So... what was it like to write? Having started our blog in one fashion, we slowly (yes slowly not quickly) discovered that we had no real aim or argument, and that the recipes we had chosen had absolutely no correlation to our supposed topics or each other. This led to a complete revamp in week 11 and spree of cooking infested days, in which the both the kitchen and our souls were battered... There are only so many times you can be let down by a dodgy recipe. However the learning curve that accompanied this experience was sharp and didn’t fail to excite my culinary taste buds. Like a mathematical equation, there is something very satisfying in completing a recipe and knowing that you got it right, moreover it is even more satisfying to know you have substituted/revamped/approximated and still created something edible. You can definitely see a difference in style of cooking and compilations of ingredients, to that of the modern day.
Blogging creates an entirely different dimension to the kitchen, most noticeably, the constant need to document what is going on, and the odd relationship it creates with the food. That is to say- we can safely assume that most meals are cooked to be eaten and cooked with specific people in mind, however whilst blogging the emphasis was most definitely on the process. An interesting phenomenon occurred. We cooked- not to eat- but to write about the process of cooking. Once more food entered the world of the literary and once more, the etiquette of the table was completely rent asunder and disregarded in favour of a powerhouse conveyer belt of meals. Interestingly most of the food stuffs went untouched until the next day.
Now let’s think of the issues raised... well most certainly inefficient recipes led to disaster in the kitchen. There is certainly a culture for fine art cuisine versus the ‘take-away’ in modern times, which contrasts to constantly assumed thorough knowledge of a kitchen in the older recipes. The tastes of the general public have changed, as the ingredients which are available to the general public have expanded. It was interesting to discover that staple ingredients of the war time diet, were almost extinct in our supermarkets and that new ingredients have been invented to replace them.
My argument at the beginning of this blog was ‘How does language and presentation differentiate from the taste and realities of the food?’ Well the answer is of course, that it differs massively. There can be no approximation to the realities of the kitchen through these neatly set out recipes, which endeavour to communalise the war in the kitchen and alleviate the challenges faced by rationed cooks. These literary texts set out to appease and to attempt to make fashionable, restricted diets. Their wording is completely different from that used in modern day cook books, however you cannot help but wonder if it completely different from the usual wording of cooks through the wars also.
Words cannot equal the realities of food consumption, however they can command the reader's mind and stomach- pacifying and allaying fears in times of want and stirring up the hearts and minds of readers who may well be run down with the drugery of the all too undescribable attorcities of the World Wars.
Words cannot equal the realities of food consumption, however they can command the reader's mind and stomach- pacifying and allaying fears in times of want and stirring up the hearts and minds of readers who may well be run down with the drugery of the all too undescribable attorcities of the World Wars.
