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 5.6.3 Redux: Fava Beans in Pine Nut Mustard Sauce

So I gave this one a try again, having found some frozen fresh fava beans (i.e. not canned or dried). It came out quite nicely this time, and I think the frozen beans made all the difference. The Latin and the English, from Grocock and Grainger, once again:

[5.6.3] aliter: fabaciae ex sinapi trito melle nucleis ruta cumino; ex aceto inferuntur.

5.6.3. Alternatively: serve the beans (cooked) in some pounded mustard, honey, pine nuts, rue, cumin; serve with vinegar.

1 cup fresh frozen fava beans
1 teaspoon ground mustard
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon pine nuts
1/2 teaspoon cumin
sprig or two of rue, minced, to make about 1/2 teaspoon
vinegar to serve

Cook beans according to directions on the package (it took about a half hour of boiling for me).

Grind the cumin seeds (if you're not using ground) with the rue (if you can get it) in a mortar. Toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan until golden brown and fragrant; transfer to the mortar and grind, adding the mustard to make a smooth dryish paste. Add the honey and mix; it should form a thick sticky mess.

When the beans are finished cooking, drain well and then toss with the sauce; the heat from the beans will thin it a bit. Sprinkle a little vinegar over and serve.

This definitely worked better this time, and was quite simple, especially given I didn't have any cumin seed so went with pre-ground. I did not, however have any rue, since it's still winter out there, but as I used it the last time I tried this recipe I think that amount should be fine. It was quite rich, and well balanced, and definitely had a nice kick with the ground raw mustard. It could be described as a hot mustard honey sweet and sour sauce.

I found I rather liked the fava beans, unlike last time when the choices I had were dried or canned; the frozen ones really did taste much, much, better. They don't seem that far off from lima beans, actually, mild and a little sweet, so if you can't find frozen fava beans frozen lima beans would work just as well.

So now I finally get to put this one with the keepers, yay!

Apicius 3.13.1: Sweet Cumin Turnips

(Okay, my photography skills are pretty much crap, which is especially embarrassing because I actually have a degree in fine arts, though obviously photography was not my major.)

So, when I was a kid I hated turnips. But then there was this recipe in Apicius that sounded interesting, and well, I am a grown-up now. And since I hated them as a kid I pretty much hadn't had them since I was a kid, and tastes change...

Alas, not really. Even with the honey and the defrutum sweetening it up, I didn't really care for it. But maybe other people like turnips, so I'll publish this anyway. And this recipe might work with butternut squash, so. Not that that's Old World.

[3.13.1] rapas siue napos elixatos exprimes. deinde teres cuminum plurimum rutam minus laser Particum mel acetum liquamen defritum et oleum modice; feruere facies et inferes.

3.13.1. Squeeze the water out of boiled turnips or swedes. Then pound plenty of cumin, a little rue, Parthian laser, honey, vinegar, liquamen, defrutum and a little oil. Bring to a simmer and serve.

The local supermarket didn't have any turnips, so I got a rutabaga, thinking it was the same thing. Apparently it isn't, being a cross between a turnip proper and maybe cabbage; though as they are also called swedes I guess that works with the recipe too.

Here's the recipe; as it's still winter out there, I didn't have any rue available and left it out.

1 rutabaga
2 teaspoons cumin (I used ground, because that's what I had)
1/2 teaspoon asafoetida
4 tablespoons honey
4 teaspoons vinegar
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1/2 cup defrutum
2 teaspoons olive oil

Peel and cube the rutabaga and then boil forever until it's reasonably softened up. When it's done, drain and mash it a little to get the extra liquid out (though I found it didn't really need it). Throw the rest of the ingredients in the saucepan, and heat to a simmer; mix the rutabaga back into the pan and heat it through.

The sauce to this was perfectly nice and quite sweet, but no, I think I just don't care for turnips (or rutabagas). So now I don't know if this should go in the keepers or not; someone who likes turnips might think it's a great thing to do with them. Anyone care to give it a try and let me know?

Apicius 3.15.3: Lettuce Mash

Well, this recipe wasn't nearly as horrible as I'd feared it would be. (Hey, they can't all be keepers.)

