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England ... it is sylvan, unpredictable, sublime, originative and contradictory - a land of eccentricity and ingenuity, a mix of worlds, practices and lifestyles all enriched and enlivened by an enthrallingly complex past. Travel here and discover more than you thought possible - and that defining Englishness is a daunting task indeed. This is a magazine about forests, crags and drystone walls; about culinary daring, crumbling ruins and journeys into the wild. It is an ode to literary histories and a smuggling past, coastal towns and cultural capitals. Recalling long forgotten giants and lingering lore, this is our homage to England and the verve that makes it eternal.

tahini.

Delve into the world of the sesame paste that is said to have put the Middle East on the food map. We've gone through thousands of years of archives to bring you the only published work that is solely dedicated to tahini.

The British capital has become an unlikely hotbed for a rapidly evolving coffee scene, absorbing diverse influences from its increasingly diverse citizenry. Home to deeply entrenched tea culture, the development of the city mirrors the development of its booming coffee scene. As the younger generation welcomes coffee traditions from Brooklyn, Melbourne, Turkey, and more, London, home of the royal family, iconic red phone booths, and double-decker buses, grapples with its identity. In this issue, we explore how tea-crazy London went mad for coffee and how its integration of international coffee-savvy experts is changing as Brexit looms. Featuring potters, flat white-pouring Aussies, refugees, and expats, Volume 8 holds a magnifying glass to London, England.

EATEN No. 4: Sweet & Sour showcases the sour and the saccharine in culinary history, from the grandeur of Renaissance sugar sculptures to M.F.K. Fisher’s travels in Japan to the nautical adventures of one of America’s favorite cocktails. (Winter/Spring 2019).

CONTRIBUTORS
       
  Edward Everett on the Last Medar of Glastonbury Abbey
        Nawal Nasrallah on Eating Right in Medieval Baghdad
        Rachel Robey on the Rise and Fall of Seville’s Bitter Orange
        ...and more!

When it was announced that Joël Robuchon died on 6th of August, one word was on every ones lips, ‘purée.’ French slang similar to ‘darn’ or ‘shoot’ in English, it is more commonly used as shorthand, for ‘purée de pommes de terre’ – mashed potatoes. Playing on the double sense of the term, the author of an article in the popular French TV mag, Telerama, chose as a title for his Robuchon obituary ‘Oh purée – Joël Robuchon est mort!’In 1981 when Robuchon opened his first restaurant in Paris, Jamin, mashed potatoes were already on the menu. In the 1982 edition of their guide to France, Gault and Millau devoted a lengthy entry to Jamin praising such Robuchon creative dishes as his Poêlée de langoustine à l’étuvée de ris de veau et de légumes aux truffes (sautéed Dublin bay prawns with braised sweetbreads, vegetables and truffles) and Nouilles aux écrevisses et coquilles Saint-Jacques (pasta with crayfish and scallops) before calling attention to his Tête de porc à la sauge (pig’s head with sage) which was served with ‘an extraordinary purée de pommes de terre.’ They didn’t elaborate on what made this purée extraordinary but the reason was surely obvious: butter.

At the time, cooks in France typically made purée with 2 oz (60g) of butter per 2.2 lbs (1 kilo) of potatoes and ‘finished’ it by adding a little less than 6 fl oz (2 dl) of milk. In 1986, when Robuchon published Ma Cuisine Pour Vous, he ‘told all.’ His purée was made with approximately half a pound of butter (250g) for every 2.2 lbs (kilo) of potatoes and 6 fl oz (2 dl) of milk. Almost as an afterthought he added, ‘the amount of butter may be increased to 500g per kilo of potatoes’ – which he apparently didn’t hesitate to do in his restaurant. If Robuchon’s purée was received with surprise and delight, it was by no means revolutionary. In the second edition of his Guide Culinaire in 1907, Auguste Escoffier included a recipe for Purée de pommes de terre in which he uses roughly the same ratio of butter to potatoes as Robuchon did some eighty years later. What’s more, in his Livre des Menus of 1912 Escoffier recommends serving the purée with a Pied de Porc Truffé (truffled pig’s foot) – a combination that foreshadowed Robuchon’s use of the purée to garnish his pig’s head creation. So what made Robuchon’s potatoes such a sensation ? First of all, potato dishes had fallen from fashion by the time Robuchon put mashed potatoes on his menu. In homes, schools and modest bistros the purée was as popular as ever but of the sixty-six potato recipes in Escoffier’s magnum opus only a handful had survived the upheaval caused by the emergence of Nouvelle Cuisine in the 1970s; the potato dish one was least likely to encounter in a restaurant with gastronomic pretensions was the purée. Hence, it was an immediate hit with Parisian snobs and became a ‘must-taste’ for the gastronomic cognoscenti. Initially served only with his pig’s head dish, Robuchon was soon obliged to offer a little bowl of purée as a ‘side’ with virtually every item on the menu. Mashed potatoes had becomehis signature dish and Robuchon an acknowledged authority on potato cookery. Indeed, his second book, Le Meilleur & le Plus Simple de la Pomme de Terre (1994), was devoted entirely to potato recipes. In it he gave a new version of his now famous purée in which the initial ratio of potatoes to butter remained the same, but he substituted an obscure heirloom potato – La Ratte – for the much more common and mundanely named BF 15 he had called for earlier. He also boiled the potatoes in their skins (he had previously called for peeling them first), and in addition to being ‘mashed’ by working them through a vegetable mill, he recommended that the purée be worked through an extremely fine drum sieve before serving to increase its creamy texture. La Ratte started to appear in speciality stores at extravagantly high prices. Foreign aficionados were known to smuggle bags of them out of France and the sale of drum sieves exploded. In the course of the years that followed Robuchon became an entrepreneur, opening restaurants in Tokyo, Las Vegas, London, Hong Kong, Monaco, Taipei, Singapore and Bangkok. Wherever he went, his purée went with him, virtually unchanged – except in Tokyo where it was served with sea urchin and laced with coffee!

Only one other person has had his name so closely associated with the potato in France – Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the French pharmacist turned agronomist who is credited with popularizing the spud in the late 1700s. To this day dishes made with potatoes are called Parmentier or à la Parmentière. Will there a potato dishes à la Robuchon in the future? Probably not. One dish does not a Parmentier make. Purée!

Things you'll learn in issue six:
Why the Mandarin word for "tomato" translates literally to "barbarian eggplant," plus other etymological curiosities. What the bit of red ribbon tied around the neck of a Kweichow Moutai bottle is actually good for. How to love baijiu. The strange history of the New England chow mein sandwich. What time the best jianbing stall in Tianjin opens for breakfast. How a Scottish botanist stole the secrets of Chinese tea cultivation from the Empire of the Great Qing. The long path of the 1769 summer harvest from the tea terraces of Fujian to the Boston Tea Party. Also, Thomas Jefferson's favorite Chinese green tea.

Featured contributors:
Anne Mendelson, Derek Sandhaus, Alfreda Murck

How one foodie's visit to her local farmer's market stirred awake memories of a family legacy from colonial Shanghai. Why medieval Turks ate their macaroni with chopsticks. Imaginary recipes for mythical creatures. A simple takeout test to find the best egg rolls in town. How a humble pepper-taro stew from wartime China earned the name "Scorched Earth War Of Resistance." Ezra Pound's go-to Chinese spot in 1930s London. A 250-year-old ginseng teacake recipe fit for an emperor. The trouble with translating Chinese dish names into English. The next best thing to a dragon sandwich (hint: go to Hebei and ask for the donkey burger).

Featured contributors:
Kian Lam Kho, Dianne Jacob, Paul French