RECIPE BOOKS AS HISTORY & WRITING: ARANJUEZ
Asked to speak at a university seminar in Aranjuez on the topic, “A Contemporary Reading of Altamiras”, I asked if I could give an angled take on that subject: how do we make a contemporary reading? Or, to put that in academic terms, on what methodologies do such readings depend?
Following through that emphasis, I invited two-star Michelin chef Kiko Moya of L’Escaleta restaurant to share my spot. Having collaborated with him to match food history and Spanish alta cocina in different formats, I felt this was a great chance to present some of our work together to an academic event. Given his restaurant schedule’s demands, Kiko could attend only via video-conference, but we were able to highlight how a chef might absorb, perceive, research and express knowledge of food history in a professional kitchen. By setting his recreations of Altamiras’s dishes in the context of my own academic methodologies, I hoped to show the potential value of chefs’ work in a field that is always defined by the five senses at play when we cook and eat.
My own methodologies for the book were pioneered by social and cultural historians from the 1960s, although I find the theories of certain literary critics with social awareness, like Toni Morrison, can give valuable leads. What is most important, perhaps, is to avoid all centralist national, regionalist, nationalist or commercially driven branding agendas.
In a packed day of half-a-dozen talks, I found especially valuable a brief contribution from Javier Goya, the chef and co-owner of Triciclo restaurant in Madrid. Like Kiko he saw history rooted within a chef’s culinary language as a fascinating thread of restaurant cooking to develop with researchers from other fields, but in his own position, in urban Madrid, he was wary of history used as a simplistic commercial strategy lacking depth.
Between the morning and afternoon talks the speakers were invited to lunch and I have included a photo of one of our delicious snacks allowing the conversation to flow back and forth. The seminar itself, organised by the Universidad Juan Carlos III, was held in a historic building in Aranjuez, a key locale for the arrival of New World plants in the royal botanical garden.
❖ If you’d like to read this text in Español, just click on this link!
See also:
❖ 1 Franciscan Values in Spanish Culinary Culture: from Eiximenis to Altamiras
❖ 2 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, “Celebration”, 2011, “Celebrating with Altamiras: The Spirit of Fiesta Food”
❖ 3 Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food, “Food, Hunger and Conflict”, 2015
❖ 4 Amsterdam Symposium on the History of Food, “La Cultura del Frío”
❖ 5 Snow and Ices: From Sierra to Friary Kitchen, Museo de Madrid
❖ 6 Nadal: Galician Christmas Food, Migration and Memory
How do we make readings of historic recipes in manuscripts or books? Merged academic methodologies give answers, and chefs use the five senses at play when we cook and eat.”