female chefs – Sheryl Kirby

It must be State Fair season; people are once again frying things that were never meant to be deep-fried. Like Kool-Aid. [Globe and Mail]

Don’t diss the junk food – it has its place as a guilty pleasure. [The Guardian]

It’s still tough going for women in professional kitchens. [National Post]

The fragmentation of food – while many of us aspire to eat foraged mushrooms around a battered harvest table, most people get their food from a box via the microwave. Plus, getting freekah. Let’s watch a food trend unfold. [The Independent]

Oh sweet merciful crap – someone has started a company making server uniforms for skeezy titty restaurants. [FOX Business]

Continue reading “Lucky Dip – Monday, June 20th, 2011”

Ever wonder where the male dominance of professional kitchens comes from? Or why pastry is often considered a woman’s job?

Greg found and downloaded a BBC documentary called A Tudor Feast at Christmas. The show had nothing to do with the holidays other than the 2006 air date, however the premise of the piece was that a group of food historians and archaeologists took over the kitchens at Haddon Hall (a Medieval castle) and spent 3 days cooking a Tudor-style feast. They hunted and fished and prepared food as it would have been done in 1590 when the kitchen was built (it had not been used for over 300 years when the documentary was filmed), right down to the peacock pie complete with the skin and feathers of the bird arranged atop the pie so it looked as if the bird were alive. (Fans of the TV series The Tudors will recognize the technique as the same one used for the swan served to Henry VIII after the death of Anne Boelyn).

In the interviews with the historians, two points came up that intrigued me.

Continue reading “Old Habits Die Hard”