Apicius 6.8.5: Numidian Chicken

Good grief that photo is terrible. This post might be better without it!
I wanted to try this chicken dish because it was parboiled and then roasted, and that technique worked quite well with some of the other dishes I've tried, specifically the recipe for roast neck joint.

Numidia was a north African kingdom, located in what is now Algeria, extending into parts of Tunisia and Libya as well. It was defeated by Rome in the Jugurthine War in the first century BCE, and was eventually made a province. I'm not sure how this recipe is particularly Numidian; nothing in it is any less Roman, or more exotic, than most other recipes.

The recipes, in both the Latin and English, from G & G:

[6.8.5]: pullum Numidicum: pullum curas, elixas, leuas, laser ac piper aspergis et assas.  teres piper cuminum coriandri semen laseris radicem rutam careotam nucleos; suffundis acetum mel liquamen et oleum; temperabis. cum ferbuerit, amulo obligas, pullum perfundis, piper aspergis et inferes.

6.8.5: Numidian chicken prepare the chicken, (par-)boil it and lift it out; sprinkle with laser and pepper and roast it. Pound pepper, cumin, coriander seed, laser root, rue, date, pine nuts; pour on vinegar, honey, liquamen and oil; balance the flavours. When it comes to heat, thicken with starch, pour over the chicken, sprinkle with pepper and serve.

Since this is an experiment, as usual I just used one piece of chicken rather than a whole bird; this time I used a thigh, with bones and skin, since I figured it would have a bit more flavor than the usual bland skinless boneless breast, especially since it called to be boiled a bit.

As one of the spices I got recently I did get some dried rue; I have no idea if it's still in my (rather overgrown) herb garden, though at any rate things are only just starting to come up here. I also got some more asafoetida, both in resin form and ground. It's definitely a lot stronger than the rather old ground asafoetida I had. And again, that's as (an entirely historical) substitute for the laser (a.k.a. silphium), which went extinct in Roman times. And so also extinct is the laser root called for in the recipe; though I didn't know it while making the recipe, asafoetida is actually from the root of the plant, so would work for that as well.

So here's what I tried:

1 chicken thigh, with skin on and bones in
1 small peppercorn of long pepper (about 1 inch long); or several regular black peppercorns
pinch ground asafoetida
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander seed
1/4 teaspoon dried rue leaves
2 teaspoons pine nuts
1 small date, seeded and chopped
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 tablespoon olive oil

Simmer the chicken piece in water to cover until mostly done, about 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 350º Fahrenheit. Grind the peppercorn(s) in the mortar. When the chicken is ready remove from the water and place in a baking pan, then sprinkle with half the pepper and the pinch of asafoetida. Bake in the oven another 15 minutes or so until the skin crisps up a bit and the chicken is cooked through.

In the mean time make the sauce. Grind the cumin, coriander seed and rue leaves with the remaining pepper; when they're pretty finely ground add the pine nuts and get it all as fine as you can before adding the date, which will make a sticky impossible mess of things. But with patience it will (eventually) make a smooth paste, and so add the vinegar, honey, fish sauce and olive oil and mash/mix. It will still be quite thick at this point.

Dump it into a small pan; I found it so thick that I actually had to add a few tablespoons of water to it. (Again, I suspect the Romans, whose fish sauce was much less salty than the modern Thai variety, were using a lot more liquamen in the first place.) Heat it up to a simmer, and let it cook and re-thicken.

When the chicken is finished, pour the sauce over, sprinkle with a bit more pepper (I forgot, of course), and serve.

Despite the unappetizing photo (really, I am beyond ashamed at my terrible photography skills. I have got to get better at that), this tasted quite nice. The vinegar was quite pronounced and an important part of the sauce. Funny enough I could taste both the rue (bitter) and the honey (sweet) at the same time, though that doesn't really seem possible. It was quite rich too, given the pine nuts, and was over all really a very Roman sauce. There are quite a few 'patterns' in the sauces in Apicius; this one with dates is of a type that shows up on a few recipes. Like I said, very Roman.

I've done a few chicken recipes so far; I'd like to try them again with whole chickens and a greater quantity of sauce, since that's really what the recipe is calling for. As for the technique, of parboiling then roasting, I'm not sure it's really necessary here, at least with our modern chickens, which I imagine are rather plumper and less scraggly than ancient ones. If I'd thought of it, I would have thinned the sauce at the end with some of the water the chicken had cooked in. Oh well. Also, I left out the laser root, thinking there was no equivalent; you can add another pinch of ground asafoetida to the sauce, if you like, though I found there was already plenty of it from when the chicken was roasted.

