Apicius 7.5.5: Pork Roast

Oh. My. GODS. This recipe looks like nothing at all, but WOW.

This is it:

[7.5.5] assaturas in collare: elixatur et infunditur in fretali piper condimentum mel liquamen, et attorretur in clibano quousque coquatur. elixum uero collare, si uoles, sine conditura assas, et siccum calidum perfundis.

7.5.5. Roasted neck joint: the joint is boiled, placed in a roasting dish with pepper, spices, honey, liquamen, and roasted in a clibanus until it is cooked. If you wish you may roast the boiled neck joint without the sauce and pour it on while it is hot and dry.

A clibanus, in case you're wondering, is a sort of small portable oven the Romans usually used for baking bread, which could be nestled down in the embers. A modern oven will do.

Now, when Apicius talks about 'meat' without saying what kind exactly, I'm going to guess pork will work. While out shopping last night, the local supermarket had pork loin on special, so I grabbed one, figuring I'd make something Roman with it. It's not a neck joint like the recipe calls for, but those are hard to come by. From what I understand they are best cooked slowly, but are quite good. Which is probably why the Apicius recipe calls for both boiling and roasting. A pork loin probably doesn't need both, but I did it anyway, just to be (somewhat) authentic and to see if there was a reason for it. Oh, there WAS. It was AMAZING.

So here's what I did:

I threw the pork loin in a large stewpot and simmered it for about two hours. The reason I left it that long was because it was kind of a big one (like five pounds) and I wasn't sure how long it would take. I wanted to put something in there to flavor it, but none of the recipes really had any instructions for that (though there are three ham recipes that call for boiling the ham with figs). In the end I did drizzle a bit of the fig defrutum I made a while back over it while it simmered, which made it smell very wonderful.

I had meant to only sort of half-cook it and finish it off in the oven, but when I took it out of the pot and cut into it to test it was already done; in fact it was starting to fall apart a bit it was so tender. Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself in my enthusiasm; let's put this in recipe form:

1 4-5 pound pork loin
couple tablespoons defrutum or caroenum (optional)
about a dozen peppercorns (or more or fewer to taste)
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon dried mint
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)

Put the pork in a large soup pan with water to cover. Drizzle with caroenum or defrutum if you like, then bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, then let it cook for something like two hours, skimming as necessary, or until the pork is very tender. Transfer to a baking dish with a few tablespoons of the simmering liquid.

Preheat oven to 325° Fahrenheit (160° Celsius, if I've got that right). Grind the peppercorns and the other spices, then mix with the honey and liquamen to a paste. Spread over the top of the pork, then bake for half an hour to crisp up.

I made this basically to have some leftovers for other recipes from Apicius; there are plenty of sauces in there for copadia, probably leftover tidbits of meat, which I would like to try. The original recipe just says 'spices'; I picked ones that would work with the recipe I had my eye on, but you can substitute out whatever you like. Those three did work though, quite nicely.

Oh my god, really, this was amazing. The long simmering meant it was tender as could be, while the bit of roasting at the end dried it out a little and gave it a nice crunchy sweet crust which was pure heaven. It was so perfectly balanced and absolutely delicious. Oh I'll be making this again!

Apicius 8.5.2: Beef With Quince

This time, the lone beef recipe.

The Romans don't seem to have eaten beef like we do; I have it in my head it's because cattle were mostly used as work animals, and so not really fit for eating. On the other hand, I know in ancient Greece it was appropriate to sacrifice a cow or bull to certain Gods; as the animal thus killed was then generally cooked and shared in a ritual feast, they at least must have eaten it here and there. But here it is.

The seasoning is actually exactly the same as the lamb recipe just below—liquamen, pepper, and laser/asafoetida—but the other ingredients make it a very different dish.

Quince is a little hard to come by, though worth seeking out (it's generally seasonal, in the autumn); if you can't find it pears will do. Sort of.

[8.5.2] uitulinam siue bubulam cum porris [uel] cidoneis uel cepis uel colocaseis: liquamen piper laser et olei modicum.

8.5.2. Veal or beef with leek or quince, or onion, or taro: liquamen, pepper, laser, and a little oil.

Actually I suppose given the options in this recipe it could count for more than one. The first uel, which I assume means 'or', is in brackets, meaning it's not found in all manuscript editions; I took that to mean it could be leeks and quinces. There is another quince with leeks recipe elsewhere in Apicius, so the two were known to be paired together.

1/2 pound or so of beef, cut into cubes
1 leek, white and light green parts only, sliced into half moons and thoroughly washed
1 peeled, cored, and chopped quince (or large pear)
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
several peppercorns, ground (or more to taste)
1/2 teaspoon asafoetida
1 tablespoon olive oil

Put all the ingredients (unless you are using pear instead of quince) in the pan with water to cover. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the beef is tender (how long will depend on the cut of beef), adding water if necessary as it cooks. Once the beef is tender let the liquid reduce to the consistency of a thickish sauce or gravy. If you're using pears rather than quince, add them just at the end and cook until the pieces are soft but still holding their shape.

Don't be afraid to cook the quinces for a good long while; even if you use stew meat and end up simmering this for a couple hours they won't fall apart. They're better the longer you cook them, actually. Oh, and watch out when you cut the beef up; you may find, like me, that you have some extra 'help':

(That's Rory. Yes, his poor ears are a bit mangled from a pair of hematomas a few years back, but he's otherwise fine. And yes, when he's bad I call him Roranicus Pondicus!! How appropriately Roman.)

This dish was really quite good. The quince paired well with the leek, and gave the whole dish a nice sweetness. And even though the spices were the same as the last lamb recipe, it was definitely different. The cut of beef I used (it was the one on sale) was a shoulder steak; it turned out to be fairly tender, so I didn't cook it all that long. I would like to try it in a proper stew, to see just how mellow the quinces could get.

It doesn't seem like the Romans usually browned their meat first, though I suppose that might simply be a detail left out of Apicius, with its terminal case of shorthand. You could if you wanted to. Even so this was quite good, and is going straight with the keepers.

Apicius 8.6.1: Lamb With Black-eyed Peas

Another lamb recipe. This one sounded like a good hearty dish for a chilly night.

[8.6.1] copadia hedina siue agnina: pipere liquamine coques, cum faseolis faratariis liquamine pipere laser, cum inbracto bocellas panis et oleo modico.

8.6.1. Kid or lamb pieces: cook with pepper and liquamen, (or) with cow peas, liquamen, pepper, laser, (or) as a relish on pieces of bread with a little oil.

The translation has a bit of guesswork to it; in a footnote, G&G state "[t]he term faseoli faratariis seems to imply a 'starchy' pea, or perhaps pea flour is intended. Lit. 'with flour-filled beans'". So 'cow peas' (which Wikipedia tells me is the same as black-eyed peas) is a guess. They are an Old World plant, native (probably) to Africa, and it seems likely the Romans knew of them. I liked the idea of a lamb and bean dish with a thick sauce; again I was thinking of the Moroccan tagine, which is a slowly simmered meat dish that is a little thicker than a stew, so that's what I aimed for.

1 pound lamb, cut into cubes
1/2 cup dried black-eyed peas (cowpeas)
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
several peppercorns, ground (or more to taste)
1/2 teaspoon asafoetida

Put all the ingredients in a wide frying-pan with water to cover. Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer, skimming off the foam. Simmer until the beans are soft and the lamb is tender, about an hour and a half, adding more water as necessary. At the end let the cooking liquid reduce down to a stew or gravy consistency, then serve.

This was just as hearty as I'd predicted—even with so few ingredients it had quite a full and rich flavor. Though originally I used a full tablespoon of fish sauce, thinking it needed a bit of broth to it, with the reduction at the end it came out a bit too salty for my tastes (though not inedible in the least); I reduced the liquamen to a teaspoon above to account for that.

It was pretty good, and very rich (I could only finish half the bowl), but I'm not entirely sure I like black-eyed peas. It was the first time I'd had them, and there was something about the taste I didn't really care for. Still, their earthy flavor was strong enough to hold its own with the lamb, and was a good match. I suppose one could substitute navy beans or the like, though those are technically New World ingredients; anyway the original recipe is a little vague on that ingredient so there's a bit of wiggle room.

