Julia & Julius

Ancient Olympians on the Atkins Diet (776 BC)

2010-11-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

Ancient Olympians on the Atkins Diet (776 BC)

By: The Scribe on August, 2007

While the modern-day Olympics have certainly changed since their inception in 776 BC, one thing has certainly remained the same: all athletes, past and present, have been concerned with their diet. An athlete’s mealtime can make or break his performance, which the ancient Greeks were well aware of. In fact, food historians are realizing that the diet of the first Olympians wasn’t that far off from what people in the 21st century would identify with the popular “Atkins” diet!

There are a wealth of Greek and Latin texts, such as The Deipnosophists – or in English,The Philosopher’s Banquet – which is a 15-volume tale of a long feast that was written around 200 AD, wherein food origins and quality are discussed at length. This tale, written by a Greek named Athenaeus, centers around a banquet where diners talk extensively about all different kinds of food and where it came from – and not only that, but each character provides the ancient literary source for their own words! Essentially, it’s an ancient document wherein the characters talk about food using quotes from other real, ancient documents.

Unfortunately, out of the 1,500 documents that were cited in the work, only 15 still survive. Still, these documents provide valuable insight into ancient Mediterranean cuisine and how it was prepared.

For most people, a regular diet would consist of items like bread, fruit, and vegetables, while fish was the primary meat source for an average citizen. But Olympians, who typically came from the upper social classes in ancient Greece, had families who could afford to feed their children heartier meats and other protein-rich foods that helped to condition and build muscle.

Although the earliest reports of Olympic diets seemed to center around eating mostly cheese and fruit, the focus was shifted toward meat somewhere along the way. Apparently, this happened after one ancient Olympic runner won multiple competitions after eating a meat-only diet – which naturally started a copycat craze. The athletes were also advised to avoid eating bread right before their competition, and to snack instead on dried figs.

The Deipnosophists also includes this intriguing tale about a wrestler named Milon of Croton, who is recorded to have attended six different Olympic games and won competitions at each one:

“Milon of Croton used to eat 20 pounds of meat and as many of bread, and he drank 3 pitchers of wine. And at Olympia he put a four-year-old bull on his shoulders and carried it around the stadium; after which, he cut it up and ate it all alone in a single day.”

– Theodorus of Hierapolis’ “On Athletic Contests”, cited by Athenaeus.

Sweet Wine Cakes

2010-11-11T13:46:00.000-08:00

For our Best Fest celebration, I made Sweet Wine Cakes, from Cato's De Agricola.

Ingredients:

1lb (500g) wholemeal bread flour
2oz (50g) lard
1oz (25g) grated cheese
Must: either grape juice and yeast or partially fermented Lambrusco (I used sweet sherry)
Aniseed
Ground cumin
Bay leaves

Method:

Rub the lard into the flour. Stir in the grated cheese, aniseed and cumin. Try 1 teaspoon each of the spices at first but increase the amount for a more highly flavoured dough. Personally, I like these cakes highly spiced and use at least 1 dessertspoon aniseed and 1-2 tablespoons cumin. Make a well in the flour.

When the dough has risen, knead well. The wine dough, in particular, will need a lot of extra flour kneading in. Cut and shape portions of the kneaded dough to a suitable size to fit each one on a bay leaf.

Bake in a heated oven at 450F. The time will depend on the size of your bay leaves and, therefore, the size of your wine cakes. I suggest you check small cakes at 10-15 minutes, larger ones may need 20-30 minutes.

For the finishing touch, I topped each one with an almond slice. This made a great addition, as the almonds got toasted, and the roasted almond taste went well with the spice of the cakes.
The cakes were relatively successful. They tasted much like scones that you get at the coffee shop, but with a weird cumin taste to it. The anise didn't really come through, because I used very little of it. I'm not a big fan of anise. They were dry, and crumbly. The bay leaves added a nice touch. I tried eating one with the bay leaf still in it, and one without. The bayleaf was kind of crunchy, but still pleasant. Either way, the aroma of the bay leaf permeated the cakes to give them a delightful spicy taste.
I served these up at the Meet & Greet where we got to meet Dr. Betini. I hope you got to try one!

1,800-Year-Old Roman Multitool

2010-11-10T14:31:00.000-08:00

What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, it turns out that back somewhere between A.D 201 to 300, a clever Roman, probably named MacGyvericus, invented the multitool. And not just some weird, old-fashioned multitool, either. MacGyvericus’ tool is startlingly similar to the modern Swiss Army Knife, now part of the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.

Like the common Swiss tool, the Roman version has a lot of foldaway implements stowed inside: a knife, spike, pick, fork and a spatula. Unlike the modern-day equivalent, the Roman Army Knife has a useful spoon on the end, making it likely that this iron and silver artifact, found in somewhere in the Mediterranean countries, was meant for eating with.

Sure, they invaded and occupied my home country and occupied it for years, but they brought with them central heating and civilization, two things that England lacked back then. When the Romans left, the country slipped back into dark times, where it became insular and xenophobic, and it remains so today. At least, though, the cold and rainy nation still has central heating and folding knives, although the latter is now used primarily by gangs of marauding teenagers as they roam the rainy twilight streets in search of old people to stab.

Past the ‘Best Before’ Date (ca. 400 BC)

2010-11-10T00:48:00.000-08:00

Past the ‘Best Before’ Date (ca. 400 BC)

By: The Scribe on November, 2007

A 2,400-year-old shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Chios in the Aegean sea contained a rather tasty surprise – DNA testing on the insides of some of the amphorae yielded a recipe for Greek salad dressing! The shipwreck currently lies 70 meters deep, and is located about a kilometer away from Chios.

Scientists were able to obtain samples of the ancient dressing after sending several underwater robots down to the shipwreck to collect two of the jars. Amphorae were used by the ancient Greeks and Romans to transport liquids and other commodities – things like wine, oil, spices, grain, or olives – and are shaped like large cones. Since they’re made out of earthenware pottery, they have an incredible lifespan, preserving for hundreds of thousands of years, even underwater!

Studies on amphorae from shipwrecks often help to reveal the country of origin of the ship and how old it was, and it isn’t unusual for the jars to often still contain remains of their original contents – finds like this have helped to dramatically increase the amount of information available on trade in the ancient Mediterranean.

The DNA contents of the amphorae from this shipwreck revealed several common yet interesting ingredients: the jars contained olive oil mixed with oregano. This came as a bit of a surprise to archaeologists, since the island the ship had left from was a major exporter of fine wines – it had been assumed that any ship leaving Chios would have held plenty of amphorae full of wine.

While further investigations revealed that another amphora from the ship likely contained wine – which means there was probably plenty aboard – the oregano-flavored oil seems to have been the primary trade item on this vessel, making up at least two-thirds of the 350 amphorae found on the ship.

It’s likely that strong winds developed soon after the ship left port, causing it to capsize without warning. It is fairly common for the area around Chios to develop sudden storms or fluke winds that are exceedingly dangerous for sailing, however since they are unpredictable, sailors couldn’t simply not leave port for sake of potential trouble.

As a result, it turns out that not only did the ancient Greeks like their salad dressing, but the island of Chios was responsible for a more diverse agricultural program than previously assumed. These people certainly knew what they were doing, as well – in the rural areas of modern Greece, the older women are well aware that adding oregano and other spices to oil helps not only to increase the flavor, but also to preserve the life of the oil much longer.

By exporting flavored oil with an intentional longer lifespan, it’s possible that this ancient preservation method accidentally helped to preserve the oil’s DNA for archaeologists to find two thousand years later.

Oedipus... Starring Vegetables

2010-11-09T14:06:00.000-08:00

Pass the Caesar Salad, Please… (ca. 264 BC – 440 AD)

2010-11-03T00:32:00.000-07:00

Salve! Spartacurtus ibi!

I found this in another blog about the diets of gladiators.

I thought it'd be a useful addition to our blog.

Pass the Caesar Salad, Please… (ca. 264 BC – 440 AD)

Previously, we brought you a story about a gladiator graveyard recently discovered at the site of the ancient city of Ephesus in Turkey. Now, it appears that forensic analysis of 70 gladiator skeletons has revealed some startling news about gladiator lifestyles – or rather, what they ate during their lives as gladiators.

Instead of conforming to the modern media image of gladiators as muscle-bound Playboys, gladiators in ancient Rome were actually overweight vegetarians – strong and muscular, yes, but with more than a little extra pudge around the middle. Using a method known as elementary microanalysis, palaeoanthropologists were able to determine that ancient gladiators lived off a diet that consisted mainly of barley, beans, and dried fruit.

A simple diet such as this, while increasing bone density and actually allowing the gladiators to become much stronger than normal, would result in a zinc deficiency, causing an imbalance in the gladiator’s internal chemistry. There would be too much of a natural chemical called strontium built up in the body, which would result in the gladiator becoming – rather literally – fat.

Why was this beneficial? Primarily, these layers of fat would have helped to protect their vital organs against piercing blows from opponents. It may have also helped them to heal much more quickly after being injured. Considering that most gladiators only survived for an average of three years in the ring, it was likely the case that gladiators “beefed up” during the fighting seasons and training, and then lost the weight soon after retirement (if they survived that long).

So, as much as Hollywood would like everyone to believe that gladiators were poster boys for fitness, the truth of the matter is that even though they were incredibly strong and relatively attractive men – in fact, unattractive men weren’t even considered for gladiatorial training – they were actually relatively overweight, moreso resembling lightweight sumo wrestlers than Russell Crowe’s movie-gladiator Maximus.

Too many designations in the kitchen

2010-11-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

Too many designations in the kitchen

At first blush, the UNESCO project for culinary heritage seems a good thing. On closer examination, it's plagued with problems, not the least of which is the very possibility of preserving cuisines.

By Rachel Laudan

November 1, 2010|7:59 a.m.

This month, UNESCO is expected to designate for the first time one or more of the world's culinary traditions as an "intangible cultural heritage." The cultural category, established in 2003 as a supplement to the better-known category of "tangible heritage" (castles, cities, landscapes), was created to protect traditions in the developing world by encouraging tourism. Already the tango, Croatian lace-making and Sardinian pastoral songs have been chosen.