I picked this one to try because it was unusual, and because the ingredients were easy to come by. Plus it was just weird, and it's good to widen one's horizons, yes? Here's the Latin, with the English translation:

[3.15.3] aliter holus molle ex foliis lactucarum: cum cepis quoques ex aqua nitrata; expressum concides minutatim; in mortario teres piper ligusticum apii semen mentam siccam cepam liquamen oleum et uinum.

3.15.3 Another vegetable mash recipe made with lettuce leaves: cook them with onions in water with soda. Squeeze the water out and chop finely. In a mortar pound pepper, lovage, celery seed, dry mint, onion, liquamen, oil, and wine.

That's right, this recipe is for boiled lettuce. Which, yes, sounds absolutely horrifying to modern ears, because you just don't do that with lettuce. But then I considered that we eat boiled cabbage, and boiled spinach with no problems, so it's not like it was that far out there. And I wanted to see. Morbid curiosity, I suppose. So this is what I did:

1 small head romaine (cos) lettuce
1 medium onion
baking soda
a few peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon dry mint
1 teaspoon liquamen (Thai fish sauce)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup wine

Chop lettuce roughly, removing any discolored leaves. Chop half the onion, and put it and the lettuce in a pan with a pinch of baking soda and enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the onions are cooked and translucent. Strain in a colander and rinse under running water, then get as much of the water out of it as you can (I patted it with a paper towel). Turn out onto a cutting board and chop quite finely.

Grind the peppercorns, celery seed, and mint in the mortar; mince another teaspoon of the onion and mash that up in the mortar with the spices until smooth, or as smooth as you can make it. (Save the remaining onion to use in another recipe, or save yourself the horror of finding it in the back of the fridge in three weeks' time and throw it out now.) Add the contents of the mortar plus the remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer to cook the onion a bit and flash off the alcohol, then add the lettuce/onion mixture and heat through.

Eat, if you dare.

So, then. The first bite of this was definitely strange and confusing. So confusing that I found myself taking another bite. And then another, and another, and pretty soon I'd found I'd actually eaten all of it, though even after finishing it I wasn't sure if I liked it.

The cooked lettuce part wasn't actually that bad. I was afraid it would just turn to slime, but it didn't; it held its shape, and even some of its crispness fairly well. And as for the taste, it wasn't really all that far from bok choy, and that's fine. It was a little bitter, that was all, and I was curious as to why of all the recipes in Apicius, this one didn't have honey in it when it could definitely have used some. I would guess it was the celery seed; I don't know if it's normally bitter or if I just have an old batch (and again, I left out the lovage because I don't have any). Although I suppose romaine or cos lettuce is famous (or at least was in ancient times) for being rather bitter (it's one of the 'bitter herbs' eaten at Passover, if I'm remembering correctly). So I don't know.

It was certainly different, though.

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 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.

Apicius 7.13.2 Roman Marinated Mushrooms

This one sounded both appetizing and fairly simple, once the caroenum was made. Here's the Latin, with Grocock and Grainger's translation below.

[7.13.2] in fungis farneis: piper carenum acetum et oleum.

7.13.2 Sauce for ash-tree fungi: pepper, caroenum, vinegar and oil.

I have no idea what kind of mushrooms 'ash-tree fungi' are; they could grow on the trees themselves like wood ear, or might get the name because they were commonly found underneath ash-trees. I went with what the supermarket had, of course, so got a half a pound of crimini mushrooms.

The two other ash-tree fungi recipes said to boil the mushrooms, so I assumed this one also meant for them to be cooked.

It's not much of a 'sauce', though, being on the thin side with no thickener called for. What it did look like, however, was a version of marinated mushrooms, so I figured I'd try that. Keeping it simple, this is what I came up with:

1/2 pound mushrooms, cleaned and trimmed
1/4 cup caroenum
1/4 cup vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
10 peppercorns

Cut mushrooms in half or quarters if they're large, and grind the peppercorns in a mortar. Mix the caroenum, vinegar, oil and pepper in a saucepan; add mushrooms. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer a few minutes until the mushrooms are cooked. Makes about two servings.

