The flour smelled great, by the way, woody, complex, nutty.
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I averaged about 120 grams per hour. My back was sore for days; the spasms in my upper arms have just stopped; I got blisters on my palms! Making bread was time-consuming and exhaustingβpeople must have really wanted it.
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I love it when my obsessions mesh...
Ancient scripts and cooking!
Cuneiform tablet gingerbread cookies, hot from the oven... βοΈπͺπ§΅
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All involved were able to keep this secret for a year while the Nat Geo team put together this amazing
package. Thanks to @kristinromey @_alicezoo @mallorybenedict Nirupa Rao
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For months I tried to find an equivalent, checking with museums all over. Finally I reached out to an archaeobotanist at the British Museum who'd done her own Neolithic bread-baking experiments. She said the closest equivalent was a Mexican metateβshe used one with good results.
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Or read the "Bread Alone" chapter of my latest book, The Lost Supper, in which I explore our relationship with grains going back to the Paleolithic.
cc: @greystonebooks
To order a copy, and for more info:
taras-grescoe.com/the-lost-sβ¦
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I tried to source one through Mexican chefs in #Montreal, to no avail. So I ordered one with Etsy. (Yeah, I know.) It arrived from Oaxaca, 22 x 30 cm, on three legs, made of basalt.
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I should start from the beginning. A year ago, I went to the ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk site in central #Turkey. A proto-urban Neolithic community, pop. as high as 8,000, inhabited for 1000+ years starting ca 7200 BCE.
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Here are the first passes with the grindstone (or βmanoβ) on the metate. It is clearly designed to roll over corn (maize) rather than wheat.
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For more to the story, check out my feature in this month's @SmithsonianMag
cc @Ted_Scheinman @KitchenBee @TimG_translator @TheSohoAgencyUK @TavolaMed
smithsonianmag.com/arts-cultβ¦
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For space reasons, this was removed from the article:
"One of the only things silphion wasnβt used as, surprisingly, was a love potion. A close reading of Greek and Roman texts shows no evidence of it being prescribed as a contraceptive or aphrodisiac...
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Emmer is a beautiful grain! Very hard, silky and glistening between the fingers. Each grain is about the size of aβ¦mouse turd. (A non-beautiful analogy, itβs true.)
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"and a single ambiguous reference to its possible use as an abortifacient."
I go into much more detail on my adventures in Turkey, and the history of the herb, in the Silphion chapter of my upcoming book The Lost Supper. More soon!
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I was welcomed by chef Fisun Ercan and her husband Tulga. Fisun grew up in a village near Izmir, where her family baked flatbreads regularly.
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According to archaeobotanists (hey Lara and Amaia!) who have excavated at ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk, bread there was unleavened. That is, no sourdough starter. The dough may have been left out for several hours to collect natural yeasts from the environment. I mixed the flour with water...
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It took 4 months of fermentation, but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen).
I can now confirm it was under the supervision of Sally Grainger, world's leading authority on the subject, author of The Story of Garum.
Here's how I did it...
ππ§΅
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I wasn't completely sure about the emmer from Italy (sometimes it's another "ancient" grain, spelt), so I ordered some from an organic supplier in British Columbia, Canada.
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Iβve been making sourdough for the last six or seven years, but Iβve never ground my own grain. So I took my emmer and my metate to Marc-AndrΓ© Cye, #Montrealβs knowledgable βBaker on the Goβ (His handle on Instagram). Here we are at his HQ!
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She also has a large version of a firin, with clay walls. Itβs like a big, communal version of the dome-shaped ovens youβd find in Γatal. At 730 that morning she started a fire using logs from ash trees.
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Instead I decided to turn to an expert for help. I took my emmer dough (including a control batch made with bread wheat, T. aestivum) to Bika, a farm-to-table Turkish restaurant outside #Montreal.
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As I've mentioned, the current misconception re: love potion/abortifacient qualities come from John Riddle's Viagra-era book Eve's Herbs. The references cited simply don't stand up to examination.
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Then into the oven on a peel! The emmer ekmek (bread) is on the right. It puffs up more than the bread wheat version. In a Γatal firin, by the way, the dough would probably have been stuck to the oven wall, and removed when it fell off.
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Marc-AndrΓ© was really intrigued by the project. Heβs ground grain mechanically before, but never on a quern.
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Fisun rolled out the dough and cut it into pita-sized breads, the way she used to in her village in Turkey. We made a control batch with bread wheat, and did versions with and without wild mustard seed.
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Marc had taught me the technique, so at home I got to work grinding enough emmer to make the flatbread. I found 4 tsps, about 20 grams, was a good amount to do per batch. Each batch could take up to 7 minutes to grind into flou
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A handful of Khak-shir went into the mix. Overnight, the dough swelled slightly, remained wet and sticky. Now I had to figure out how to bake it. I considered making my own Neolithic firin (wood oven) out of clay, which is what one archaeobotanist did...