This year the leading culinary contenders — both repeat applicants — appear to be Italy, Greece, Spain and Morocco for the "Mediterranean diet," and Mexico for the indigenous cuisine of certain villages in the state of Michoacan. If UNESCO finally gives food the official heritage nod, it's likely that other organizations will follow its lead and make their own designations.

Should we cheer? Perhaps. It's good to see credit going to cooks who imbue a place with its identity, to make explicit what we all know — that cuisine is more than just ingredients and processes protected by denominations of origin; it's the totality of the eating tradition. And if recognition boosts tourism, which is what the heritage industry is all about, then that's good too.

At first blush, the UNESCO project for culinary heritage seems so self-evidently a good thing that only a grinch could grumble. On closer examination, though, it's plagued with problems, not the least of which is the very possibility of preserving cuisines.

Take the cuisines of the Mediterranean. In prehistory, these were based on barley bread and porridge. In the Roman Empire, the cuisine changed to one based on wheat bread, fish sauce and salted meats and cheeses. With the spread of Christianity and Islam, the cuisines north and south of the sea diverged, with Christians emphasizing pork, lard and fish, and Muslims eschewing pork and wine and favoring sheep fat. In the 18th century, tomatoes began creeping into the diet and low-acid olive oil became popular among the upper classes. A century later, new national cuisines were created as Italy was unified and the Ottoman Empire broke up. That there was something called a "Mediterranean diet" that unified these changing, competing cuisines was given currency only in 1975. Its originator was an American scientist, Ancel Keys (developer of the balanced ration for soldiers in World War II, named K-rations in his honor), who published a book with his wife, Margaret, titled "How to Eat Well and Stay Well the Mediterranean Way."

A similar process applies to the corn, beans and chilies that the Conservatorio de la Cultura Gastronómica Mexicana, the group promoting Mexican cuisine to UNESCO, identifies as the unchanging foundations of Mexican cuisine from its pre-Hispanic past. Yet the people in the territory that is now Mexico have been eating bread, noodles and rice for about 500 years, and their signature dish — mole — has roots in the Islamic cuisine of medieval Spain. To exclude these contributions to Mexican culinary heritage is to write out much of the country's history and many of its people. To try to freeze the cuisines in time is like commanding the tide to stand still.

Even if it were possible to stem the tide of culinary change, it's not clear it would be desirable. People change their diets for good reasons, including access to new ingredients and technologies, the appeal of variety and improved nutrition.

In the Roman Empire, people shifted from barley to wheat because they preferred raised bread to barley bannocks. Centuries later, tomatoes and dried pasta opened up a world of quick sauces and a delicious, near-instant staple with a long shelf life. New techniques make kitchen life less laborious as well. Grinding wet corn for tortillas the traditional way — on the knees, pushing stone across stone — was five hours of exhausting, arthritis-inducing hard labor for Mexican village women. Only in recent generations have electric mills and instant mixes relieved women of this drudgery. Mexican women agree with critics who protest that the tortillas do not taste as good. But the choice is worth it, they argue, because they can spend more time with their children, make crafts for sale or take a job so their children can stay in school. Why should they be denied that option? Let's record and remember their labor, not preserve it.

Compounding the problems of viability and desirability that dog the UNESCO project is the fog that obscures how culinary traditions are to be selected, adjudicated, administered and monitored. Candidates seem to be picked by lobbying groups. They apparently choose the projects, get permission from the chosen community and endorsements from their national governments, and then deliver the paperwork to UNESCO. Who funds this and why is obscure.

Then a committee in Paris chosen from member states, expert or not in culinary matters, judges the proposal. In a recent article, the Economist called for the annual meetings of the older World Heritage program, including the proposals and the constitution of the committee, to be thrown open to the public. Surely this should apply to the intangible heritage program as well.

So what seems at first to be a careful selection of some of the world's greatest culinary traditions turns out on inspection to be a process of dubious intellectual worth, clouded and probably politicized decision-making, and poised to become marshaled in support of a knee-jerk nationalism. UNESCO's program is just the latest in a series of efforts to give form and shape to a pervasive culinary nostalgia, the disquieting feeling that somewhere, sometime, food was better, tastier, more natural and more healthful, that there was a Mediterranean diet or a Mexican cuisine untarnished by migrants, industrialism and change.

Like "authentic," "terroir," "slow" and "local" — all used to try to pin down our yearnings, each catching the mood of the moment — culinary tradition as intangible heritage turns out upon examination to be not quite up to the job demanded of it.

Rachel Laudan is a historian and writer based in Mexico City and a contributor to ZesterDaily.com, where a longer version of this appears.

Agamemnon versus Legolambnon

2010-10-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

Veni, Vidi… Vomit? (1st C BC)

2010-10-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

Veni, Vidi… Vomit? (1st C BC)

By: The Scribe on April, 2007

One of the common “facts” taught about ancient Rome, both by public schools and uninformed historians, is that Roman houses contained a special room called a vomitorium, which was set aside for the purpose of purging one’s insides from a recent meal… in order to make room to eat more. The word itself comes from the Latin word vomere, which means “to vomit”.

Fortunately for the Romans, this is simply a misconception. Vomiting, for those who have experienced such a phenomenon in the past, is typically not an event that any human wishes to endure any more than absolutely necessary – say, during illness – and thus it would be absolute falsity to claim that the entire Roman upper class was semi-bulimic.

Ancient Rome did have vomitorioums, however, but their purpose was entirely unrelated to the consumption of food! Vomitorium was the proper name for an architectural feature of ancient Roman theatres: it was a wide corridor situated below or behind a tier of seats, through which thousands of spectators could file in and out of quickly (or “spew out of”, to keep the nuance of the Latin word).

The vomitoria of the Colosseum in Rome were reportedly able to allow 50,000 people to enter and be seated within 15 minutes; presumably they would be able to exit in an equally rapid manner, thus earning the passageway its name. The misconception of meaning for this term probably came about in the early 1900s, when historians were writing history texts without a correct understanding of Latin… which meant that they could not read texts of the ancient authors… who, when writing about eating excessively and illness afterward, never once mentioned the existence of special room in which one could throw up.

Jus porro frigidum in porcellum elixum

2010-10-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

Last night, I prepared Cold Sauce for Pork, Apicius 8.7.15 from Cooking Apicius by Sally Grainger.

Ingredients

Ingredients
2 t caraway seeds
60g pine kernels (I substituted sunflower seeds)
1t dill
1/2t oregano
2T vinegar
1 T garum
2 T date syrup (I mashed up the Dulcia Domesica I had left over)
2 T honey
40g whole grain mustard (I used actual mustard seed)
generous ground black pepper

Roast and grind the seeds in mortar and pestle until uniform paste texture achieved. Mix in thicker liquids (dates, honey), then the thin liquids, (vinegar, garum.)
Mixture makes a paste- rub all over pork loin, and bake @ 425F for 17 minutes.

The sauce prior to being put on pork

The Final product

I made this to take over to a friend's place to watch the Cowboys lose (again). We served it with chili & beans, and Strawberry Nerds. Everyone smelled the spice rub prior to cooking, and exclaimed that it smelled very strong. We were glad that we were also making chili, in case Apicius had led me wrong. I used the paste I made from the recipe above, and it made enough to cover the entire 1.1lb pork loin in a 1/4" thick coating of the sauce. The pork tenderloin I bought already had been marinated with an Asian marinade, which I thought would nicely complement the garum in the recipe. The sauce ended up being very heavily mustard, which went quite well with the pork. Most whole grain mustards tend to make a good sauce for pork dishes. It was delicious! The honey and dates gave this a sweet taste, while the mustard was tangy. Cooking the tenderloin at 425 made the paste a sort of crust surrounding the pork, which was flaky and tasty. The fish sauce taste mostly baked out of the recipe, or was unnoticeable. The sweetness from the honey and dates did much to mask the bitter taste of defeat that the Cowboys endured, but it went well with the tanginess of the mustard. Everyone said that they'd gladly eat it again.
~Consul Spartacurtus~

A guide for epicureans who don't do Chianti

2010-10-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

From Variety Magazine-

News

Posted: Sun., Oct. 24, 2010, 4:00am PT

Where to eat

A guide for epicureans who don't do Chianti

By MONICA CORCORAN

Locals' escargot, or 'bovoleto,' is said to ward off evil spirits.

Rome Film Festival takes populist approach

Rome Film Fest: Extra eclectic

Reviving Rome's 'La Dolce Vita'

Seeking bargains in lap of luxury

'Last Night' to open Rome film fest

Sisters steal show at Rome fest

The old adage "when in Rome" may be a handy excuse for all sorts of transgressions, but it's an apt and accurate mantra for a foodie.

Roman emperor Vitellius (69 AD) feasted at a banquet four times a day and dispatched the Navy to appropriate rare, exotic edibles like peacock brains. Though such gluttony no longer prevails, Romans still sensualize eating and appreciate innovation.

"The gastronomic scene in Rome is ultra-sophisticated today," says Robin Saikia, author of the upcoming Blue Guide Italy Food Companion. "New ideas are constantly blended with traditional methods."

Indeed, many time-honored dishes -- and favorites of Vitellius -- still linger on menus with modifications. For instance, plump spit-roasted dormouse or "il ghiro" was once a staple at a Roman orgy. Nowadays, restaurants substitute roasted quail for rodent and baste it in honey with dates and cumin, notes Saikia.

The delicate bird is also the politically correct replacement for "cavia" or guinea pig, which is stuffed with chopped ham, cheese, herbs and bacon. She recommends Roman escargot or "bovoleto," which are small snails simmered in herbs and garlic and then served with chopped celery, carrots, and red wine. Story has it that the snails -- and perhaps the garlic -- ward off evil spirits.

Ex-pat and food writer Eleanora Baldwin, who leads the "Savoring Rome" culinary tour for Context Travel (contexttravel.com), recommends that the daring try "coratella coi carciofi" or the heart, lungs and spleen of the lamb, which are sautéed with artichokes and Marsala wine. Her pick for where to sample: Augustarello in the Testaccio (98 Via Giovanni Branca; 06 574-6585). She also adores "puntarella in salsa d'alici," which is crisp chicory topped with anchovy, vinegar, olive oil and garlic dressing.

