Apicius 5.2.1: Lentils With Mussels

(To be fair, I don't think even Martha Stewart's people can get an appetizing photo of lentils. They're just the color of mud, and there's nothing for it.)

This was an odd one I'd been wanting to try. Now, granted spondyli (according to Grocock and Grainger) can mean both 'mussel' and 'artichoke' in Latin and Greek, through some logic I'm not quite following likening both mussels and artichokes to vertebrae (which is what the word originally meant). So it's not outside the realm of possibility that this is supposed to be a lentil and artichoke recipe. Though I'm not sure that's any less weird.

[5.2.1] lenticula ex spondilis siue fondilis: accipies caccabum mundum, adicies in mortarium piper cuminum semen coriandri mentam rutam puleium, fricabis, suffundis acetum, adicies mel, liquamen et defritum, aceto temperabis, reexinanies in caccabo. spondilos elixatos teres et mittes ut ferueant. cum bene ferbuerint, obligas. adicies in boletari oleum uiridem.

5.2.1. Lentils with mussels: take a clean pan, (put the lentils in and cook them). Put in a mortar pepper, cumin, coriander seed, mint, rue, pennyroyal, and pound them. Pour on vinegar, add honey, liquamen, and defrutum, flavour with vinegar. Empty the mortar into the pan. Pound cooked mussels, put them in and bring to heat; when it is simmering well, thicken. Pour green oil over it in the serving dish.

I used frozen mussels, both because that's what the store had, and because I thought it would make it easier to measure the amount of them. I wanted the lentils and mussels to be roughly half each, and wasn't sure how much I'd be getting if I got them fresh in the shell. I could tell they'd been frozen, though, and I imagine fresh ones would have tasted a bit better. But frozen worked perfectly fine, if you can't get ahold of fresh ones yourself.

This is what I tried; as it was an experiment I only made a small amount, just enough for a serving. The rue is not yet up in my garden, so I had to leave it out, though I rather like it. And these days there is some concern about pennyroyal as I've mentioned here before, so I just went heavy on the mint which is related.

1/4 cup lentils (I had the small brown ones)
a few peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon cumin (I had ground)
1/2 teaspoon coriander seed
1 teaspoon dried mint
a dozen mussels
1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 teaspoon defrutum
olive oil

Boil the lentils in plenty of water, adding more if necessary, until quite soft (about half an hour).

Grind the peppercorns and coriander seed, add the other spices and grind a bit more; then add the vinegar, honey, liquamen and defrutum and mix to a paste.

Boil or steam the mussels for about five minutes if using fresh ones; discard any that remain closed after that time. Remove from the shells and debeard. If using frozen pre-cooked mussels, throw in some water and bring to a boil, then take off the heat (just to thaw and warm them up).

Drain the lentils, then put the spice/vinegar mixture in; put the mussels in the mortar and smash to a paste as best you can (or you can use a food processor). Put in with the lentils and stir it all together.

Drizzle with a bit of olive oil (or mix a bit in), and serve.

These were surprisingly good; the earthy lentils and briny mussels were both strong enough to work well together, and the pepper and vinegar gave it a nice bit of kick. The olive oil was also surprisingly necessary and gave it a bit of a flowery taste (the rue would do so as well). It worked out much better than I'd feared, and I ate the whole thing right up, though I could tell the mussels were frozen as the texture was a bit grainy. It would be better with fresh, I'm quite sure. Still, though, for something that I'd worried would just be weird, it totally worked, and I'll call it a keeper.

Though I do wonder how it would work with artichokes.

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 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.