I think it's probably just me; someone who liked black-eyed peas might just love this, so I'll put it with the keepers, as otherwise it did work quite well and made a rich hearty dish. I'd call it good simple plebeian/peasant food, if old gourmet Apicius wouldn't be insulted.

Apicius 6.2.16: Almond Chicken

Yeah, I'm catching up. I made this one a couple weeks ago now.

[6.2.16] ius candidum in auem elixam: piper ligusticum cuminum apii semen ponticam uel amigdalam tostam uel nuces depilatas, mel modicum, liquamen acetum et oleum.

6.2.16. White sauce for boiled bird: pepper, lovage, cumin, celery seed, roasted hazelnuts or almonds or (any) skinned nut, a little honey, liquamen, vinegar and oil.

For 'boiled bird' I used chicken, because that's what's available here; my little lovage plant is still pretty small, so I left that out instead of bothering the poor thing (I think I may try to root some cuttings over the winter). For the nuts I chose almonds, though they weren't skinned and the sauce wasn't 'white'. It still tasted really good.

1 split chicken breast, with bones and skin
several peppercorns (or more to taste)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
1/3 cup almonds
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
2 teaspoons vinegar
1 tablespoon oil

Boil the chicken in water to cover for 30 minutes or until done. Grind the pepper and seeds to a fine paste in a mortar. Dry roast the almonds in a pan until toasted and fragrant, then grind as finely as you can in a mortar or food processor. Throw the pepper, seeds and ground almonds in a pan and add the rest of the ingredients and heat. Pour over the chicken and serve.

Like the tuna with hazelnut mustard sauce, this 'sauce' was very thick; even with a bit of the liquid from cooking the chicken added it was pretty much a paste, which leads me to suspect that the Romans were using liquamen a lot more liberally, almost as a broth at times. Given I'm using Thai fish sauce, which, though it is made using a very similar process, is a lot saltier than proper liquamen, I'm not sure what to do about that. (Liquamen, according to Grocock and Grainger, was made with about seven parts fish to one part salt; modern Thai fish sauce uses three parts fish to one part salt, or even just one to one.) Also, I kind of don't really like the stuff, though I suppose once it's cooked the wet dog smell goes away. Some added chicken broth could work for some extra liquid I suppose.

At any rate, this dish was really very good, though I didn't realize how similar it was to the earlier tuna recipe until I was eating it. It was quite rich given the ground nuts; I think if I tried it again I'd use a food processor for the nuts to see if I could get them a bit smoother. I'd also add a good deal of chicken broth (or more of the water the chicken cooked in) just to thin it down a bit. But overall, it was very good and is going straight with the keepers.

Apicius 3.2.1: Beets with Leeks

I had been wanting to try this one for a while as a sort of appetizer; it kind of reminded me of the red onion chutney stuff you get at Indian restaurants (and which upon googling seems to just be called 'red onion chutney'), though the leeks are cooked and not raw. It's in a section of Apicius for easily digested food, and is a relish to be eaten with bread, but I thought it might work well as a side dish, too.

II. [3.2.1] PVLMENTARIVM AD VENTRUM. betas minutas et porros requietos elixabis; in patina conpones. teres piper cuminum, suffundes liquamen passum up quaedum dulcedo sit. facias ut ferueat; cum ferbuerit, inferes. similiter polipodium in tepidam mittes. ubi mollierit rades et minutum cum pipere et cuminum tritum in patenam feruentem mittes et uteris.

3.2.1 You boil chopped beets and stored leeks, and arrange them in a dish. Pound pepper and cumin and pour on liquamen and passum so that there is a certain sweetness. Bring to the boil, and when it has boiled, serve it.

In the same way you put polypody into warm water (to cook). When it has gone soft, peel it and put it, cut up, into a hot dish with ground cumin and pepper, and use.

Polypody, incidentally, is not some kind of octopus, like you might think; it's the root of the tree or oak fern, according to Grocock and Grainger. Wikipedia says it's Polypodium vulgare, and apparently it's pretty common here in New England, though I'm not sure I want to go foraging especially given it looks like a lot of other ferns out there. It's known for being a gentle laxative, so that's why it's in that section of Apicius I assume. Anyway.

It occurs to me now that 'beet' might mean either the leaves or the roots; when I made it I assumed this recipe meant the roots, but I don't really know. And again, I'm doing these recipes experimentally, so usually only making a small amount, in this case a single beet root.

1 medium beet root, trimmed, peeled, and diced
1 leek, white and light green parts only, chopped and thoroughly washed
a few grains of pepper, or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1/4 cup passum (raisin wine)

Boil the beets and leeks separately, or, if you don't care that the leeks will stain bright red, boil the beets and when they're getting towards done throw the leeks in with them (they won't take as long). Grind up the peppercorns and cumin seeds, and add the liquamen and passum and mix. When the leeks and beets are done, drain and put them together in a pan along with the passum-liquamen-spice mixture; bring to a boil for a moment then serve.

This was perfectly nice; innocuous might be the best word, though I suppose this recipe is meant to be something mild and good for the digestion. I did find I wanted to put some butter on them, but they were otherwise pleasant enough, given the passum which did make them a little sweet. I didn't try them with bread as a relish proper, though.

While it wasn't all that exciting, it wasn't a failure either, so I'll put it with the keepers as a perfectly acceptable side dish.

Apicius 8.6.6: Lamb in Caroenum Sauce

I figured it was time to try some lamb (it was on sale). Poking around in my copy of Apicius this one looked interesting:

[8.6.6] hedus siue agnus syringiatus (id est mammotestis): exossatur diligenter a gula sic ut uter fiat et intestina eius integra exinaniantur ita ut in caput intestina sufflentur et per nouissimam partem stercus exinanibitur. aqua lauantur diligenter et sic inplentur admixto liquamine et ab humeris consuitur et mittitur in clibanum. cum coctus fuerit, perfunditur ius bulliens: lacte piper tritum liquamen carenum defritum modice sic et oleum, et iam bullienti mittis amulum. uel certe mittitur in retiaculo uel in sportella et diligenter constringitur et bullienti zemae cum modico salis summittitur. cum bene illic tres undas bullierit, leuatur et denuo bullit cum humore supra scripto. bulliente conditura perfunditur.

8.6.6. Hollowed-out kid or lamb (that is, swollen-skinned): carefully bone the carcass from the neck end so that it is like a bag. The entire intestinal tract should be emptied out in this way: blow into the intestines at the top end so that that excrement is expelled from the very bottom. It is washed carefully with water and filled with liquamen, the lamb is sewn up at the shoulder and put in the oven. When it is cooked this boiling sauce is poured on: milk, ground pepper, liquamen, caroenum, a little defrutum, a little oil too, and when it is boiling add starch. Or alternatively it is tied up carefully, put in a net or basket and lowered into a pan of boiling water with a little salt. When it has come to the boil well and truly three times, it is taken out and boiled once more in the sauce written above. Then pour the boiling sauce over it.

Since I was just making a single chop I was able to (thankfully) skip a lot of that; the "boiling" sauce sounded simple but interesting, and I had both the caroenum and defrutum on hand. Here's what I came up with:

1 lamb chop (I used a shoulder arm chop)
about a dozen peppercorns, ground (more or fewer to taste)
1/4 cup whole milk
1/4 cup caroenum
2 tablespoons defrutum
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 teaspoon olive oil
corn starch or other thickener

Put a little olive oil in a pan and heat on medium high; put in the lamb chop and cook about three minutes per side or until done.

Mix all the other ingredients save the starch in a bowl. When the lamb is cooked drain the rendered fat if there's a lot, and pour the milk/caroenum mixture into the pan. Deglaze the pan and bring the sauce to a gentle boil, then thicken with a little starch. Serve with the sauce poured over the chop.

I opted to pan-fry the lamb both because it was a single chop rather than an entire freakin' lamb, and because boiling and lamb don't generally go together unless you're making a stew.

This was quite interesting; the caroenum was a bit tart but still quite sweet, and gave it a rich red color; as there were no spices in it save the ubiquitous pepper, the grapey flavor of the syrups was the main flavor, which was definitely a bit strange to my modern palate. Grapes don't get used much like that. Roman food reminds me a bit of Japanese food, where on the whole there's a little sweetness in everything, even the savory dishes.

It was good though, if unusual, and I'll put it with the keepers as the flavors were quite nicely balanced, though there was rather a lot of sauce to it. If you try it you might want to make two chops with the same amount of sauce instead of just the one.