"It's perfect to complement the rich and sometimes fatty Roman fare," says Baldwin, who hits Roma Sparita (24 Piazza Santa Cecilia in the Trastevere; 06 580-0757) for her chicory fix.

"Animelle" or lamb sweetbreads, another delicacy for the courageous palette, is offal rolled in flour, dipped in beaten egg and fried alongside artichokes. The best in Rome? Fellini dined on animelle and other ancient Roman specialties at La Campana, (18 Vicolo della Campana in the Pizza Navona; ristorantelacampana.com).

Eating and drinking local is a new trend in Rome, as the region now boasts its own fantastic wines. "Lazio was never known as a great wine-producing area," says Saveur contributor Brette Jackson, who has seen a recent uptick in enoteche. "But now the Lazali are enjoying the wine and food culture that has always been a popular pastime with the Umbrians and Tuscans."

At Urbana 47 (47 Via Urbana; 06 4788-4006) salumi, wines and ingredients of dishes like zucchini ravioli with amaretto and sliced seared rib-eye steak with chard in a balsamic reduction come from nearby purveyors. Post-midnight, there's a late-night, after-dinner menu served. In the same Monti district, Enoteca Provinicia Romano (82 Largo del Foro Traiano; 06 6766-2424) serves local fare like roasted pork from Ariccia and chocolate from Trappist monasteries.

Read more: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118026014.html?categoryid=3282&cs=1#ixzz13KczFCTO
Visit Variety.com to become a Variety subscriber.

Please sir, I want more eel spleens

2010-10-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

Please sir, I want more eel spleens

The Romans can teach us loads about the flavour and freshness of food. What d'you reckon, Jamie?

Ben MacIntyre

I BELIEVE I HAVE HIT on a way to revive the teaching of Latin while simultaneously improving school food. Recent studies of Ancient Roman cookery clearly show that to improve our nutrition we need to go back, not to the basics, but to the classics. So I am today unveiling Cenae scholasticae Jacobi Oliveris (Jamie Oliver’s Roman school dinners).

Here is a sample:

Alternatively, we could introduce set-menus based on specific classical works, such as this banquet recalled in a poem by Martial: tuna with boiled eggs, puls (a sort of muscular risotto made from polished spelt grains) with sausage, bacon and green beans, followed by raisins, Syrian pears and roast chestnuts. Pythagorus favoured a delicious-sounding cucumber salad with raisin-coriander vinaigrette, while Cato, the orator, was partial to herby olive tapenade.

Roman cooking might not appeal to all modern palates, particularly since a prime ingredient was garum, the pungent paste made out of fermented fish entrails. But in truth the Romans were remarkable, inventive cooks who would surely have looked upon the mass-produced, tasteless slop we eat today with deep disdain. Everything the Romans ate was organic, fresh, without additives or colourings, and usually home-produced and home-cooked. There was no waste. Anything edible was eaten, except the bones and the eyes; the Romans ate with the proper reverence, planting, harvesting and slaughtering in conjunction with the gods and constellations. Food was serious, but it was also fun, and in contrast to the snobbery associated with good food today, the ordinary citizens of Ancient Rome were as passionate about their grub as the rich.

Roman fast-food outlets (known as popinae), serving fried fish, ham and sausages, did a roaring trade. The link between diet and wellbeing was appreciated by the ancients, if not fully understood: Pliny believed that vinegar could cure hiccups and would bring down a fever if held in the mouth during a hot bath. The only complete Roman cookbook to survive is that of Apicius, the gourmet; this provides recipes of a sort, though not quantities or proportions. (He favours roasting your ostrich whole, for example, which is tricky without a really huge Aga, and a hammer.) Yet this and other culinary references scattered through the literature testify to the sheer variety of Roman cuisine, which picked up new tastes as the empire expanded.

Apicius lists 34 sauces for fish alone. In addition to garum, the Romans loved to combine sweet and sour tastes, herbs such as cumin, coriander, lovage and tonsil-threatening quantities of pepper. Herb purées, ancestors of pesto, were ground from thyme, pine nuts, rocket and parsley; honey was used to flavour dishes both sweet and savoury. Modern nutritionists might balk at the quantity of salt used for preservation and flavouring, but salt was highly valued and regarded as sacred: the word salary comes from sal, the Latin for salt, this being the currency in which Roman magistrates were paid.

Food was prepared then with a sense of occasion and theatre (admittedly easier if you had slaves to do the washing up): desserts disguised as pyramids, birds sculpted out of veal, root vegetables carved in the shape of fish. A piece of meat that tasted of meat was, in the Roman cookbook, a failure; meat was there as a canvas to be sketched on. Pork alone was believed to have 50 specific flavours. Texture was vital, and some liked it viscous, hence the taste for offal.

The popular image of Romans lying around consuming vast vats of larks’ tongues and periodically throwing up is unfair, for gluttony was rare. There were exceptions, of course: the teenage Emperor Elagabalus dined on the brains of 600 ostriches accompanied by peas laced with gold and rice sprinkled with pearls. Vitellius, it is reported, once ate a dish of parrot livers, peacock brains, flamingo tongues and the spleens of moray eels. And that was merely a starter. Mostly the Romans ate sparingly, and well, with an approach to nourishment that shows up our own bizarre hypocrisies and hang-ups about food.

Many of the people who today eat foie gras, made by force-feeding geese until their livers are near busting, would protest at the Roman technique of making pig’s liver by fattening swine on a diet of beer. We eat such rarities as snipe and woodcock, but would never dream of snacking on a crane, or an owl, or a snake. (Actually I did eat an owl once in China, by mistake; it was a hoot.) The composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is in trouble for consuming a swan that electrocuted itself in powerlines near his home in Orkney. If he hadn’t eaten it, something else would have done so. We recoil at the Roman delicacy made by drowning tiny birds in wine before consuming them whole, yet we seldom spare a thought for the billions of living chickens crammed into cages for a brief, hormone-packed life before being crunched up into nuggets. Given the choice of a battery life and being bombed into the next world on an overdose of Chianti, I know which fate I would prefer.

The Roman way of food has much to teach us, for freshness, inventiveness and pleasure. Bring back meatflavoured cheese, mouse-gruyere sculpted as Big Ben, spleen of eel, and sautéed swan; let us eat anything edible, so long as it is not actually endangered, and let us finish up the leftovers, including the tail and the ears.

Le château met les petits plats dans les grands

2010-10-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

Bonjour~

This is an article I found about a cooking history class in France, where they're cooking the "cuisine Apicius." They seem to be having fun with it, and getting high school students interested in Latin!
I think that it's pretty awesome that they're also trying out the favorite dishes from other times in history too - Henry IV?! I can only imagine what he'd eat... Nom nom nom.

The original French can be found ici.

Spartacurtus

The castle put dishes in large

Wednesday, parents and children are invited to the table of the castle.Their host, Marie-Jose Baldwin, will be running a session test kitchen.

Marie-José Baldwin hosts workshops and conferences around the kitchen through the centuries. PH. "NA"

Share

Nerac
Lot-et-Garonne
Tourism

Send to a friend

Marie-José Baldwin fell into the pot tiny taste of the good things. But she chose the classics to art. "I then asked:" how high school students interested in Latin? " .By greed ...

Thus it has combined his two passions: good food and beautiful letters. After wading through the cuisine Apicius, "one of our only sources for recipes Roman, Jose Maria invited her students to put into practice revenue. "Everyone had a great time, in every sense of the word! "

This passion for cooking did not stop there. It continued its journey into the kitchens of the story. She arrived in the eighteenth century and the advent of cooking with flowers. "Cooking is a great gateway to explore all the companies and their habits, even the social hierarchy," says the teacher, gourmet. That's the subject of his next response to the castle of Nerac, a movie directed at children.

Garlic Sauce

It is a real sensory workshop which will take place at the castle, next Wednesday, from 14 am 30. Of course, the team's castle and Marie-José Baldwin will explanations of what they ate at the court of Henri IV, the king's favorite dishes ... A little decorum at the table during the Renaissance will also be provided. For example, it was frowned upon, at the time to dig into the dish or to clean their fingernails ... with a knife.

But children and their escorts will also be invited to put their hands in the dough. They will set the table. Here, moreover, how was it presented to the Renaissance? And where does the art of folding towels? All responses will be made through practiced ... and appetizers. In fact, bring water to the mouth without taste buds n'entrevoient of these dishes would not make sense for Marie-José Baudoin that the kitchen "is a reason to live."

Therefore, small hands will be invited to concoct a sauce of garlic, it is said, was popular with the Vert Galant. While some might wince at the mention of this specific recipe, other dishes are provided, more greedy, but equally unexpected ...

"Laboratory experimental cooking, Wednesday, October 27 to 14 h 30.Animation for youngsters from 6 to 12 years, accompanied by an adult.

Single rate: 4 euro.

Toasting the Toast Mosaic

2010-10-21T14:55:00.000-07:00

This blog celebrates food of the ancients, so I thought that this blog should pay respect to Mrs Hadland, who created a giant mosaic of her mother-in-law- out of toast. Mosaics are certainly an ancient method of creating a picture, and it's food. So therefore, we here at Julia & Julius salute you!

A museum curator has created the world's largest toast mosaic in the image of her mother-in-law to celebrate her 50th birthday.

Sandra Whitfield, from Warrington, said she cried - with joy - when she saw the huge picture card created by her daughter-in-law Laura Hadland.

It took 27-year-old Mrs Hadland and 40 friends six hours to toast 9,852 slices of bread to create the 32ft 8in by 42ft (10m by 13m) artwork.

The card was officially named the world's largest by a Guinness World Records adjudicator on Sunday.

Mrs Whitfield said: "It's unusual, extraordinary and fantastic that she took the time and all the effort to do that."

Ancient Romans preferred fast food

2010-10-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

Ancient Romans preferred fast food

Jennifer Viegas

Discovery News

Wednesday, 20 June 2007

Fast food: even the ancient Romans were into it (Image: iStockphoto)

The average ancient Roman ate on the run and didn't wine and dine in decadence and formality like the elite in Rome, says a British archaeologist.

Dr Penelope Allison of the University of Leicester presents her findings in a new book detailing the excavation of an entire neighbourhood block in Pompeii.

