Tempeh Taco Tuesday

Have you ever had an authentic San Francisco “tempeh taco”?  They are hearty, healthy, delicious, and oh so easy to make.  

Tempeh Tacos: A vegan, gluten-free bite of goodness!  

I’d love to take credit for the invention of the tempeh taco, but that honor belongs to my old roommate.  If you ever get to San Francisco and manage to find him, make sure you ask him to whip some up!

Now, I would love to enlighten my clever and efficacious readers with a tale about how the tempeh taco singlehandedly shaped centuries of British culinary history.  Maybe I'd add an epilogue that chronicles the exploits of the tempeh-loving diaspora now in the United States.  But I don’t think the British ate very much tempeh in those days.   

However, tempeh-tacos broach another question in the history of food: the history of “substitutions.”  Now, substitutions are timeless facts of cookery.  We make use of them all the time: when we want something healthier, something tastier … or when we’re just too lazy to go to the store. 

How might one write a history of the substitute?

On the one hand, the substitute provided men of limited means with vicarious enjoyment that would otherwise be out of their reach.  Shortly after turtle feasting took the British public by storm during the 1750s, “mock turtle” made its culinary debut.  It was made from calves brains and forced meat and dressed up with a few Creole influences, such as Madeira and cayenne pepper, to remind people of the real thing.  Indeed, mock turtle wasn't all that different from “calves head hashed:” an older traditional stand-by.  It used similar ingredients, similar methods of preparation and required the same amount of labor to prepare.[1] Calling the dish “mock turtle,” however, implies some degree of culinary expertise, a familiarity with real turtle, and a finished product that is somehow more than the simple sum of its ingredients.  There was nothing very embarrassing or humiliating about this substitute at all.  In fact, it was often served alongside real turtle!  

This is the first reference to "calves head turtle" I have found
Dated November 27, 1760

By the turn of the 19^th century, however, it seemed as if the substitute’s status began to decline.  War, a few bad harvests and impending bread riots prompted social ‘reformers’ to devise all kinds of wacky substitutes for bread.  The pamphlet below, published in 1796, included an entire glossary of underutilized comestibles that that were sure to please the pauper’s palate.  "Dogstone" soup, anyone?

Historians of this age have also linked edible substitutions to the abstracted impersonality of industrial life.[2]   As men and women became increasingly disconnected from the food they ate, they came to be nourished on spurious imitations that, in society's eyes, did not even count as food, robbing them of the last vestiges of humanity.

The reigning king of all substitutes, unquestionably, was the potato.  This is the Irish lumper, known colloquially as the “famine potato.”  

A student recoiled in horror when she saw these warty, mutant potatoes.
"However might one peel such a thing?"  

Yet the potato seemed to create even more controversy over substitutes.  Potatoes grew like weeds, they were easy to store, and they didn’t even require any preparation.  In many ways they resembled fast food: simply boil and serve.  Potatoes unarguably provided a lot of nutritional bang for the buck, yet they raised serious red flags even for the most well-meaning and morally upstanding 19^th century social reformer.  According to the literary critic Catherine Gallagher, there was something a little dirty and blasphemous about the fact that it was the “substitute for the very food that most commonly stood as a signifer for all food.”  Second, given the pauper’s overly picky palate, how could one encourage the poor to choose tubers over wheat?  And last, in a political climate where the mere sight of a poor person chowing down portended Malthusian apocalypse, reformers wondered whether all these edible substitutes were really such a good thing after all.[3]  

Alas, noble readers.  Have the processes of industrialization robbed the substitute of its soul?  For many Britons, the most visceral (and painful) reminders of World War II were the fascinating edible inventions –– margarine, powdered eggs, snoek piquante –– that sought to artificially approximate feelings of culinary normalcy in war-time.[4]  But perhaps we are today turning a culinary tide in the history of substitutions.  After all, many of today’s most expensive breads now regularly eschew glutinous wheat in favor of beets, turnips, almonds and rice …. the edible symbols of poverty at the turn of the 19^th century.

