“Mieso” — Counterfactual pottery
A project by Arne Hendriks, Mily Bogaarts
In volved in a production team.
(Text copy right by Mily Bogaarts)
This project is all about traditional Dutch miso. Or ‘mieso’ as the dutch ancesters would have written it. It is a (thought) experiment around a new history. In this new (counterfactual) history, miso is already well known and embraced in the Netherlands for well over 400 years. And it plays an important role in traditional Dutch recipes.
With as result: an ancient design for a traditional dutch mieso pot and homemade miso from Faba beans (grown at a farm called Veldzicht in Zeeland, NL).
But what is Miso or Mieso?
Miso is a fermented beanpaste that has its origin in Japan (where misosoup is a common meal). It is made from soybeans, salt and Koji.
However, sadly enough, miso isn’s very known in the Netherlands. The traditional Japanese cuisine used to exist (400 years ago) marely out of plants and sometimes fish (yes, a long time ago, Japanese food was mostly vegan). The Dutch cuisine, on the other hand, is what I call: cow driven (packed with meat and dairy). While leafing through the ‘National Cookbook for the Dutch Housewifes’, I found a list of most important ingredients for the Dutch cuisine. The following ingredients were listed:
1. Milk
2. Butter
3. Cheese
.... and so on...
You can image that animal based products are the foundation of the traditional Dutch Cuisine.
However, a plantbased diet seems to become more and more a part of a sustainable future. And this proteïn transition isn’t easy for a country that basicly runns on animal proteïns. But what if we took our change, 400 years ago, and learned from the Japanese cuisine? What if we had embraced miso (packed with plantbased umami) back then? Would it have influenced the cheese indutry (full of animal based umami)? The Netherlands has after all, already a trade relationship with Japan for 400 years (we even introduced the milkcow in Japan..). Eventhough miso made it into the trading ships in 1652 (found in letters from that time), it never made it to the Dutch kitchen.
But imagine, what if it did?
In volved in a production team.
(Text copy right by Mily Bogaarts)
This project is all about traditional Dutch miso. Or ‘mieso’ as the dutch ancesters would have written it. It is a (thought) experiment around a new history. In this new (counterfactual) history, miso is already well known and embraced in the Netherlands for well over 400 years. And it plays an important role in traditional Dutch recipes.
With as result: an ancient design for a traditional dutch mieso pot and homemade miso from Faba beans (grown at a farm called Veldzicht in Zeeland, NL).
But what is Miso or Mieso?
Miso is a fermented beanpaste that has its origin in Japan (where misosoup is a common meal). It is made from soybeans, salt and Koji.
However, sadly enough, miso isn’s very known in the Netherlands. The traditional Japanese cuisine used to exist (400 years ago) marely out of plants and sometimes fish (yes, a long time ago, Japanese food was mostly vegan). The Dutch cuisine, on the other hand, is what I call: cow driven (packed with meat and dairy). While leafing through the ‘National Cookbook for the Dutch Housewifes’, I found a list of most important ingredients for the Dutch cuisine. The following ingredients were listed:
1. Milk
2. Butter
3. Cheese
.... and so on...
You can image that animal based products are the foundation of the traditional Dutch Cuisine.
However, a plantbased diet seems to become more and more a part of a sustainable future. And this proteïn transition isn’t easy for a country that basicly runns on animal proteïns. But what if we took our change, 400 years ago, and learned from the Japanese cuisine? What if we had embraced miso (packed with plantbased umami) back then? Would it have influenced the cheese indutry (full of animal based umami)? The Netherlands has after all, already a trade relationship with Japan for 400 years (we even introduced the milkcow in Japan..). Eventhough miso made it into the trading ships in 1652 (found in letters from that time), it never made it to the Dutch kitchen.
But imagine, what if it did?
