Apicius 6.2.14 & 6.8.14: Stuffed Chicken With A Cumin Raisin Sauce

I had tried the stuffed chicken part of this recipe a couple weeks ago, but didn't like the balance of seasonings (it was far too mild); tonight I tried it again and liked it a lot better. It also seemed to need a sauce of some kind, as it was a bit dry without the stuffing, so I went with 6.2.14, Sauce for various birds.

The chicken recipe:

[6.8.14] pullus farsilis: pullum sicut in iure cuminato. a ceruice expedies. teres piper ligusticum gengiber pulpam cesam aliquam elixam, teres cerebellum ex iure coctum. oua confringis et commiscis ut unum corpus efficias. liquamine temperas et oleum modice; mittis piper integrum, nucleos abundantes. fac inpensam et imples pullum uel porcellum ita ut laxamentum habeat. similiter in capo facies. ossibus eiectis coques.

6.8.14: Stuffed chicken: the chicken (is prepared) as if (served) with a cumin sauce. Draw the chicken from the neck, pound pepper, lovage, ginger, chopped meat, boiled alica, pounded brains cooked in stock; break eggs and stir them all to make a smooth mixture. Flavour with liquamen and a little oil, add whole peppercorns and plenty of pine nuts. Make the stuffing and fill the chicken or piglet in such a way that some space remains. You can do the same with a capon. Cook with the bones taken out.

Now. Once again, I'm an American, and a New Englander at that. So, besides the fact that I'm not sure even where I would find brains for eatin', I'm really not inclined to try them. You can call me a wimp; I'm perfectly good with that. It does look like that in a lot of the recipes that call for brains they're used as a binder. I made do with just the egg.

I liked the look of this recipe (brains notwithstanding) because it was one of the few that called for ginger, and that sounded interesting. I don't know, now, if I got the proportions of alica (semolina) to meat right; I was (of course) thinking of bread stuffing, like made at Thanksgiving, but it occurs to me now that they might have wanted it more meat than 'filler'. The stuffing did have a lot in common with some of the sausage filling recipes earlier in the book; those I'd think should be mostly meat. Well, it came out nice anyway. I did go for the whole peppercorns as the recipe called for, so I may not be that much of a wimp, though I have to say I did rather regret it. I think I'd grind it next time, personally. But here's what I tried. It made rather a lot of stuffing, probably enough for four pieces of chicken, actually; since I was testing this I only used one piece, and put the rest of the stuffing to the side of the baking dish to cook with the chicken.

Oh, and the leftover pork was from the pork roast recipe a few posts down (linked in just below in the recipe here). I've found my favorite mix for the honey glaze is a few ground peppercorns, a tablespoon of honey to a teaspoon of fish sauce, and a decent pinch of asafoetida.

1 boneless chicken breast (or half a chicken breast, if they're large)
1/4 teaspoon lovage or celery seed
1 tablespoon fresh minced ginger
1/2 cup diced cooked pork (preferably from a roast per 7.5.5)
1/4 cup semolina flour
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns
3 tablespoons pine nuts

Bring 1/2 cup of water to a boil in a saucepan; add the semolina and take off the heat, stirring until mostly smooth. Let cool a bit.

Grind the peppercorns and lovage or celery seed in a mortar; when a fine powder add the minced ginger and get as smooth as you can manage. Add the contents of the mortar, chopped meat, egg, liquamen, and oil to the semolina and mix till quite smooth. Toast the pine nuts and peppercorns in a dry pan until the pine nuts are lightly browned and fragrant; mix in with the semolina/meat mixture.

Butterfly the chicken breast and flatten it out a bit (I always whack it with the back of a knife); put about a 1/4 cup of the stuffing mix on one side then close it up like a book. Put in an oiled baking pan; you can smooth a little olive oil over the top too if you like. (Extra stuffing can be put in the pan with the chicken, or probably you should use like 4 or so pieces of chicken). Bake in a 350° F oven for 30-40 minutes, covering for the first 20 minutes or so, then uncovering it to crisp up a bit. Serve with the sauce below.

The sauce:

[6.2.14] ius in diuersis auibus: piper cuminum frictum ligusticum mentam uuam passam enucleatam aut damascena; mel modice. uino myrto temperabis, aceto liquamine et oleo. calefacies et agitabis apio et satureia.

6.2.14: Sauce for various birds: pepper, roasted cumin, lovage, mint, de-seeded raisins or damsons, a little honey. Flavour with myrtle wine, vinegar, liquamen and oil. Bring it to heat and stir it with a stick of celery and savory.

I went through the fowl chapter looking for a cumin sauce (since the stuffed chicken recipe mentioned one) and of several chose this one, as it looked like it would harmonize and seemed interesting. I used raisins, because I had a bunch soaking in port in the fridge for another batch of (faux) passum, and pre-soaked ones seemed like they'd be easiest to grind up. Damsons are a type of plum; I would guess that because the recipe says to use either them or raisins, that dried damsons are what it's calling for, i.e. prunes. I do have some on hand, but again went with the raisins because it was easiest for me, but you could certainly try it with prunes if that appeals.

I used to have some savory out in the herb garden; I can't remember now if it was summer (annual) savory or winter (perennial) savory; at any rate there's nothing growing out there now, so I added some dried savory in with the ground spices instead of stirring it with a twig. Also, I didn't have any celery in the house so didn't use it to stir. It didn't cook very long anyway, and I'm not sure quite how much flavor it would have imparted in the first place.