Pompeii is a city frozen in time after the eruption of volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Historians often extend findings from Pompeii to other parts of Italy, particularly Rome, given the city's proximity to the Roman Empire's centre.

"In many parts of the western world today, a popular belief exists that family members should sit down and dine together and, if they don't, this may represent a breakdown of the family structure, but that idea did not originate in ancient Rome," says Allison.

Her claims are based both on what she did not find during the excavation, and what she did.

Allison noticed an unusual lack of tableware and formal dining or kitchen areas within the Pompeii homes. Instead she found isolated plates here and there, such as in sleeping quarters.

"Similar to how children today bring a plate of food to their rooms before watching TV or playing on the computer, my guess is that Roman youths would tote food to certain areas where they possibly engaged in other activities," she says, adding that kids might also have dined with slaves in nanny or caretaker roles.

What she did find in the homes were multiple mini barbecue-type fire boxes, suggesting that "BBQ or fondue-style dining" often took place.

Allison's book is titled The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii Volume III and is published by Oxford University Press.

"Meticulously researched"

Professor Stephen Dyson, of the University of Buffalo in the US, is one of the world's leading authorities on ancient Rome and formerly served as the president of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Dyson says the new book "was meticulously researched" and that his own work in Pompeii and Rome supports Allison's conclusions.

"We've also found numerous fast food restaurants in Pompeii and other parts of ancient Rome," he says.

Dyson likened these places to a cross between "Burger King and a British pub or a Spanish tapas bar."

Open to the street, each had a large counter with a receptacle in the middle from which food or drink would have been served.

"Most Romans lived in apartments or rather confined spaces, and there is not much evidence for stoves and other cooking equipment in them," he says.

Dyson thinks "fast food" restaurants became popular because they were plentiful, the same way many modern city-dwellers often eat out due to the panoply of affordable choices.

Additionally, many of Rome's and Pompeii's residents, who worked as artisans, shopkeepers, weavers and such, made enough money to support these places.

Grabbing food to go, either in a house or on the street, also seems to match the energy and flexibility of the Italian mindset.

"Italy's vibrant street and bar scenes today, along with the often multipurpose design of homes with bedsteads stacked in a corner, or kitchenettes in surprising places, reflect the wonderful, slightly chaotic, aspects of early Roman life," he says.

POM Wonderful "Aphrodite" TV Commercial

2010-10-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

A wonderful video about the origin of the pomegranate!

Asafoetida Adventure: a Parthian Meal

2010-10-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

Salve! Spartacurtus sum! Tonight, I made a dinner with the intention of showing off the spice asafoetida. From The Classical Cookbook by Richard Dalby, I chose to make a Parthian dinner, which included Parthian Beans, and Parthian Chicken. The Parthian Period was a period in Iranian history (274 BC – 224 AD).

Parthian Chicken

Pullum Parthicum: pullum aperies a naui et in quadrato ornas. teres piper, ligusticum, carei modicum. suffunde liquamen. uino temperas. componis in Cumana pullum et condituram super pullum facies. laser et uinum interdas. dissolues et in pullum mittis simul et coques. piper aspersum inferes. (Apicius 6, 9, 2)

Recipe:

Ingredients

4 pieces chicken (breast or leg)
ground black pepper
6 fl oz (3/4 Cup/170 ml) red wine
2 tablespoons (30 ml) garum (liquamen; substitute Vietnamese nuoc mam)
1/2 teaspoon laser (substitute asafetida powder or 5 drops asafetida tincture)
2 teaspoons chopped fresh lovage or celery leaf
2 teaspoons caraway seeds

Directions:

Place the chicken in a casserole dish and sprinkle it liberally with pepper.
Combine the wine, fish sauce and asafoetida. Add the lovage and caraway seeds and pour over the chicken.
Cover and bake in a pre-heated oven at 375°F (190°C/gas mark 5) for 1 hour. Halfway through the cooking time, remove the lid to brown the chicken.
Serve with a little of the sauce poured over the meat.

Parthian Beans

Aliter pisam sive fabam: despumatam subtrito lasare Parthico, liquamen et caroeno condies. Oleum modice superfundis et inferes. (Apicius 5, 3, 7)

Recipe:

Ingredients:

Black Beans, 1 can
1 T Garum (liquamen; substitute Vietnamese nuoc mam)
1/2 t Laser (substitute asafetida)
2 T Pine nuts (I substituted sunflower seeds)
White wine, 1/2 bottle
Vegetable stock, 1/4 pint

Directions:

Boil the beans and skim off, save separately
Grind the asafetida and pine nuts together
Put about stock and wine in a pan with the spices, and bring to a boil, reducing to about two-thirds the starting quantity
Add beans to the pan, heat thoroughly

This dish was surprisingly delicious! The chicken came out a little burned. I knew I shouldn't have followed the instructions that said to leave the chicken in the oven for an hour. I took it out after about 45 minutes, when I could smell it beginning to burn. The chicken was still delicious, but a little dry. The dish had a strange earthy garlic taste that was new to my palate. The beans were the best part. They were fantastic! I used Goya black beans, which I'm not 100% sure is authentic Roman, but it was marvelous! I had added celery leaves and caraway to the beans, because I happened to have some left over from the chicken, and it was a nice addition. They all ground up in the mix when before I tossed them into the boiling wine. The asafoetida taste certainly came through, and it was, in an odd sense, a good pairing with the fish sauce. It was a weird combination of tastes- fish sauce and the asafoetida, but both dishes tasted much better than the individual ingredients smelled like when they went in. I would certainly do this again, especially the beans! In all, this dish was quite successful. As you can see, I paired the Parthian dishes with white rice.

While I was doing the cooking, I did a bit of reading on asafoetida to see what I'm up against. My findings follow:

The name asafoetida originates from the Persian word aza (mastic resin) and a Latin word foetida meaning stinking. It is also known as devil’s dung because of its strong pungent smell (due to the presence of sulfur compounds). The famous Victorian chef Alexis Soyer was not a fan:

Alexis Soyer

“This plant, which we have excluded from our kitchens, and whose nauseous smell is far from exciting the appetite, reigned almost as the chief ingredient in the seasoning of the ancients. Perhaps they cultivated a kind which in no way resembled that of modern times. If it were the same, how are we to explain the extreme partiality which Apicius shows for it and which he says must be dissolved in luke-warm water, and afterwards served with vinegar and garum? It is certain that the resin drawn by incision from the root of this plant is still much esteemed by the inhabitants of Persia and of India ; they chew it constantly, finding the odour and taste exquisite.”

[From: The Pantropheon, Or, History of Food, and Its Preparation (1853)… Alexis Soyer]

The aromatic resin comes from certain species of the giant fennels, plants of the genus ferula. When the plants are about four or five years old, they develop very thick and fleshy, carrot shaped roots. The resin is collected from these roots just before the plants start flowering in spring or early summer. The milky resinous liquid soon coagulates when exposed to air. The color darkens when it is sun dried into a solid form.

The strong smelling and sparingly used asafoetida has an interesting history. Its predecessor silphium (also known as silphion or lasar), the wonderful spice from the region of Cyrene (now in modern Libya) was in great demand in ancient times. Silphium resisted attempts at cultivation and transplantation, which made it one of the major sources of revenue for Cyrene. The plant was valued for its many uses as food source, seasoning for food, and most importantly, as medication. Perfumes were made from its flowers; the stalk was used for food or fodder while the juice and root were used to make a variety of medical potions. Some of the best-known representations of silphium are the stylized images used in ancient coins.

The Greeks believed the plant was a gift from Apollo, because the plant appeared after a heavy rainstorm flooded the area at about the time the city of Cyrene was founded in 7th century B.C. Silphium was first mentioned in one of the Athenian poems from 6th century B.C. as a seasoning and dominant flavor of sauces served at banquets. It was also prescribed as part of several compound drugs in the Hippocratic texts of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. In his History of the Plants the Greek scientist Theophrastus wrote that Silphium is a thick root similar to celery. Two kinds of sap are collected from the plant, one from the stem and the other from the root. Exporting it to Athens they put it in jars and mix flour with it and shake it for a long time; and thus treated it remains stable.

Apollo

However, true silphium became extinct by the end of 1st century A.D. According to geographer Strabo profit taking led to the decline of silphium. Two centuries later Pliny tells the end of the story of silphium in his Natural History. He called it “one of the most precious gifts from nature to man”. In those days the spice was worth its weight in silver and it was used in the treatment of leprosy, to restore hair and as antidote to poison. Potions made from silphium were supposedly among the most effective birth control methods known at the time. According to Pliny, the last single stem of silphium that was found within living memory was sent to Emperor Nero.

Asafoetida, as a substitute for silphium emerged into prominence during Alexander the Great’s invasion of Asia. While crossing the northeastern provinces of the Persian Empire, his soldiers discovered a plant that was almost identical with silphium. Although not quite so good, it made a perfect substitute for silphium in tenderizing hard meat.

Asafoetida was cultivated for both medicinal purposes and for the use as a spice. The Greek called it silphion medikon - Median silphium (silphium from Iran) and the Romans called it silfi. De Meteria Medica, the foremost classical source of botanical terminology, by Greek Physician Dioscorides (circa 40 AD to 90 AD) treated both the Libyan and Median silphium under one heading. It said that the Cyrenaic silphium has a very healthy aroma, so that it is not noticed on the breath, but the Median and Syrian silphium are weaker and have a nastier smell.

Dulcia Domesica

2010-10-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

For my latest effort at Apicius' recipes, I thought I'd go for a dessert. After browsing the various sweets in the cookbooks, I chose Dulcia Domesica, Household Sweets, which are dates stuffed with walnuts, fried in honey.

DULCIA DOMESICA.
Homemade sweets. Take palms or dates, with the stones removed, and stuff them with nuts or nut kernels and ground pepper. Salt the dates on top and bottom and fry in cooked honey, and serve. (Apicius, Book Seven, XI-I)

I have never really eaten dates before, (Hey! Get your mind out of the gutter!) so this was a new experience to me. I couldn't find dates in the produce section of HEB, so I had to settle for a package of them I found with the dried goods. I found walnuts already shelled, sliced, and diced into tiny pieces, which really helped with the recipe. I cut the dates open longitudinally, and found that they have a perfect cavity to shove nuts in. I was able to cram an impressive amount of walnuts in each date, and held them shut with a toothpick.

