I know it's been a while; I tend to cycle through hobbies, doing one for a while, then dropping it to move on to (or get back to) another. But I've got lovage growing out there in the garden, and wanted to try something from old Apicius again. Though as Fate would have it, there's no lovage in this recipe.
This one is a recipe for stuffed bonito, a type of fish whose name means 'beautiful'. They do fit the name, being sort of a silvery-blue-green with darker tabby stripes. They're related to both mackerel and tuna, and like them have a dense, somewhat oily flesh. Dried bonito flakes are familiar as an ingredient (with seaweed) in dashi stock, used as a base for miso soup and the like in Japanese cooking (and the flakes make great cat treats, so I hear).
But of course I couldn't find any bonito locally, neither frozen nor fresh, and so I went with a tuna steak, since it is related. I would definitely like to try this again with proper bonito.
The Latin (again, I am using Sally Grainger and Christopher Grocock's quite excellent annotated version of Apicius:
[9.10.1] in sardis: sardam farsilem sic facere oportet: sarda exossatur et teritur puleium cum piperis grana, mentam nuces mel; impletur et consuitur. inuoluitur in carta et sic supra uaporem ignis in operculo conponitur. conditur ex oleo careno allece.
9.10.1 Sauce for bonito: stuffed bonito should be made like this: the bonito are boned and pennyroyal is pounded with grains of pepper, mint, hazelnuts, honey. They are stuffed and sewn up. They are wrapped in papyrus and placed in a covered pan above the heat of the fire. They are flavoured with oil, caroenum and allec.
This one looked interesting, as it wasn't just the usual list of ingredients for sauce; it's also on the simple side, using only a few ingredients. And wrapping up fish while baking to seal in the flavor is a technique still used today, though we use kitchen parchment or aluminum foil rather than papyrus. I went with aluminum foil, even though I do actually have some papyrus, up in my art supplies.
As usual I skipped the pennyroyal (though I would like to try it sometime); it's got some toxicity issues, especially for children and pregnant women. Again, I used a tuna steak; as it was thick and not going to fold or roll up I split it in half thickness-wise to get two thinner steaks. I kind of stumbled on a good technique due to laziness: the cutting board was dirty so I just cut it on a saucer with a large knife. But the knife was long enough to rest on the edges of the saucer, which were raised just about half of the thickness of the steak. They came out pretty even, actually. I did then pound them a little to flatten them some more, but not very much as they were a bit fragile and I was worried they'd fall apart.
Allec was a type of fish paste that was leftover from making garum; it was also used as a condiment in its own right. The closest modern equivalent is anchovy paste; though it's quite salty, so was garum, so it's probably pretty close (though of course it hasn't been fermented).
The recipe:
3/4 pound tuna steak (or the same sized bonito fillet)
1/4 teaspoon peppercorns (I used 15)
24 fresh mint leaves, minced (comes to 2 tablespoons)
1/2 cup hazelnuts
1 tablespoon honey
The sauce:
1 teaspoon anchovy paste
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon caroenum
Preheat oven to 350° F. Cut the tuna steak in half horizontally to get two thinner steaks; put each on a square of aluminum foil in a baking pan and set aside.
Toast the hazelnuts in a dry pan until fragrant; take off the heat. Grind the peppercorns in a mortar, then add the mint and grind to a fragrant paste. Add the hazelnuts in batches and grind by hand, or lose patience and throw them all in a food processor like I did and grind as finely as you can with the mint and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and mix in the honey; it should form a sticky, almost dry paste. Spread this on the tuna (or bonito) pieces, fold them in half, then seal up with the foil. Bake for 25-30 minutes until cooked through.
For the sauce, mix the three ingredients together till smooth. Pour over the cooked fish, or put on the side and dip the pieces in as you eat. Makes two servings.
I wasn't sure I was going to like the sauce (never having had anchovy paste, a.k.a. toothpaste for cats) so I only made a small amount. Probably it should be doubled so there's enough for each piece. I drizzled mine over the top in an attempt to look picturesquely nouvelle cuisine; alas, nothing can camouflage my crappy photography skills.
This was very good, though I may have overcooked the tuna a little (I was afraid that given the thickness it would be raw in the middle). It was, as you can imagine, also quite rich. Luckily I could taste the filling as I went, as there wasn't anything I couldn't eat raw in it (e.g. eggs). I started out with six mint leaves but kept adding them until they balanced out with the hazelnuts. The pepper, I think, was just right too, adding a bit of kick but not too much (you can certainly add more if you are not, like me, a wimp). It did look a little anemic coming out of the foil, since it didn't crisp on the outside; maybe brushing the top with a little olive oil, or opening the foil up halfway through would have helped. But it tasted quite good, and is going straight to the keepers pile. If I ever find some actual bonito, I'll definitely give it another try.
