Podcasts

India’s bread landscape and my plans here A podcast about this podcast and another podcast

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This is the last of the short episodes of the holiday season. It is also something of a meta-episode because it is mostly about this podcast and another podcast.

I’ve hinted before that I’d like to do more constructed shows here, where I speak to a few different people about a topic to try and get a broader sense of the subject. They’re harder to do, but more rewarding, and they consistently get more listeners. The problem is that as a one-man band, I don’t have the time I need to do that kind of show very often. As an experiment, I’m going to try chunking episodes into seasons, with a break between seasons when I’ll be working on those more complex shows. I’m not sure yet how long either the seasons or the breaks will be.

In anticipation, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast, if you aren’t already doing so, via iTunes or by email, which gives you the added advantage of getting Eat This Newsletter between episodes and during the breaks. (You can also, of course, do both.) I’m also on Twitter and Instagram.

Aside from finding time and resources, one of the other things that is really hard for a completely independent production like this is to find new listeners. Reviews and ratings on iTunes probably help, but a word-of-mouth recommendation is even better.

I know that’s true for me, and so I want to share a podcast that was recommended to me. Bee Wilson (@kitchenbee) recommended “this wonderful podcast series by Vikram Doctor, The Real Food Podcast … It is superb and worth listening to in its entirety.”

On the strength of that, I jumped through a few hoops to ensure I had an episode to listen to on my walk in the park, and I agree. Thoroughly enjoyable and informative. In addition to making podcasts, Vikram Doctor is also the editor of special features for the Economic Times of India.

I’ll be subscribing, and if you have any interest in food from an Indian perspective (and not just Indian food) I recommend you take a listen.

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Notes

  1. I’m currently working on two idea for shows suggested by listeners, and I’d love to hear about anything you think I should consider.
  2. Vikram Doctor’s Real Food podcast is at audiomatic.in.
  3. I’m using that banner photograph knowingly, having shamelessly stolen it from Julia Barton, who started the whole stock mic thing.
  4. And I admit I flipped the cover photograph, which I took from Douglas Self’s strange catalogue of Acoustic Location and Sound Mirrors.
  5. Seriously, though, why is it so difficult both to find new podcasts and to put my own podcast in front of people. I still don’t know.
Podcasts

Long live the Carolina African Runner Who cares whether it really is the “ur-peanut” of the American South

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peanut Maybe you’ve seen the stories about a peanut, prosaically named Carolina Runner No. 4? In 2017 it will be ready to be grown in commercial quantities, having faded gently away from being the primary peanut before the 1840s to a reasonable contender into the 1910s to presumed extinct by the 1950s. Professor David Shields, an historian at the University of South Carolina, found it in a genebank as part of a project by the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation, which he chairs, to restore the crucial varieties of the American South. It’s a fine story, but a couple of things bothered me.

One, how do they know it is “the first peanut cultivated in North America” or “the South’s original peanut” as all the articles claim.

Two, although everyone acknowledges that the peanut came to the USA not from South America, it’s ancestral home, but from West Africa with enslaved people, nobody seems to be much interested in what on earth it was doing in West Africa, or the consequences of its introduction there by the Portuguese.

The podcast looks a bit at the question of whether Carolina Runner No. 4 – henceforth Carolina African Runner – is indeed the “ur-peanut”; I conclude that it doesn’t really matter. My article sketching the peanut’s influence in West Africa is here.

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Notes

  1. My thanks to Professor David Shields and Dr David Williams for their help. Errors, of course, my own.
  2. The Carolina Gold Rice Foundation is doing good work.
  3. Music is The Peanut Vendor, played by Louis Armstrong, natch. It too had quite an influence, if Wikipedia is to be believed.
Podcasts

A deep dive into cucurbit names How Latin confused cucumbers and watermelons

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anguria One of the most fascinating things about pumpkins and squashes is what people call them. The whole summer squash, squash, pumpkin thing is confusing enough, and that’s to say nothing of courgettes and zucchini, which I explored in a podcast a few weeks ago. One of the people I talked to for that was Harry Paris, an Israeli researcher who has done more than anyone to disentangle the rampant thickets of cucurbit history. While not strictly anything to do with zucchini, while I had him on the line, I asked him to shed a little light on one of the great mysteries of Italian fruit names.