In other news, I made another batch of the marinated mushrooms, this time with the caroenum made from the fresh grapes. It was a lot more interesting and rich than the versions I'd made with the caroenum from store-bought grape juice. That may be my favorite recipe so far, though it's one of the simplest ones.

Apicius 6.8.10: Chicken With Taro

I happened upon some taro root in my travels the other day; I'd been wanting to try this particular recipe for some time, so got some. Taro is the root of the colocasia plant, widely used in Caribbean cuisine; it's native to southern India and the Romans did know it, though they don't seem to have made extensive use of it. It has a slightly sweet taste to it, sort of like a combination of potato and chestnut. It goes by a lot of names depending on the culture, which is probably why I'd had a hard time finding it before; this time though it was nicely labelled 'taro' so I grabbed some. They look like this, incidentally:

(Picture from Wikipedia)

You don't want to eat them raw, as they'll do nasty things to you, but they're fine once cooked. The ones I got were labelled both 'taro' and 'eddoe' which supposedly aren't quite the same thing, and now I'm a little confused; they're very closely related though and both types of colocasia (at least according to Wikipedia).

I'm going to give three recipes here, as the one I actually used refers back to the others.

[6.8.8] pullum elixum ex iure suo: teres piper cuminum timi modicum feniculi semen mentam rutam laseris radicem; suffundis acetum, adicies caroetam et teres. melle aceto liquamine et oleo temperabis. pullum refrigeratum et mittis siccatum, quem perfusum inferes.

[6.8.9] pullum elixum cum cucurbitis elixis: iure supra scripto, addito sinape, perfundis et inferes.

[6.8.10] pullum elixum cum cologasiis elixis: supra scripto iure perfundis et inferes. farcies inelixum etiam oliuis columbaribus, non ualde ita ut laxamentum habeat ne dissiliat dum quoquitur in ollam submissus in sportellam. cum bullierit, frequenter leuas et ponis ne dissiliat.

6.8.8. Chicken boiled in its own sauce: pound pepper, cumin, a little thyme, fennel seed, mint, rue, laser root; pour on vinegar, add date and pound. Flavour with honey, vinegar, liquamen and oil. Cool and dry the chicken and serve in the sauce.

6.8.9. Boiled chicken with boiled gourds: pour the sauce written above, with the addition of mustard, over the chicken and serve.

6.8.10. Boiled chicken with boiled taros: pour over the sauce written above and serve. You can also stuff the un-boiled bird with preserved olives, but not with too many, so that some space remains and it does not burst while it is cooking in the pot, lowered there in a basket. When it is boiling lift it out and replace it frequently so it does not burst.

The authors note that other translators have considered 6.8.10 to be two recipes, but they opted to give it as one; I don't think the olives part has much to do with the taro part, myself. But given I was just making a single chicken piece as a trial rather than a whole chicken, stuffing it with anything wasn't an option anyway.

My guess:

1 half split chicken breast, bone in and skin on
1 taro root (about the size of a medium potato)
a few peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
a few mint leaves, shredded
a few small sprigs of rue, chopped
1/2 teaspoon asafoetida
2 teaspoons vinegar
2 dates, chopped
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon powdered mustard

Put the chicken in a saucepan with enough water to cover (about three cups) and bring to the boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Grind the seeds and spices in a morter, then add the leaves and grind to a paste; add a teaspoon of the vinegar to loosen it up and put in with the chicken. Grind the dates as best you can in the mortar, then add the honey to make a very sticky mess. Add the remaining vinegar to thin and the liquamen if also necessary; throw it all in with the chicken with the oil and the mustard and give it a good stir.

When the chicken is getting towards done (twenty minutes to a half hour depending on its size), peel the taro and cut it into chunks, then put in with the chicken; cook at least another fifteen minutes longer. When both the chicken and taro are cooked, fish them out and put them on a plate. Bring the sauce to a boil and let reduce till fairly thick, then pour over the chicken and taro and serve.

You could of course use whatever cut of chicken you prefer; I opted for a split breast because I figured the skin and bones would give it a bit more flavor (plain skinned breasts can be really very bland). I had to sort of do the grinding in stages given the small size of my mortar but it all worked and I actually did manage to get the dates to a genuine paste; when the sauce was cooked there were no little bits of date at all. Grocock and Grainger do mention that dried fruits were probably soaked before being ground, which does make a lot of sense.

So, this was really very good; the chicken was quite tasty even though it was boiled, and the taro was lovely and sweet and absorbed quite a bit of the flavor of the sauce. Strangely enough I couldn't taste half the herbs in it on their own—I would never have guessed there was mint in it, for example—but they all came together into something rich and a little sweet. I could taste the mustard (which I did want to), but even that wasn't overpowering.

The only problem I had with it was that there was a tiny bit of bitterness to it, though I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It seemed to be in the sauce, but there should have been plenty of honey in there to counteract the rue; I wonder if it was the asafoetida, but I don't know. In researching taro for this, though, I learned that the eddoe variety is known to have a bit of an acrid taste, so I wonder if that was it, though it did seem to be in the sauce. Other than that, though (which might be cured by adding just a little more honey), it was very good, and I'm going to consider it a keeper.

Caroenum Redux

Remember when I said that my sister had a grape arbor, and that come fall she might be persuaded to give me some grapes (assuming she had them)? Well, she did have some grapes, and she did let me have them. So I went over there yesterday and we picked all these:

Those faux-tupperware things are about eight inches square and three inches deep. I don't really know how many pounds of grapes that was, but once I picked out the good ones this is what I got, a full-sized colander full:

Which I washed as well as I could to get rid of the ants, and then threw in a large pot to squish with a potato masher. (By the way, if you're going to try this at home, a word of advice: wear old clothes.) I can see why grapes are the wine making fruit—they sure do make a lot of juice.

Which, eventually, after a lot of squishing them through a strainer, then putting them in a tea-towel and wringing (which was a surprisingly visceral experience), I ended up with just shy of eight cups of juice:

Which I then boiled down to make another batch of caroenum, the syrup the ancient Romans made from must (fresh grape juice) to use as a sweetener. I'd made a batch before with store-bought unsweetened grape juice, but wanted to try it with fresh ones. If you don't have access to fresh grown grapes, I don't see why it wouldn't work with store-bought fresh ones, though I imagine eating grapes and wine-making grapes are probably different varieties.

It needed a lot of skimming, I'll say, as there was quite a bit of foam, but it eventually reduced down to about a third of its original volume, which I let cool down before funneling it into the same pretty bottle that had held the first batch. I ran it through a sieve first to get rid of any pulp and remove the last of the ants (I hope).

Given they were blue grapes (I have no idea what variety, and neither does my sister, as they came with the house when she bought it; probably the usual Concord) the color was a lot different, coming out a lovely ruby red rather than a brownish amber like with the white grape juice. It also tasted very different, with the unmistakable tang of fresh grape juice. It was quite sweet and did make a syrup, but it was still a little on the tart side. I'm not sure how it did that, but it's got a lot more personality than the kind I made from store-bought.

Just look at that color!

I can't wait to use it; I might try those marinated mushrooms again to see the difference.

Apicius 5.5.2: Barley Soup

This one sounded interesting, if a little weird. I liked the mix of grains and pulses, but I also couldn't figure out how it wouldn't be, well, licorice soup. I really did think it had the potential to be absolutely horrible. But I tried it anyway. Dried beans are cheap, and hey, one should live a little, right?

It should be noted that this recipe is almost word-for-word the same as an earlier one in Apicius, namely 4.4.2, where it is called tisanum barricam. Barricam being an otherwise unknown word, Grocock and Grainger tentatively translate it as 'thick'; maybe, maybe not. It did end up fairly thick, for the record.

[5.5.2] aliter tisanum: infundis cicer lenticulam pisam. defricas tisanam et cum leguminibus elixas. ubi bene bullierit, olei satis mittis et super uiridia concidis: porrum coriandrum anetum feniculum betam maluam coliculum mollem. haec uiridia minuta concisa in caccabum mittis; coliculos elixas et teres feniculi semen satis, origanum silfi ligusticum. postquam triueris, liquamine temperas et super legumina refundis. agitas. coliculorum minutas super concidis.