Next, I sprinkled the dates with a small amount of salt, as per the directions. The recipe called for frying the dates in honey. Now, I had previously only fried things in oil or grease, so this was new to me. I had to look at a few other versions of the recipe in order to confirm that the recipe didn't mean for me to fry in oil, and add some honey, or something of that nature. Indeed, I was correct, I was really supposed to fry in pure honey, no grease. I poured about 1.5 cups of honey into my cast iron skillet, and heated it up until the honey started to simmer. I dropped in the dates, and spread them around so they would be evenly coated with honey. The honey boiled and simmered, and nearly boiled over a few times, but I got the hang of it quickly once I turned the heat down to medium. The honey grew thicker the more I simmered it, and once I saw that it was thickening and crystallizing on the dates after about seven minutes of simmering, I pulled them out to cool, and dusted them with freshly ground black pepper.

They were a sticky mess. I laid them out on wax paper to prevent them from sticking to everything that they touch. I served them at the Classics Club meeting to thunderous applause. Everyone seemed to enjoy them, even though they were a bit sticky and messy. But overall, they were enjoyed! The dates and honey were a great mix of flavors, and the walnuts added a crunchy texture that was a great contrast to the sticky, sogginess of the dates.

It was quite an ordeal to clean up after this, as I had caramelized honey on my skillet, which took some real elbow grease to get off. I ended up wasting a good deal of honey on this, which wasn't cheap. I had no immediate use for the caramelized honey, so I threw it out. The boiled down honey with pieces of date and chunks of walnuts would have made an excellent sauce for the topping on a cake or other desert of some sort, but I had nothing else to put it on, so it went in the composting bin. In retrospect, I could have saved it for another day.

In all, the Apician dessert was a success. People seemed to enjoy it. I took the dates to my accounting class after the meeting, and my classmates enjoyed it. I told them that it was an Ancient Roman dessert, and they ate it mainly out of curiosity, instead of hunger.

Garum - Veni, Vidi, Vomui

2010-10-13T00:27:00.000-07:00

Salve!

This is a repost of a blog from the Buenos Aires Herald called "Is that so?" by Dereck Foster.

I thought that this was an interesting addition to to the topic of Garum. I added the pictures to keep it interesting.

A few things I'd like to note:

I find it really interesting that the author describes the fermentation process as being from the bacteria in the intestines of the fish. It makes me wonder if the bacteria in the garum acted as a sort of probiotic for the Romans that kept their stomaches happy.

Additionally, I learned that the Romans got this anchovial abomination from the Greeks, whom I had always thought had better taste than that.

I nearly gagged when I read about the manufacturers feeding the garum waste to the poor! Bleech! Imagine having to eat the leftover stuff that isn't good enough to be rotted fish sauce!

Additionally, I think that another takeaway from this article is that this stuff was expensive, and they used it sparingly. I think that my experiences with the sauce may have been spoiled by too generous of application...

One last thing- I don't know what the author is speaking of regarding there being three Apicii (pl. of Apicius). Can anyone shed some light on this!?

~Spartacurtus

Is that so?

When in Rome...

By Dereck Foster
For the Herald

...Eat as the Romans do. OK that is easy to do today, but anybody interested in the history of food and delves if only lightly into the foods and customs of ancient Rome, will discover that Italian cuisine -as we call it today- has come a long and curious way since the days of the Caesars.
One of the most obvious and frequently consulted sources have been the writing and jottings of one gentleman gourmet known as Apicius (although there is argument as to whom one refers because it seems that there existed three persons that go (went) by that name. What is not in discussion, however, is that one of the basics of Roman cuisine was a condiment that is known (but hardly eaten today) by the name of garum. In an age when it is almost impossible to eat without the help of some condiment or other — be it ketchup, mustard or chimichurri — it cannot surprise us that the Romans, while unable to count with the profusion of sauces — which are our inheritance — counted with one all encompassing sample that, as has been asserted by more than one historian, was an absolute passion and without which it was practically impossible to conceive a meal.
Although it was the Romans who adopted garum with such fanaticism, they actually inherited garum from the Greeks so that we must consider this strange sauce as a Grecian contribution to international gastronomy. Thankfully, it has now passed the baton to what we today consider more refined and suitable substitutes. More than once attempts have been made to imitate the Roman product in modern times, but the results have not raised any hopes of a reintroduction of this sauce into our modern gastronomy.

What exactly is — or was — garum? If we take nuoc-nam as an example, we come fairly close to what garum was to the Romans. This South-East Asian condiment comes as close as possible to a Roman garum as the experts agree, although there are aspects of its making that differ.
According to the best ancient Roman sources, garum was basically a maceration of the intestines of mackerel or anchovies with salt and left out in the sun until the mix was completely decomposed (or rather digested by the action of the natural microbes found in the fish). At this point carefully calculated amounts of aromatic herbs were added; (almost everybody had his or her secret recipe). The mixture was then passed through a very fine strainer so as to separate the solid from the liquid. The liquid was then bottled and left to mature (much like a wine). The solids left over were not discarded; they were given to the poor who used it to mix into their porridges and stews.
In those days — up to the demise of the Roman Empire, garum was considered much finer and more expensive than oysters — another Roman passion — and caviar. According to Maguelonne Toussaint- Samat, in her History of Foods, something like close to four litres of garum cost the equivalent (in 1990) of 4000 pounds sterling. However, in most cases only a few drops of garum were required to improve almost any food the Romans indulged in.

Canstruction

2010-10-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

This blog would like to send its congratulations to Waterloo Architecture Student Association, of Waterloo, Canada for winning this year's Canstruction Best Meal Category! Ave! Ave! Ave! This model of the Parthenon is built completely out of canned food, that all went to charity.

Canstruction, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that holds annual design and build competitions to construct fantastic, giant sized, structures made entirely out of canned food. In each city after the structures are built and the winners declared the creations go on view to the general public as giant art exhibits. At the close of the competitions all of the food used in the structures is donated to the local food banks for distribution to community emergency feeding programs.

Asparagus, and Coriander Crusted Fish

2010-10-11T17:34:00.000-07:00

I gotta tell you, I am having a lot of fun writing for this blog.
Tonight, I tried out two more recipes from Apicius.

The first dish wasn't so much as a recipe, but a technique for cooking asparagus. Usually, when I've cooked asparagus, I've either steamed it, or boiled it. I had never thought of doing it Apicus' way. In de re Coquinaria, Apicius tells us how to prepare asparagus

"Asparagus: in order to have it most agreeable to the palate must be peeled, washed and dried and immersed in boiling water backwards." (Apicius, 3, 3, 72)

cooking the asparagus

When Apicius says to immerse it in boiling water "backwards," he means to have it so that the stalks of the asparagus are underwater, and the tips are poking out of the water. This way, the stalks are boiled and cooked, and the fragile flower tips of the asparagus are spared from the boiling water. In order to do so, I cooked the asparagus in an old coffee can, which allowed me to have them easily stand upright. I didn't have any other pots that were deep and skinny enough to accommodate this.

This worked out perfectly! The asparagus were delicious! Yum! The tips were relatively uncooked, and the stalks were cooked to perfection.

Next, I cooked "Fish in Coriander Crust."

"Prepare the fish carefully, put in a mortar salt and coriander seed, crush finely, roll the fish in it, put in a baking dish, cover, seal, bake in the bread-oven. When cooked, remove, season with very sharp vinegar and serve" (Apicius 10, 1, 4)

I used two tablespoons of coriander seeds, which I got from my gardening supplies. It's really nice that the Romans were so fond of coriander (cilantro), which is so ubiquitous in South Texas cooking. I had grown cilantro in my garden that had gotten out of control, and had harvested the seeds to share, and to plant next season. I cleaned them up, and roasted them on my skillet for 2 minutes at high heat, stirring constantly. I tossed them in the mortar and pestle, and ground them down with 1 teaspoon of salt.

Grinding the coriander & salt

Now, this recipe might not be the most authentic, as I used salmon for the fish. The Classical Cookbook recommended cod, plaice, or haddock, but I really like salmon, and it was on sale, so I picked salmon. I know, I know, the Romans didn't have salmon, as far as I can figure this may not be the most authentic dish, but we're testing the coriander crust, not the fish itself. So, I rolled the fish around in the mixture of ground up seeds and salt, and put it in a pan with a dash of olive oil so it wouldn't stick, and covered it. I baked at 375F. The cookbook recommended 15 minutes, but it wasn't nearly ready then. It was ready by 25 minutes. Reader, one of the hardest parts of cooking is making everything ready simultaneously. It's difficult to have the meat cooked when the veggies and all other dishes are ready, and this time I failed at it because of the extra time needed to cook the fish. Therefore, I ate the asparagus first, since they were ready first, and then after another 10 minutes or so, had the fish.
After taking the fish out of the oven, I sprinkled it with white wine vinegar. I had a little sticking in the pan, but it looked beautiful!

The fish fell apart a bit because it stuck to the pan.

The fish was wonderful! I'd never put white whine vinegar on salmon, but it worked out quite well. The coriander acted as a breading, it was absolutely delicious! I would make this dish again in a heart beat! Nom Nom Nom! The coriander was a delightful contrast to the white wine vinegar. The dish probably wouldn't have worked as well without the white wine vinegar, which added a tartness that was a nice contrast to the herbal earthiness of the coriander crust.

In all, this meal was a success. Both recipes were quite easy to make, and the ingredients were easy to obtain. I only wish I had known that the salmon would have taken longer to cook. I served the Roman dishes with enriched white rice, which was a nice pairing.

Silphium Asafoetidaque

2010-10-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

Ecce! Hic Spartacurtus est!

How the asafoetida is packaged

Today I happened to be in an Indian grocery, and found asafoetida powder, an ancient Roman spice. While it is known in Hindi, as "Hing," most of the Western world knows it as "Devil's Dung." Asafoetida is a gum derived from the sap of the roots and stem of the Ferula assafoetida plant, which is closely related to fennel. It has a very pungent aroma, though this awful odor is supposed to dissipate with cooking. It comes in a fine yellow powder. I was told by the shop keeper to keep it in a an air-tight container when I bought it, otherwise its scent will taint the flavor of all the other foods around it. This stuff smells AWFUL. It seriously smells like armpits, or rotting onions and sulfur.

