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 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 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.