I did not have myrtle wine, and have no idea where I would even find any or how I might make some (since I'm guessing it's made with myrtle berries?), so used some of the raisin-soaked port, assuming it was a sweet sort of interesting wine being called for.

a few peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin or cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon lovage or celery seed
1/2 teaspoon savory
1 teaspoon dried mint
1 tablespoon raisins, soaked either in water or wine until soft
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon sweet wine or passum
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 teaspoon olive oil

Dry roast the cumin seeds, if using; grind the peppercorns and the cumin to a powder in a mortar, then add the savory and mint and grind them as well. Add the raisins and mash to a paste as smooth as you can manage. Add the honey, wine, vinegar, liquamen and olive oil and mix, then turn into a small saucepan and heat for a bit, then pour over the stuffed chicken above and serve.

This was good, if a little odd. We don't usually stuff one kind of meat with a different kind of meat, although it really is very Roman. Ginger does have an affinity with sweetened pork, so it worked, though as I was using the ubiquitous de-boned, de-skinned bland chicken breast the chicken part anyway wasn't exactly exciting. It would have been much better with the skin left on I think. The original recipe does say you can use a piglet instead of the chicken, so pork stuffed with pork might be more to modern tastes and one could use a thick pork chop butterflied to hold the stuffing. I think it came out pretty good, though; the second time around I did get enough ginger in there, though really personally I would skip the peppercorns and use ground. They were a bit much for me.

The sauce was quite good, very dark and very rich, just a little sweet and sour; there wasn't a whole lot of it, though, so if you make more than one piece of chicken you may wish to double (or even triple) the recipe. I suppose you could add a bit more wine to it too, without doing any harm.

Overall, I'd give it a B or so, so I'll consider it a keeper.

Apicius 7.11.4 Redux: Peppered Sweets

So I gave this one another try tonight, after finally figuring out how to make really thick semolina without burning it. I was able, then, to roll them up like little truffles, the 'sweets' of the recipe title. Here, again, are the Latin and English, to refresh your memory:

[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.

Alica, you will remember, is a type of groat, or smashed up grain (in this case emmer wheat) which came in several grades, the finest (according to Grocock and Grainger) about the texture of semolina, though that is made from a different variety of wheat (durum, which, according to Wikipedia, was bred from emmer wheat originally anyway). I suppose something like bulgur wheat (though a bit more coarse) like you'd use for making tabbouleh would also work. (And, looking it up, emmer wheat is still used in Italy, where it's called farro, and is apparently available in health food stores, so I'll keep an eye out.) At any rate, I used semolina flour.

And again, I didn't have any rue, as it's the middle of winter and it has all died down in my herb garden (I checked). Rue, while bitter, gives a distinct flowery note, which makes me wonder if a little rose water (not that that's period) would give a similar effect. I did use wildflower honey, so hopefully that helped.

When I'd made this recipe in the past I didn't get the semolina very thick, and so the whole thing came out like a pudding, which, while perfectly tasty, wasn't what I'd guess the original recipe had in mind. Though who can tell, really; Apicius is more about what's between the lines than the actual lines sometimes.

So here's my third attempt:

a dollop of cream plus whole milk to equal 1 cup
1/2 cup semolina flour
15 peppercorns (or more, to taste)
3 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon wine
1 teaspoon passum
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

Heat the milk + cream up as hot as you dare without scalding it (I got it to just starting to simmer), then throw in the semolina, stirring constantly. Take off the heat pretty much immediately and continue stirring till more or less smooth and about as thick as cookie dough, then set aside.

Grind up the peppercorns in a mortar, then add the honey, the wine, and the passum. Stir to mix.

Toast the pine nuts and walnuts in a dry frying pan on medium heat until lightly browned and fragrant. Tip out onto a cutting board and cut them up as finely as you can manage, then put in the mortar with the honey/wine/pepper mixture and get as smooth as possible. When you're tired of that, throw it all in with the cooked semolina, then mix it as smoothly as you can with a spatula or potato masher.

Toast the hazelnuts in the pan you used for the other nuts until again lightly browned and fragrant, then empty them onto the cutting board and chop as finely as you can.

Take small lumps of the semolina mixture and roll into one inch balls (you may wish to give your hands a light coating of oil so it doesn't stick, and if you're being strictly authentic it probably ought to be olive), then roll in the hazelnuts till you get these lovely little truffle-looking things. Makes about two dozen.

These were really really really really good, and very rich. And even with the uncooked wine and the passum they didn't taste alcoholic at all (and I'm pretty sensitive to that). I kept nibbling on the semolina mixture (like one does with cookie dough, because one can't resist) as I was getting the hazelnuts ready and kept thinking it was a little on the bland side, but once the hazelnuts were on there they made the whole thing work quite well. I would have said that maybe the mix could have used a little salt, just like a cake has a little just to bring the other flavors out, but now I don't think it needed even that. The walnuts (what Apicius generally means when it just calls for 'nuts') and the pine nuts gave it a richness, along with the semolina itself and the milk (plus the cream I added). The peppercorns this time were fine, and gave it a little bite without being obnoxious.

So, yeah, this one is definitely going in the keeper pile. Third time pays for all, as they say.

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.