It's been a few months since I've done any Roman cooking; I think I got to a point where I just needed a damned tomato in my life (and peppers, and zucchini, and chocolate, and butter). Also, this is a hobby blog and I tend to do things in waves, so I at least am not surprised. But it seemed time to get back into this.
This recipe for a cheese patina sounded rather like a honey cheesecake without the crust. Strictly speaking a patina is a wide flat cooking dish or pan with sloping sides; the name was also applied to the kind of dish cooked within it. These generally used eggs as a binder, though not always, and seem to have ranged from something like a quiche or frittata to custards. They could be sweet or savory and contain pretty much any ingredient you could imagine. (Incidentally patella, 'little patina', the word for kneecap, comes from the same root, as does the Spanish paella, which also gave its name to a specific type of dish cooked in it.) This particular patina recipe is found under the Homemade Sweets and Curds section of Apicius.
I'll give the Latin followed by the English, as usual; and as usual, the translations and information about Roman cooking techniques are straight from Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger's Apicius: A Critical Edition With an Introduction and English Translation, so, you know, don't go thinking I'm an actual expert on this stuff or anything.
[7.11.7] tiropatinam: accipies lac, aduersus quod patinam estimabis, temperabis lac cum melle quasi ad lactantia, oua quinque ad sextarium mittis, si ad eminam, oua tria. in lacte dissoluis ita ut unum corpus facias, in cumana colas et igni lento coques. cum duxerit ad se, piper adspargis et inferes.
7.11.7. Cheese patina: take some milk and choose a dish of sufficient size to hold it; flavour the milk with honey as though for milk pudding. Put in 5 eggs to a pint or 3 to a 1/2 pint. Dissolve them in the milk so that you have a smooth emulsion. Strain it into a Cumaean clay dish and cook over a slow fire; when it has set, sprinkle with pepper and serve.
Apparently this is one of the (all too common, alas) recipes in Apicius where a key ingredient is found only in the title; at first I thought well maybe 'cheese' referred to the consistency of the finished custard, but that didn't seem very likely really, especially given that part of the instructions are 'as though for milk pudding', implying that it is specifically not a milk pudding. But then I had to guess at the amount of cheese to put in. Not that that's anything new with Apicius.
I have to confess I'm not that handy with a custard; in fact I pulled out my Mastering the Art of French Cooking by the one and only Julia Child (and Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle) just for some tips. Those recipes turned out to be rather more complicated than I'd hoped, so instead I cribbed from an old Better Homes and Garden cookbook (yes, the one with the gingham/Italian restaurant tablecloth cover). The added texture of the cheese confused me too, as it was a bit grainy and hard to tell if the egg was separating, though I think I did all right in the end. So this is the recipe:
1 cup whole milk
3 eggs
5 tablespoons honey (=1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon, if that's easier)
1 cup ricotta cheese
ground pepper
Put the milk in a saucepan and mix in the honey with a whisk (you may wish to start warming the milk first to allow the honey to more easily dissolve). Add the cup of cheese and whisk till smooth. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl until quite smooth, then add to the milk and cheese mixture. Heat slowly over low to medium heat (you can use a double boiler if you've got one), stirring all the while. Keep stirring until the mix is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. It may look like it's not going to get there, especially with the cheese making it kind of grainy, but it will. I gave it a couple more minutes after that stage because I was following directions for creme brulée and I wanted it to be a little thicker, but you don't have to.
Take it off the heat and allow it to cool down; you can eat it then, sprinkled with some pepper, or put it in the fridge to firm up for later.
I don't know why the Romans were so taken with pepper, especially given that from what I could find the variety they used had both larger peppercorns and was rather spicier than the common round black peppercorns that are ubiquitous today; but they put the damned stuff on everything, including sweets. I guess that was one of the few sources of kick or heat they had for spices and a little bit of pain with their otherwise perfectly good food made them feel alive or something, like it does in Mexico or India. Me, I'm a wussy New Englander; our (sacred) recipe for clam chowder specifically says to use white pepper, if you must, because black pepper would just be too much. I put some on there for the photo (and I did eat it) but given my druthers I'd leave it off.
In spite of the pepper, this was quite good; I was a little confused though when I pulled it out of the fridge later to see a bit of water in with it. I thought that maybe I'd gotten it too hot after all and the egg had scrambled a bit; but actually I think it was just condensation, as I threw it in a bowl with some foil over it and stuck it in the fridge while it was still pretty hot, since it was getting late. I drained it off today and it certainly tasted fine, quite rich and custardy, with a bit of sweetness from the cheese.
I used ricotta because I was assuming a soft farmer's type cheese would be what they'd have. Mascarpone would certainly work, and now that I've thought of that I may just have to try this again because god damn, mascarpone cheese is amazing, especially with honey. And I suppose you could also add a little cream to the milk if you wanted, as I don't know that they separated that out. Though for that matter I don't know that they used cow's milk, either; goat's or ewe's milk would I'd guess be more common, but who knows.
It was as I said, quite rich and custardy; the only thing I might tweak is to add a little more honey, as it was a bit on the mildly sweet side for my tastes. But then I definitely have a very sweet tooth. Overall, though, this is definitely going into the keeper pile.
ETA: I did indeed try it with mascarpone cheese and some cream and it was absolutely heavenly. Here are the proportions for that version of this recipe.
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