APICIUS 6.8.11: Vardanian Chicken

Well, I'm back, to quote Sam Gamgee.  It has been a while.  

So let's jump right into it with another chicken recipe; this one is called Vardanian Chicken.  As usual I am taking the recipes and translation from Apicius: A Critical Edition With an Introduction and English Translation, by Sally Grainger and Christopher Grocock.  Now, while the footnote on the recipe page tells the reader to refer to Appendix 3 for information on the possible 'Vardanus' the recipe is named for, there is no mention of any 'Vardanus' in Appendix 3 (oops).  And poking around on the internet I couldn't find anything about a 'Vardanus', though I did find a 'Vardanes', a prince of Parthia of the 1st century C.E., so maybe that's him.  I rather like the idea of this chicken being nice enough for royalty.

At any rate, I thought I'd try this with a whole chicken for once; and going over the recipe it looked like it might be a type of stewed chicken.  Naturally the recipe doesn't state that outright, because why would it; but it does sound like it needs to be cooked in a bit of liquid.  Also, the three recipes before it are titled 'boiled' chicken, and a lot of the recipes in Apicius build on the preceding ones.  Of course, the Latin term used for 'boil', whatever, is a rather general term, used for several different cooking methods including frying in oil (!), so I'm assuming 'stewed' could fall under that term too.

To stew this chicken, I did add water, though the recipe doesn't specifically call for it; either the original cook figured it was so obvious he didn't bother to mention it, or rather more wine or liquamen is used, as that ancient Roman fish sauce used a lot less salt than the modern Thai fish sauce I've had to substitute.

Here's the Latin, and the English, as usual:

[6.8.11] pullus Vardanus:  pullum quoques iure hoc:  liquamine oleo uino fasciculum porri coriandri satureiae; cum coctus fuerit teres piper; nucleos ciatos duos et ius de suo sibi subfundis et fasciculos proicies.  lac temperas et reexinanies [in] mortarium supra pullum, ut ferueat.  obligas eundem aluamentis ouorum tritis, ponis in lance et iure supra scripto perfundis.  hoc ius candidum appellatur.

[6.8.11] Vardanian chicken:  cook the chicken with this sauce:  a bundle of leek, coriander and savory, in liquamen, oil, wine; when it is cooked, pound pepper, two cups of pine nuts, and pour on the cooking liquor and discard the bundle.  Blend with milk and pour the contents of the mortar over the chicken and bring it to heat.  Thicken it with beaten white of egg.  Place the chicken on a serving dish and pour the sauce written above over it.  This is called a white sauce.

Why yes, that is called white sauce, even now, because it's white, fancy that.  Anyway here's my take on this recipe:

1 four to five pound whole chicken
2 leeks, rinsed and roughly chopped
1 small bundle of cilantro (or parsley)
1 small bundle of fresh savory, or 2 tablespoons dried
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup white wine
several black peppercorns, or 2-3 grains of long pepper
1 cup of pine nuts
1/2 cup of cooking broth
1/2 cup of whole milk
1 egg white

Rinse the chicken in cold water and remove the giblets, if any, then place in a large stock pot.  Add the leeks, the cilantro or parsley, the savory, fish sauce, olive oil, and wine, then add water to nearly cover it.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a lowish medium and cover, so that it is bubbling quite gently.  Stew the chicken for about an hour and a half, checking every once in a while to make sure it doesn't go dry (if it needs more water, add it).

When the chicken is so tender it is falling off the bone, take it off the heat and start on the sauce.

Toast the peppercorns and the pine nuts in a dry pan until fragrant and a little colored, then take off the heat and put in a bowl so it doesn't continue to brown in the hot pan.  Fish out the peppercorns and grind them first; then add some of the pine nuts and go at it until it's practically pine nut butter.  If, like me, your shoulder gets sore, feel free to use the food processor.  There is no shame in it.

Ladle out some of the broth and strain it; then measure out 1/2 cup and add it to the pine nuts along with the 1/2 cup of milk.  Blend until quite smooth, either by hand or machine, then tip into a pan to heat on medium.

