RDF/RSS Feed
Atom Feed
Adapting recipes for Paks’s world–which doesn’t have the same plants–requires some thought. Bread is easy–Paks’s world grows several varieties of wheat and has mills for turning grain into flour. They grow barley and rye and emmer and oats as well. I can have any bread I want (well, not cornbread.) Roasted and baked meats are easy. Some vegetables are easy–they agreed to be part of that world. Others…no. I really, really wish I’d been able to import potatoes. I eat a lot of potatoes. But potatoes refused to fit in. So did tomatoes.
So here’s the innkeeper, knowing that a caravan’s due in today, and they will want food. And here am I, with a really good new lamb stew recipe…with potatoes and tomatoes in it. I’d really like someone in Paks’s world to have this dish–in many ways it fits in nicely except for those two ingredients.
Which are major. I have, on occasion, used a turnip in place of a potato in a stew (not that successful, to my mind.) Or a large white radish. Again…it’s not a potato. And tomatoes…ubiquitous in the cuisine I grew up with. Tomatoes, peppers, onion, and garlic, what about them? One possibility is just not naming what that wonderful ingredient is…dried tomato-equivalents might be imported to the north.
It’s not trying to fool the reader to call it a “bush red-fruit”….or something other than tomato…because it’s the word tomato that’s the problem. It sounds too New Worldish, too Western Hemisphere. I can’t hear tomato without being aware of its origin here, its use here.
The recipe mentioned in one of the comments of the previous post has been extended a bit. A couple of tablespoons of capers, a big tablespoon of veal reduced stock. Other family members fell upon it with glee.
Paks, however, will never taste what I taste because I haven’t been able to shove potatoes across the line between the worlds, without stretching my own suspension of disbelief well beyond its elastic limit. And I know she’d like this. The innkeeper who got hold of its ingredients would have caravans stacked up at the door.
And. They. Refuse.
I’m going to go out to the kitchen and have myself a nice bowl of lamb and potato stew before I start the pies for tomorrow.
Comment by Chris — November 25, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
Hm. If there aren’t potatoes, I would guess there are probably several other starchy rootlike or tuberlike things (as there are in our world) so perhaps one of them could have been domesticated. Some types of bean plants have starchy tuberous roots, for instance, such as the West African “yam bean.” There are also the “true” yams (Dioscorea), also Old World, which are *not* sweet and not at all related to the sweet potato varieties called “yams” in the US. Unfortunately they don’t have any recognizable English common names except “yam,” and “yam” has all the wrong connotations for going into a savory lamb stew! There are also some tuberous things in the arrowroot family, such as cocoyams (doubly unfortunate name there!). Perhaps they could be simply called “tubers…”
As for tomatoes, I’d nominate sour apples for a flavor replacement; unfortunately with tomatoes you’re dealing with something that’s actually a fruit but is not *thought* of as a fruit, and it’s hard to come up with something that both has the right flavor components and conceptually fits into a savory stew. Perhaps it would work to simply accept the idea (common in medieval European and some Asian cooking) that meat dishes *can* have fruit in them and still taste good….
You have probably figured out already that while the Old World doesn’t have the vegetables we call “peppers,” it does have the spice called pepper, which at least produces hotness.
Eggplant, BTW, is Asian in origin, if that helps any.
Just some thoughts from a former botanist, hope they are helpful
Comment by Elentarien — November 25, 2009 @ 7:50 pm
Could you do some research on these veggies and find out what they might be called elsewhere in the world, or in other languages and draw on those? Its not the same, but it would save you some headaches.
I know what you mean though. I am running into the same issue for my world. Plants and animals. I don’t want to have to create entirely new species for every little thing – and it makes more sense that the world is at least somewhat identifiable to the reader. I mean why call the creature a riksnarth when its just a deer? Or the plant a blingblat when its a bluebell? Unless I DO create new plants, or animals of course. The readers will understand a ‘deer’ a whole lot better and get the picture.
But I agree with you that some names and ‘words’ are just too localized. According to wikipedia the ‘correct’ name for a tomato is a “Linnaeus” Could you, perhaps, play with that word a bit and call your tomatoes by that instead? It would still be a strange word, but it would also be correct. . .lol
Just a thought.
Comment by KateG — November 25, 2009 @ 9:01 pm
Well, I make a beloved lamb soup/stew that doesn’t use tomatoes that might give you some inspiration. It came from the NY Times in the 1970’s and has became an instant family staple.