5.5.2. Another barley soup: soak chick peas, lentils and peas; crush barley and boil it with the vegetables. When they are well boiled, add sufficient oil and chop (these) greens into it: leek, coriander, dill, fennel, beet (leaves), mallow, tender cabbage; chop the greens finely and put them in the pan. Boil (more) cabbage and pound a good quantity of fennel seed, oregano, silphium and lovage. After you have ground them, flavour them with liquamen and pour back over the vegetables and stir. Chop the cabbage finely and sprinkle over.

I wasn't sure what 'mallow' was, being an American; given what I could find out about it online it looks like it was a plant I used to have in my garden as an ornamental, something that was being called a miniature hollyhock or malva. While it was very pretty, it was also hideously invasive and so I'd ripped it out a couple years ago. I had no idea the leaves were edible. Well, supposedly; I'm still not sure I got the right plant. Anyway I left it out.

In other news, I did actually find some lovage! A sort of local specialty herb place had it, so I took the trip over there and bought a plant (they didn't have it dry). This being the end of the season though I had to pick the least scraggly of the ones they had left, oh well. It does have a nice new shoot coming in from the middle, so I assume it will be fine (if it makes it through the winter, which it should, I think). But it's pretty small yet and I didn't want to start picking off its leaves, the poor thing. So I used celery seed, still. But I found some! (You don't know how proud of that I am.)

I also made a fairly small quantity (so I thought) because, like I said, I was half sure the thing was going to be completely inedible.

1/4 cup dried chick peas
1/4 cup dried lentils (I used the little ones)
1/4 cup split peas
1/4 cup pearl barley
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 leek (white and light green parts only), cut into half-moons and thoroughly washed
decent handful cilantro or parsley, chopped
4 large sprigs dill leaves, chopped
4 or 5 large sprigs fennel leaves, chopped
4 or 5 beet leaves, shredded
small wedge of cabbage, shredded
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon asafoetida
1 teaspoon celery seed or lovage
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)

Put the chickpeas in some water and bring to a boil. Let them boil for a couple minutes, then turn off the heat and let them soak for an hour. Or, soak them overnight to use the next day.

Put the beans/grains in a pot with four cups of water. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat; let them simmer for something like an hour and a half, until the chickpeas are tender (by that time the peas and the lentils will be starting to dissolve), skimming the foam every so often and adding more water when needed to keep it the consistency of soup. Add the olive oil, then stir in the leeks and the chopped greens, and cook until tender.

Grind up the seeds in a mortar, then add them and the other spices to the soup. Stir in the liquamen and let it cook a few more minutes.

Boil some more shredded cabbage to use as a garnish, if desired.

So, by the time this was done I was really dubious, what with the fennel leaves and fennel seed both. But I was really quite pleasantly surprised—not only did the anise flavor not dominate, it actually gave the whole thing a refreshing sort of flavor, especially combined with the dill. It was actually really good. The lentils and the peas were starting to dissolve and become the body of the soup; I suppose I should have left it longer to really cook down, but I was getting a bit impatient.

I'm quite surprised by how well it turned out. The only thing I would change (or rather, add) would be to throw some chicken broth in there. It did make a decent broth on its own, but it could have used a bit of extra oomph (though I suspect the Romans would have used more liquamen than I did). Otherwise, though, it all worked quite well. I do think it was important to keep it fairly thin for quite a while, because the greens needed to be able to cook in something that was mostly water; I added probably another four cups of water as it simmered. But it thickened up pretty quickly at the end.

So, surprisingly enough this one is a keeper!

Apicius 2.1.1 & 4.3.1: Sea Food Minutal

We've had some cooler weather lately as summer fades, which has got me wanting soup. So this time I combined two recipes, a sea food minutal or thickened stew which called for little fish meatballs, the meatballs being the second recipe. First the minutal recipe proper, in the Latin and English as usual:

[4.3.1] minutal marinum: pisces in caccabum mittes, adicies liquamen oleum uinum cocturam. porros capitatos coriandrum minutatim concides, esiciola de pisce minuta facies et pulpas pisces cocti concarpis, urticas marinas bene lotas mittes. haec omnia cum cocta fuerint, teres piper ligusticum origanum; fricabis; liquamen suffundes, ius de suo sibi, exinanies in caccabum. cum ferbuerit tractam confringes, obligas, cum ferbuerit, agitas; piper aspargis et inferes.

4.3.1 Sea food minutal: put the fish in a pan, add liquamen, oil, wine, stock; chop leek and coriander finely, make finely ground fish forcement and flake the flesh of the cooked fish, and put in well-washed sea urchins. When all these are cooked, pound pepper, lovage, oregano, pound again, pour on liquamen and some of the cooking liquor and put it back into the pan. When it has come to the boil, crumble a tracta in, thicken it, and stir it when it comes to the boil (again); sprinkle with pepper and serve.

And the forcement or meatballs:

[2.1.1] isicia fiunt marina de cammaris et astacis de lolligine de sepia de lucusta. esicium condies pipere ligustico cumino laseris radice.

2.1.1 Seafood forcemeat is made from prawns and lobster, from squid, cuttlefish, and spiny lobster. You will season the forcemeat with pepper, lovage, cumin, and laser root.

First, a word on sea-urchins. There was pretty much no way I was going to get my hands on any of them, even though I understand (after a bit of research) that they are a trendy 'new' food in places like Los Angeles and New York City. From what I hear one only eats the coral, which is actually the ovaries of the thing, and it is a taste all its own that isn't like anything else, so there really isn't a substitute. I just left them out.

I also pretty much used whatever the supermarket had that looked interesting, so shrimp and something called langostino lobster tails went into the meatballs. I had no idea what 'langostino lobster' was, though looking at the prepared tail meat I figured it was some kind of crustacean, a small crayfish maybe. When I looked it up at home I found they aren't lobster, or shrimp either, but something else entirely sort of related to a hermit crab; however it does taste a lot like lobster, so they say. I also picked flounder for the generic 'fish' of the recipe. I don't really know the differences between all the white fish out there, if there are any.

One further note: I'd had leeks years ago and been kind of underwhelmed by them, but decided to give them another try. And again, I substituted parsley for the hated cilantro, but if you like cilantro go for it. And, alas, I substituted celery seed for the lovage again. I really wish I could find some of the stuff; lovage is really good.

So, this is what I came up with:

Seafood Meatballs

2 cups total your choice of seafood such as shrimp, lobster, squid, &c. peeled and deveined if necessary. (If frozen, thaw before measuring.)
1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon celery seed (or lovage if you can find the stuff)
1/4 teaspoon cumin seed
1/4 teaspoon asafoetida

Grind the seeds in a mortar to a fine powder. Put the seafood in a food processor and whizz to a paste, then empty into a mixing bowl and add the spices. Mix thoroughly, then set aside to use in the next recipe.

Seafood Minutal

1/4 pound fish fillet
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1/2 cup wine
1 1/2 cups stock (I used vegetable stock)
one leek (white/light green part only), chopped in half moon sections and thoroughly washed
decent handful fresh parsley or cilantro, chopped (came to about 1/4 cup)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon lovage or celery seed
1 teaspoon fresh oregano
corn starch to thicken

Put the fish fillet in a large, fairly deep skillet; add the oil, liquamen, wine, and stock, then the leeks and parsley or cilantro. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to a simmer. As it simmers, form the shrimp forcemeat balls (I made them about an inch big) and drop them into the stock mixture. Grind up the pepper, celery seed/lovage and oregano (or you can just chop the oregano and throw it in rather than attempting to mash it to a paste) and add them to the soup. When it's all cooked through (the leeks will probably take the longest) flake the fish if it hasn't managed that on its own and add a bit of cornstarch mixed with a little of the broth to thicken. Serve with more pepper sprinkled over it.

This came out pretty good, though the first thing I noticed was just how peppery the shrimp/lobster meatballs were. If you're into that sort of thing you'd probably love it, but it was a little much for me, and cutting back on the pepper probably would have allowed the taste of the 'lobster' to be more apparent. Though I could taste it still, and yes, it did have the sweetness of real honest-to-gods lobster. Otherwise though the spices were about right.

I'd been worried the forcemeat wasn't going to stick together, and was all set to cheat and add an egg to the mixture, but it was actually quite sticky and had no problem at all staying in ball shape. I suppose I should note that the shrimp was raw but the 'lobster' was already cooked; the raw shrimp was still plenty sticky to hold it all together.