Have we found a Roman flavor more detestable than Garum?! I think we have a contender. Can you imagine a spice that smells so strongly that it starts taking over the over foods stored around it!? I think I've found it. Somebody out there must agree with my revulsion to this spice, or it probably wouldn't be called "Devil's Dung."

So the story behind this vile spice is that originally, in Ancient cooking, the Romans had a spice called Silphium, also known as lasarpicium. This herb became terribly popular, not only for cooking, but for medicinal purposes as well. It was imported only from a small region in Cyrenaica, which is now modern Libya. This spice was so valuable that the Roman state treasury hoarded it along with their gold and silver. Pliny explains what happened to it:

Pliny the Younger

"For many years now it has not been seen in Libya: the agents who lease grazing land, scenting higher profits, have allowed sheep to overgraze the silphium lands. The single stem found within living memory was sent to the Emperor Nero. If an animal should ever come upon a promising shoot, the sign will be that a sheep after eating it rapidly goes to sleep, whereas a goat sneezes rather loudly. For a long time now, however, the only silphium brought to us in Rome has been that originating in Iran and Armenia, which is plentiful enough, but not nearly as good as Cyrenaic."

Ferula assafoetida

So Nero ate the very last sprig of silphium! Academia has found it difficult to believe that the silphium of Libya could really have become extinct from overgrazing. In Cyrenaic, it was so important for the economy that its image was stamped on all coins of the region from the 6th century BC. This was undoubtedly effective as a form of publicity, since money enjoyed such wide circulation and its imagery was consequently a powerful message. Thus the cultivation of silphium was a measure of the wealth of Cyrenaic and its territory. In more recent history, there are sometimes reports of its rediscovery, but the plants found never have the capacity to make goats sneeze like the original. Thanks Nero.

Cerenaic coin with silphium

However, the substitute that was used from Pliny's time onwards still exists as asafoetida, which is the 'silphium' imported from Central Asia that he speaks of. So, as strong as this stuff smells, and it smells really, really strongly, this is a shadow of the original strength so loved by the Romans.

The Romans not only used this spice to flavor vegetables, but despite its pungent aroma, asafoetida was known to alleviate stomach ailments, cold symptoms, anxiety issues, chronic fatigue, yeast infections, and painful gas and flatulence. Romans believed that regular dose of asafoetida before and during early pregnancy can help lessen the risk of miscarriage. I know that from the smell of it, it could probably lessen the chances of pregnancy in the first place, as nobody would want to go near you.

As a source of pungent flavor, asofoetida is still used widely today in Indian and Middle Eastern cooking, the pungency of the herbal aroma is far more persistent than that of the commonly used garlic, and Worcestershire sauce contains asafoetida as one of its main ingredients.

In the name of history, we will try out this spice, and get to the bottom of its flavors, and unlock the mysteries contained therein. I will be looking for a recipe that exhibits this wildly awful smelling spice, and will try it out. Of course, you will read all about it here, in Julius and Julia.

Julie and Julia and Julius.

2010-10-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

Salve!

I found this blog posting on Julie Powell's blog. Julie Powell is the Julie from the movie, Julie and Julia, the namesake of this very blog. In it, she discusses the challenges of cooking with the ancients.

I thought this article was incredibly fascinating. I had no idea that there was a difference between lamb and mutton. Additionally, I wholeheartedly agree with her that we should take advantage of technological improvements as they are available, such as refrigeration, and food processors and blenders, instead of mortar and pestle.

Do we need to lay out some ground rules for our cooking, like she suggests? Reader, if you'd like to comment on her questions she raises in the last paragraph, I invite you to do so in the comments section.

~Consul Spartacurtus~

The Trouble With Blood

by Julie Powell

A modern chef takes on the challenge of ancient cooking.

The author with a plate of turkey tamales she prepared following a recipe based on ancient Maya cooking techniques (Photo by Richard Bowditch) [LARGER IMAGE]

Winner Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes

2005 James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards

Like many Americans these days, I fancy myself a fairly adventurous cook. And I've produced some (overly) ambitious stuff in my cramped kitchen, like quail in rose-petal sauce and chicken livers and eggs in aspic. So when ARCHAEOLOGY asked me to fix up some ancient menus, I figured, no problem. I'll hit up the Greeks and the Romans and that will be that. But I had no idea what I was getting into. Because it turns out Apicius, first-century A.D., isn't the unchallenged king of the ancient culinary world, after all.

Why not give the Mongolian Empire's Hu Szu-hui a chance to strut his stuff? This court physician can be credited with showing us what in Xanadu did Kublai Khan dine on while decreeing his stately pleasure dome. In 1330, Hu presented the Mongol emperor Wenzong, the great-grandson of Kublai Khan, with an enormous dietary manual, Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor's Food and Drink, containing more than 200 recipes, and much advice concerning the medicinal values and health dangers of foods. (The full translation of this book, along with extensive commentary and the complete original text, can be found in A Soup for the Qan, by Paul Buell and Eugene Anderson.) In his dishes, from lamb-stuffed eggplant with basil-garlic yogurt sauce to deep-fried fish cakes flavored with mandarin orange and the bitter spice asafoetida, he was creatively combining flavors from the wide sphere of Mongolian influence, from Baghdad to Beijing, centuries before the words "fusion" and "cuisine" were ever used in the same sentence.

Ready to cook ancient cuisine? Click here for Julie's adaptations of ancient Maya, Mongolian, and Mesopotamian recipes.

Or what about the nameless cooks who scribbled down their tips in cuneiform in seventeenth-century B.C. Mesopotamia? Millennia before "tall food" became all the rage in today's chic bistros, chefs in the cradle of civilization were, if the clues they left on clay tablets are to be believed, dismembering tiny game birds, roasting the legs, and braising the bodies before carefully reassembling them atop a round of flatbread and garnishing them with watercress.

The Maya were not lacking for culinary achievements either, as we know thanks to European observers, archaeological evidence from trash heaps, and a direct culinary heritage that can be traced forward to many of today's Latin American cooking traditions. They made good use of the many foodstuffs native to the New World, such as tomatoes, maize, turkey, and chile peppers, to create a complex and flavorful cuisine, and the tamales and salsas (not to mention chocolate!) they invented today grace tables the world over.

Long before superstar chefs started experimenting with trout ice cream or tomato foam, adventurous foodies from Mongolia to Mesopotamia to Mayapán were paving the way. I decided to retrace their culinary steps as best I could, and re-create some of their most appealing dishes for a group of brave guests.

The author and her guests dig into an ancient smorgasbord.

(Photos by Richard Bowditch) Click to view larger versions.

The first difficulty a twenty-first-century home cook runs into when attempting to explore cuisines hundreds or thousands of years old is in establishing the ground rules. Does one make use of refrigeration? (The answer, after a brief but definitive analysis of logistics: an emphatic yes.) What about mutton, one of the most common meats throughout the Old World but now almost impossible for the common consumer to obtain in this country? Would I be cheating if I settled for lamb? (In America today, sheep are slaughtered almost exclusively before the end of their first year, making them technically lamb. Anything older is very, very tough--to buy, I mean, although I presume it also presents a challenge to the incisors.) And what about all those archaic food-preparation methods? I possess neither a horse under whose saddle I can shove meat for tenderizing, as the Mongols did, nor a yard into which I can dig a six-foot-deep hole to cook my turkey Maya-style. And then there are the Sumerian recipes that call for blood. Is it safe to cook with blood? Is it even legal?

Julie Powell received a 2004 James Beard Award for food journalism. Her book chronicling a year spent cooking out of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Vol.1) will be published in 2005 by Little, Brown.

Meus Hortus

2010-10-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Salve! Spartacurtus ibi est!

So I have gotten some questions about a comment I made in a recent blog posting about how I garden, and grow cilantro, rue, and other Roman herbs. Just as eating, and classical history are interests of mine, I also enjoy gardening, and my garden is actually Roman themed. Therefore, I thought I'd share some pictures of my garden.

Enjoy!

Some Roman artwork

An Obelisk

Some herbs- cilantro, mint, basil, chives, thyme, hyssop & rue.

Greek seals

Iris, Ghost peppers, and lavender

Mints, dusty miller, rue, and horseradish, with my rain catching system in the background.

My obelisk amongst the cacti

Apollo's bust

Another bust

Anyone know who this is?

McRoman’s Happy Meal: Fast Food in Ancient Rome (1st C AD)

2010-10-08T08:01:00.000-07:00

McRoman’s Happy Meal: Fast Food in Ancient Rome (1st C AD)

By: The Scribe on August, 2007

While it’s often thought that fast food was a modern invention of a society bent on immediate gratification… well, that theory can now be placed to rest. A study on the remains found at Pompeii has revealed that, more often than not, ancient Romans ate their food while “on the run”.

Although the concept of Roman fast food eateries has been around for awhile, after excavating an entire city block from Pompeii, archaeologists realized that the distinct lack of tableware, formal dining areas, or even full kitchens in Roman homes seems to indicate that cooking – and eating together as a family – wasn’t necessarily at the forefront of ancient Roman concerns. Instead, isolated plates in various corners of the homes turned up, even in places that were previously thought to be unrelated to eating, such as in the bedroom.

This seems similar to how today’s children and adults will take a plate of food into another area of the home while working on something else, instead of always sitting down at the kitchen table to eat. In fact, many of the homes also contained mini-barbeque style implements, which would have certainly allowed someone to cook their meat faster and could eat it on the go.

In addition, there are literally remains of fast food restaurants from Pompeii. These places resemble something like a cross between McDonald’s and a British Pub, in the sense that you could purchase both food and alcohol, and could either grab it and go or sit down at little tables inside the eatery. These fast food places were open to the street, and had a large counter area with a reception area in the middle where the food and drink would be served.

Then, if you wanted, you could sit down at one of the picnic-style tables and quickly munch down your bread and hot sausage (with cheese!), or carry it off as you went about your business – or perhaps bring the food back home for the family, if the wife didn’t want to cook that evening. And while it may seem strange to think that people in ancient times could support these kinds of establishments, many of the people living in Pompeii specifically were comparatively wealthy – local artisans, shopkeepers, potters, weavers, and so on – and could therefore afford to eat out on a regular basis.

