Lady Lunchalot

Prehistoric man ate the first slice of bread tens of thousands of years ago, but it wasn’t exactly a nice pasta dura or ciabatta loaf. Primitive bread was probably made by mixing crushed barley and other grains with water and spreading the paste on a hot rock until it hardened into some kind of gritty pancake.

Some archaeologists think that the development of this kind of bread encouraged prehistoric man to move from a nomadic lifestyle into small farming communities - a move which has shaped civilisation as we know it.

Bread next appeared in Egypt more than 5,000 years ago, when Egyptian bakers discovered the magical bubbles of air that occur when yeast ferments and allow bread to rise. However Egyptian bread would have been horrible compared with the breads we know today. Ancient mummies have been found with cracked, chipped teeth, which was probably the legacy of a lifetime of gritty bread.

Eating patterns from this ancient era still carry on today. It was from Ancient Egypt that Moses led the Israelites in such a hurry that their bread didn’t even have time to rise. Leavened bread became a symbol of permanence and stability to the Israelites, and they didn’t allow their bread to rise until they entered the Promised Land. To this day Jews mark Passover by eating unleavened bread.

In typical Roman fashion technologically advanced grain mills were developed to produce finer quality flour. Wealthy citizens ate refined white bread, while the poor bought coarse heavier breads.

However bread has not been the lifegiving source to all cultures, and excessive dependence on bread has even led to widespread famine. Wheat fields require a great deal of space, and the same soil cannot be tilled year after year. Europe and the Mediterranean regions were not the best places to grow crops, so, under Roman instruction, Egypt and Africa became Europe’s wheat fields. As a result of the Roman passion for bread, it quickly a European staple. For centuries Europe was dependent on a crop which was extremely volatile. If grain could not be imported or produced, Europe starved.

France is perhaps the most famous example of a country left vulnerable to the whims of the wheat trade. Thousands of Parisian peasants revolted because of the lack of bread on their tables, leading to Marie Antoinette’s infamous expression, “Let them eat cake.”

Civilisations from each continent have developed their own types of breads. Today at supermarkets and bakeries we can choose between baguettes, bannock, brioche, panini, pumpernickel, challah, lavash, and foccaccia. We eat naan bread with curries, tortillas with burritos, and pitta with kebabs. Regardless of the variety of food modern societies have access to, history has made bread an invaluable staple; a food which provides nourishment and comfort to almost each one of the earth’s cultures.

Autumn’s wet weather is the perfect time for mushrooms. Try buying mushrooms at a market or mushroom specialist - they have so much more flavour than the bland supermarket ones.

Mushrooms were once thought to be a food from heaven - and it’s not hard to see why. The mysterious overnight sprouting of wild mushrooms must have appeared as though it was a gift from the gods, and many cultures have treated them this way. Egyptian hieroglyphics dating back more than 4500 years tell us that only Egyptian royalty were allowed to eat them. Mushroom rituals have been held throughout history in parts of the world as diverse as Russia, China, Latin America, Greece and Mexico.

But the world had to remain content with wild mushrooms for another 3,700 years until Japanese farmers managed to cultivate shiitake and matsukame mushrooms. Europe didn’t taste its first homegrown mushroom until 1678 when the French discovered the fungus’s magical technique of reproduction which enabled mushrooms to be farmed in Europe.

Despite the advances made since the first mushroom was cultivated on European soil, cultivation of the most prized fungal species continues to elude fungus fans. The noble truffle, the undisputed king of mushrooms, has never been successfully farmed despite extensive experiments stretching from its native homeland of France to the furthest reaches of New Zealand.

Fungi facts

• More than 40,000 species of edible mushrooms grow throughout the planet, but only a fraction of these are sold in western supermarkets.
• Throughout history, popes and kings have been assassinated by eating poisonous mushrooms.
• Buddha died from eating a poisonous mushroom.
• Many cultures have eaten magic mushrooms, fungi that contain mind-altering chemicals, to achieve mystical insight. Other cultures just eat them to get stoned.
• Some primatologists claim that magic mushrooms could have provided the spark which led to the homo-erectus and homo sapiens evolving from the apes.
• The 5,300 year old “Ice-Man” discovered buried near the Austrian and Italian borders was carrying polypore mushrooms.

Veal with creamy mushroom sauce

This dish is delicious served with lightly steamed asparagus.

• 2 veal scallopines or escallopes
• 1 cup of sliced mushrooms
• 500 ml of cream (For a lighter dish substitute cream with 400g ricotta cheese and 100ml reduced fat milk– remember you will get a different texture)
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• A tablespoon of butter or olive oil
• A pinch of salt

Pan fry veal on low heat until brown on both sides. In separate pan, sautee mushrooms, onion and garlic in butter or oil until mushrooms are soft. Add cream and salt and simmer on low heat for five minutes. Pour sauce over veal and simmer until veal is cooked.

If a New York sports cartoonist almost a century ago had known how to spell “dachsund”, the hot dog would not be called a hot dog.

Sausages are one of the oldest processed foods, with records stretching as far back as 900 B.C. Most corners of Europe had developed their regional sausage specialties by the Middle Ages, but the first true frankfurter wasn’t eaten until the late 1600s. Johann Georghehner, a German butcher, is most often credited with creating the first frankfurter. Back then, these sausages were often referred to as “dachsunds” because of their distinctive curve that looks like a dachsund dog’s posture.

Incidentally at around the same time a similar sausage recipe was being developed in Vienna, Austria. Like the German sausage, the Austrian version was named after its birthplace. Today Americans still refer to frankfurters as wieners.

German immigrants bought their dachsunds (the sausages, not the dogs) with them when they arrived in New York City and sold them on the streets from carts. However, hot dogs hadn’t yet been dressed in a bun, and roadside snackers often found the naked sausages a little too hot to handle.

Enter Arnold Feuchtwanger, an enterprising hot dog vendor at the St Louis World’s Fair in 1904. He hit upon the idea of lending his customers gloves while they ate their dachsunds to prevent them from burning their fingers. It was a great idea, except his customers had the unfortunate habit of wandering off with the gloves. Luckily Feuchtwanger’s brother-in-law was a baker, so he whipped up a batch of elongated rolls, which were the perfect blanket in which to nestle a steaming dachsund.

So where does the cartoonist with bad spelling come into it all? Thomas “Tad” Dorgan, a sports cartoonist for the New York Journal was hiding from an imminent deadline at the New York Polo Grounds one chilly April day. He heard the vendors’ cries of: “Get your red hot dachsund sausages!” and a bolt of inspiration hit as he scribbled a cartoon of neat little barking sausages snuggled into their bread rolls. Unfortunately (or fortunately) Dorgan didn’t know how to spell “dachsund”. So he gave the cartoon the hasty caption, “hot dogs” instead.