Herewith for your amusement and delight: Bean and Lamb Shank Stew.
Soak 1 pound dried large lima beans (NOT small ones) or butter beans overnight.
Start them cooking.
While they come to a boil, brown 1 or 2 lamb shanks in olive oil and/or a bit of their own rendered fat. When brown, add lots of chopped up onions (2-3) and saute a bit. Add 1-2-… cloves minced garlic and cook a bit more. Once everything is nice and brown, add the beans and their water, plus enough water to cover by an inch or two and a stock cube or two (I use 1 Knorr chicken flavored, but use your own favorite). Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer till the beans and the lamb are both tender (about an hour to hour and a half). Pull out the lamb shank(s), cut the meat into bite sized piece and return to the pot with 2 or 3 carrots and 2 or 3 parsnips cut into coins. Cook till the roots are tender and mash some of the beans to thicken the broth. Serve with some fresh chopped parsley and fresh ground pepper on top.
Like most such bean-based stews, this improves with age, and like any good “peasant dish” the exact quantities of the various ingredients are immaterial: you use what you have on hand. But it’s been a family comfort dish for years and the ingredients are all fairly “old world” in origin and feeling (except perhaps for the beans).
But for now, I leave you with this and go back to turkey wrestling. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Comment by elizabeth — November 25, 2009 @ 9:04 pm
I think it makes a huge difference whether the world, or the people in it, are connected to this one in anyway, or not, and whether it’s SF or fantasy. If you have “earth people” on another planet, they will tend to name things after familiar stuff from back home (ignoring generation ships for the moment.) “If it looks like a duck…call it a duck.” Their biologists will complain but they’ll ignore the biologists.
But if you’re dealing with aliens on their own planet, they’ll have their own names, and since you’re seeing the graceful browsers with the skinny legs, big ears, etc. through their eyes, they won’t be thinking “deer”–they’ll be thinking “riksnarth” or something else. Maybe they don’t have bells, so they won’t call that blue flower a bluebell but a bluethroat.
Fantasy’s an interesting case, because typically we use old root words for the familiar things that belong deeply to our culture, unless we’re setting the fantasy in another culture here in this world. It’s actually more consistent to make up a word, when the language you’re writing in doesn’t sound/feel right, than to borrow the foreign language translation–because a reader who knows that language will be thrown out of the world you created–right then–and into ours. “WAIT a minute…!!” For instance, if I read a book in which someone substituted the French “pomme de terre” for “potato” I would know it was French, and that the fantasy world didn’t speak French.
I’ll keep thinking. I made it through the Paks books without potato and tomato; I don’t know why it’s giving me such a hard time now.
Comment by elizabeth — November 25, 2009 @ 9:07 pm
Oboy, a new recipe. Looks really good, too. (I will resist tossing in a can of Ro-tel diced tomatoes and green chilis.)
Comment by Chuck — November 26, 2009 @ 8:21 am
In the early editions of “The Hobbit,” Gandalf tells Bilbo “Just bring out the cold chicken and tomatoes!” which in later editions becomes “cold chicken and pickles.” I don’t know whether it was the name alone or also the origin of the tomato that prompted this change; after all, he kept tobacco but called it “pipe-weed.” Maybe because tobacco was so much part of a comfortable life that he couldn’t imagine the hobbits without it.
Maybe potatoes could be imported by a name change. If both potatoes and turnips are in the same dish (there’s a vegetarian winter stew — “we call it “hobbit stew”), you don’t know which is which in your spoon until taste and texture register in your mouth. Maybe a name along the lines of “turnip that’s not bitter” or “turnip with smoother texture” and a vague association of the origin being from “way down south across the sea”? “Sweet turnips” sounds to me more like a parsnip. “Dumpling roots”?
Comment by Chris — November 26, 2009 @ 9:44 am
Um, the tomato was named *by* Linnaeus, but as far as I know was never called a “Linnaeus,” and I didn’t see that in the wikipedia article. The Latin name of the tomato (as assigned by Linnaeus) is *Lycopersicon* which literally means “wolf peach.” Heaven only knows why
I also thought of jicama root as another starchy-tuber thing; it’s actually another type of bean root, like the “yam bean.”
