Cooking in clay

When we talk about handcrafted objects we go back in time to the origins of civilization and that is why mentions of man’s wanderings on earth have become in these short articles a recurring theme that connects us with the simple and everyday things of life. And what is more daily for a man than the very healthy habit of eating?

The art of making clay pots goes hand in hand with human settlements because the whole group had to be fed with what was hunted and collected every day. Before discovering pottery, animal skins and rustic wooden containers were used for liquid foods and baskets or boxes for solids.  Clay proved to be a natural and easily moldable material which, once subjected to high temperatures, was used on all continents and for thousands of years for cooking, serving, and storing food and beverages.

We know that the gastronomy of each country is closely related to its culture and its personality as a people.  The recipes combine not only the ingredients offered by the land where you live but also the character and idiosyncrasy of its inhabitants. The ancestral traditions of almost all the towns have been cooked in clay pots. The stews prepared in them allow slow cooking and without any kind of fat, if you want, to achieve the delicious typical flavors of each region.

Thus we have the tajin, the emblematic dish of Moroccan cuisine, which comes from the Arabic name of the fireplace shaped container where it is prepared. It allows to stew without more water than the one that condenses in its cover and softly humidifies the ingredients, either chicken or lamb with vegetables, preserving all its flavor. The delicious and not very dietary cassoulet from the south of France – from cassolo, the name of the clay pot used for its elaboration – made of white beans, sausages, pork, and duck meat. In Spain, in addition to the many uses of ceramics in gastronomy, the botijo was used to cool the water naturally, thanks to the pottery porosity which it is made from.

Our well known Romans, those of the empire, used with much ingenuity the hermetically sealed clay amphoras to preserve the wines for decades. They also mixed and preserved in terracotta the ingredients of the sauce with which they gave joy to numerous dishes: the famous garum, the fish sauce of that time, similar to the sauce used in Asian cuisine. Recently, amphorae of garum have been found in the remains of the Pompeii market – 79 B.C. – that still smell like fish.

One wonders why food made in terracotta casserole tastes better. Perhaps the previous stews leave their aromatic mark inside or perhaps the fact of cooking slowly and over a gentle fire in natural materials is essentially better. The truth is that food prepared in a clay pot retains all its flavor… and that is what counts.