Finally, a meat dish. This one is a minutal, which means (as per Grocock and Grainger) a stew made with small or chopped pieces of meat. This one with the apricots reminded me especially of the famous lamb and apricot tagine from Morocco, which is a slow-cooked sweet and savory stew. Given the meat was pre-cooked, the Roman recipe didn't need nearly as much time. The Latin and the English, as usual:
minutal ex praecoquiis: adicies in caccabo oleum liquamen uinum; concides cepam ascaloniam aridam; spatulam porcinam coctam tessellatim concides. his omnibus coctis teres piper cuminum mentam siccam anetum; suffundis mel liquamen passum acetum modice ius de suo sibi; temperabis; praecoqua enucleata mittis, facies ut ferueant donec percoquantur. tractam confringes, ex ea obligas, piper aspargis et inferes.
4.3.6 Minutal of apricots: put oil, liquamen and wine in a pan, chop in dried ascalonian onions and diced cooked shoulder of pork. When all this is cooked, pound pepper, cumin, dry mint, dill; pour on honey, liquamen, passum, a little vinegar, some of the cooking liquor; balance the flavours. Put in stoned apricots, bring them to a simmer until they are thoroughly cooked. Crumble a tracta and thicken with some of it. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.
This sounds like a recipe invented to use some of last night's roast, i.e. leftovers. I'd never made pork shoulder, but a couple nights before slow-roasted one (per instructions found on the internet) for like four and a half hours with a couple suitably Roman spices (pepper and cumin) and some honey rubbed on it. The honey caramelized almost to black but didn't burn given it wasn't too hot (I think 325° Fahrenheit). I don't think I've ever had roasted pork shoulder but it came out very tender, like meltingly so (I understand the cut is used for pulled pork and the like). However it is a rather fatty cut of meat and was almost a little too rich for me, though it was quite good.
This recipe makes use of tracta, which are dried disks of flour crumbled into sauces to thicken them. They can be made from scratch, though I understand they are a lot of work. Since I don't have any (I may make some someday, just to be authentic), I used cornstarch, although I suppose that's pretty New World.
Ascalonion onions are a bit of a mystery and cannot be identified with certainty according to Grocock and Grainger; though the ancient city of Ascalon (Ashkelon) in what is now Israel gave its name to both shallots and scallions they may not be either of them. I went with scallions because that's what I could find.
I managed to find fresh apricots in my local supermarket; dried ones would probably work as well, though you'll have to cook them a bit longer. I also went with fresh mint rather than dried because that is what I had.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 cup wine
3 green onions, roughly chopped
1 cup diced cooked pork shoulder
a few peppercorns
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chopped fresh mint leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried dill
2 teaspoons honey
2 tablespoons passum
1 teaspoon vinegar
2 fresh apricots, stoned and sliced
cornstarch or other thickener
Put the olive oil, liquamen, and wine in a pan; throw in the onions and pork shoulder and let simmer till the onions are soft. Grind the peppercorns, cumin, mint and dill in a mortar; when they form a smooth paste add in the vinegar and honey and mix well. Pour into the pan, then add the passum. Add the apricot slices and simmer for a few more minutes until the apricot slices are cooked but still fairly firm. Thicken with a little cornstarch mixed with some of the cooking liquid. Serve with a little more ground pepper. Makes about two servings.
I left out the second liquamen as I felt there was plenty of it already; I found I wanted to fry the onions in just the oil first but no, the recipe called for simmering it all in the wine mixture.
Okay. This was really good, but then I really like meat + fruit dishes. It was quite well balanced, and not too vinegary, with just the right amount of sweetness to make the apricots work. With the pork shoulder already cooked and very tender the whole thing felt like it had been simmered forever. You could, I suppose, make it with some pork cutlets if you didn't want to roast an entire pork shoulder beforehand, but it probably won't be as tender.
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