What Food do you Store and Where do you Store It?
What should the cook keep at hand? Supermarkets and refrigerators have so revolutionized our habits in the last thirty years that it is hard to think back to earlier times. I’ve become increasingly fascinated by pantries and larders and all the other places food gets stored. And looking in to other pantries has a slightly guilty feel to it, as if you are intruding. But it says a whole lot.
Guadalajara Pantry
To start with, here’s a drawing of a pantry in a Guadalajara hacienda, 1940s or 50s I would say. It from a book by Maru Toledo who is well known in Guadalajara for her programs on food and cooking. The book, La comida en casas de techos altos: Rescate de tradición oral en Xalíxco (self-published, 2007) is a semi-fictional account of hacienda cooking. It’s absolutely full of fascinating tidbits and I will be referring to it often.
Haciendas out in the country had large numbers of people to feed–the family and the manager, and visitors–and no hope of popping out to the store. Cooking became very much a matter of ringing the changes on a small number of basic long-lasting ingredients.
So here you have the store room. I’d like to blow it up larger but then it spills on to the side matter on the blog page. Sad to say, there’s no key or description but here’s how I interpret it.
Anyway it’s cool and dark with high ceilings and light and air filtering in from a high window.
Hanging from the ceiling is a woven cage (you can still buy these in old fashioned stores, note to self, get one) for putting meats and the like.
On the right wall hangs a big copper pot. Below it I would guess are zinc fronted safes for cold meats, cheeses and so on and below them, two big calabazas and sausage, chorizo or longaniza I’d guess.
On the back wall, top to bottow are sacks of maize, flour and frijol, below them jars with (guessing again) oil, vinegar and pickles, dishes, and pitchers. Then comes a shelf with clay cazuelas, the blender, the mixes, the grater, the pressure cooker and three boxes titled Regel, Wisconsi and Vasco (any guesses)?. And on the floor, bottles of Aga (?), sacks of sugar, a palm fan for the fire, the metate, and a big pile of calabazas/chiles?
On the left wall are drawers for slat, beens, rice, panocha (raw brown sugar), maize, sugar, and something I can’t read. Below DDT, Flit (love those), flour, garbanzos, habas, pasta and wheat. Water jugs on the floor.
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I was prompted to write this post by Judith Klinger. She’s never afraid to speak her mind which is why I like her blog.
In a recent post, she begins to examine some of the assumptions that underly the recent fad, that probably most American readers have noticed, for living for a week off the products already in the kitchen. As Judith notes, in many parts of Italy, a large bursting fridge is just not an option. It would blow the circuits.
And contrast her passing comment, that the basic stores in the kitchen are dried spices, with the predominance of grains, flours, and beans above.
If you have any pictures or descriptions of historically-interesting home food storage that you’d like me to post, please do send them.
Your description of the hacienda pantry brings back memories of the pantry in the joint family household I grew up in south India. It was also a cool and dark with high wooden ceilings and light and air filtering in from a high window. There, set on shelves running the length of one wall, were huge, lidded brass containers that stored supplies of various dried legumes and beans. Smaller containers held dried spices and nuts. Lined up on another shelf were large ceramic jars containing a year’s supply of homemade pickles and fruit preserves prepared during the summer months. On one corner sat a huge earthenware pot with a lid containing tamarind. Salt was stored in wooden jars and large ceramic jars stored coconut oil and sesame oil. The huge wooden rice box with a lid, held a special place in our pantry. It had two compartments that stored parboiled (converted) rice and long grains rice. Bunches of bananas, plantains, large pumpkins and winter melons were hung from coir hangings around the inner courtyard.
if you have a family to feed, you have to have some way to store food. it isn’t feasible in this day and age to go to the market (or even the supermarket) every single day, and neither was it easy in older times in greek villages – what happened when the weather was bad? what about when the shopper/forager was ill? what happened when a product was in short supply?
there is and always as been a way to store food items, whether the food is stored as is, or needs to be processed in some way. in modern times, this need has been fulfilled by a cooling box.
i was recently ill – my husband did only the basic shopping (milk, bread, yoghurt, etc), and we cooked stored food: frozen mince was made into pasta sauce; dry packaged beans were made into soup, we cooked frozen pies (which we had made ourselves). most of what we ate was stored food, supplemented by market products (in our case, our garden sometimes acts as the market).
being able to buy what you need on a daily basis is a luxury, especially if you have a family and both parents work. by making efficient use of space (cupboards, shelves) and keeping a simple fridge/freezer, most people can store quite a lot. it all depends on one’s priorities whether the freezer is filled with ice cubes and martini glasses, or some lamb chops, peas and a home-made pie.
