A Historical Look Vegetables ::

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

Excerpt from the Vegetable Bible, by Christian Teubner

Anyone interested in the history of vegetables should look up the accounts and drawings of medicinal plants made by medieval monks. Roots and herbs were thought to be worth mentioning only for their curative powers. For example, in the Middle Ages, scorzonera or black salsify was reputed to be an antidote to snake venom. Parsnips were thoguth to be good for treating insomnia, and sorrel was used to cure liver and kidney complaints. Some therapeutic effect was ascribed to almost all domestic vegetables, but the everyday and the simple did not merit attention.

In the fourteenth century, Saint Catherine of Sienna, so the story goes , ate nothing but "raw herbs" from the age of 14-what would nowadays be described as raw fruit and vegetables. Hers was not an unusual story in the history of the Church. A diet rich in vegetables was characteristic of the way of life of early Western monks, since vegetables stood for asceticism. Benedictine and Carthusian monks were completely vegetarian. The medieval nobility's disdain for "roots and herbs" still exists, to some extent, in the Est. Only meat is equated with wealth and those who must eat vegetables are still often thought of as poor or fasting.

The Eastern viewpoint, however, has always been very different. In Asian countries vegetables represent aesthetic and culinary riches. Many Asians cuisines, such as those of China and later Japan, resulted from the constraints of poverty, and developed their complexity in spite of, or perhaps precisely because of this. Prepared with great care and sophistication, begetables formed the dominant part of these culinary traditions. From time immemorial, they have constituted an important component of any meal, second only to grains. The soybean, which has been cultivated in China for over 800 years, still constitutes, together with its products, the focus of Chinese and Japanese cuisine and esteemed a accordingly. To observe the reverence and skill with which a Japanese cook cuts vegetables is like watching a solemn ritual.