Comment by Jo Thomas — November 26, 2009 @ 11:14 am
Re “pomme de terre”
I can’t remember when “potato” became the proper word in British English but Elizabethans and Jacobeans refered to them as “earth apples” (same as the French). They were called this because they were eaten both raw and cooked in much the same way as apples. Perhaps the two phrases were concurrent and it’s just chance which form became the dominant one in each nation / culture that the potato was imported to.
Comment by elizabeth — November 26, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
Chris: Tomatoes were first thought to be dangerous–possibly poisonous–probably because of the similarity of appearance of the flowers (which, after all, Linnaeus was using to classify plants, so he would have correctly noted its resemblance to a nightshade.) I’m leaning toward “summervine”–grown in Aarenis, in the most sprawling of forms we have, found north of the Dwarfmounts as a trade product, sun-dried, sold by spice merchants. As for potato-equivalents, a white to pale yellow starchy root/tuber exists, but it’s the name that’s so far not right for this fictional universe. I’ll find it, it’s just a matter of eavesdropping on more cooks.
Comment by elizabeth — November 26, 2009 @ 10:23 pm
Given the English/French antagonism, could be that the English went and found another name in order to avoid anyone thinking they’d merely translated the French…maybe?
Comment by Tina Black — November 30, 2009 @ 9:23 am
My mom used to make the BEST Scotch broth with lamb, barley, carrots and turnip cubes to replace the potatoes. Try it!
Comment by Victoria — November 30, 2009 @ 10:11 am
I’ve heard potatoes called “ground apples” before.
Another term for tomatoes is “love apple.”
Comment by Keith McCormic — November 30, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
I agree that turnips or parsnips would be the old-world analogs for potatoes, but they are definitely not the same thing taste-wise. As far as tomatoes, there are definitely some sour old-world foods that we don’t see much around here, like quince. Supposedly, both quince and chaenomeles (colder-climate quinces) turn red when stewed.
Of course, quinces would be much more citrusy and less sweet than tomatoes, but you could easily have a tree fruit of some kind fill the gap. Hmm… Is this an area with blackwood trees? You could have a variety of persimmon (“blackwood fruit”?) that isn’t quite as sweet and which is used more for flavoring stews than as a dessert food.
My suggestion for potatoes is to utilize a chestnut (most varieties taste like potatoes) or some kind of vinous or grassy groundnut-like plant (“pigroot”?). Either way, you could have the item be considered “famine food” in many areas.
This could easily be established by having the innkeeper say something like, “The stew’s okay, but I had to use pigroot because I ran out of turnips. I added some blackwood fruit to cover up the blandness.”
Oh, out of curiosity- are redroots a taproot like carrots or more of a tuber like sweet potatoes?
Comment by elizabeth — November 30, 2009 @ 3:24 pm
Redroots are more a tuber, but not sweet like a sweet potato. Raw, they are “dry” and bitter. Definitely famine-food in the dry state.
Comment by kyta — November 30, 2009 @ 3:56 pm
When I make a spiced lamb stew, I normally don’t add tomatoes, but use reconstituted dried apricots and/or plums. A different sort of flavor, I suppose, more North African (fittingly), but it adds some of the pungency or fruit-like flavors, potentially? I also thought of quince for a starchy, but somewhat fruity addition to lamb stew; it’s another ingredient used in many Moroccan tagines.
Comment by elizabeth — December 1, 2009 @ 10:26 am
Yes–those are the old folk names for potatoes and tomatoes. The problem is, they easily recall the modern common names.
Comment by Matt P — December 2, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
I’d suggest beets. Not really a taste or texture substitute for potatoes, but good in a stew or alone. And there is at least one golden cultivar that doesn’t turn everything red (and is a bit less sweet in my opinion).
Or Keith’s suggestion of chestnuts, above.
I have a diabetic friend that substitutes cauliflower or celeriac for potatoes. Dunno if either of those would be available… or how they’d work in your stew, for that matter.
Comment by Jeff Jaje — December 4, 2009 @ 2:18 pm
I don’t know about the innkeeper’s root vegetable problem, but I’m certain Paks would enjoy Lamb in a cream of mushroom soup. Or a mushroom/wine reduction as a sauce on some braised lamb.
I’m getting hungry now.
Comment by elizabeth — December 4, 2009 @ 4:47 pm
Ummmmm….me, too. But I think (given the weather and what I’m doing tomorrow) I’ll opt for homemade chicken-tomato-barley soup with green chilis in it.