Judith’s blogpost was so true. I’ve thought about it also. I’ve been shocked more than once by the sheer over-the-top masses of foodstuffs almost falling out of people’s refrigerators and cupboards in the generic suburban household in the United States.
Often in these cases they do not even know what they have. There is rotting lettuce and sour cream, containers of leftovers that have been hiding in the back for weeks, and deli packages of meats and cheeses curling at the edges shoved together like piles of old papers. Personally I find it disgusting, but my understanding is that this way of doing things makes people feel secure, well-set up, and happy. The abundance of it all, the fact that apparently they *can* let things rot then throw them away and simply buy three or four more packages – the laissez-faire of it all, the joy of messiness!
Whatever.
I buy what I need pretty much every day, but not so much as a luxury but as a somewhat-necessity and by preference. The necessity part is that somehow I seem to have this thing called stenosis of the neck, which means that I can’t carry or lift a lot of stuff, so this big-grocery shopping thing is out of the question. Smaller bags, less effort. And I can buy what is fresh and what I feel like cooking that day.
And as a single mother, if I am sick (which I can not allow to happen very often at all I assure you!) generally I’ll order a pizza or something else to be delivered or the kids will make something simple for themselves.
It seems to me that much of the overstuffedness and wasted food in some kitchens can be traced directly to foodie-ism. When people cook from recipes which are not of the same generic structure, of varying ‘ethnic’ sorts, then lots of different ingredients are needed, including masses of sauces, dried spices and herbs, etc. The stuff gets bought, the recipe pulled out, the food cooked, then the extra stuff needed in bottles and cans and boxes and bits of leftover produce or meats sits there, as it will not be naturally flowing into the next recipe (which has a good possibility of having a completely and utterly different ‘flavor base’). Since many people do not cook in any way except from recipes – they do not know how to just take a few things and make a dish – the stuff continues to pile up. The foodie-cook answers to the recipe and to the masses of ingredients. Not just to the need to get a meal on the table.
When I lived on a small sailboat, we stored the meats and veggies in a tiny refrigerator. The dry goods went into what was supposed to be the icebox which was built into the boat (1938 Sparkman-Stevens). We ate fish from the fishtrap I made out of chicken wire and had herbs from pots on the dock. One way to live. :)
The charming Hiroyuki (from Japan) posted photos of his food storage in the food blog he did on eGullet several years ago. Fascinating. Tiny. Organized to a T. You might enjoy hunting that up, Rachel . . .
foodie-ism and foodie-cooks – a great coinage;
i don’t have a high tolerance of them myself
Ciao Rachel! I’m pleased and flattered that my blog inspired you for a moment!
I’m also fascinated by pantries and kitchens and I just tried to find the Bartolomeo Scapi drawing of a kitchen, first published in 1570 in the “Opera dell’arte del Cucinare” but I wasn’t lucky. I have the book at home in Italy, so it will have to wait until then but it’s a fascinating glimpse into a huge Papal kitchen.
Right now I’m sitting in our loft in NYC wondering where on earth to store a large quantity of potatoes and onions, NYC apartments do not come with root cellars…… I see onion confit in my future…..
What a fascinating post! But I wish, how I wish that the drawing were just a bit larger!
Peering at what you think might be zinc-fronted safes for keeping things cool, I’m wondering if they’re not screened cupboards for storing prepared foods, to keep out mice, rats, etc.
“Aga” is bottled sidral (apple soda/cider); it’s still bottled in Mexico under that name.
Cristina
Mexico Cooks!
I wish the drawing were larger too but its that or a drawing that sprawls all over the page. We agree about the cupboards. In my youth screened cupboards=zinc fronted safes (that is, they were safes as in money but simply screened cupboards and for some reason zinc was the preferred screen). They were for leftovers, cheeses, butter, etc and were in a cool place, so these perishable foods stayed cool.
Aga. Of course. Thanks. That’s a big supply. Odd.
Zinc doesn’t rust and isn’t that reactive to salt and acid etc, so it is pretty common to see on a food safe. In pre-refidgerator Australia a zinc meat safe would be hung up in the shade and covered with wet hessian/burlap. The evaporation would help keep the meat cool.