Welcome to the New Day Cafe! This is an open thread.
The Guardian had a recent piece on Neanderthal cooking techniques,
“Pity the Neanderthal chef. With only rudimentary cooking implements – a hot rock, some scraps of animal skin, perhaps a favoured prodding stick, plus stones for pounding, cutting, scraping and grinding – their hands must have been a scarred mess, and the woodsmoke from the hearth must have played havoc with their eyes. However, according to research published this week, they did at least have access to a smörgåsbord of ingredients…
Microscopic analysis of ancient food scraps unearthed from a hearth in Shanidar Cave, in Iraq, has provided the first real indication of complex cooking – and thus of food culture – among Neanderthals.
According to Dr Ceren Kabukcu, of the University of Liverpool, who carried out the analysis, a typical dish would probably have contained a pounded pulp of pulses, nuts and grass seeds, bound together with water and flavoured with bitter tannins from the seed coats of pulses such as beans or peas, and the sharp taste of wild mustard.”
The author of the piece, Linda Geddes, tackles an approximation of Neanderthal cooking and concludes that it was actually fairly decent-tasting, though it lacked something most of us consider essential to our diets: salt.
If you want to try Neanderthal cooking yourself, here are some tips,
“Soak a handful of dried fava beans, alongside similar quantities of puy lentils and wheat berries, plus a smattering of brown lentils, overnight. Rinse in clean water and then pound these ingredients – including their skins – into a rough pulp. Add a generous tablespoon each of pounded unsalted almonds and pistachios (both with their skins on), and yellow mustard seeds. Gradually add enough water to bind these ingredients into a paste that can be shaped into thin patties with your hands (think drop scones, or American pancakes).”
Cook the patties for a minimum 10 minutes, either on a stone on a fire or cheat and use a frying pan.
More from CNN on the 70,000 year old cooking techniques: www.cnn.com/…
“(Dr. Ceren) Kabukcu said she was surprised to find that prehistoric people were combining plant ingredients in this way, an indication that flavor was clearly important. She had expected to find only starchy plants like roots and tubers, which on face value appear to be more nutritious and are easier to prepare.
Much research on prehistoric diets has focused on whether early humans were predominantly meat eaters, but Kabukcu said it was clear they weren’t just chomping on woolly mammoth steaks. Our ancient ancestors ate a varied diet depending on where they lived, and this likely included a wide range of plants…
the research suggested life in the Stone Age was not just a brutal fight to survive, at least at these two sites, and that prehistoric humans selectively foraged a variety of different plants and understood their different flavor profiles.”
Grab a cup of coffee
and share what’s on your mind this morning.
This is an open thread. Please join us.