Pompeii was also a bit on the touristy side, attracting people from all over the Roman Empire, which must have helped business along as well – seemingly to the point where individuals could own more than one fast food shop, as there is a known inscription that indicates one man owned over ten “franchises” in Pompeii alone!

Based on these finds, it is extremely likely that there were also fast food shops elsewhere in the ancient Roman world, however it is doubtful that there were quite as many as there seemed to be in Pompeii. Of course, as much as the Romans liked their fast food, it should be remembered that it was undoubtedly much healthier for them to eat out on a regular basis than the choices offered to the modern consumer these days!

ISICIA OMENTATA (a kind of Roman Burgers)

2010-10-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

Isicia Omentata

Isicia omentata: pulpam concisam teres cum medulla siliginei in vino infusi. piper, liquamen, si velis, et bacam myrtam extenteratam simul conteres. pusilla isicia formabis, intus nucleis et pipere positis. involuta omento subassabis cum caroeno.
Translation:
Finely cut pulp of pork is ground with the hearts of winterwheat and diluted with wine. Flavor lightly with pepper and broth and if you like add a moderate quantity of myrtle berries also crushed, and after you have added crushed nuts and pepper shape the forcemeat into small rolls, wrap these in caul, fry, and serve with wine gravy.

(Apicius, 2, 1, 7)

Ingredients:

------------

500g minced meat

1 French roll, soaked in white wine

1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

50ml Liquamen

(can be replaced by

1/2 tsp salt and a little white wine)

some stone-pine kernels

green peppercorns

a little Caroenum

Baking foil

Instructions:

-------------

Mix minced meat with the soaked french roll.

Ground spices and mix into the meat.

Form small burgers and put pine kernels and peppercorns into them.

Put them into baking foil and grill them together with Caroenum.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/ethnic/historical/ant-rom-coll.html#3

Bulgarian Archaeologist Comes Across Ancient Rock Stove

2010-10-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

Bulgarian Archaeologist Comes Across Ancient Rock Stove

Archaeology | October 5, 2010, Tuesday

Bulgarian archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov demonstrates how the ancient rock stove that he found at Perperikon works. Photo by Darik News

Leading Bulgarian archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov has completed his four-month summer excavations at the Ancient Thracian city of Perperikon.

On Tuesday, Ovcharov presented his latest intriguing discovery an ancient cooking stove cut right into the stones of the rock city dated back to 3rd-4th century.

The stove consists of a lower part, a hearth, whose ceiling has two holes that let through some fire; the ceramic cooking vessels would be placed on top of the holes.

"We can easily call this discovery a prototype of the contemporary cooking stoves," Ovcharov said.

The archaeologist made a recapitulation of his four months of excavations over the summer, during which his team examined 100 meters of the fortress wall of Perperikon.

The 3-meter-thick wall is taken to mean that Perperikon was the strongest fortress in the Rhodope Mountain from the Roman period (in this case, the second half of the 3rd century AD).

The stronghold protected what is believed to have been a palace-sanctuary harboring the ancient temple of Dionysus.

Professor Ovcharov, also known as the "Bulgarian Indiana Jones", believes that Perperikon was a religious center in Thracian and Roman times but was also a crucial city controlling the mining of gold in the Rhodope Mountain.

The numerous artifacts and objects unearthed by him over the summer include a Roma lamp with the image of a naked dancer, bronze and silver ornaments, lead seals of local rulers, including the Byzantine patrician Teodorokan, two rock tombs, and an image of a mummer (known in Bulgaria as "kukeri" dated to the 13th century.

Moretum - E Pluribus Unum

2010-10-05T21:34:00.000-07:00

From The Classical Cookbook, I made Moretum, which came from the recipes that comprise a feast at Cato's farm. "Moretum" translates to "salad." This recipe is actually a poem by the same name written by Virgil.

The original Latin poem can be found ibi.
The English translation can be found here.

The Classical Cookbook recipe calls for:

2 heads garlic

8 oz Pecorino Romano Cheese

1 large handful of coriander leaves (cilantro)

2 t chopped fresh rue

2 heaped t chopped fresh celery leaf

1 t salt

1 T white wine vinegar

1 T olive oil

Peel, and roughly chop the garlic. Grate the cheese. Roughly chop the herbs Grind the garlic and salt, break it down to a pulp in a mortar and pestle. Add cheese and herbs. When you have a smooth mixture, add liquids, and mix well. Gather mixture together and chill. Serve with a crusty loaf.

Dear Reader, although authenticity is a prominent objective of this blog, and following the ancients' culinary techniques is a valuable endeavor, sometimes it is necessary for me to not follow the recipes of antiquity to the letter. In the interest of keeping things scholarly on this blog, I skipped this part of the recipe in Virgil's poem:

Th' aforesaid herbs he now doth introduce

And with his left hand 'neath his hairy groin
Supports his garment;' with his right he first
The reeking garlic with the pestle breaks,

This garlic and cheese recipe is actually quite famous. In the original Latin poem, during the mashing of the garlic and green herbs, Virgil describes the colors blending into one ("color est e pluribus unus"), at line 102. This is conjugated to, "E Pluribus Unum," the motto of the United States of America. Our country's motto came from a cheese ball recipe.

Epityrum album nigrum variumque

2010-10-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

Salve! Spartacurtus sum!

Today, I tried out a recipe from The Classical Cookbook, by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger. This book lays out huge feasts one dish at a time. The feasts' recipes vary in historical times, and geographically.

I picked out the recipe for Olive Relish, which is part of the feast for the homecoming of Odysseus. The recipe is based upon Cato's On Agriculture.

The original recipe, translated, is:

Recipe for a confection of green, ripe, and mottled olives. Remove the stones from green, ripe, and mottled olives, and season as follows: chop the flesh, and add oil, vinegar, coriander, cumin, fennel, rue, and mint. Cover with oil in an earthen dish, and serve.

-Cato, On Agriculture, 119

Here's the original Latin.

This is the recipe as interpreted by The Classical Cookbook:

4 oz black olives

4 oz green olives

4 T red wine vinegar

4 T olive oil

1 t chopped fennel leaf, or root

2 t chopped fresh coriander (cilantro)

2 t chopped fresh rue

2 t chopped fresh mint

Chop olives roughly, add oil and vinegar. Prepare herbs by chopping finely. Add to mixture. Top off with a dash more olive oil, and seal container.

On Agriculture was written around 200 BC, by Cato, a Roman soldier and politician. The authors of The Classical Cookbook recommended that I alter the recipe, and omit the cumin. Cumin today is seed, which is very aromatic, and not the leaf, which is not. Using cumin at today's strengths from the seed overpowers the dish, so I followed the authors' recommendation, and left it out.

I am an amateur gardener, and tend an herb garden. I had rue, mint, coriander (cilantro), fennel all growing in pots in my backyard. Using fresh herbs certainly helped. This was actually the first time I had actually used the rue, which I was a bit afraid of, because I'd heard it can give you a rash if you touch it. Fortunately, this blogger was safe.

The Olive Relish turned out great! I am extremely happy with the results. I love olives in the first place, so it would have been hard to go wrong. The red wine vinegar added to the olives was a really nice touch. The herbs are an interesting addition, especially the mint. I would have to say that this olive medley beats anything they have at those olive bars, hands down. This recipe was an absolute success. I could eat this all day. I found that the dish does get better with age, even though Cato recommends serving immediately, I thought that once the herbs, oils, and olives got to mingle a bit, it only tasted better.

National Taco Day

2010-10-03T22:30:00.001-07:00

I understand the fact that this is a Classical food blog, but please realize that this is still a food blog. Therefore, I would like to take a moment to recognize National Taco Day, October 4. Being that this food blog is based in San Anto, and we take our tacos pretty seriously, I thought I'd attempt for this humble blog to pay homage.

You'd think it might be a bit of a stretch to try and tie Ancient cuisine to delicious Mexican food, but here's an article from National Geographic that might be able to bridge the gap.

I believe that it could be possible that the taco came from Ancient roots. I found in The Frugal Gormet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines by Jeff Smith, "(The Greeks) developed the 'edible plate,'... by topping the bread with an assortment of 'relishes,' here meaning anything that was put on the bread." This completely sounds like piling ingredients on a tortilla, if you ask me.

To celebrate National Taco Day, Taco Cabana will be giving out FREE breakfast tacos at all their locations Monday, Oct 4 from 7a-9a.

Additionally, Jacala Mexican Restaurant at 606 West Ave, San Antonio, TX 78201 (210) 732-5222 is throwing a Taco Day celebration from 7p-9p.

Figure in center is holding a taco.

Garum Colatura

2010-10-03T21:30:00.001-07:00

In the ongoing discussion of garum, I thought I'd post this from another blog I read, The Kitchn. I've copied the article, and the comments.
Is anyone interested in trying this stuff out?

-Spartacurtus

Garum Colatura: Ancient Roman Fish Sauce!

The people of Southern Italy and Southern Asia may be far apart, geographically, but when it comes to fermented fish, they have a lot in common. Both Thai cooks and ancient Roman chefs relied on a certain salty, powerfully fishy liquid dredged off fermenting anchovies. They added this to dishes for savor and umami. The Thai call it fish sauce (nam pla); the ancient Romans called it garum. And it's still around, more or less.

Have you heard of garum, the ancient Roman fish sauce, made from what seeped out of the barrels of fermenting anchovies and other fish? It's still made today, although it probably isn't as pungent. It is sold in little glass vials, sometimes under the label anchovy extract or syrup, whose instructions advise you to toss it with pasta, garlic, red pepper, and olive oil.

I had been hearing a lot about colatura, and I was dying to try it. I picked up a little bottle at Zingerman's, and dashed it over pasta. Delicious! It does indeed have a fishy smell, but when you spread a tablespoon or two through a whole batch of pasta it just gives it an elusive savory, briny flavor, which complements summer basil and tomatoes, or simple garlic, in a beautifully wild and addictive set of flavors. I am hoarding the rest of the bottle, saving it for the best pastas and simple dinners at home.

