Apicius 3.7: Melon Salad Redux

I thought I'd give this one another try, as it's a simple summery dish, and 'tis the season. I tweaked the proportions a bit and like this version much better, though it's probably still a bit of an acquired taste. The Latin and English, as refresher:

VII. PEPONES ET MELONES. piper puleium mel uel passum liquamen acetum. interdum et silfi accedit.

3.7. LONG AND ROUND SWEET MELONS: pepper, pennyroyal, honey or passum, liquamen, vinegar. Sometimes silphium is added.

Again, watermelons are in fact Old World, being native to southern Africa.

These are the proportions I used this time, though I bent the rules a bit by using both honey and passum, as I had it. And again, I substituted peppermint for the pennyroyal, as pennyroyal's a little dicey, toxicity-wise (and I had plenty of mint).

2 cups diced watermelon
A few peppercorns (I used exactly 5)
1 teaspoon chopped fresh peppermint
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon passum (raisin wine)
1/4 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
2 teaspoons cider vinegar
A very tiny pinch of ground asafoetida

Grind the peppercorns in a mortar; add the chopped mint and the pinch of asafoetida and grind to a paste. Add the honey and mix, then the passum, liquamen and vinegar and mix/grind until smooth. Pour over the watermelon and garnish with a sprig of mint if you're feeling extra fancy (I was).

This was much more balanced than the last version. It was a strange and complicated mix of contrasting flavors, being all at once sweet and sour, sweet and salty, and spicy hot and cool; but I think it worked. If I were to tweak anything it would be to use even less of the liquamen. It wasn't overly salty, mind you, but I think I just wasn't expecting there to be salt in it at all; like I said, this recipe is perhaps an acquired taste. Still, I'll put it in with the keepers, though under the salad heading as it's not something I'd quite call a dessert. It was certainly interesting.

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 8.7.8 Flaccian Pork

Well, okay, originally it's 'Flaccian Piglet', but those being hard to come by around here I just used a pork chop. There are more than a few recipes for piglet in Apicius; it seems it was a fairly common food, not surprising I guess given how many young sows have in a litter. As to whom this dish is named for, there are more than a few Flaccuses or Flacianuses to choose from, ranging from consuls to freedmen. In Appendix 3, G&G name four individuals it might be connected to, but they can't pin it to one in particular. Anyhow, the text and translation:

[8.7.8] porcellum Flacianum: porcellum ornas in modum apri, sale asperges et in furnum mittes. dum coquitur adicies in mortarium piper ligusticum careum apii semen laseris radicem rutam uiridem, fricabis; suffundes liquamen, uino et passo temperabis. in caccabum; cum olei modicum ferueat; amulo obligas. porcellum coctum ab ossibus tanges, apii semen teres ita ut fiat puluis, asperges et inferes.

8.7.8. Flaccian piglet: dress the piglet in the manner of a boar. Sprinkle with salt and put in the oven. While it is cooking, put in a mortar pepper, lovage, caraway, celery seed, laser root, green rue; pound them. Pour on liquamen, flavour with wine and passum. In a pan, bring it to heat with a little oil. Thicken with starch. Smother the cooked piglet (thoroughly with the sauce) 'down to the bone'. Pound celery seed to a fine powder, sprinkle and serve.

I'm not sure what is meant by 'dress the piglet in the manner of a boar'; as I was just using a pork chop I suppose it doesn't much matter.

I had to leave a couple things out of this, alas. For one, though I have rue planted in my herb garden, it's February in New England. I could have, I suppose, checked to see if there's any out there hanging on, but while I was making this it was both a) dark out and b) pouring rain, so I opted to skip it, though I do like the unique flowery note rue gives to food. The other sad news, and it is very sad, is that my little lovage plant, the one I got back in the fall, has since died. I was planning on overwintering it in the house on the windowsill, as I bought it rather too late in the season I thought to plant it outside, but it didn't survive. Come spring I think I'm going to buy a bunch of lovage seed for planting (those, at least, aren't too hard to find on the internet), and broadcast ALL OF THEM in a specific patch in the flower garden. I'm not great with seeds, but I imagine some of them will have to come up, right? Anyway, argh.

Even with those changes (and the fact that I'm using faux passum, meaning port that has had raisins soaked in it, rather than raisin wine proper), I have to say it came out quite good, though it was basically just a roasted pork chop with sauce over it.

1 thick cut boneless pork chop
a few peppercorns (or more, to taste)
1/4 teaspoon caraway seed
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon laser root (ground asafoetida)
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1/4 cup wine
1/4 cup passum
1 teaspoon olive oil
cornstarch (or wheat flour) for thickening
salt

Preheat oven to 350° F. Sprinkle the pork chop with salt and bake for about 30 minutes (or less, if you use a thinner cut of pork).

