The Pirate Chef

     So today I shall share with you, not a recipe per se, but a common dish that led itself to piratical ingenuity in the kitchen. Yes, I speak of that all-too-familiar dish of Salmagundi!

     It was also known as salmi or salamagundi, which is from the French word for hodgepodge, salmagundis. Which quite fits the dish as it was a mix of whatever was on hand for that day's meal.

     Salmagundi could be served two different ways, as a cold salad or as a hot stew-like dish.

For the salad, cooked meats and seafood would be served with vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts, and/or flowers and topped with a dressing of oil, vinegar, and whatever spices they had on hand.

     The stew was a little different than the salad though. It would contain most of the same ingredients, but possibly without the dressing, the fruit, the flowers and leaves.

     For both versions, they would usually slice up the meats they had available and cook them in a pot with the vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices, and whatever else they could get their hands on.

     This was a meal that you truly did not know what you were going to be eating and was best not to anger the cook that day.