Apicius 5.4.3: Plain Pea Conchicla

There are quite a few recipes for peas in Apicius, though I'd never tried one before this. They are made with dried peas, not fresh peas (as the 'instructions' invariably call for skimming the foam off while cooking them), and, according to Grocock and Grainger, are made with marrowfat peas.

Marrowfat peas are peas that are left on the vine to mature before harvesting, much like beans used for drying are. I do not seem to be able to find them for love or money here in the US; I have had to use the usual split peas for soup, which I'm guessing are harvested much earlier in the season going by the size. Marrowfat peas are apparently what are used to make the English dish of 'mushy peas', though I have to admit that has got to be one of the least appetizing names ever. I suppose these Apician recipes may well be the forerunner of that dish.

This recipe is a conchicla; there is some confusion as to exactly what that means, whether it refers to a type of bean (though the recipes are almost always for peas), or to a specific type of serving dish, presumably shell-shaped. They don't seem to be any more complicated, or particularly different in technique than the 'regular' pea recipes, so who knows.

I assumed, going by the instructions, that this was meant to make a quite thick paste, rather than something thick but still soupy like modern split pea soup.

The Latin, followed by Grocock and Grainger's English translation:

[5.4.3] conciclam de pisa simplici: pisam coques. cum dispumauerit, fasciculum porri et coriandri mittis. dum coquitur, teres piper ligusticum origanum, fasciculum de suo sibi; fricabis; suffundis liquamen; uino et liquamine temperabis, mittis. super adicies oleum et lento igni ferueat, et inferes.

5.4.3 Plain pea conchicla: cook the peas; when you have skimmed them, put in a bundle of leeks and coriander. While it is cooking, pound pepper, lovage, oregano, the bundle itself, pound again, pour on liquamen, flavour with wine and liquamen; put (in the pan). Pour oil over the top; let it come to heat over a gentle fire and serve.

A while back I ordered some of the more unusual spices used in Apicius, like calamus root, Indian bay leaf (probably what the Romans called malabathrum), and dried rue; I also got my hands on some long pepper.

They're not kidding about the name. A single 'corn' can be up to two inches long, probably equal in size to more than a dozen ordinary black peppercorns. The taste is a bit different—more fragrant, almost floral. And also, not actually 'hotter' than black pepper, though that was what I'd heard. A little astringent, too, maybe? Quite a bit different and much more complex; I'm not even sure I'd guess it was a type of pepper.

While the recipe calls for a 'bundle' of leeks, the modern ones in the supermarket were absolutely gigantic, so I've only used half of one here.

And in happy news, I finally have some lovage growing in my garden. I planted it a couple years ago now, and it's doing well, though only just sprouting for the spring.

The recipe:

1 cup split green peas
several sprigs of cilantro (or parsley, if you hate cilantro like I do)
a leek
1 small peppercorn of long pepper (about 1 inch in length); or, several regular black peppercorns
2 small sprigs of lovage
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (or 1 teaspoon fresh, minced)
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 tablespoon wine
olive oil

Set the peas to boil in about 3 cups of water. Trim the roots and the dark green parts off the leek, then split the white/light green part lengthwise, setting aside one half to use in another recipe. Clean off the half left, making sure to get in between the layers as they tend to hold a fair bit of sand.

Put the half leek and the cilantro/parsley in with the peas, and continue to boil them, adding more water if needed so it doesn't get too thick, and skimming off any foam on the surface.

Grind the peppercorn(s) with the lovage and oregano and set aside. When the peas start to break down a bit, fish out the cilantro/parsley sprigs and leek slices and add to the mortar. They'll be quite wet, and you may need to squish them in a sieve a bit to make it easier to grind. Or, you can put them in a food processor and pulse to a paste. Mix in the fish sauce and the wine, then add all of it back to the peas.

When the peas start to thicken, turn the heat down to low and keep an eye on them, stirring here and there to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom. When they've thickened about to the consistency of mashed potatoes, take off the heat. You can, if you like, run the whole thing through a food processor to really smooth it out; I didn't, since I didn't think of doing that until just now.

Serve with a drizzle of olive oil over. Makes two servings.

This were quite good, especially with the olive oil on top, which gave it a nice sort of floral note. Overall it was quite balanced, and though I could taste the pepper it didn't dominate. It could probably take even more of the herbs as the peas were themselves quite earthy, but on the whole it was good and not bland, and so I'll put it with the keepers.

I suppose one could eat it like a dip with bread, like modern bean dip. I just ate it with a fork.

There are, like I said, quite a few pea dishes in Apicius, some with pork (like in split pea soup); I'll definitely have to give some of the others a try.