How to Make Tempeh Tacos

What you need:

--1 package of tempeh (I like the flax kind from Whole Foods)

--Half of an onion, diced
--A handful of shiitakes, chopped

--Corn tortillas

--Salsa

--Hummus

--Kale

--Pumpkin or sunflower seeds

Sauté your onions, shiitakes and crumbled pieces of tempeh in a skillet with olive oil.  Add add soy sauce in small intervals and mix vigorously.  Add the kale last to the mixture … it tastes best when it retains a little crunch.  In a separate sauce pan, sauté some pumpkin seeds in olive oil mixed with a teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  Keep your eye on the pumpkin seeds … they’ll keep browning well after you take them off the heat.  Add the tempeh mixture on top of the corn tortilla.  Now comes the magic.  Reader, I know what you’re thinking … salsa and hummus … together?!  But these contrasting flavor properties actually work surprisingly well together.  If you are lucky enough to live in the Bay Area, try to snag a bottle of salsa from Papalote Tacqueria.  Spicy, creamy and smooth, this hummus-salsa combination is divine.  Top with your crunchy-spicy cayenne-pumpkin seeds.  Enjoy!

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[1] To compare the two dishes, I drew on a recipe for “Calves Head Hashed” from Susanna Carter’s The Frugal Housewife (London, 1759) and a recipe for “Mock Turtle” in Francis Collingwood’s The Universal Cook (London, 1792.)  Both call for many of the same ingredients, are around the same length, and involve the same number of “steps” to prepare the dish.   

[2] See, for example, Sandra Sherman, Imagining Poverty: Quantification and the Decline of Paternalism (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001)

[3] The original, published in 1798, doesn't mention potatoes much, but by the time the 6^th edition of the Essay on the Principle of Population came out in 1817, Malthus had added a bunch of extra sections devoted to potatoes in Ireland.  The potato's many roles in British (and Irish) history are meticulously documented in Redcliffe Salaman’s The History and Social Influence of the Potato (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1949) an “oldie but a goodie” to say the least.  But my favorite piece of potato-eating scholarship is Catherine Gallagher, “The Potato in Materialist Imagination” in Practicing New Historicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 

[4] See Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (London: Allan Lane, 2011).  Also check out Ina Zweiniger-Bargeiolowska's Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption 1939-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 

The Secret History of Toad-in-a-Hole

Toad-in-a-hole.  Ostensibly it's been around for centuries; by the mid-19^th century, cookery books were already calling it "an excellent old English dish."[i]  Along with ‘bubble and squeak’ and ‘angels on horseback’ it captures that sense of playful eccentricity associated with British cuisine that we've all come to love.  Indeed, the innocent referentiality of the name –– “toad-in-a-hole” –– evokes that syrupy Dickensian nostalgia for the good old days, when kids still played together in the garden and before our imaginations were stifled by the bottom-line. 

Sausages, red onions, and lots of butter make this treat
the star of every dinner party

Toad-in-a-hole makes no elitist claims for itself.[ii]  It's cheap comfort food, after all, characterized by its elastic portions and its high caloric content.  In 1861 Mrs Beeton described it as "a homely but savoury dish" noting that it could serve 4-5 people for a measly 1 shilling and 9 pence.[iii]  In his comprehensive study about the tastes and preferences of 1960s Paris, the influential sociologist Pierre Bourdieu distinguished the airy delicacy of the bourgeois "taste of liberty" from the proletarian "taste of necessity" This latter category eschewed the gratuitous plating rituals, the social decorum, the restraint of our life-sustaining appetites at the table in favor of letting the good times roll.  Toad-in-a-hole fits into this category like meat and beans in your grandmother’s cassole.[iv]  It's your protein and your carb-heavy side rolled into one, baked to perfection, and doused in gravy.  It requires only one plate, and there's virtually always extra enough for a second helping.  What's not to love? 