Grind 1/4 teaspoon of the celery seed to a fine powder; set aside in a little bowl.

Grind the peppercorns, caraway seed, asafoetida, and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon of the celery seed. (You may want to toast the caraway seeds first to make them easier to grind). Throw them in a small saucepan, then add the wine, passum, liquamen and oil. Let it heat up a bit then add the cornstarch mixed in with a little more wine and cook till thickened and bubbly. Pour over the pork, sprinkle with the reserved ground celery seed, and eat.

This sauce was quite good. It was a little bitter, but that was actually part of the flavor I think, especially given the celery seeds added at the end (which of course I forgot to add for the picture), never mind the rue I left out. It was quite rich but also a little piquant, and rather reminded me of steak sauce, almost, though the only thing I can think it might have had in common were the raisins in the passum. It was also very dark in color given the port/passum. I'd gone a little light on the caraway seeds, not wanting them to dominate; I might actually add a little more just to bring them out more, but still, I was surprised by how complicated and interesting this sauce actually was.

I did end up using the last of the passum, though, so I guess I'll be making another batch soon. And since it was the bottom of the bottle, there was a bit of raisiny sediment there that made the sauce all the richer and thicker. Oh and also, it was quite a bit of sauce and you could probably get away with this amount for two pork chops. As it was it was good enough I spooned it all up even after I'd finished the pork, so, you know, throw this one in the keeper pile too.

Apicius 3.2.1: Beets with Leeks

I had been wanting to try this one for a while as a sort of appetizer; it kind of reminded me of the red onion chutney stuff you get at Indian restaurants (and which upon googling seems to just be called 'red onion chutney'), though the leeks are cooked and not raw. It's in a section of Apicius for easily digested food, and is a relish to be eaten with bread, but I thought it might work well as a side dish, too.

II. [3.2.1] PVLMENTARIVM AD VENTRUM. betas minutas et porros requietos elixabis; in patina conpones. teres piper cuminum, suffundes liquamen passum up quaedum dulcedo sit. facias ut ferueat; cum ferbuerit, inferes. similiter polipodium in tepidam mittes. ubi mollierit rades et minutum cum pipere et cuminum tritum in patenam feruentem mittes et uteris.

3.2.1 You boil chopped beets and stored leeks, and arrange them in a dish. Pound pepper and cumin and pour on liquamen and passum so that there is a certain sweetness. Bring to the boil, and when it has boiled, serve it.

In the same way you put polypody into warm water (to cook). When it has gone soft, peel it and put it, cut up, into a hot dish with ground cumin and pepper, and use.

Polypody, incidentally, is not some kind of octopus, like you might think; it's the root of the tree or oak fern, according to Grocock and Grainger. Wikipedia says it's Polypodium vulgare, and apparently it's pretty common here in New England, though I'm not sure I want to go foraging especially given it looks like a lot of other ferns out there. It's known for being a gentle laxative, so that's why it's in that section of Apicius I assume. Anyway.

It occurs to me now that 'beet' might mean either the leaves or the roots; when I made it I assumed this recipe meant the roots, but I don't really know. And again, I'm doing these recipes experimentally, so usually only making a small amount, in this case a single beet root.

1 medium beet root, trimmed, peeled, and diced
1 leek, white and light green parts only, chopped and thoroughly washed
a few grains of pepper, or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1/4 cup passum (raisin wine)

Boil the beets and leeks separately, or, if you don't care that the leeks will stain bright red, boil the beets and when they're getting towards done throw the leeks in with them (they won't take as long). Grind up the peppercorns and cumin seeds, and add the liquamen and passum and mix. When the leeks and beets are done, drain and put them together in a pan along with the passum-liquamen-spice mixture; bring to a boil for a moment then serve.

This was perfectly nice; innocuous might be the best word, though I suppose this recipe is meant to be something mild and good for the digestion. I did find I wanted to put some butter on them, but they were otherwise pleasant enough, given the passum which did make them a little sweet. I didn't try them with bread as a relish proper, though.

While it wasn't all that exciting, it wasn't a failure either, so I'll put it with the keepers as a perfectly acceptable side dish.

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.

Apicius 4.3.6 Pork and Apricot Minutal

Finally, a meat dish. This one is a minutal, which means (as per Grocock and Grainger) a stew made with small or chopped pieces of meat. This one with the apricots reminded me especially of the famous lamb and apricot tagine from Morocco, which is a slow-cooked sweet and savory stew. Given the meat was pre-cooked, the Roman recipe didn't need nearly as much time. The Latin and the English, as usual:

minutal ex praecoquiis: adicies in caccabo oleum liquamen uinum; concides cepam ascaloniam aridam; spatulam porcinam coctam tessellatim concides. his omnibus coctis teres piper cuminum mentam siccam anetum; suffundis mel liquamen passum acetum modice ius de suo sibi; temperabis; praecoqua enucleata mittis, facies ut ferueant donec percoquantur. tractam confringes, ex ea obligas, piper aspargis et inferes.