I tasted one or two, and it was quite nice, if a little bland. That's probably because although I could have sworn we had some cider vinegar we did not and so had to use rice vinegar, which is quite mild and a little sweet. Also I do intend to leave it to do the marinating thing, so we'll see how it all tastes after spending the night in the fridge. I was definitely wary of it getting too peppery, so may have been conservative about that. Still, the sweetness of the caroenum makes it a nice take on marinated mushrooms. I look forward to tasting it tomorrow! I'll ETA then.

ETA the next day: yep, this one's a keeper. The oil/vinegar/caroenum proportions are just right. The only possible changes I might make are a slightly stronger vinegar like I said above and maybe a little more pepper, but that sort of thing is to taste anyway. Even so it worked quite well once it cooled down (it's so hard to figure out if flavors are balanced when something's hot, I find). I'm calling this one a success.

ETA II: I made another batch, twice as large, this time with the cider vinegar, which did make a difference and gave it the bite the rice vinegar was lacking. So here's the final recipe, in an amount to feed several people as a side dish:

1 pound mushrooms, cleaned and trimmed
1/2 cup caroenum
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
20 peppercorns

Cut mushrooms in half or quarters if they're large, and grind the peppercorns in a mortar. Mix the caroenum, vinegar, oil and pepper in a saucepan; add mushrooms. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer a few minutes until the mushrooms are cooked. Makes about four servings.

And now I'll link it on the recipe page, where the keepers go!

Apicius 5.6.3: Beans in Mustard Sauce

Right, 'cause I need another hobby blog. Anyway, this one is for ancient Roman cooking, specifically from Apicius, a collection of Roman recipes probably dating to the first and second centuries C.E. A few Christmases ago I got a copy of Apicius: A Critical Edition With an Introduction and English Translation by Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger, which is a very lovely and useful edition, with lots of additional material concerning ingredients. I also have an old Dover copy of Joseph Dommers Vehling's translation from 1936, though I hear his Latin is kind of on the iffy side. Not reading Latin myself I would not know.

I suppose I should mention I am in no way a historian; my training's in art, actually, and I am merely an interested amateur who thinks this stuff is pretty cool.

I started cooking recipes (or rather, guessing how to assemble loose lists of ingredients) from Apicius years back and had a lot of fun doing it; while obviously there are a lot of very familiar New World ingredients not present in them (for example the ubiquitous tomato), and while it certainly has its own, well, vibe (they were surprisingly fond of sweet-and-sour sauces), it still has to me a very Mediterranean feel to it. And I love Mediterranean food.

Given that these recipes are, as I said above, really just lists that only rarely give amounts or proportions there is a lot of room for interpretation and someone else making the same recipe may very well come up with something quite different.

So let's start, then.

I picked Apicius 5.6.3, because I liked the idea of green beans in a mustard sauce. Here is the recipe with the rest of the little chapter it's in with Grocock and Grainger's translation following. I included the other recipes in the chapter because the recipe I'm looking at refers back to the previous ones.

VI. FABACIAE VIRIDES ET BAIANAE.

[5.6.1] fabaciae uirides: ex liquamine oleo coriandro uiridi cumino et porro conciso cocte inferuntur.
[5.6.2] aliter: fabaciæ fricte ex liquamine inferuntur.
[5.6.3] aliter: fabaciae ex sinapi trito melle nucleis ruta cumino; ex aceto inferuntur.
[5.6.4] Baianas: elixas minutatim concidis. ruta apio uiridi porro aceto oleo liquamine careno uel passo modico inferes.

5.6 GREEN BEANS AND BAIAN BEANS.

5.6.1 Green beans: serve cooked in a dressing of liquamen, oil, green coriander, cumin, and chopped leek.
5.6.2 Alternatively: fry the beans and serve them in liquamen.
5.6.3 Alternatively: serve the beans (cooked) in some pounded mustard, honey, pine nuts, rue, cumin; serve with vinegar.
5.6.4 Baian beans: boil and chop finely. Serve in a sauce of rue, green celery, leek, vinegar, oil, liquamen, caroenum or a little passum.

Oddly enough that third use of the word fabaciae, beans, has a ligature for the ae, æ, while the other instances don't. I assume that's directly after the manuscript they were transcribing from, as is the lowercase (uncial, I'd guess).

