Apicius 3.7: Melon Salad Redux

I thought I'd give this one another try, as it's a simple summery dish, and 'tis the season. I tweaked the proportions a bit and like this version much better, though it's probably still a bit of an acquired taste. The Latin and English, as refresher:

VII. PEPONES ET MELONES. piper puleium mel uel passum liquamen acetum. interdum et silfi accedit.

3.7. LONG AND ROUND SWEET MELONS: pepper, pennyroyal, honey or passum, liquamen, vinegar. Sometimes silphium is added.

Again, watermelons are in fact Old World, being native to southern Africa.

These are the proportions I used this time, though I bent the rules a bit by using both honey and passum, as I had it. And again, I substituted peppermint for the pennyroyal, as pennyroyal's a little dicey, toxicity-wise (and I had plenty of mint).

2 cups diced watermelon
A few peppercorns (I used exactly 5)
1 teaspoon chopped fresh peppermint
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon passum (raisin wine)
1/4 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
A very tiny pinch of ground asafoetida

Grind the peppercorns in a mortar; add the chopped mint and the pinch of asafoetida and grind to a paste. Add the honey and mix, then the passum, liquamen and vinegar and mix/grind until smooth. Pour over the watermelon and garnish with a sprig of mint if you're feeling extra fancy (I was).

This was much more balanced than the last version. It was a strange and complicated mix of contrasting flavors, being all at once sweet and sour, sweet and salty, and spicy hot and cool; but I think it worked. If I were to tweak anything it would be to use even less of the liquamen. It wasn't overly salty, mind you, but I think I just wasn't expecting there to be salt in it at all; like I said, this recipe is perhaps an acquired taste. Still, I'll put it in with the keepers, though under the salad heading as it's not something I'd quite call a dessert. It was certainly interesting.

Apicius 4.1.2: Sala Cattabia

This one looked fairly approachable to modern eyes; more or less a chicken salad with a ginger-raisin vinaigrette. A while back I tried the recipe immediately after it, also a sala cattabia, though it didn't make it into the keepers pile. (I still don't know what 'cattabia' refers to; for a while there I thought maybe it was a type of cooking pot, but no, I was thinking of a caccabus.) This one is said to be 'in the style of Apicius', so extra fancy, I suppose. It would work quite well as a lunch dish, though I had it for supper. It was very yummy, let me say.

The Latin, followed by the English:

[4.1.2] aliter sala cattabia Apiciana: adicies in mortario apii semen puleio aridum mentam aridam gengiber coriandro uiridem uuam passam enucleatam mel acetum oleum et uinum. conteres. adicies in caccabolo panis Picentini frustra, interpones pulpas pulli glandulas edinas caseum Vestinum nucleos pineos cucumeres cepas aridas minute concisas; ius supra perfundes; insuper niuem sub ora, [piper] asparges et inferes.

4.1.2. Another sala cattabia in the style of Apicius: put in a mortar celery seed, dry pennyroyal, dry mint, ginger, green coriander, de-seeded raisins, honey, vinegar, oil and wine. Pound together. Put in a small pot pieces of Picentine bread interlayered with chicken meat, goats' sweetbreads, Vestine cheese, pine nuts, cucumber, finely chopped dried onions. Pour the sauce over (the ingredients); stand (the pot) in snow for an hour, sprinkle with pepper and serve.

According to Grocock and Grainger, Picentine bread is made from alica, a fairly finely milled wheat groat similar in texture to semolina. The alica is left to soak for nine days, probably in must (fresh grape juice, which was usually made into wine). As the must started to ferment, the naturally occurring yeasts acted as a leavening agent. Nowadays we just buy yeast to make bread; of course the Romans had to get it another way. After the nine days more flour was mixed in to make a proper dough, then it was baked. The resulting bread was famous for being quite light and spongy, and I imagine it was a bit sweet too since it started with grape juice rather than just water. I don't know if nine days is long enough to get it to something like sourdough; at any rate it does seem a very interesting way to make bread. Maybe I'll try it someday, though I have to admit my bread-making skills are pretty substandard. I'm going to go ahead and blame my kitchen, which is basically in the cellar, and always a bit on the cool side. I'm sure that's it.

I was able to find a bread made with semolina, crazy enough, though it was this weird sort in Local Supermarket's bakery department that was only lightly baked (as the Gwragedd Annwn prefer, so I hear) that I put in the oven for another ten minutes. Not sure that did anything but warm it up, but it was certainly tasty. A French (or Italian) bread would work, too.

G&G don't give an explanation for 'Vestine cheese', but luckily the internet does, because there totally are people out there who did their PhD's on the History of Cheese. Vestine cheese was made by the Vestini of central Italy, and was a smoked goats' cheese which was quite popular for breakfast. Smoked goats' cheese does exist out there, again according to the internet, but Local Supermarket only had the plain kind, so that's what I used.

I skipped the pennyroyal, since it's on the questionable side; there's mint in it anyway, which is closely related, so I just used plenty of that.

And I left the sweetbreads out entirely, because no. Just no. I mean, you can if you want, but I'm not gonna and you can't make me.

For the dressing:

1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon dried mint
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon minced fresh cilantro (or parsley, if like me you hate cilantro)
1 tablespoon raisins
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon wine

Soak the raisins in the wine for a bit to soften; meanwhile grind the other dry(ish) ingredients to a fine paste in a mortar, then add the raisins when they've softened a bit. (I found cutting them up into several tiny pieces first made grinding them easier). Add the wine the raisins soaked in, the vinegar, honey, and oil and mix to a slurry. Set aside.

For the salad:

1 cup bread cubes
1 cup diced cooked chicken
2 oz smoked or plain goats' cheese, crumbled
1 generous tablespoon pine nuts
1/2 cucumber, peeled and diced
1 tablespoon minced onion
pepper

Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan until lightly browned and fragrant. Put all the bread cubes in the bowl, then layer half each of the chicken, goats' cheese, cucumber, onions, and pine nuts, followed by another layer of chicken, cheese, cucumber, and onions. Pour the dressing over, sprinkle with the remaining pine nuts and pepper to taste. Put in the fridge to chill for an hour, or eat right away (which is what I did).

This was really very good, though it has no salt (and no liquamen, either), so I was worried it would be bland. It wasn't, because the goats' cheese was a little salty, but you could add salt if you like with the pepper at the end. The flavors all worked quite well together, and surprisingly the bread was a very important part of it and gave it a good solid base. It was over all quite nicely balanced, though it was a little light on the dressing. Ideally I wanted enough to soak down through the layers and into the bread at the bottom, but it didn't get that far, being fairly thick. It tasted good, though, so I think the proportions of the dressing are about right. Maybe half again as much would work for the amount of salad? That's very much to personal taste, though, of course.

The dressing wasn't all that gingery, oddly enough; I wonder if it's the ginger I've been getting lately. The last time I got some I made ginger tea out of it, using rather a lot of ginger, but it had barely any kick. So maybe you'll want to use less, ha. Still though, the dressing was rich, complex, and densely flavored, and very Roman.

You can play with the proportions of the salad a bit too, of course. I don't really care too much for raw onion, so only used a little. It did work well and gave it just the right amount of bite, I thought. You could also use rather more pine nuts; the measurement I gave above was just what I had left in the container!

Overall, though, definitely a keeper, and I'll be making it again!