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I took this photo in a #Montreal grocery store.
It's pomace, lowest grade of olive oil.
Extracted with hexane from solid residue of skins, stems + pits.
Often recalled in EU b/c of toxins, carcinogens.
It's on the market b/c extra virgin prices have spiked.
Here's why:
π«π§΅
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I was honored to be Sally Grainger's sous-chef in #Istanbul. Here I am with Chef and Dr. Miski at the end of a long day of cooking from Apicius...
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The technique is pretty intuitiveβback and forth grinding. (Almost like the quern was a set of molars, part of the pre-digestion process.) But it's physically demanding. It worked better when I put it on the floor, kneeled, and put my full weight into the mano-grindstone.
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And I tasted itβand it was great! Salty up front, but with that deep-down umami. As good as the reconstructed Flor de Garum I had in Spain, better than most Asian fish sauces. I've been using it in French onion soup, puttanesca sauce, Roman patinaβand my kids seem to love it!
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In the excavations, I saw the placement of the beehive-shaped ovens and the storage bins that almost every dwelling had. Helpfully, replica houses showed exactly what these looked like.
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Last year I finally got published in the "Yellow Magazine." An article on the possible rediscovery of the ancient Roman herb silphionβthey sent me and a team of photographers to #Turkey ; it also became a chapter in my new book The Lost Supper
nationalgeographic.com/histoβ¦
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The next step was to find the ancient grain used by ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌkans. This is emmer, which they probably first gathered in the wild, but then grew near the settlement. Latin name Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccum. Italians call it farroβwhich I found at a grocery store near my home.
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Lacking though was the means of grinding the bread. This was a saddle quern, which consists of a slab of andesite and a (usually) oval-shaped grindstone. This I found in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in #Ankara.
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The pores in the basalt were huge, but they quickly filled with flour, providing a smoother surface. Marc found tiny flecks of stone in the first batches of flour, so we threw those out. Ancient Egyptian teeth were worn down by microabrasions, probably for this reason
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This is brilliant!
Grapes are kept fresh for up to half a year, without refrigeration, in the rural north of #Afghanistan, by being encased in mud-straw clay disks. The centuries-old tech is known as "kangina"... ππ§΅
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But for the real, in-depth story, including my voyage to CΓ‘diz, Spain (for the first modern version of garum), read "The Quintessence of Putrescence" chapter of my new book The Lost Supper. You can find out more, and order it, here: taras-grescoe.com/the-lost-sβ¦
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Grinding grain seems to have been a gendered activity in Egypt; wear-and-tear on skeletons suggests it fell disproportionately on women. Not in egalitarian ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk, where evidence suggests men and women might have shared in grinding tasks.
journals.ed.ac.uk/lithicstudβ¦
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What archaeologists did find in abundance at Γatal was wild mustard grains. Descurainia sophia is known in Persian cuisine as Khak-shir. I tracked some down at an Iranian supermarket. Like mustard without the harsh bite, and quite refreshing.
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I tried to source one through Mexican chefs in #Montreal, to no avail. So I ordered one with Etsy. (Yeah, I know.) It arrived from Oaxaca, 22 x 30 cm, on three legs, made of basalt.
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My archaeological advisor in the UK suggested I rebrine the solids for a week to squeeze a "second extraction." I've done that, and got an equal volume of liquid out of it. Common practice among value-conscious garum merchants in 1st cent CE, apparently.
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It took me four hours, in two sessions, to grind enough for a βdaily breadβ make. The flour smelled great, by the way, woody, complex, nutty.
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For the full blow-by-blow, go to my Lost Supper blog (now Substack-free !) I've taken off the paywall for this post:
tinyurl.com/yc35555a
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And I tasted itβand it was great! Salty up front, but with deep-down umami. As good as the reconstructed Flor de Garum I had in Spain, better than most Asian fish sauces. I've been using it in French onion soup, puttanesca sauce, Roman patina (below)βand my kids seem to love it!
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I averaged about 120 grams per hour. My back was sore for days; the spasms in my upper arms have just stopped; I got blisters on my palms! Making bread was time-consuming and exhaustingβpeople must have really wanted it.
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Here are the first passes with the grindstone (or βmanoβ) on the metate. It is clearly designed to roll over corn (maize) rather than wheat.
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My advisor told me the colourβa coruscating goldβwas perfect. The smell is somewhere between colatura and Vietnamese nuoc mam. Intensely fishy, but not off-putting.
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I'm going to have to sign off for today...got to make my kids dinner! But this will be continued. (Making it a Cereal Serial, I guess.) Tune in tomorrow for more...