I used flounder for the fish and it pretty much just disintegrated into the soup; there wasn't much question of 'flaking' it, and I guess I'd try to find a fish that holds together a little better. But it tasted fine.

I'm still kind of ambivalent on the leeks, I guess. Though that said the only thing I would change is to reduce the amount of pepper in the forcemeat balls; otherwise it was quite good even with the leeks. I'm going to put this in with the keepers, with that reservation then, though again, pepper really is one of those individual taste things and someone else might think the amount just right. It was quite well balanced as far as the rest of the spices went otherwise, and the meatballs themselves were quite tasty. So overall: pretty good.

Apicius 1.33 & 4.1.3: Cheese Spreads

In the back: the sweet Apicius 1.33; the front, savory 4.1.3

There are a few cheese mixtures in Apicius, to be eaten, I assume, with bread; two of them caught my eye because of the contrast in flavors. Also they looked pretty simple to put together, always a plus. The first one was a sweet mix, with raisins and dates in it; the second a savory one including garlic, surprisingly rare in Apicius as it was considered a food of the lower classes. The first recipe:

XXXIII YPOTRIMA: piper ligusticum mentam aridam nucleos pineos uuam passam cariotam caseum dulcem mel acetum liquamen oleum uinum defritum aut caroenum.

1.33. Hypotrimma: pepper, lovage, dried mint, pine nuts, raisins, dates, sweet cheese, honey, vinegar, liquamen, oil, wine, defrutum or caroenum.

According to Grocock and Grainger hypotrimma means 'something ground up', i.e. a paste made in a mortar; it looks to be the Greek equivalent of the Latin mortarium. (There is in fact a recipe titled Mortaria just down the page.)

The second recipe was strictly speaking a salad, with I think bread crumbs mixed into it; it's a little vague, though, and so I opted to try just the cheese mixture on its own.

[4.1.3] aliter sala cattabia: panem Alexandrinum excauabis; in posca macerabis. adicies in mortarium piper mel mentam alium coriandrum uiridem caseum bubulum sale conditum aquam oleum; insuper niuem et inferes.

4.1.3. Another sala cattabia: hollow out an Alexandrian loaf. Soak (the crumb) in posca. Put in a mortar pepper, honey, mint, garlic, green coriander, cows' cheese, salt, spiced wine, water and oil. Stand (the pot) in snow and serve.

There are three recipes labelled sala cattabia; I assume sala is 'salad' but I don't know what the cattabia part means, and G&G (they are officially G&G now) don't explain it. They do all use bread, or bread crumbs in the recipe, so maybe that's just what that type of salad was called. Posca is a kind of drink made from wine that's gone sour and turned to vinegar; that doesn't sound all that appetizing to modern western tastes, but there are known drinks made with vinegar, such as the old Persian sekanjabin. At any rate though since I left the bread part out I didn't use it.

I have to admit that 'cows' cheese' did confuse me at first; but then I realized that cheese was probably more commonly made with goats' or ewe's milk than cows' at the time, so the distinction was necessary. I used ricotta for both, assuming it was something like simple homemade farmer's cheese. The Romans did have a variety of cheeses available, both hard and soft, but I have no idea how any of that corresponds to modern cheeses, so I went with what seemed simple. And again, I don't have any lovage, so substituted celery seed.

Oh, and I'm one of those people who cannot stand cilantro (which is what is meant by 'green coriander'). Since it's a genetic thing, I'm going to assume there were plenty of ancient Romans who hated the stuff too, and so would have had to find something else to use. I substituted parsley; alas, the local supermarket had had a run on the fresh stuff (there was a bin for it which was empty save for a few stray leaves), so I used dry, which is kind of a crime, I know. I also didn't have spiced wine, so just used regular wine.

The recipes:

Sweet Cheese Spread (Apicius 1.33)

1 cup ricotta cheese
a few peppercorns (or more, to taste)
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
4 or 5 fresh mint leaves
1 tablespoon pine nuts
2 teaspoons raisins
3 dates
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/4 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sweet wine
1 tablespoon caroenum

Grind the peppercorns in a mortar with the celery seed; add the mint and mash to a paste, then the pine nuts. Add the raisins and dates (you may need to empty the mortar first if there isn't room) and do your best to get them to a sticky paste too (or use a food processor). Add the honey, then the rest of the ingredients to thin it out, then mix it into the ricotta in a bowl. Serve as a spread on bread.

Savory Cheese Spread (Apicius 4.1.3)

1 cup ricotta cheese
a few peppercorns (or more, to taste)
1 teaspoon honey
8-10 fresh mint leaves
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 teaspoon chopped cilantro or parsley
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon wine
1 teaspoon olive oil

Grind the peppercorns first; add the mint, garlic, parsley and salt and make as fine a paste as you can (you probably don't want chunks of raw garlic in there). Add the honey and mix, then the wine and olive oil to thin. Mix into the ricotta, and serve on bread.

These were both quite nice, though I didn't get the dates nearly as mushed up as I thought I had, so the sweet version still had a few chunks in it. I think I'd prefer it smoother, personally, and would use a food processor next time. It was quite well balanced though and had a lovely richness to it, so I'm calling that a keeper.

I was really leery of getting the second one too garlicky (and in fact made sure to mix it second, because I figured the garlic would linger in the mortar no matter how well I scrubbed it out), but I think I under spiced it. It was pretty good, and the mint and garlic were balanced against each other, but a bit too mild; I'd redo it with twice the amount of each, as well as a good deal of fresh parsley to complement the mint. It was a good start though. I left it in the fridge overnight (rather than standing the pot in snow!) thinking it might get a little stronger as the flavors came together, but no. So that one will need a little tweaking before I call it final. Still though, it was definitely on the right track.

So one keeper, and one that needs tweaking. Not bad!

Apicius 7.11.4 Pudding with Nuts

Time for a dessert. There is a decided lack of baking or pastry recipes in Apicius; the usual assumption is that baking was a specialized field, and so considered separate (or separate enough) that such recipes did not end up in Apicius. Which is quite a loss. But there are a few sweet recipes sprinkled in among the others; this one, with three varieties of nuts plus pepper sounded interesting.

[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.

According to Grocock and Grainger alica is ground emmer wheat, available in several grades ranging from coarse to fine, the finest being about like semolina. In Apicius the middle grade was called for the most often to make porridges or to add bulk in meatballs and sausages. I used semolina (although it's a different variety of wheat), which can be made into a porridge more or less like Cream of Wheat (though that has all kinds of other stuff added to it).

'Nuts' in the general sense probably referred to the ubiquitous walnut (again, according to G&G); if not it probably meant whatever kind you have on hand. I had walnuts, so I used them. This is the recipe I came up with. It was quite good, but I think I'd like to tweak it still.

1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
4 teaspoons honey
1 tablespoon sweet white wine
2 tablespoons passum
1/2 teaspoon chopped rue (a couple smallish sprigs)
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
1 cup semolina
2 cups whole milk
3 tablespoons chopped hazelnuts

Grind the pepper in a mortar; add the rue and grind into a greenish paste. Add some of the honey, then the white wine and mix to thin the herb/pepper mixture. Pour this into a saucepan, then add the rest of the honey and the passum. Heat a bit to flash off some of the alcohol, then add the milk and the semolina. Stir with a whisk until smooth; heat on medium till it thickens and bubbles (this will only take a few minutes), stirring often so it doesn't stick to the bottom and burn. When it's thick, take off the heat and set aside.

Toast the pine nuts and walnuts in a dry pan until a little browned but not burnt; grind them up as fine as you can in the mortar, then stir in to the semolina mixture.

Toast the hazelnuts the same way in a dry pan; when they've browned crunch them up in the mortar, though not as finely as the other nuts. Sprinkle over the pudding and serve.

The order of the recipe does imply that the wine and passum are not cooked, only mixed in with the cooked alica at the end, which would give the whole thing an alcohol flavor like modern rum balls. I opted to cook the semolina in the wine/passum/milk mixture for a couple reasons: first, I'm a supertaster and can't stand the taste of alcohol (it's like gasoline to me, ick) and second, again, I'm using a modern smallish mortar and there wasn't really room in the thing to use it in that way.