But toad in the hole was not always the beloved tradition it is today.   The OED does not reference it until 1787.  The term is attributed to the English antiquary and lexicographer Francis Grose, who included it in his Provincial Glossary, a haphazard collection of forgotten proverbs and words gleaned around rural England.  Included in that glossary is a forgotten Norfolk dish called "Pudding Pye Doll," which Grose defines as "the dish called toad-in-a-hole, or meat boiled in a crust."[v]  Remarkably, the first time that toad in-a-hole is acknowledged in print, Grose presupposes its antique, pre-literary existence.

How did he come to know about it in the first place?

Francis Grose, Antiquary.
A man keenly interested in historic dishes
and with the gut to prove it

Thanks to the fastidious accounting skills of F.R.S. and F.S.A Josiah Colebrooke, Grose's colleague in the Society of Antiquaries, we know now that toad-in-a-hole was known in London circles as early as the 1760s.  The dish was even served to the illustrious group of natural philosophers and virtuosi known as the Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers, the Royal Society's semi-official dining club.

The dish first appeared in 1769, and for the next ten years, the Royal Philosophers enjoyed toad in a hole once or twice a year or so.[vi]  At the Mitre Tavern, the dining club’s chosen dining venue, toad in a hole was served alongside such delicacies as venison, fresh salmon, turbot, and asparagus.  (The Mitre was also frequented by the likes of Boswell and Johnson as well as Grose’s Society of Antiquaries.)  Sometimes the dish pops up in winter, sometimes in spring; toad in the hole was neither season specific nor associated with any particular holiday.  On several occasions Mr. Colebrooke felt compelled to include an additional description like “alias beef baked in a pudding” in the club's dinner books, lest there should be any confusion among posterity.  Obviously, the term was not yet familiar to everyone.  

The Royal Philosophers bill of fare dated February 21 1771
Note the additional description of toad in a hole

Of course, it is extremely unlikely that Englishmen hadn't enjoyed various cuts of meat baked in batter long before the 1760s; the idea is certainly clever, but it’s not exactly rocket science.  But the funny name –– even if it didn’t describe a completely novel dish –– was important, for it drew the dish into an emerging culinary canon with which Britons could collectively identify.

Alas, not everyone appreciated the lexicographical whimsy of toad in a hole.  I’ve managed to find a print reference from as far back as 1762, which calls toad in a hole a “vulgar” name for a “small piece of beef baked in a large pudding.”[vii]  In George Alexander Stevens’s popular satirical monologue, A Lecture on Heads (1764), toad in a hole is supposedly “bak’d for the devil’s dinner.”

Why such contempt for a silly name?  It might well have to do with a growing sense of culinary patriotism cultivated during the Seven Years War (1756-1763).  The English had long prided themselves on their stately haunches of grass-fed roast beef as opposed to the effeminate and over-seasoned ragouts preferred by the French. Yet toad in a hole wasn’t all about the beef; the meat could be disguised in pudding and dressed up with spices such as ginger and nutmeg.[viii]  As several Victorian cookery writers would later attest, it was the perfect occasion to use up leftovers and "veiny pieces of meat" that one would otherwise throw away.  Culinary nationalists likely bristled at the fact that one could put virtually anything in ‘toad in a hole’ and still utilize a quaint English name.  Perhaps the literary celebrity Fanny Burney most perceptively summed up the social anxieties associated with the dish in 1797.  Toad in the hole was “ill-fitted,” she said, as it submerged “a noble sirloin of beef into a poor paltry batter-pudding."[ix]  Not only was British culinary decline linked to the lamentable decay of traditional class distinctions, but an international reputation could also be at stake.  If toad-in-a-hole was admitted to the British culinary repertoire, how would anyone know what the jolly roast beef of old England tasted like? 

Many patriotic songs about roast beef
were penned during the 18th century

It might be for this reason that the genteel and civilized members of the Thursday’s Club abandoned the dish when they relocated from the Mitre Tavern to the larger and better equipped Crown and Anchor on the Strand in 1780.  The Crown and Anchor catered to gentlemen’s clubs, polite families, and political societies.  Dinners there didn’t come cheap.  But the absence of toad in a hole at this finer, more upscale establishment might provide new insight into the social politics of English cuisine.  When toad-in-a-hole first came on the culinary scene as an potential exemplar of quintessential British cookery, it was reviled as vulgar, unpatriotic and ungodly –– an affront to tradition.  Only as the dish accordingly sled down the social scale did it begin to command respect as part of the laboring man's diet.  Once harnessed to 19th century "industrial" values –– such as frugality, versatility, and time-management –– toad-in-a-hole was reborn as the quirky yet savory tradition that still is today. 