Give the egg yolk to the cat, then beat the egg white till smooth; when the pine nut/milk mixture is heated and making a little bit of steam, add a small spoonful of the hot mixture to the egg white and stir to temper it.  (This will prevent the egg from scrambling when added to the hot sauce.)  Then add the egg into the sauce and stir constantly until it thickens, which won't take too long, probably less than a minute.  Remove from heat.

You can either then remove the whole chicken to a plate, and pour the sauce over to serve, or just cut off some of the chicken as an individual portion like I did and scoop some sauce over it, depending on how fancy you're feeling.  

This was unexpectedly mild for a Roman dish, though looking back at the ingredients I suppose that makes sense.  It was also quite rich, with the pine nuts and the whole milk and I would only tweak it a little.  When I originally made it, I only used one single grain of the long pepper, since it's about equivalent in size to several regular black peppercorns, but of course it has a much milder, and richer, flavor, so I've called for double or triple that amount above.  I suppose pepper is more or less always to taste, anyway.

It also was a little lacking in salt.  Now it's hard to tell because I of course am a modern American, and we're all acclimated to a truly scandalous and unhealthy amount of sodium, so older recipes are probably going to taste like there's not enough salt.  That said, it's true that I was afraid to use too much fish sauce, as it can get overpowering even though it does mellow quite a lot when cooked.  Perhaps it should have two tablespoons instead of just the one.  I did sprinkle the finished dish with a little salt; I would guess the Romans probably did the same, as individual tastes certainly vary.

As usual, I swapped out the cilantro for parsley as I have that cilantro-hating variation of the OR6A2 gene (and in looking that up, found that the same foul-smelling chemical in cilantro is also found in some stinkbugs, and yes!  I've always thought marmorated stinkbug stink smells like cilantro!); though of course parsley is missing the little bit of citrusy taste that cilantro has.  Perhaps next time I'll add a little lemon juice.  

Overall this was quite good; the chicken was wonderfully tender, and the sauce rich, and I'd make it again, just with a little more pepper and salt, maybe.  So I'll add it to the keepers list!

Note:  I did not get a photo of this; the chicken was so tender that it was literally falling apart and looked quite a mess, though it certainly tasted good!

APICIUS 6.8.1: Chicken With Uncooked Dill Sauce

Not-quite-as-horrible-as-usual photo I think; I think my lovely new (repro) Samian ware dish helps.  (Seriously though, my pictures are crap at least partially because I'm always making these in the evening and photographing them by artificial light.)  I am forever embarrassed by my lack of photography skills.  I have a degree in art, dammit!

I have this crazy dream of trying all the recipes in Apicius. It's an especially crazy dream because I., there are an awful lot of recipes in Apicius, II., some of them are fragmentary and/or garbled, III., there are plenty of foodstuffs that are difficult to find here in the US, IV., actually some of them are extinct, and V., some of the ingredients I simply refuse to eat (e. g., brains).

I wasn't entirely sure where to start with this goal; I've been wanting to get a good overview of Roman cooking, and pecking around at random wasn't really doing that.  So I picked one type of dish and decided I'd do the recipes in order, hoping that will help me get a feel for them.  A lot of the recipes do follow one from the other, with only one or two ingredients that differ, and I thought it would be interesting to highlight those differences.  There do seem to be certain 'types' of recipes in Apicius.

I picked the chicken dishes to start with, as that's certainly an easy ingredient to come by.  And the first one is (text and translation from Grocock and Grainger, as ever):

[6.8.1] elixo ius crudum:  adicies in mortarium aneti semen mentam siccam laseris radicem; suffundis acetum, adicies careotam, refundis liquamen senapis modicum et oleum, defrito temperas et sic mittis.

6.8.1.  Uncooked sauce for boiled chicken:  put dill seed, dried mint, and laser root into a mortar, pour on vinegar, add date, pour on liquamen, a little mustard and oil, flavour with defrutum and use as it is.

This recipe is unusual, not just because the sauce isn't cooked, but because there's neither pepper nor lovage in it, which is pretty much mandatory for the chicken dishes.  It seemed to me that the main flavors in this dish ought to be the dill and the vinegar, since those two pair well and the dill was a bit uncommon for Apicius; and since there wasn't much liquid in it otherwise it seemed it would have to use a decent amount of vinegar.  Though to be fair, the Romans probably were able to use their liquamen, fermented fish sauce, rather more liberally; I'm using Thai fish sauce, which is made by a similar process, but is much, much saltier, so you can't use too much.  I ended up adding a little of the cooking liquid to make up for that.  And as usual I used asafoetida for the extinct laser (silphium) root, though it was the powdered resin/sap, not the root part of the plant.