This was quite good just as it was, as a mildly sweet nutty porridge with the hazelnuts sprinkled on top. The semolina pudding was quite filling; the hint of pepper gave it a little kick that offset the otherwise mild flavor, while the rue gave it a flowery note (the honey completely cancelled out any bitterness). So I think, as a pudding, it will go in the keeper pile as is.

However, the recipe calls it 'sweets', plural, which I'm assuming means some kind of little candy-like finger food. A couple recipes down, in 7.11.6, instructions are given to make a very thick porridge with alica which is then spread out on a plate to firm up, then cut into cubes which are then fried and drizzled in honey. (It also says the alica is better boiled with milk than water, which is why I used the milk.) So I could imagine making this recipe as dense and very sweet little candy squares with the hazelnuts pressed into the top.

I'd never made semolina before, and the instructions I could find online were surprisingly enough quite vague in the amount of liquid needed, so I guessed a bit. While it came out pretty thick it still wasn't something that could be cut into squares, even after a spell in the fridge. So I think next time I'd like to make it with less milk so it could be cut up.

I'd also add more honey, maybe close to triple the amount; I think this recipe could get to something almost fudge-like if it were sweet enough, given the richness of the semolina. At first I thought it could use a little more pepper, but over the course of eating a bowl of it I think it might be enough as is. Pepper is one of those tastes that's sort of cumulative.

So I'd like to try it again sometime, tweaking it a little to make little candies with it; still, just as a pudding, it was really very good.

Apicius 9.10.8 Tuna With Hazelnut Mustard Sauce

Okay, this one was goooood.

(I think my plating skills—and my photography—could use a bit of work.  But trust me, it sure tasted good.)

I thought it was time to try a seafood recipe, as there are an awful lot of them in Apicius; not surprising considering Italy is almost entirely seacoast.

[9.10.8] ius in siluro in pelamide et in tinno salsis: piper ligusticum cuminum cepam mentam rutam caluam careotam mel acetum sinape oleum.

9.10.8. Sauce for salted sheatfish, young tuna and tuna: pepper, lovage, cumin, onion, mint, rue, smooth nuts, date, honey, vinegar, mustard, oil.

Sheatfish (so Wikipedia tells me) is a type of freshwater catfish found in Europe; I went with the tuna variation of the recipe, since the supermarket had tuna steaks but not catfish. That it calls for salted sheatfish probably explains the lack of liquamen which is quite salty.

I cannot seem to be able to find lovage (either leaf, seed, or plant) anywhere these days; I've grown it myself in the past and loved the stuff (the leaf I think goes especially well in chicken dishes). Lovage being fairly reminiscent of celery I used celery seeds, though they really are a poor substitute.

'Smooth nuts' are, according to Grocock and Grainger per their wonderful appendix, most likely hazelnuts.

These are the proportions I came up with, which worked quite well (and on my first try!)

1/2 pound tuna steak
10 peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon cumin seed
1/2 medium onion, chopped
4-5 fresh mint leaves, chopped
4-5 sprigs rue, chopped (about 1/2 teaspoon)
2 tablespoons chopped hazelnuts (a bit more if whole)
3 largish dates
2 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons vinegar
1 teaspoon dry powdered mustard
1 tablespoon olive oil

Grind the peppercorns, celery seed, and cumin seeds in a mortar; put them and all the other ingredients except the tuna in a food processor and whiz to a paste.

Put a bit of (additional) olive oil in a medium-sized frying pan; sear the tuna on both sides for a couple minutes, then add a decent amount of water to deglaze the pan. Add the sauce and stir; simmer it all until the fish is cooked through and the sauce has reduced back to being a thick sticky mess. Serve with the sauce glumped on top of the fish.

Since I figured tuna could hold its own I went for a fairly rich sauce; originally I'd thought to poach the fish in the sauce as it was, but it turned out to be a very sticky and thick affair, and there was not much I could do about that unless I wanted it to be mostly vinegar (which I didn't). So I went with adding some water, then the thick sauce, and sautéing it in that until the sauce reduced back to its original state. It worked perfectly well, though I think maybe such a thick sauce would work better as a coating/crust on baked fish. It did have to be cooked I thought given the onions in it.

I ended up using a food processor; going by the order of the instructions it seemed the onions were meant to be mashed along with everything else into a paste. My mortar though is the small modern kind for grinding spices; Roman mortars were dish-sized wide things and I think they used them sort of like we use food processors, though of course food processors cut food up rather than mashing it. Also I'm getting the impression the Romans like their sauces fairly smooth, so cooking the chopped onions separately with the fish didn't seem like the right way to do it. There wasn't a lot of the sauce, and so I didn't get it too smooth in the food processor (the hazelnuts didn't become a 'butter' or anything and were still in distinct, if small, pieces), but it seemed to work well even so.

I really liked this, and would definitely like to try it again as a coating for a baked tuna steak. I will say it was very rich; I got the smallest tuna steak they had, thinking it would be a little more than a serving, but really given the richness was more like two.

It was nicely mustardy and had a little bit of a kick; the sweetness was just about right, and of a lovely rich earthy sort with the hazelnuts and the dates. I managed to get it nicely balanced on my first try, too, which is kind of a miracle. I'm kind of assuming the long lists of spices in Roman food are parallel to those in Indian cuisine; a little of each making up a sum greater than its parts. And I think doing just a little honey and a little vinegar, such that you can't really taste the vinegar on its own is the way to go. It gives it a balanced sweetness without being cloying. Also I think if the vinegar is overplayed it will dominate, and since most recipes include it everything will end up tasting the same, which cannot have been the intent.

As I said, I'd like to try this again in a baked version, but for now it's still going straight in the keeper pile. It really was very good!

Apicius 4.3.6 Pork and Apricot Minutal

Finally, a meat dish. This one is a minutal, which means (as per Grocock and Grainger) a stew made with small or chopped pieces of meat. This one with the apricots reminded me especially of the famous lamb and apricot tagine from Morocco, which is a slow-cooked sweet and savory stew. Given the meat was pre-cooked, the Roman recipe didn't need nearly as much time. The Latin and the English, as usual:

minutal ex praecoquiis: adicies in caccabo oleum liquamen uinum; concides cepam ascaloniam aridam; spatulam porcinam coctam tessellatim concides. his omnibus coctis teres piper cuminum mentam siccam anetum; suffundis mel liquamen passum acetum modice ius de suo sibi; temperabis; praecoqua enucleata mittis, facies ut ferueant donec percoquantur. tractam confringes, ex ea obligas, piper aspargis et inferes.

4.3.6 Minutal of apricots: put oil, liquamen and wine in a pan, chop in dried ascalonian onions and diced cooked shoulder of pork. When all this is cooked, pound pepper, cumin, dry mint, dill; pour on honey, liquamen, passum, a little vinegar, some of the cooking liquor; balance the flavours. Put in stoned apricots, bring them to a simmer until they are thoroughly cooked. Crumble a tracta and thicken with some of it. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.

This sounds like a recipe invented to use some of last night's roast, i.e. leftovers. I'd never made pork shoulder, but a couple nights before slow-roasted one (per instructions found on the internet) for like four and a half hours with a couple suitably Roman spices (pepper and cumin) and some honey rubbed on it. The honey caramelized almost to black but didn't burn given it wasn't too hot (I think 325° Fahrenheit). I don't think I've ever had roasted pork shoulder but it came out very tender, like meltingly so (I understand the cut is used for pulled pork and the like). However it is a rather fatty cut of meat and was almost a little too rich for me, though it was quite good.

This recipe makes use of tracta, which are dried disks of flour crumbled into sauces to thicken them. They can be made from scratch, though I understand they are a lot of work. Since I don't have any (I may make some someday, just to be authentic), I used cornstarch, although I suppose that's pretty New World.

Ascalonion onions are a bit of a mystery and cannot be identified with certainty according to Grocock and Grainger; though the ancient city of Ascalon (Ashkelon) in what is now Israel gave its name to both shallots and scallions they may not be either of them. I went with scallions because that's what I could find.

