Roastfish and Cornbread

Late last week my family had lunch at a small restaurant on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. Then we went back the next day because we liked it so much. The establishment in question is Chef David Young's Roastfish and Cornbread.

This is a restaurant that is hard to categorize. The food is more unusual and upscale than one would expect for a locals' hangout, but it's also too "homestyle" for haute cuisine. Take a look at the menu on the restaurant's website (make sure to check out the vegetarian menu as well). Note the occasionally surprising combinations of ingredients. Now picture it as simple, but well made food served without pretension.

Where's the medieval aspect to all this? There isn't one really. Yes, there's an odd link between the cuisine of the southeast United States and that of medieval England (e.g. honey-mustard barbecue, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, peach pie), but that's pretty tenuous and I don't think that's what drove me to post this. I think it's more to do with the fact that chef Young loves food. He researches his own cooking and shares the results. I like that, a lot.

Many of David's recipes from Roastfish and Cornbread are available in his cookbook, Burnin' Down South, which you can purchase from Amazon.com (I bought a copy before leaving the restaurant).





Burnin' Down South
David Vincent Young
Outskirts Press, 2008
ISBN: 1432724649

... and of course, if you're lucky enough to be in that area, you can go to the actual restaurant.

On Vegetables

Ask the average person and they'll probably tell you that people in medieval Europe didn't eat any vegetables (except possibly for the Irish, who were evidently eating potatoes for centuries before they were brought from the Americas, but that's a whole different issue).

vegetables grown for no reason

Some background: I just spent the weekend traveling, and this morning it occurred to me that every time I eat in restaurants for more than a couple of days I start to feel incredibly vegetable-deprived.

Mind you, I'm not a vegetarian. I'm not even one of those people who are forever grazing on carrots and celery and whatnot. In fact I'm pretty sure I don't eat anywhere near the number of servings of vegetables currently recommended by any of the health authorities. That's why this disturbs me so much. If I'm feeling veggie deprived when eating restaurant food, then there really must be a serious lack of green things there.

Let's think about the typical restaurant meal for a minute. If it's fast-food then there's almost no chance for plants. Maybe there's a shred of lettuce or tomato or pickle - about 1/1000000th of a full serving. French fries come from a plant, but they're really just starch and fat - not much veggie goodness there. And no, before anyone says it, ketchup is not a vegetable.

Other restaurants may do slightly better. A small salad, coleslaw, maybe even green beans or broccoli (when I was in England I found they served peas as frequently as the US does broccoli - a pointless observation, but there it is), but even that seems to be more the exception than the rule.

Now compare that to the menus from meals served to medieval royalty. It can be hard to tell what's going on in a lot of these - there are lots of meat references and few vegetable ones, but that's not too different from modern menus. Looking at household accounts and dietetic manuals from the time though, it's pretty clear that medieval people were eating plenty of vegetables. Apparently only a relative few of the recipes for vegetables were thought important enough to write down.

They ate salads and cooked turnips (sliced and layered with cheese and butter) and sometimes cooked cauliflower and such. Occasionally spinach or beets, parsnips and carrots. Now that I think about it, it really doesn't sound that different from the modern diet. The average person likes to eat meat, starchy-foods, and sweets. They'll eat some vegetables, and maybe like them too, but for most people it's not the first thing they'll reach for at the table.

Interesting. So apparently I'm an exception and not the norm. There's a surprise.

It's really not that hard ...

I'm more than a little conflicted when it comes to "Medieval Times" - no, not the period of history but the chain of theme restaurants.  On the one hand, it generates interest in medieval European history.  However they present a version of the middle-ages that is notably less accurate.

One of the areas where they stumble rather badly is the food (no surprise that I latch onto this aspect, eh?).  On their website they have this to say about their dinner. 

With clockwork precision, legions of serving wenches and serfs deliver four courses to hungry guests in minutes. The meal begins with savory garlic bread and a steaming hot vegetable soup ladled into pewter bowls: then come roasted chicken, spare rib, a seasoned potato and pastry of the Castle. Two rounds of beverages are included with the feast. Cash bar service is also available throughout the show. To the special delight of the guests, the feast is served "medieval style" - without silverware, but with plenty of extra napkins.

Let's go over this point by point:

1. Describing this as a four course meal is really silly when a typical course in a medieval feast contained four to six dishes - and that didn't include bread.  


2. The vegetable soup might be ok, depending on what exactly is in it.


3. Seasoned potato?  Potatoes are new-world ... hello!


4. What the heck is a pastry of the castle?  Ah, another site lists it as an apple pastry. Apples are good, pastry is good, the name is dumb.


5. Medieval style means no silverware?
   "There were no utensils in medieval times, thus, there are no utensils at Medieval Times. Would you like a refill on that Pepsi?"

So how could they fix this to make it more authentic, while still appealing to the masses?  It wouldn't take much in terms of time or money.

The first step is to go through their menu and recipes and get rid of all the new-world ingredients.  Tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, chocolate, vanilla, tea and coffee are the ones that most often sneak into a pseudo-medieval menu.

I suspect that this would effect the soup.  If so, then find a new recipe that is actually medieval.  There are hundreds of medieval soup recipes out there, many are quite good, and almost all of them are cheap to make.  Pick one or two.

Replace the potato with the old-world equivalent - the turnip.  They're just as easy to cook, and there are medieval turnip recipes that just about anyone would like.

Beverages are pretty easy too.  Serve the kids grape juice, and give the adults the added option of beer, wine or mead.

Finally, for Pete's sake give them spoons and knives!  The medieval serving manuals clearly state that all diners should be furnished with spoons and knives.  We're talking the middle-ages here, not the stone-ages.

Do I actually expect Medieval Times to do this?  No, not really.  I can dream though. It's not like I want them to do a proper four or five course feast with around 30 different dishes, complete with different menus for meat and meatless days. I just want them to get a few very basic things right. Kind of like how people expect a documentary about Pearl Harbor to be set in Hawaii instead of Des Moines, Iowa.

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