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[i] Charles Francatelli, The Cook’s Guide and Housekeeper’s and Butler’s Assistant (London, 1861). 

[ii] For more on working and middle class rhetoric of puddings, see Fiona Lucraft, “General Satisfaction: A History of Baked Puddings” in The English Kitchen: Historical Essays (Devon, Prospect Books, 2007) pp. 103-119.  

[iii] Isabella Beeton, Book of Household Management (London, 1861). 

[iv] Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).   

[v] In addition to the Provincial Glossary, with a collection of local proverbs and wider superstitions, Grose also wrote several books spreading the 18^th century vogue for “antiquities” to a wider market, notably in The Antiquities of England and Wales (London, 1772). 

[vi] See the dinner books, RSC Papers, kept in the Royal Society Archives, London. 

[vii] The Beauties of All Magazines Selected, including the several original comic pieces, vol. 1 (London, 1762) p 53.

[viii] Indeed, the first English recipe for toad in the hole, recorded in Richard Briggs’s The English Art of Cookery (London, 1788) also suggests that the dish might be suited for less desirable “veiny pieces” of beef.

[ix] Frances Burney, Letters and Journals, (London: Penguin, 2001).

Adventures of a Bouillon Cube: c. 1750

Who plays the English tastemaker?  The cook?  Or the customer always right?  This question has reared its head several times as I've been mining old newspapers for references to sauces and condiments.  Unlike the main ingredient, such as a chine of beef or a leg of mutton, the garnishing powerfully illustrates the individual's will in the construction of a national "taste."  Late 18th century advertisers believed that the application of a sauce could transform British cuisine into French, Italian, American or even Indian food.  As much as plumb pudding and roast beef were considered hallmarks of English cuisine, it appears that the possibility of choice, variety, and convenience of good eating were also crucial parts of that story.

Meet Elizabeth Dubois.  I haven't been able to find much biographical information about her as of yet; it seems like she might have been married to someone in the book trade.  I have only heard of her through her advertisements printed in the 1740s and 1750s as a seller of delicious and practical "Portable Soups" all over London.

She starts running the ads in the London Evening Post for what appears to be solid cubes of bouillon in 1744.  "This useful Commodity never spoils if kept dry," she claims, "and is dissolved in a few Minutes in boiling Water; and for Gravy Sauce is much cheaper and better than any usually made on the Spot."  Apparently, the single-serving sized cubes were the brainchildren of her uncle, the reputed cook to the late Duke of Argyll, invented while the Duke was engaged with wars overseas.  But she points out that they are perfect for other occasions ranging from long hunts "when the chace proves long" (you could chew it like a protein bar) to prolonged naval engagements abroad (when the diet of salted meats rendered good English gravy particularly difficult to obtain.)

As advertised in the London Daily Advertiser, 1747

A new (portable) means of preserving the flavors of herbs and fresh meat?  And it happened to be cheaper by the dozen (with a nifty tin box thrown in)?  Indeed, Dubois's advertising scheme had a sophisticated plan of attack.

A 21st century incarnation of Mrs Dubois's invention

But Mrs Dubois was constantly revising her advertising scheme.  In late 1749, she starts offering a special soup made of "shell and other types of fish, which is very palatable" for her customers who keep Lent.  Clearly, she saw these folk as an important untapped market.

Before long, she begins to expand her enterprise, selling her products in taverns and coffee shops all over London: from Billingsgate to Westminster, from her own place in Long-Acre all the way to Bath.

