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!
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