I managed to find fresh apricots in my local supermarket; dried ones would probably work as well, though you'll have to cook them a bit longer. I also went with fresh mint rather than dried because that is what I had.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 cup wine
3 green onions, roughly chopped
1 cup diced cooked pork shoulder
a few peppercorns
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chopped fresh mint leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried dill
2 teaspoons honey
2 tablespoons passum
1 teaspoon vinegar
2 fresh apricots, stoned and sliced
cornstarch or other thickener

Put the olive oil, liquamen, and wine in a pan; throw in the onions and pork shoulder and let simmer till the onions are soft. Grind the peppercorns, cumin, mint and dill in a mortar; when they form a smooth paste add in the vinegar and honey and mix well. Pour into the pan, then add the passum. Add the apricot slices and simmer for a few more minutes until the apricot slices are cooked but still fairly firm. Thicken with a little cornstarch mixed with some of the cooking liquid. Serve with a little more ground pepper. Makes about two servings.

I left out the second liquamen as I felt there was plenty of it already; I found I wanted to fry the onions in just the oil first but no, the recipe called for simmering it all in the wine mixture.

Okay. This was really good, but then I really like meat + fruit dishes. It was quite well balanced, and not too vinegary, with just the right amount of sweetness to make the apricots work. With the pork shoulder already cooked and very tender the whole thing felt like it had been simmered forever. You could, I suppose, make it with some pork cutlets if you didn't want to roast an entire pork shoulder beforehand, but it probably won't be as tender.

Passum

One of the ingredients the Romans used as a sweetener was something called passum, or raisin wine. This was wine made from dried grapes that were then mixed with must and pressed, i.e. made from raisins before being fermented and so extra sweet (and again, I am totally cribbing this from Grocock and Grainger). There are plenty of raisin wines (also called straw wines) still made in the Mediterranean area but they can be hard to come by, as well as expensive stuff to use just as a flavoring. So I cheated, and made a pseudo-passum by steeping raisins in already-made wine.

It's said to be sweet, and I assume red, so I used a port (again, I am not a drinker and know next to nothing about wines. Seriously I had to look this stuff up on Wikipedia). The bottle was 750 ml, so I used most of a medium sized (twelve ounce) box of raisins; I put them in some Tupperware, poured the wine over it and let it all soak in the fridge for a few days.

When that was done I strained it back into the bottle, then took a spoonful at a time of the soaked raisins and squashed them up in the mortar, then strained them. But that got pretty tedious pretty quick, so I ended up going all 21st century and throwing them in a food processor with a bit of the wine to make a slurry, then straining that back into the bottle.

When I tasted it it was definitely sweeter, with a strong raisin flavor to it. Hopefully that will be an acceptable substitute.

Apicius 5.2.2 Lentils With Chestnuts

This one sounded interesting:

lenticulam de castaneis: accipies caccabum nouum, et castaneas purgatas diligenter mittis. adicies aquam et nitrum modice, facies ut coquatur. cum coquitur, mittis in mortario piper cuminum semen coriandri mentam rutam laseris radicem puleium, fricabis. suffundis acetum mel liquamen, aceto temperabis, et super castaneas coctas refundis. adicies oleum, facies ut ferueat. cum bene ferbuerit, tutunclabis ut in mortario teres. gustas, si quid deest, addes. cum in boletar miseris, addes oleum uiridem.

5.2.2 Lentils with chestnuts: take a new pan and put in carefully peeled chestnuts. Add water and a little soda, put it to cook. When it is cooking, put in a mortar pepper, cumin, coriander seed, mint, rue, laser root, pennyroyal, and pound them. Pour on vinegar, honey, liquamen, flavour with vinegar and pour it over the cooked chestnuts. Add oil, bring to heat. When it is simmering well, pound it with a stick as you pound in a mortar. Taste it; if there is anything lacking, add it. When you have put it in the serving dish, add green oil.

Since this one called for laser root, which is another name for the famed silphium, I broke out the asafoetida. To my surprise it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. Now, it was a few years old (and pre-ground at that), so maybe it had lost some pungency, I don't know. The person I bought it from had originally triple bagged it in ziplocs though, so it had been pretty well sealed up.

It is not chestnut season in these parts right now, so I used some pre-roasted ones in a pouch. They probably taste a little different than boiled chestnuts (a little sweeter), but that's what I could find.

Making this recipe taught me that even though there are very few measurements there is a method to recipes in Apicius, because once I started with it the order made a lot of sense. After I set the lentils to cook, and put the chestnuts in a pan with some water just to heat through, I started grinding the herbs in my mortar. (I left out the pennyroyal again and just used mint.) With the green herbs as well as the dry spices, it formed a thick paste pretty quickly; putting a little vinegar in it and mixing that up (especially to thin the honey, which is quite thick and sticky) made it far more workable, and something that could be poured in to the vegetables without leaving half of it behind. Which is also I think why vinegar is in there a second time, because that's when you're adding it properly for the taste. In the next recipe down, also a lentil recipe, the authors' note says they replaced the second vinegar with wine, as it seemed redundant. But I think it makes sense given the method.

So here is what I came up with:

1/2 cup dry lentils (will make about a cup cooked)
1 cup peeled chestnuts
a few peppercorns (or more to taste)
1/8 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander seed
1/4 teaspoon asafoetida
1/2 teaspoon fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 teaspoon fresh rue leaves, chopped
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 teaspoon honey
olive oil

Heat the lentils in a decent amount of water; bring to a boil then reduce to simmering, and cook for about a half an hour or until soft but not mushy. If using raw chestnuts, boil them in a separate pan with a pinch of baking soda until cooked (I'm afraid I don't know how long that will take, but probably not as long as the lentils). Mine were already cooked so I put them in some water just to heat. Grind the seeds and herbs in a mortar to make a thick paste; dilute with a little of the vinegar, then add the honey, fish sauce and the rest of the vinegar to the mortar and mix/mash it well.

When the lentils are done, strain them and add them to the strained chestnuts, then mash with a fork or potato masher. Add the spices/vinegar/honey mix, and a bit of olive oil so it's not too dry. Turn out into a serving dish with a little more oil drizzled over the top. Makes about two cups.

I was very wary of getting too much cumin in there so went quite light on it, and over all I think the balance of spices worked really well. No one flavor dominated, but it had a nice sweetness to it. I think the secret is to go pretty light on the vinegar/honey so that it's not too obviously sweet and sour, but just has a bit of background sweetness with enough bite to be interesting. As it was it was really well balanced, I thought. Mind you, it wasn't a particularly appetizing color, but that's what you get with lentils (I have a cousin who used to call lentil soup 'mud soup', and that's about right).

I was really very pleased with this (I do like lentils anyway); the earthiness of the lentils paired very well with the sweetness and texture of the chestnuts, and the herb/spice mixture added quite a bit to it without being overpowering, so this one is going straight into the keeper pile. I'd like to try it with some fresh chestnuts come fall, too.

Apicius 3.7 Melon Salad

And another simple summery dish, this time watermelon with a sweet and sour dressing. Following are the Latin and English versions, once again from my copy of Apicius: A Critical Edition with an Introduction and English Translation by Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger, which I have to say is a damned fine edition of Apicius, with an awful lot of helpful appendices on ingredients &c.

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.

I had just sort of assumed that melons like watermelon were New World things, since they look (to this non-botanist's eye anyway) related to the squashes like zucchini and butternut; but no. Poking around on the internet I fell down the rabbit hole of JSTOR to find Melons and Watermelons in the Classical Era by Alfred C. Andrews published in Osiris, Vol 12 (1956), which article says that there are even representations of melons in paintings from Herculaneum and Pompeii (although poking through some books and google images I couldn't find them, alas). According to Andrews watermelons are native to southern Africa, while cantaloupes and muskmelons are native to Asia and Africa; the ancient Egyptians had them, which must have been very welcome in that climate, and from there they spread to Greece and then Rome. I think that's pretty cool (but then I am a dork; witness this blog.)

As usual the "recipe" is just a list of ingredients with no proportions; it looked like it could reasonably be a vinaigrette dressing to pour over the melon pieces, so that's what I did.

This recipe uses some ingredients that are very typical of Roman food while very unusual to modern tastes, so I'll explain (and I really shouldn't take any credit for these explanations as they are all cribbed from Grocock and Grainger).

First, passum is a very sweet raisin wine; I don't drink so don't know much about wines, but I hear it is a little tricky to come by. But since the recipe gives honey as an alternative, I used that.

Liquamen is the famous fermented fish sauce. Grocock and Grainger devote an entire section of the appendix to liquamen and garum, concluding that garum (the more familiar name to modern readers) is a higher quality table condiment, often made with fish blood, while liquamen was the more common version made from whole fish and used in cooking (and hopefully I have got that straight). Luckily Thai fish sauce is really quite close to liquamen and readily available, though it's probably rather saltier than liquamen.