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I didn't use any oil. However, I did add a few grams of salt. This is controversial, as no salt storage has been found at ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (and there are many saltflats in the area), so I erred on the side of flavor.
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The resulting liquidβwhich the Romans more often called "liquamen" than "garum"βis very similar in colour to this colatura, an Italian sauce made from the drippings of salted anchovies. Colatura, though, isn't fermented (the fish are gutted before salting).
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For months I tried to find an equivalent, checking with museums all over. Finally I reached out to an archaeobotanist at the British Museum who'd done her own Neolithic bread-baking experiments. She said the closest equivalent was a Mexican metateβshe used one with good results.
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Sally Grainger suggested I rebrine the solids for a week to squeeze a "second extraction." I've done that, and got an equal volume of liquid out of it. Common practice among value-conscious garum merchants in 1st cent CE, apparently.
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Emmer is a beautiful grain! Very hard, silky and glistening between the fingers. Each grain is about the size of aβ¦mouse turd. (A non-beautiful analogy, itβs true.)
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Humanity's first known written sentence: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."
Parents will agree...very human indeed.
Oldest known sentence written in first alphabet discovered β on a bronze-age Canaanite head-lice comb
theguardian.com/science/2022β¦
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Within only a few days, the enzymes in the sardines' viscera liquefied the flesh. No water or brine was addedβthe fish just digested themselves.
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I was welcomed by chef Fisun Ercan and her husband Tulga. Fisun grew up in a village near Izmir, where her family baked flatbreads regularly.
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The Neolithic bread thread continues...
I wasn't completely sure about the emmer from Italy (sometimes it's another "ancient" grain, spelt), so I ordered some from an organic supplier in British Columbia, Canada.
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Then into the oven on a peel! The emmer ekmek (bread) is on the right. It puffs up more than the bread wheat version. In a Γatal firin, by the way, the dough would probably have been stuck to the oven wall, and removed when it fell off.
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...in other words, this script arose independently. The people of Rapa Nui *invented* writing. Not for the first time, but nonetheless, they did invent it. Just as the ancient Chinese, Sumerians, and Egyptians did, in their own times. Here's the paper:
nature.com/articles/s41598-0β¦
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Grainger told me the colourβa coruscating goldβwas perfect. The smell is somewhere between colatura and Vietnamese nuoc mam. Intensely fishy, but not off-putting.
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According to archaeobotanists (hey Lara and Amaia!) who have excavated at ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk, bread there was unleavened. That is, no sourdough starter. The dough may have been left out for several hours to collect natural yeasts from the environment. I mixed the flour with water...
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We liked the bread-wheat flatbread.
But we loved the hand-ground emmer flatbread!
The enzymes were still active, so it really felt alive. A lot of bran, it's true, but the flavor was nutty, maybe even woody. Best flatbread I've ever had! Fisun wants to use emmer for baking now...
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This is amazing!
Scrolls from library at Herculaneum, buried by eruption of Vesuvius, 79 CE, are being restored using scanners and A.I. They continue to add new chapters to the book of antiquity.
A scroll reveals a new account of Plato's last night on earth...πππ§΅
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Full disclosureβin the end, we dipped some of the breads in olive oil, and accompanied them with zaatar and feta cheese to make a lunch of it..
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The best of all was the emmer flatbread made with wild mustard (in the dough, upper pita). It brought a slight crunch, but also a subtle, mild mustard flavor. Must have been a welcome dose of flavor to daily bread in ΓatalhΓΆyΓΌk.
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Ancient recipes call for 3 months' fermentation (in open vats, under the Mediterranean sun); modern Asian fish sauces are fermented for 12 months+. I let mine go for about 3.5 months, with shakes of the jar every couple of days to keep everything mixed.
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The resulting liquidβwhich the Romans more often called "liquamen" than "garum"βis very similar in colour to this colatura, an Italian sauce made from the drippings of salted anchovies. Colatura, though, isn't fermented (the fish are gutted before salting).
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Marc had taught me the technique, so at home I got to work grinding enough emmer to make the flatbread. I found 4 tsps, about 20 grams, was a good amount to do per batch. Each batch could take up to 7 minutes to grind into flour.
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Marc-AndrΓ© was really intrigued by the project. Heβs ground grain mechanically before, but never on a quern.
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Within only a few days, the enzymes in the sardines' viscera liquefied the flesh. No water or brine was addedβthe fish just digested themselves.
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Iβve been making sourdough for the last six or seven years, but Iβve never ground my own grain. So I took my emmer and my metate to Marc-AndrΓ© Cye, #Montrealβs knowledgable βBaker on the Goβ (His handle on Instagram). Here we are at his HQ!
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