As her market expanded beyond the parish,
she vigilantly protected her ideas from theft

Bath, you say?!  The fact that her bouillon cubes made it all the way to this famous spa-town over one hundred miles away suggests that she believed that these portable soups would appeal to a fashionable health conscious crowd.  Wonder if Elizabeth Montagu, given her love of spa water and other health fads, ever got into these.

Service becomes more and more personalized.  After a few years, Du Bois begins to encourage customers to experiment with mixing her four flavors –– veal, chicken, mutton and "gravy" –– to their own personal liking.  She suggests adding salt to taste.  But still unsatisfied, she decides to take custom-orders beginning in October, 1752.  An ad in the London Evening Post proclaims:

"Having been often asked, why I did not make some solid Soups of Venison, this is to inform such who may be inclined to send their own Meats, of what kind soever, with Directions as to what Spice or Herb are approved, may have their Commands punctually obeyed by their laudable Servant Elizabeth Du Bois, at tte Golden Head ... near Long-Acre; where her strong Gravy Soup, Mutton Broth, Veal Broth, and Chicken Broth, may be had in the utmost Perfection..." 

Who knows whether her venture succeeded?  I never hear of her after 1756.  Regardless, Elizabeth Dubois's marketing ploys suggest that conceptions of eating "on the go" changed drastically around mid-century.  No longer would bread and hard cheese monopolize the market on portable foods.  Moreover, Du Bois wasn't just selling five different types of bouillon cubes.  Her use of culinary expertise –– selling something you couldn't get at home –– and her regard for customer choice imply that she was also selling an idea of English convenience to bring to the the most far flung corners of the earth.

Spring Soop

In my last post, I mentioned a peculiar breed of 18th century cookery books that catered to primarily to vegetable lovers.  Or did they?  For I fear, goodly reader, that many of these self-professed Pythagoreans delighted in vegetables more so out of necessity rather than out of hatred of beef-stake pyes and harricos of mutton.  Nope, meat didn't come cheap in those days.  But what were these cookery books all about?  Who read them?  What kinds of knowledge did they impart?

We know that they were remarkably savvy when it came to marketing themselves to target demographics.

"This little Treatise of Kitchen-Gardening is chiefly design'd for the Instruction and Benefit of Country People," opens the vegetable friendly Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery (1744) "who most of them have a little Garden spot belonging to their House, and at the same time let it lie useless, for want of knowing how properly to manage it..."

You've guessed it, reader.  The cookery book to the left isn't exactly in the same league as the botanical virtuoso Philip Miller's The Gardener's Dictionary ––  which I've discussed in previous posts.  No "Aegyptian Lettuces" or fancy cantaloupes discussed in this text.  To the contrary, this is much closer  to an early modern "Gardening for Dummies."  The section on "Melon," for example, pooh poohs the idea of enumerating all sorts of this fruit, as "there being annually new Sorts brought from abroad, a great many of which prove good for little."  Hmmmph.  Good old utility trumped exotic tastes.

While the first portion of the book explains how to cultivate a host of different vegetables and herbs at home, the remainder devotes itself to simple recipes that one could whip up in a minimal amount of time.  Flipping through the (electronic) pages yesterday evening, my appetite was piqued by recipe below:

Asparagus, you say?  Once considered a socially exclusive treat, the Enlightenment actually witnessed great strides in the democratization of this particular vegetable.  In 1727, Stephen Switzer, one of the most well-known horticulturists of the era, gushed over the considerable improvements made in the art of Salleting, pointing out that "the raising of the asparagus and artichoke, especially the first, has been the most advanced of any one vegetable the garden produces." He reveled in the fact that Britons could now enjoy them as late as Christmas, and that they were "near as green and as good as that which comes by nature."

It often comes up in cookery books as "Sparrow-Grass" too

Switzer's enthusiasm was infectious.  By the time I had finished the preface of his The Practical Kitchen Gardener, he was proclaiming visions of "asparagus piercing the ground in a thousand places," exclaiming:

"these! these! are the innocent and natural dainties, where they present themselves and grow for the nourishment and the delicious entertainment of mankind."

