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 350ยบ 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.
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