4.3.6 Minutal of apricots: put oil, liquamen and wine in a pan, chop in dried ascalonian onions and diced cooked shoulder of pork. When all this is cooked, pound pepper, cumin, dry mint, dill; pour on honey, liquamen, passum, a little vinegar, some of the cooking liquor; balance the flavours. Put in stoned apricots, bring them to a simmer until they are thoroughly cooked. Crumble a tracta and thicken with some of it. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.

This sounds like a recipe invented to use some of last night's roast, i.e. leftovers. I'd never made pork shoulder, but a couple nights before slow-roasted one (per instructions found on the internet) for like four and a half hours with a couple suitably Roman spices (pepper and cumin) and some honey rubbed on it. The honey caramelized almost to black but didn't burn given it wasn't too hot (I think 325° Fahrenheit). I don't think I've ever had roasted pork shoulder but it came out very tender, like meltingly so (I understand the cut is used for pulled pork and the like). However it is a rather fatty cut of meat and was almost a little too rich for me, though it was quite good.

This recipe makes use of tracta, which are dried disks of flour crumbled into sauces to thicken them. They can be made from scratch, though I understand they are a lot of work. Since I don't have any (I may make some someday, just to be authentic), I used cornstarch, although I suppose that's pretty New World.

Ascalonion onions are a bit of a mystery and cannot be identified with certainty according to Grocock and Grainger; though the ancient city of Ascalon (Ashkelon) in what is now Israel gave its name to both shallots and scallions they may not be either of them. I went with scallions because that's what I could find.

I managed to find fresh apricots in my local supermarket; dried ones would probably work as well, though you'll have to cook them a bit longer. I also went with fresh mint rather than dried because that is what I had.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 cup wine
3 green onions, roughly chopped
1 cup diced cooked pork shoulder
a few peppercorns
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chopped fresh mint leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried dill
2 teaspoons honey
2 tablespoons passum
1 teaspoon vinegar
2 fresh apricots, stoned and sliced
cornstarch or other thickener

Put the olive oil, liquamen, and wine in a pan; throw in the onions and pork shoulder and let simmer till the onions are soft. Grind the peppercorns, cumin, mint and dill in a mortar; when they form a smooth paste add in the vinegar and honey and mix well. Pour into the pan, then add the passum. Add the apricot slices and simmer for a few more minutes until the apricot slices are cooked but still fairly firm. Thicken with a little cornstarch mixed with some of the cooking liquid. Serve with a little more ground pepper. Makes about two servings.

I left out the second liquamen as I felt there was plenty of it already; I found I wanted to fry the onions in just the oil first but no, the recipe called for simmering it all in the wine mixture.

Okay. This was really good, but then I really like meat + fruit dishes. It was quite well balanced, and not too vinegary, with just the right amount of sweetness to make the apricots work. With the pork shoulder already cooked and very tender the whole thing felt like it had been simmered forever. You could, I suppose, make it with some pork cutlets if you didn't want to roast an entire pork shoulder beforehand, but it probably won't be as tender.

Passum

One of the ingredients the Romans used as a sweetener was something called passum, or raisin wine. This was wine made from dried grapes that were then mixed with must and pressed, i.e. made from raisins before being fermented and so extra sweet (and again, I am totally cribbing this from Grocock and Grainger). There are plenty of raisin wines (also called straw wines) still made in the Mediterranean area but they can be hard to come by, as well as expensive stuff to use just as a flavoring. So I cheated, and made a pseudo-passum by steeping raisins in already-made wine.

It's said to be sweet, and I assume red, so I used a port (again, I am not a drinker and know next to nothing about wines. Seriously I had to look this stuff up on Wikipedia). The bottle was 750 ml, so I used most of a medium sized (twelve ounce) box of raisins; I put them in some Tupperware, poured the wine over it and let it all soak in the fridge for a few days.

When that was done I strained it back into the bottle, then took a spoonful at a time of the soaked raisins and squashed them up in the mortar, then strained them. But that got pretty tedious pretty quick, so I ended up going all 21st century and throwing them in a food processor with a bit of the wine to make a slurry, then straining that back into the bottle.

When I tasted it it was definitely sweeter, with a strong raisin flavor to it. Hopefully that will be an acceptable substitute.