(I think my plating skills—and my photography—could use a bit of work. But trust me, it sure tasted good.)
I thought it was time to try a seafood recipe, as there are an awful lot of them in Apicius; not surprising considering Italy is almost entirely seacoast.
[9.10.8] ius in siluro in pelamide et in tinno salsis: piper ligusticum cuminum cepam mentam rutam caluam careotam mel acetum sinape oleum.
9.10.8. Sauce for salted sheatfish, young tuna and tuna: pepper, lovage, cumin, onion, mint, rue, smooth nuts, date, honey, vinegar, mustard, oil.
Sheatfish (so Wikipedia tells me) is a type of freshwater catfish found in Europe; I went with the tuna variation of the recipe, since the supermarket had tuna steaks but not catfish. That it calls for salted sheatfish probably explains the lack of liquamen which is quite salty.
I cannot seem to be able to find lovage (either leaf, seed, or plant) anywhere these days; I've grown it myself in the past and loved the stuff (the leaf I think goes especially well in chicken dishes). Lovage being fairly reminiscent of celery I used celery seeds, though they really are a poor substitute.
'Smooth nuts' are, according to Grocock and Grainger per their wonderful appendix, most likely hazelnuts.
These are the proportions I came up with, which worked quite well (and on my first try!)
1/2 pound tuna steak
10 peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon cumin seed
1/2 medium onion, chopped
4-5 fresh mint leaves, chopped
4-5 sprigs rue, chopped (about 1/2 teaspoon)
2 tablespoons chopped hazelnuts (a bit more if whole)
3 largish dates
2 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons vinegar
1 teaspoon dry powdered mustard
1 tablespoon olive oil
Grind the peppercorns, celery seed, and cumin seeds in a mortar; put them and all the other ingredients except the tuna in a food processor and whiz to a paste.
Put a bit of (additional) olive oil in a medium-sized frying pan; sear the tuna on both sides for a couple minutes, then add a decent amount of water to deglaze the pan. Add the sauce and stir; simmer it all until the fish is cooked through and the sauce has reduced back to being a thick sticky mess. Serve with the sauce glumped on top of the fish.
Since I figured tuna could hold its own I went for a fairly rich sauce; originally I'd thought to poach the fish in the sauce as it was, but it turned out to be a very sticky and thick affair, and there was not much I could do about that unless I wanted it to be mostly vinegar (which I didn't). So I went with adding some water, then the thick sauce, and sautéing it in that until the sauce reduced back to its original state. It worked perfectly well, though I think maybe such a thick sauce would work better as a coating/crust on baked fish. It did have to be cooked I thought given the onions in it.
I ended up using a food processor; going by the order of the instructions it seemed the onions were meant to be mashed along with everything else into a paste. My mortar though is the small modern kind for grinding spices; Roman mortars were dish-sized wide things and I think they used them sort of like we use food processors, though of course food processors cut food up rather than mashing it. Also I'm getting the impression the Romans like their sauces fairly smooth, so cooking the chopped onions separately with the fish didn't seem like the right way to do it. There wasn't a lot of the sauce, and so I didn't get it too smooth in the food processor (the hazelnuts didn't become a 'butter' or anything and were still in distinct, if small, pieces), but it seemed to work well even so.
I really liked this, and would definitely like to try it again as a coating for a baked tuna steak. I will say it was very rich; I got the smallest tuna steak they had, thinking it would be a little more than a serving, but really given the richness was more like two.
It was nicely mustardy and had a little bit of a kick; the sweetness was just about right, and of a lovely rich earthy sort with the hazelnuts and the dates. I managed to get it nicely balanced on my first try, too, which is kind of a miracle. I'm kind of assuming the long lists of spices in Roman food are parallel to those in Indian cuisine; a little of each making up a sum greater than its parts. And I think doing just a little honey and a little vinegar, such that you can't really taste the vinegar on its own is the way to go. It gives it a balanced sweetness without being cloying. Also I think if the vinegar is overplayed it will dominate, and since most recipes include it everything will end up tasting the same, which cannot have been the intent.
As I said, I'd like to try this again in a baked version, but for now it's still going straight in the keeper pile. It really was very good!
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