TO BURN OR NOT TO BURN... JUST DON'T BURN THE FOOD!

BACK IN THE DAY, I’m pretty sure cooks didn’t have temperature settings on their wood burning stoves! In fact, they used different types of wood to achieve the right temperature for the kind of food they were cooking.

   This link gives a very informative description about how a cast iron wood burning stove works! I recommend it...  http://www.everydishtellsastory.com.au/?p=790 

    Possessing the skill to judge the right baking time and temperature is obviously a skill that most 21st Century cooks can only wonder about. The recipes on the What’s Cooking...? page of my website have been adapted over the generations, hence the standard baking temperatures. Because my own oven is particularly hot (burning was not uncommon in the early days), as well as fan-forced, when I test these recipes I will most probably lower the temperatures and reduced the cooking times where needed. You may or may not have to do the same. A bit of trial and error may be needed, particularly with recipes that have travelled through time.

     I was doing a bit of research on the Aga, a 20th Century evolution - and don't they look the business - and found out that to make it to work successfully you really have to know your stuff, know your oven. It's technical, it is. You can't just make a dish and then stick it in there and fasten the door. It's positively scientific, in fact. But quite a few cooks have them and swear by them, and I love watching tv chefs, such as Rick Stein, cooking with their Aga. I don't know anyone who owns an Aga, so I can't share any firsthand information. 

     When I was growing up we lived over a shop, which was very very old and still had original features, such as an antique Kookaburra gas cooker. I recall the peas cooking on the back hob (I didn't like peas back then) and the lamb chops (still my most favourite meat - I can always eat a lamb chop or three) or steak sizzling in the old frypan on the front hob. A roast went in the oven on Sundays and fed all eight of us. A lot of simple goodness came from 'the living flame' of the old gas Kookaburra.

     I suppose childhood memories are where we all start when it comes to our attitude to food and cooking. My father made everything he ate look positively irresistable, and he cooked beautiful Italian food that I could hardly wait to eat. And he timed everything; he was a stickler that way. Observing him cook taught me to cook. And I make killer gravy because my mother often asked me to stir the gravy.

   Anyway, I'm no foodie, just someone who likes cooking and history and the thought of combining both in some small way. Hope you do, too.

     Which brings me back to my initial comments...  there is a lot of skill in knowing how to bake to perfection when the temperature knobs and gauges aren't anywhere to be seen! Perhaps we can channel our inner frontier cook and take a step back in time.