Silphium is the famous extinct herb/resin which was greatly loved by the Romans; as it went extinct in classical times they had already figured out substitutes such as its relative asafoetida, which I have some of, but have never opened because frankly I'm a little scared of the stuff. It's also called 'devil's dung', after all. But that was optional anyway, and given that I'm still a modern American and not acclimated to Roman cuisine just yet, I took the coward's route and left it out.

Now, pennyroyal is perfectly well-known in modern times; there is, however, some controversy about its toxicity (it has been implicated in some deaths), so I went with its common relative mint. Which, and I feel very silly for this, I bought fresh. I have plenty of mint in my garden (if you have any mint in your garden you have plenty of mint) but it's chocolate mint, and I didn't think that was going to work. So I bought freakin' mint.

My original guess at proportions:

2 cups sliced watermelon
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
10 peppercorns, ground
10 mint leaves, shredded (about 1 tablespoon)

Put the watermelon in a bowl; whisk the remaining ingredients in another bowl and pour over the watermelon.

I'm definitely on the fence on this one. On the one hand it had plenty of interesting contrast—the heat of the pepper vs. the coolness of the melon, the sour vinegar vs. the sweet honey, and the salt of the liquamen also balancing out the sweetness. But it's hard to tell. I don't know if I just don't have the hang of Roman food, or if the proportions need tweaking, or if maybe I just don't like it. I even went pretty light (I thought) on the liquamen because after all that stuff kind of smells like wet dog to me. It was also really really peppery (and a bit heavy on the salt from the liquamen come to think of it). I think maybe I should try it again, halving the liquamen and pepper while leaving the rest as it is. Also I think the dressing would have benefited from sitting overnight in the fridge to come together a bit.

I guess this one gets a :|

Apicius 1.22 Berries in Syrup

This recipe is actually for preserving blackberries, but it sounded like something that could work as a dessert or sweet dish on its own. The Latin:

XXII. MORA VT DIV DVRENT: ex moribus sucum facito et cum sapa misce et in uitrio uaso cum moram mitte; custodies multo tempore.

And the English:

1.22. How to preserve blackberries:* make a purée from some blackberries and mix it with syrup and put it in a glass vessel with (some more) blackberries. You will keep them for a long time.

*Or possibly mulberries. [Authors' note.]

I didn't have any blackberries, but I have a back yard full of these things called wineberries. They're originally from eastern Asia (Korea I think), not Rome (and not my back yard either), but they are obviously in the blackberry/raspberry family. They're ripe when a deep burgundy color (hence the name) and have these weird sticky sepal things that open up to reveal the berry. The berries are a bit sticky too, but they are quite good. They're probably closer in taste to raspberries than blackberries, but I figured they'd still work with this recipe.

So I went out there and picked a bunch, a little less than a cup. I could have picked more, but I was in a skirt and sandals which is not exactly the right outfit for tromping through brambles, so I just got what I could reach.

I washed them off then took half of them and squished them with a fork to make the purée, then strained it through a sieve into a bowl, because who needs more raspberry seeds in their life? Not me. I then added the syrup (the caroenum I made last week) and poured it over the berries. Here's the entire (very simple) recipe:

1 cup raspberries/blackberries
1/4 cup caroenum

Take half the berries and mash with a fork; strain through a sieve into a bowl, then mix with the caroenum and pour over the berries.

It was actually a lot sweeter than I was counting on and I think in the future I would use proportionally less caroenum. It probably was a bit much for the small amount of berries I had; also wineberries are probably sweeter than blackberries anyway. If you were doing it to preserve them (as per the original recipe) then you'd probably want them floating in there a bit, true. As a (totally non-period) note though: the caroenum + wineberry juice mixture would go real nice in some seltzer water as a summertime drink.

I think this is probably a keeper with a bit of adjusting; I'd like to try it with some proper blackberries next time.

Apicius 7.13.2 Roman Marinated Mushrooms

This one sounded both appetizing and fairly simple, once the caroenum was made. Here's the Latin, with Grocock and Grainger's translation below.

[7.13.2] in fungis farneis: piper carenum acetum et oleum.

7.13.2 Sauce for ash-tree fungi: pepper, caroenum, vinegar and oil.

I have no idea what kind of mushrooms 'ash-tree fungi' are; they could grow on the trees themselves like wood ear, or might get the name because they were commonly found underneath ash-trees. I went with what the supermarket had, of course, so got a half a pound of crimini mushrooms.

The two other ash-tree fungi recipes said to boil the mushrooms, so I assumed this one also meant for them to be cooked.

It's not much of a 'sauce', though, being on the thin side with no thickener called for. What it did look like, however, was a version of marinated mushrooms, so I figured I'd try that. Keeping it simple, this is what I came up with:

1/2 pound mushrooms, cleaned and trimmed
1/4 cup caroenum
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
10 peppercorns

Cut mushrooms in half or quarters if they're large, and grind the peppercorns in a mortar. Mix the caroenum, vinegar, oil and pepper in a saucepan; add mushrooms. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer a few minutes until the mushrooms are cooked. Makes about two servings.

I tasted one or two, and it was quite nice, if a little bland. That's probably because although I could have sworn we had some cider vinegar we did not and so had to use rice vinegar, which is quite mild and a little sweet. Also I do intend to leave it to do the marinating thing, so we'll see how it all tastes after spending the night in the fridge. I was definitely wary of it getting too peppery, so may have been conservative about that. Still, the sweetness of the caroenum makes it a nice take on marinated mushrooms. I look forward to tasting it tomorrow! I'll ETA then.

ETA the next day: yep, this one's a keeper. The oil/vinegar/caroenum proportions are just right. The only possible changes I might make are a slightly stronger vinegar like I said above and maybe a little more pepper, but that sort of thing is to taste anyway. Even so it worked quite well once it cooled down (it's so hard to figure out if flavors are balanced when something's hot, I find). I'm calling this one a success.

ETA II: I made another batch, twice as large, this time with the cider vinegar, which did make a difference and gave it the bite the rice vinegar was lacking. So here's the final recipe, in an amount to feed several people as a side dish:

1 pound mushrooms, cleaned and trimmed
1/2 cup caroenum
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
20 peppercorns

Cut mushrooms in half or quarters if they're large, and grind the peppercorns in a mortar. Mix the caroenum, vinegar, oil and pepper in a saucepan; add mushrooms. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer a few minutes until the mushrooms are cooked. Makes about four servings.

And now I'll link it on the recipe page, where the keepers go!

Caroenum

The Romans did love their sweet and sour sauces; since sugar was not ubiquitous as it is today, they used both honey and a variety of syrups for sweeteners. I have my eye on a mushroom recipe that uses one of those syrups, something called caroenum.

Grocock and Grainger's Apicius has a very nice glossary in the back which goes into the finer points of ingredients the Romans used; according to them, caroenum is probably a syrup made from reduced wine or must, must being freshly pressed grape juice with the skins and stalks still in it, i.e. the state of pre-wine that has just been squished by the feet of dancing satyrs. As I don't have access to that right now (though my sister does have a grape arbor and may be persuaded to give me some fresh grapes come fall), I used unsweetened grape juice from the supermarket, boiled down to a syrup.

There has apparently been much debate about how reduced caroenum should be; Grocock and Grainger argue that it's less about the exact amount the must is reduced and more about the finished consistency, which will depend on how sweet the must originally was anyway. They also say that caroenum appears to have been thinner than defrutum, another syrup that could be flavored with quinces or figs to make it richer. Caroenum seems in part to have been used in the recipes to add a bit of sweetness but also bulk, rather than flavor like defrutum.

I started with a 64-ounce bottle of unsweetened white grape juice, intending to boil it down to about half; as I was doing that I went hunting for a pretty bottle to put it in. Said pretty bottle turned out to hold about two and a half cups, which practical consideration is what ultimately decided me on how much to reduce it. So I simmered it down to about one third of its original volume, which took about an hour. It was still a fairly thin syrup and not overly sweet. Here it is in the pretty bottle, ooooh:

A little time in the fridge did make it a bit thicker, like it was a proper syrup. So then, off to try that mushroom recipe!

ETA: I made a version of caroenum from fresh grapes; that post is here.