POTS, GALLEONS & SPICE

It was not just the hunted animal or the gathered apple any more, it was pots, pans, heat, fire, ovens, vegetables, spices and herbs. With the variety of each element in different regions, came a diversity in cooking methods and recipes to the human’s adventure to food. The poor was stuck with a cereal based diet with wheat, barley, oat, rye and many more with none to little spice. The ingredients were often consumed as soups or stews. Whereas the rich and the noble relied on game, meat was for the landlord as it required land to produce. Local butchers were generally trading pork or chicken (Food in the Middle Ages). With 16^th century, came the ships and the world domination of naval armies of the Portuguese and the Spanish and later the colonization progress of all European nations led to a new future of food. It was breakthrough in trade, many ingredients were taken from the poor or remote regions of the world to the mainland. The range of food and its cuisines further branched and enriched. The mainland was introduced to new spices and techniques from the colonized regions and vice versa. The trend was the exotic techniques and ingredients of the far reaches of the world for the European Cuisine.

India was and still is a trade paradise when it comes to culinary. The whole world produces 2.8ml tonnes of spices and India with 1.9ml tonnes of production is the world leader followed by Turkey with 247k tonnes (UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2018). Every nation that has come to the region for colonisation carries marks of it in its culinary. Most of the famous dishes consumed as pillars of a cuisine today carry roots to these first trading era. 68% of all the spice we put in our food to make a difference is coming from India. In time with the trade roots or the information roots, traditional recipes have altered to create a new trend, a global cuisine.

The French

Before going on a modern trend spree let’s not forget about the forefathers of the world culinary and restaurant as we know it today, or maybe a little different.  Everything changed with Monsieur Boulanger around 1765, at least, according to the bible of French gastronomy, Larousse Gastronomique. Healthy, thick bone stocks were served as soups or stew to customers to revitalize them. The word restaurant when you think of it comes from restore, the French verb “restaurer”. The restorer of health by selling bone stocks became world’s first restaurant.

Grande Taverne de Londres came next as the first proper French restaurant after 30 years. Individual dining, table clothes, servers were officially the new French thing to do. With the French revolution in 1789 aristocracy were guillotined and their private chefs were unemployed, what a turn of events. The talented chefs were caught up in the new French restaurant trend (Who Invented the First Modern Restaurant). A boom in the number of restaurant opening were astronomical (nothing compared to today though). With success the chefs who created culinary moved to other parts of the world and spread the doctrine. Georges Auguste Escoffier, one of the most important people in culinary ever, in his book Le Guide Culinaire explaines every little detail about what a restaurant is and should be and can not be any other way.

Global Cuisine

In 1980s and the 1990s the culinary scene in the world tended to shift in a new trend “Fusion”. This trend used local ingredients, cooking techniques or even whole dishes and turned them to a French fine dining kind of experience.

Thing have changed as more and more people moved around the world settling in miles away from their hometown. This tendency caused mini versions of hometowns like Chinatown or little Italy, in major cities. They all came with the local cuisines, the food that the tenants are used to back home. As years passed these immigrants turned local so as their cuisine. Local ingredients, and dishes got caught up with the new regions ingredients and cuisine so came the great mash of cuisines. The global cuisine was not just about the French any more. It was about Asian, Indian, Italian, Mediterranean, Mexican, Brazilian, South African, Turkish, Greek, Moroccan, Thai… Everything clashed in terms of ingredients, recipes and techniques creating fresh frontiers (The Evolution of Global Cuisine).