Time to start that asparagus soup.  I'll be the first to admit, however, that I didn't follow the above recipe to the letter.  I liked the idea of cooking a bunch of different green vegetables together (this is common in many 18th century soups) but I didn't include the beets, for I feared they would muddy the bright green color of the soup.  I also skipped the flour, since I wasn't really worried about the thickness.  I also threw in some leeks and shallots, and topped it off with creme fraiche and toasted pine-nuts.

It was good with a beer, too

My noble Readers should be informed that I greatly enjoyed this modest meal, and found it relatively healthful as well as pleasing to the palate.  Who says that the flavors of 18th century Britain can't occasionally be inspired by a 21st century San Francisco sensibility?

What to Eat after a Wedding Feast

It is not uncommon to take a few days to recover one's appetite after indulging in a wedding feast.

In the jubilant spirit of mingling and merry-making –– seeing old relatives all grown up, and old friends all dressed up, and in my case, a whole lot of new people –– one eats and drinks freely and unhurriedly.  Restraint is exercised only in the interest of having sufficient stomach-space to enjoy everything brought to the table ... being sure to save room for the cake.  And why should there be any reason to refrain, especially when there are such delightful options available?  Beginning around noon, the guests were entertained with fat bacon wrapped scallops, dainty cubes of butternut squash topped with dollops of arugula pesto, and balls of coarsely chopped root vegetables encased in a breadcrumb crust, fried lightly enough that each one melted in the mouth and left but a touch of sweet oil on the thumb and the forefinger.

For Philip Miller, vegetable
cultivation was no laughing matter:
The cover of "The Gardener's Dictionary"

These gastronomical amusements, of course, constituted a mere fraction of the sundry wedding appetizers served.  And let it be known, voracious reader, that the main fare was equal if not superior in flavor to the above-mentioned dainties, even though I have neither the time nor the space to describe them all.

But what might one like to eat after such a feast (and two slices of rich pumpkin cake frosted with three layers of buttercream)?  Reader, I wanted a kale salad.

Were such concoctions available in 18th century Britain, I wondered?  (I admit that I often wonder about such things.)  It is likely that they were; the chief gardener to the Chelsea Physic Garden, Philip Miller, listed six of them in his chef d'oeuvre of 1731: The Gardener's Dictionary.  (Actually, he admitted that there were many additional varieties in existence, but claimed that they are not "cultivated for culinary use, being fit only for ornament or curiosity.")  However, he seemed to value kale (which he called borecole) primarily for its hardiness in bad weather rather than for its flavor, although he had some nice things to say about the Buda, or the "Russian Kail."

Lacking a bona fide historical recipe, I considered my 21st century options.  Perhaps I could replicate the blanched Lacinato conception (dressed with a blend of olive oil, lemon, dijon mustard and all the fresh rosemary and thyme I had on hand at the time) that I had tinkered with the week before?

Attempt #1: Blanched Kale and Shaved Parmesan

But there are many ways to love a kale salad, and last night I desired nothing but the one I had tasted for the first time at the rehearsal dinner.  The kale was served completely raw, but was chopped so finely that its texture –– light and ethereal –– betrayed none of the kale's natural fibrousness.  Sort of like tabouleh.

At Last: Travel-Weary and Salad-Happy 

"Before and After a Wedding" Kale Salad

- Lightly toast one cup of quinoa in olive oil over medium heat, and cook through (making sure to retain a little crunch).  Add generous amounts of parmesan cheese and a little olive oil and mix it up.
- Remove the stems of a large bunch of red kale, and chop very finely.  Do the same thing with half of a (large) bunch of Italian parsley.  Toss around in a bowl, and add a mixture of olive oil, salt, pepper, one or two garlic cloves, and about a tablespoon of lemon juice (and a little zest if you like).  Add the quinoa and mix it up again.
- Cook a handful of pumpkin seeds in some olive oil and add to the salad, along with some dried currants and more parmesan cheese.  



The whole thing takes about 20 minutes and 90% of the work is in the kale and parsley chopping.  It's hearty enough that the salad can be a dinner on its own if you wish, but it is particularly tasty when complemented with beer and pizza.