My attempt:

1 chicken breast

2 teaspoons dill seed
1/2 teaspoon dried mint
scant 1/4 teaspoon powdered asafoetida
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped date
1 teaspoon Thai fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon powdered mustard
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon defrutum

Plunk the chicken breast in a saucepan with water to cover; bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Simmer until cooked through; depending on the size something like 20 or 30 minutes should do it.

While that cooks, grind the dill seeds in a mortar (or use a spice grinder); when they're fine enough (that will be up to your tastes and how tired your arm is), add the mint and grind that too.  Add the powdered asafoetida, then the vinegar and date.  Squish that all up until you get a fairly smooth paste, then add the remaining ingredients.  Add a teaspoon or two of the cooking liquid if you think it needs it‑it should be a little thinner than barbecue sauce, but not too thin.

Drizzle the sauce over the cooked chicken when done, or shred the chicken and use as a dipping sauce.

When I tried the sauce by itself in order to try and balance the flavors, I was worried it might be too heavy on the vinegar; however once paired with the chicken the flavor of the chicken itself balanced it out.  A lot of times I think I get the sauces too thick (again, that might be because of the difference in salt between Roman liquamen and modern Thai fish sauce), but this time I think it was about right.  I only used one date, but since I had Medjool dates it was very large (which is why I gave the amount for chopped), and it may have made the sauce a bit too sweet.  Also I think I'd like to have been able to taste the dill more.  It was still quite good, though, and I think just needs a little tweaking.  Also I wonder if grinding the dill seed, and then soaking it in the vinegar (say the night before), would help to draw out the taste a bit.  I know there's all kinds of herb-flavored vinegars out there that use that principle.

I used the usual supermarket boneless skinless chicken breast; and while I kept an eye on it as it simmered it was still a bit dry and bland.  Perhaps thighs would be better; I know when I make chicken and dumplings I use boneless skinless thighs and they end up melty and lovely and still quite moist.  At any rate this was just a test, a single serving.  I would like to someday try all these recipes again using whole chickens, like the Romans did.

Overall though I am pleased with this, so I'll put it in the keeper pile now on the Recipes page.

Apicius 6.8.5: Numidian Chicken

Good grief that photo is terrible. This post might be better without it!
I wanted to try this chicken dish because it was parboiled and then roasted, and that technique worked quite well with some of the other dishes I've tried, specifically the recipe for roast neck joint.

Numidia was a north African kingdom, located in what is now Algeria, extending into parts of Tunisia and Libya as well. It was defeated by Rome in the Jugurthine War in the first century BCE, and was eventually made a province. I'm not sure how this recipe is particularly Numidian; nothing in it is any less Roman, or more exotic, than most other recipes.

The recipes, in both the Latin and English, from G & G:

[6.8.5]: pullum Numidicum: pullum curas, elixas, leuas, laser ac piper aspergis et assas.  teres piper cuminum coriandri semen laseris radicem rutam careotam nucleos; suffundis acetum mel liquamen et oleum; temperabis. cum ferbuerit, amulo obligas, pullum perfundis, piper aspergis et inferes.

6.8.5: Numidian chicken prepare the chicken, (par-)boil it and lift it out; sprinkle with laser and pepper and roast it. Pound pepper, cumin, coriander seed, laser root, rue, date, pine nuts; pour on vinegar, honey, liquamen and oil; balance the flavours. When it comes to heat, thicken with starch, pour over the chicken, sprinkle with pepper and serve.

Since this is an experiment, as usual I just used one piece of chicken rather than a whole bird; this time I used a thigh, with bones and skin, since I figured it would have a bit more flavor than the usual bland skinless boneless breast, especially since it called to be boiled a bit.