Anyway, so after a bit of research (okay, Wikipedia) it looks like what I'd call green beans (string beans) are New World, and so would have been unknown to the ancient Romans. Which means that 'green beans' (and even I can see that's the literal translation) have to be some kind of green-colored seed bean (unless green simply means 'fresh' as in not dried); I'm guessing fava beans, which the Romans certainly had, 'cause those things go back like 8000 years in that area. They're usually eaten as the mature seeds without the pod, though apparently they can be eaten in an immature state like string beans (or snow peas).

Since I wasn't sure I got some fresh string beans and a couple kinds of fava beans, dried and canned, figuring I'd try them all. Fresh fava beans would have been my first option, and frozen second, but my local supermarket didn't have either. I'm quite sure the Romans knew how to dry beans (that's gotta be a skill picked up in the Neolithic); canned is probably the closest I can get to fresh for now. Also, apparently 'fava bean' means 'bean bean', because languages are goofy like that sometimes.

Mind you, I've never actually had fava beans. Who knows, I might hate 'em.

Here's the recipe again:

5.6.3 Alternatively: serve the beans (cooked) in some pounded mustard, honey, pine nuts, rue, cumin; serve with vinegar.

That sounds pretty simple, some kind of dressing or sauce with five ingredients, served with vinegar sprinkled over it (like some people like with fish and chips). But is it raw or cooked? It doesn't look like it needs to be cooked (though the beans obviously do), so I'll try it raw, mixed with the cooked beans while they're still hot. Sound good?

I wanted the mustard to be the predominant flavor, so after a bit of adding a little, testing a little, then adding a little more the final amounts are:

1 tablespoon ground mustard seeds
4 tablespoons pine nuts, mashed into a paste
1 tablespoon of honey
1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons of minced fresh rue
(2 teaspoons water)

The mustard I had in seed-form; I ground up an even tablespoon in my mortar but after it was ground it was considerably more than a tablespoon; I'm not sure how that works but I'm guessing it's some kind of parallel universe thing. The cumin I used pre-ground, as I'd run out of seeds. I kept adding more mustard to it because I wanted the kick of the spice. It was really very thick and not at all like a sauce, so in the end I added two teaspoons of water to it, on the theory that something as obvious as water might not make it in the ingredient list (oil or wine on the other hand being spelled out in plenty of other recipes). The rue was fresh, and came from my own garden. Just as a note, rue has a reputation for causing miscarriages in large doses, so if you're pregnant you probably shouldn't go eating it by the fistful (though from what I could find it looks like a little is fine).

I cooked the three kinds of bean separately (the dried beans I started soaking last night), then mixed the hot beans with a third of the sauce each, which did make it a bit thinner, so maybe I didn't need the water after all. This is what it looked like:

At the top are the smaller canned fava beans, on the bottom the larger dried ones (which certainly were not anything like 'green'; maybe they're the variety used for ful medames?) with the string beans on the right.

So then. What do I think?

Well, I think I am, first of all, an idiot for totally spacing out the vinegar part, which I knew I would, dammit. The sauce was however pretty good on the whole. Unfortunately though I think my mustard seeds are on the old side; while the sauce certainly had plenty of spicy kick to it it didn't taste very mustardy, which was what I was really looking for. Otherwise though it got credit for being fairly complex, flavor-wise: the pine nuts gave it an earthy resiny taste, which was balanced by the flowery overtones of the rue; the bitter aspect of the rue brought the honey down a couple notches, while the small amount of cumin gave it a good grounded base.

As for the fava beans themselves, well, not so much. The canned ones were definitely canned, and were approaching the taste of canned peas (blech); that got me wondering though if this recipe might work with fresh or frozen peas. I did like it on the green beans just fine, but I quite like green beans.

But no, turns out I'm not a fan of fava beans, at least in those two forms, such that I immediately reached for the palate cleansing powers of a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

So would I try it again? Yes, I think I would, with fresher mustard seed, and not with fava beans (unless I can find some fresh ones). Maybe frozen lima beans (which I like) or butter beans would work. Is that too far from the original recipe? I don't know, but this is about experimentation. With some hopefully edible results.