The scientific, Latin name for watermelon is Citrullus, but depending on where you are in Italy, the Italian for watermelon is either anguria or cocomero which, to me, sounds way too much like cucumber. But the Italian for cucumber is cetriolo, and that sounds like citrullus, for watermelon. As for anguria, you better just listen.

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Notes

  1. Illustrations from a 14th century manuscript, Liber de herbis et plantis by Manfredi de Monte Imperiali.
Podcasts

The Great Epping Sausage Scandal A pioneering Victorian investigative journalist on the Epping sausages that weren't

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james-greenwoodJames William Greenwood (that’s him on the left) was a pioneering investigative journalist of the high Victorian period. He broke some sensational stories, most notably by spending a night in the workhouse to document the appallingly squalid conditions of the poor in Victorian London. Greenwood, however, wasn’t above a bit of sensationalism and, perhaps, even a touch of fake news. For example, he was unable to supply any authentication for one of his most horrific pieces, about a fight between a man and a dog. Nor was he above telling more humdrum tales, including three little pieces about sausages – which he referred to as “Veiled Mysteries”.

One of them concerned a sausage scandal centred on Epping, just outside London. I first heard about it in Jan Davison’s wonderful book English Sausages. We talked a bit about that story in the podcast, and it stuck with me. Then I found myself in Epping, which in the middle of the 19th century was justly famous for its sausages. People in London sought them out, and they were often in short supply; ideal conditions for creating counterfeits, which were given an extra veil of authenticity by seeming to be delivered direct from Epping itself.

Back home, I looked for the original of Greenwood’s exposé, published in 1883. Although he refers to “an individual of an inquiring turn of mind” it turns out that this person was not Greenwood himself, but someone else who had exposed the crooked purveyors of Epping sausages in the 1850s. Greenwood merely retold the tale in his 1883 book Odd People In Odd Places, or The Great Residuum.

There are two more sausage stories in Greenwood’s book. I think I’ll save them for 2017.

Notes

  1. Jan Davison’s book English Sausages is published by Prospect Books.
  2. The text of Greenwood’s book is available online.
  3. There’s not a huge amount easily available on James Greenwood himself. Spartacus Educational, from whom I stole the picture of Greenwood, is an amazing resource. The Victorianist has adopted Greenwood’s nom-de-plume as his own, but does not appear to have considered the sausage scandals. I found a bit more in Secret Commissions: An Anthology of Victorian Investigative Journalism.
  4. I lifted the music from The Victorian Web. It is played by Professor Derek Scott.

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Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 046

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19 December 2016

Authentic food news

  1. Interesting interview with “revered Irish chef Denis Cotter” on his approach to vegetables. Another reason to revisit Cork ASAP. Bonus: drawings by my 2nd favourite food illustrator, Johanna Kindval
  2. From Australia, the by-now traditional tale of spices, empires and Christmas, through the bottom of a glass of gin.
  3. Which reminds me, apparently you can make a pretty good gin to your own taste, at home, and you don’t need a bathtub. (I have not tried this myself.)
  4. If you prefer eggnog, you’re on your own. But you may still be interested to learn why free-range eggs have cracked the market in Britain, with added hard-boiled puns, from the Economist.
  5. Nothing specific on egg labelling, but Marion Nestle summarises a special edition of Food Navigator on food labels and associated lawsuits. Fun.

Regardless of how you feel about this particular holiday season (and I like it) the fact is that the world does tend to more or less shut down. Eat This Podcast is following that herd of reindeer. Instead of full episodes, there will be some smaller snippets over the next four or five weeks. I’m not sure how the Newsletter will go; I’ll still be reading whatever I can, so if there’s interesting stuff, I’ll probably share it.

Till then, happy whatevers, and thanks for all your support over the past year.