As one of the spices I got recently I did get some dried rue; I have no idea if it's still in my (rather overgrown) herb garden, though at any rate things are only just starting to come up here. I also got some more asafoetida, both in resin form and ground. It's definitely a lot stronger than the rather old ground asafoetida I had. And again, that's as (an entirely historical) substitute for the laser (a.k.a. silphium), which went extinct in Roman times. And so also extinct is the laser root called for in the recipe; though I didn't know it while making the recipe, asafoetida is actually from the root of the plant, so would work for that as well.

So here's what I tried:

1 chicken thigh, with skin on and bones in
1 small peppercorn of long pepper (about 1 inch long); or several regular black peppercorns
pinch ground asafoetida
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander seed
1/4 teaspoon dried rue leaves
2 teaspoons pine nuts
1 small date, seeded and chopped
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 tablespoon olive oil

Simmer the chicken piece in water to cover until mostly done, about 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 350º Fahrenheit. Grind the peppercorn(s) in the mortar. When the chicken is ready remove from the water and place in a baking pan, then sprinkle with half the pepper and the pinch of asafoetida. Bake in the oven another 15 minutes or so until the skin crisps up a bit and the chicken is cooked through.

In the mean time make the sauce. Grind the cumin, coriander seed and rue leaves with the remaining pepper; when they're pretty finely ground add the pine nuts and get it all as fine as you can before adding the date, which will make a sticky impossible mess of things. But with patience it will (eventually) make a smooth paste, and so add the vinegar, honey, fish sauce and olive oil and mash/mix. It will still be quite thick at this point.

Dump it into a small pan; I found it so thick that I actually had to add a few tablespoons of water to it. (Again, I suspect the Romans, whose fish sauce was much less salty than the modern Thai variety, were using a lot more liquamen in the first place.) Heat it up to a simmer, and let it cook and re-thicken.

When the chicken is finished, pour the sauce over, sprinkle with a bit more pepper (I forgot, of course), and serve.

Despite the unappetizing photo (really, I am beyond ashamed at my terrible photography skills. I have got to get better at that), this tasted quite nice. The vinegar was quite pronounced and an important part of the sauce. Funny enough I could taste both the rue (bitter) and the honey (sweet) at the same time, though that doesn't really seem possible. It was quite rich too, given the pine nuts, and was over all really a very Roman sauce. There are quite a few 'patterns' in the sauces in Apicius; this one with dates is of a type that shows up on a few recipes. Like I said, very Roman.

I've done a few chicken recipes so far; I'd like to try them again with whole chickens and a greater quantity of sauce, since that's really what the recipe is calling for. As for the technique, of parboiling then roasting, I'm not sure it's really necessary here, at least with our modern chickens, which I imagine are rather plumper and less scraggly than ancient ones. If I'd thought of it, I would have thinned the sauce at the end with some of the water the chicken had cooked in. Oh well. Also, I left out the laser root, thinking there was no equivalent; you can add another pinch of ground asafoetida to the sauce, if you like, though I found there was already plenty of it from when the chicken was roasted.

Apicius 4.1.2: Sala Cattabia

This one looked fairly approachable to modern eyes; more or less a chicken salad with a ginger-raisin vinaigrette. A while back I tried the recipe immediately after it, also a sala cattabia, though it didn't make it into the keepers pile. (I still don't know what 'cattabia' refers to; for a while there I thought maybe it was a type of cooking pot, but no, I was thinking of a caccabus.) This one is said to be 'in the style of Apicius', so extra fancy, I suppose. It would work quite well as a lunch dish, though I had it for supper. It was very yummy, let me say.

The Latin, followed by the English:

[4.1.2] aliter sala cattabia Apiciana: adicies in mortario apii semen puleio aridum mentam aridam gengiber coriandro uiridem uuam passam enucleatam mel acetum oleum et uinum. conteres. adicies in caccabolo panis Picentini frustra, interpones pulpas pulli glandulas edinas caseum Vestinum nucleos pineos cucumeres cepas aridas minute concisas; ius supra perfundes; insuper niuem sub ora, [piper] asparges et inferes.

4.1.2. Another sala cattabia in the style of Apicius: put in a mortar celery seed, dry pennyroyal, dry mint, ginger, green coriander, de-seeded raisins, honey, vinegar, oil and wine. Pound together. Put in a small pot pieces of Picentine bread interlayered with chicken meat, goats' sweetbreads, Vestine cheese, pine nuts, cucumber, finely chopped dried onions. Pour the sauce over (the ingredients); stand (the pot) in snow for an hour, sprinkle with pepper and serve.

