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.
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