Apicius 7.11.4 Redux: Peppered Sweets

So I gave this one another try tonight, after finally figuring out how to make really thick semolina without burning it. I was able, then, to roll them up like little truffles, the 'sweets' of the recipe title. Here, again, are the Latin and English, to refresh your memory:

[7.11.4] dulcia piperata: teres piper, mittis mel merum passum rutam. eo mittis nucleos nuces alicam elixatam. concisas nuces auellanas tostas adicies et inferes.

7.11.4 Peppered sweets: pound pepper; add honey, wine, passum, and rue. Add to the mixture pine nuts, nuts and boiled alica. Add chopped roasted hazelnuts and serve.

Alica, you will remember, is a type of groat, or smashed up grain (in this case emmer wheat) which came in several grades, the finest (according to Grocock and Grainger) about the texture of semolina, though that is made from a different variety of wheat (durum, which, according to Wikipedia, was bred from emmer wheat originally anyway). I suppose something like bulgur wheat (though a bit more coarse) like you'd use for making tabbouleh would also work. (And, looking it up, emmer wheat is still used in Italy, where it's called farro, and is apparently available in health food stores, so I'll keep an eye out.) At any rate, I used semolina flour.

And again, I didn't have any rue, as it's the middle of winter and it has all died down in my herb garden (I checked). Rue, while bitter, gives a distinct flowery note, which makes me wonder if a little rose water (not that that's period) would give a similar effect. I did use wildflower honey, so hopefully that helped.

When I'd made this recipe in the past I didn't get the semolina very thick, and so the whole thing came out like a pudding, which, while perfectly tasty, wasn't what I'd guess the original recipe had in mind. Though who can tell, really; Apicius is more about what's between the lines than the actual lines sometimes.

So here's my third attempt:

a dollop of cream plus whole milk to equal 1 cup
1/2 cup semolina flour
15 peppercorns (or more, to taste)
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon wine
1 teaspoon passum
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

Heat the milk + cream up as hot as you dare without scalding it (I got it to just starting to simmer), then throw in the semolina, stirring constantly. Take off the heat pretty much immediately and continue stirring till more or less smooth and about as thick as cookie dough, then set aside.

Grind up the peppercorns in a mortar, then add the honey, the wine, and the passum. Stir to mix.

Toast the pine nuts and walnuts in a dry frying pan on medium heat until lightly browned and fragrant. Tip out onto a cutting board and cut them up as finely as you can manage, then put in the mortar with the honey/wine/pepper mixture and get as smooth as possible. When you're tired of that, throw it all in with the cooked semolina, then mix it as smoothly as you can with a spatula or potato masher.

Toast the hazelnuts in the pan you used for the other nuts until again lightly browned and fragrant, then empty them onto the cutting board and chop as finely as you can.

Take small lumps of the semolina mixture and roll into one inch balls (you may wish to give your hands a light coating of oil so it doesn't stick, and if you're being strictly authentic it probably ought to be olive), then roll in the hazelnuts till you get these lovely little truffle-looking things. Makes about two dozen.

These were really really really really good, and very rich. And even with the uncooked wine and the passum they didn't taste alcoholic at all (and I'm pretty sensitive to that). I kept nibbling on the semolina mixture (like one does with cookie dough, because one can't resist) as I was getting the hazelnuts ready and kept thinking it was a little on the bland side, but once the hazelnuts were on there they made the whole thing work quite well. I would have said that maybe the mix could have used a little salt, just like a cake has a little just to bring the other flavors out, but now I don't think it needed even that. The walnuts (what Apicius generally means when it just calls for 'nuts') and the pine nuts gave it a richness, along with the semolina itself and the milk (plus the cream I added). The peppercorns this time were fine, and gave it a little bite without being obnoxious.

So, yeah, this one is definitely going in the keeper pile. Third time pays for all, as they say.