According to Grocock and Grainger, Picentine bread is made from alica, a fairly finely milled wheat groat similar in texture to semolina. The alica is left to soak for nine days, probably in must (fresh grape juice, which was usually made into wine). As the must started to ferment, the naturally occurring yeasts acted as a leavening agent. Nowadays we just buy yeast to make bread; of course the Romans had to get it another way. After the nine days more flour was mixed in to make a proper dough, then it was baked. The resulting bread was famous for being quite light and spongy, and I imagine it was a bit sweet too since it started with grape juice rather than just water. I don't know if nine days is long enough to get it to something like sourdough; at any rate it does seem a very interesting way to make bread. Maybe I'll try it someday, though I have to admit my bread-making skills are pretty substandard. I'm going to go ahead and blame my kitchen, which is basically in the cellar, and always a bit on the cool side. I'm sure that's it.

I was able to find a bread made with semolina, crazy enough, though it was this weird sort in Local Supermarket's bakery department that was only lightly baked (as the Gwragedd Annwn prefer, so I hear) that I put in the oven for another ten minutes. Not sure that did anything but warm it up, but it was certainly tasty. A French (or Italian) bread would work, too.

G&G don't give an explanation for 'Vestine cheese', but luckily the internet does, because there totally are people out there who did their PhD's on the History of Cheese. Vestine cheese was made by the Vestini of central Italy, and was a smoked goats' cheese which was quite popular for breakfast. Smoked goats' cheese does exist out there, again according to the internet, but Local Supermarket only had the plain kind, so that's what I used.

I skipped the pennyroyal, since it's on the questionable side; there's mint in it anyway, which is closely related, so I just used plenty of that.

And I left the sweetbreads out entirely, because no. Just no. I mean, you can if you want, but I'm not gonna and you can't make me.

For the dressing:

1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon dried mint
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon minced fresh cilantro (or parsley, if like me you hate cilantro)
1 tablespoon raisins
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon vinegar
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon wine

Soak the raisins in the wine for a bit to soften; meanwhile grind the other dry(ish) ingredients to a fine paste in a mortar, then add the raisins when they've softened a bit. (I found cutting them up into several tiny pieces first made grinding them easier). Add the wine the raisins soaked in, the vinegar, honey, and oil and mix to a slurry. Set aside.

For the salad:

1 cup bread cubes
1 cup diced cooked chicken
2 oz smoked or plain goats' cheese, crumbled
1 generous tablespoon pine nuts
1/2 cucumber, peeled and diced
1 tablespoon minced onion
pepper

Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan until lightly browned and fragrant. Put all the bread cubes in the bowl, then layer half each of the chicken, goats' cheese, cucumber, onions, and pine nuts, followed by another layer of chicken, cheese, cucumber, and onions. Pour the dressing over, sprinkle with the remaining pine nuts and pepper to taste. Put in the fridge to chill for an hour, or eat right away (which is what I did).

This was really very good, though it has no salt (and no liquamen, either), so I was worried it would be bland. It wasn't, because the goats' cheese was a little salty, but you could add salt if you like with the pepper at the end. The flavors all worked quite well together, and surprisingly the bread was a very important part of it and gave it a good solid base. It was over all quite nicely balanced, though it was a little light on the dressing. Ideally I wanted enough to soak down through the layers and into the bread at the bottom, but it didn't get that far, being fairly thick. It tasted good, though, so I think the proportions of the dressing are about right. Maybe half again as much would work for the amount of salad? That's very much to personal taste, though, of course.

The dressing wasn't all that gingery, oddly enough; I wonder if it's the ginger I've been getting lately. The last time I got some I made ginger tea out of it, using rather a lot of ginger, but it had barely any kick. So maybe you'll want to use less, ha. Still though, the dressing was rich, complex, and densely flavored, and very Roman.

You can play with the proportions of the salad a bit too, of course. I don't really care too much for raw onion, so only used a little. It did work well and gave it just the right amount of bite, I thought. You could also use rather more pine nuts; the measurement I gave above was just what I had left in the container!

Overall, though, definitely a keeper, and I'll be making it again!

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 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 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.