Obviously this isn't a vegetarian product, but if you are simply trying to eat less meat, or use meat more for flavor than for substance, this would be a fantastic addition to your cupboard.

Its rather shocking price, though, has made me wonder about using just straight up fish sauce in pasta. Anyone tried this?

• Read more: Essence of Anchovy From the Amalfi Coast, by Melissa Clark - An excellent introduction to garum and its modern equivalent.

• Find it: Garum Colatura, $17 at Zingerman's

(Images: Faith Durand)

Garum

2010-09-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

Ave! Spartacurtus sum.

I believe that the topic of garum needs to be brought up early in this blog. Reader, I have found this blog in bricks, and I promise to leave it in marble. Any classical food blog would be amiss to not include it! It does seem to be a controversial topic, and I would like to request that any readers out there to add their thoughts on the matter in the comments section of this post.

Have you tried it? If so, do you like it, or does it make you run to the vomitorium?

I would be willing to try to make it, just to taste the classical staple. I’d bet that using Nuoc Nuam as a substitute pales in comparison to the real thing, and would be akin to substituting tomato paste for a delicious salsa.

The recipe I’ve most often seen quoted for what Garum is comes from Geoponica 20.46:1-6 (this is based on the translation found in Curtis, Robert I., Garum and Salsamenta; E.J. Brill, 1991, pg 12-13)

1. The so-called liquamen is made in this manner: the intestines of fish are thrown into a vessel and salted. Small fish, either the best smelt, or small mullets, or sprats, or wolffish, or whatever is deemed to be small, are all salted together and, shaken frequently, are fermented in the sun.

2. After it has been reduced in the heat, garum is obtained from it in this way: a large, strong basket is placed into the vessel of the aforementioned fish, and the garum streams into the basket. In this way, the so-called liquamen is strained through the basket when it is taken up. The remaining refuse is alex.

3. The Bythinians prepare it in this manner: it is best if you take small or large sprats, but if not, wolffish, or horse-mackerel, or mackerel, or even alica, and a mixture of all, and throw these into a baker's kneading trough, in which they are accustomed to knead meal. Tossing into the modius of fish two Italian sextarii of salt, mix up thoroughly in order to strengthen it with salt. After leaving it alone for one night throw it into a vessel and place it without a lid in the sun for two or three months, agitating it with a shaft at intervals. Next take it, cover it, and store it away.

4. Some add to one sextarius of fish, two sextarii of old wine.

5. Next, if you wish to use the garum immediately, that is to say not ferment it in the sun, but to boil it, you do it this way. When the brine has been tested, so that an egg having been thrown in floats (if it sinks, it is not sufficiently salty), and throwing the fish into the brine in a newly-made earthenware pot and adding in some oregano, you place it on a sufficient fire until it is boiled, that is until it begins to reduce a little. Some throw in boiled down must. Next, throwing the cooled liquid into a filter you toss it a second and third time through the filter until it turns out clear. After having covered it, store it away.

6. The best garum, the so-called haimation, is made in this way: he intestines of tunny along with the gills, juice and blood are taken and sufficient salt is sprinkled on. After having left it alone in the vessel for two month at most, pierce the vessel and the garum, called haimation, is withdrawn.

Please add your comments in the comment section. Do you want to try it?!

“But what can be considered of greater authority than the senses?” -Lucretius 100-55 BC

2010-09-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

Salve! This is Consul Spartacurtus! I am a huge fan of eating, so therefore cooking is a passion of mine. I have a great time learning about food history, and am always willing to try out new recipes. There's not much that I won't eat, unless it eats me first. I was excited to learn about this blog, and that the club is willing to eat the strange things from antiquity. Therefore, I'd like to submit my most recent classical culinary conquest to the blog.

After discussing Nathan’s dining idea at our meeting, I wanted to find some weird Roman recipes, and immediately ran to the John Peace Library and got my hands on every cookbook I could grab, where I managed to grab Apicius’ de re Coquinaria and then hustled over to the San Antonio Public Library to stock up on some more modern cookbooks. I was initially just looking for a dessert to make, but then decided to try out a whole meal based on these books I found.
Here are the books I got:
Apicius - Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome
Around the Roman Table- Patrick Faas
Dining as a Roman Emperor - How to Cook Ancient Roman Recipes Today - L’erma di Bretschneider
Art, Culture, and Cuisine - Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy- Phyllis Pray Bober
The Classical Cookbook - Andrew Dalby & Sally Grainger
The Philosopher’s Kitchen - Recipes from Ancient Greece and Rome for the Modern Cook- Francine Segan

Some of these books are better than others for actual replicable recipes and how easy they are to make. I found The Philosopher’s Kitchen to have the easiest recipes, from which I picked “Grapes-and-Couscous Stuffed Chicken Breasts.”

The recipe follows:

1 T unsalted butter
salt
1/2 c dried couscous
1.25 c green seedless grapes, halved
1 celery rib, finely minced
2 t chopped fresh parsley
1 t fresh mint
4 boneless chicken breasts, skin on
freshly milled pepper
1 1/2 c white wine
1/2 c sliced, blanched almonds
1 T chopped fresh chives

Bring the butter, 1/2t salt, and 1/2 c water to boil in small saucepan. Remove from heat, and add couscous. Cover for 5 min. Then, stir in grapes, celery and herbs, and fluff with a fork.
Then, butterfly the chicken, and stuff the couscous mixture in, rolling chicken around the couscous. Lay seam-side down on greased pan, and cook @ 400F for 30 min.
Meanwhile, the wine, 3/4 c of mashed grapes and crushed almonds are added together, and boiled down in a reduction sauce. I ran this through the blender after it boiled down, and added the chives.

This dish is the second course of a summer meal described by the Greek writer, Artemidorus in the second-century B.C.

The reduction sauce turned out to be great! The whole recipe was a great success! They turned out perfectly. They held together nicely while being cut up once served, and looked beautiful coming out of the oven. Dear Reader, at this point I’d like to apologize for my neglect in not recording photographic evidence of this culinary endeavor, but I was amiss in not knowing about this very blog until after the affair was over. Ecce! The pictures included are not mine, but the ones from the cookbook.

For a vegetable, I served, “Carotae et Pastinacae” from Dining as a Roman Emperor.The recipe comes straight from Apicius’ de re Coquinaria III.XXI.1-2. I chose this dish because it uses garum, and I thought I would be negligent if I served a Roman meal without it. I detest garum. I’ve cooked with it before, and think that it is god awful. It stinks up the house, and turns good recipes awful. This was no exception. I’ve never had a recipe that made garum taste good. They used it like San Antonians use salsa. They put it on everything. To you, Reader- I challenge you to submit to this blog a good garum recipe. I don’t think it exists. I’d like to do another post solely devoted to garum. Anyhow, the carrots are sliced thin, fried briefly, and dried on a paper towel. Then I made a reduction sauce of red wine, honey, ground peppercorns, oil, and Nuoc-nam (Garum). The sauce turned out to be a gross purple mush. Prior to this, I had never tasted fried carrots. They did turn out to be pretty good, if they weren’t covered with this reduction sauce. My dinner companion and I both picked at the carrots, wishing that the sauce wasn’t there. In retrospect, it would have been nice to have put the garum sauce on the side...

I served the meal with Fratelli Brothers’ Pinot Grigio ($10- HEB), which I bought because I thought it’d pair nicely with the chicken, and it has Roman stuff on it. Really, I bought it for the label, which tells the story of Castor & Pollux. It was a good wine, but a poor pairing with the chicken, which was a bit bland for such a light bodied wine, I felt. The wine would have paired better with something spicier. This meal needed a real full bodied chardonnay. This was the opposite. At least it was able to wash the taste of garum out of my mouth.

For dessert- Lavender-Honey Apples in Puff Pastry. Also from the Philosopher’s Kitchen, this one was fairly easy. I peeled, and cored two Red Delicious apples. Then, rolled them in lavender infused honey, and then rolled the sticky mess in a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Then, I wrapped the whole affair in a puff pastry, folding the edges up to the top of the apple, and poked a cinnamon stick in the top to represent the stem. This was then baked @ 400F for 25 min.

They turned out pretty well. The sugar mixture melted out of one of the pastry puffs, and proceeded to crystalize on the baking tray. (It still sits soaking in my kitchen sink as I write this...) The other one held its sugar pretty well, and looked rather pretty coming out. I stuck a mint leaf and a cinnamon stick in each one to finish the effect of the stem. They tasted like apple pie, which I’ve always considered sort of an American taste. They were sort of apple dumplings, really. I don’t really know how authentic of a recipe this is. Was cinnamon and nutmeg available to the Romans? Nescio. The author does cite Hercules’ task to bring back the Golden Apples of Hesperides, and the story of Atalanta and apples from Aphrodite.

In all, the meal was a success... I am excited to get to try out more recipes, and to have an audience to test these things out on. I hope to do many more posts! Propino tibi!

Epicurious

2009-10-04T08:53:00.001-07:00

Our first attempt at creating authentic Roman recipes.

The two recipes were selected from La Cucina dell'Antica Roma, an Italian cookbook lent to us by one of the Classics professors at UTSA. The recipes were, as promised, based on the recipes of Apicius.

We decided to start with two mild recipes, instead of going all-out on our first try. So, our first dinner consisted of Squid Balls and Pear Cake.

Delicious.

First stop, the grocery store. We weren't entirely sure that the ingredients the recipes called for would be available at Wal-mart, so we visited HEB's Central Market. This place is huge. It has a ton of fruits and vegetables, hard-to-find items, and CHEESE. So much cheese. Unfortunately our recipes did not call for any cheese. We went to the seafood counter and purchased about a pound of squid tubes for the squid balls, as well as some Italian breadcrumbs (maybe not so accurate, but they smelled delicious), olive oil for frying, and a Vietnamese fish sauce to substitute for liquamen, the roman equivalent of ketchup. They used it on everything, from breakfast to dessert. With our modern palates we are still trying to figure out why a broth made from fish guts fermenting in the sun sounded like a good idea to the Romans.
We then made our way through the store to pick up fresh pears and raisin wine. Have you ever tried to find raisin wine? It's not easy. So we gave up and purchased regular ol' red wine. Except our wine was non-alcoholic, because it was cheap.

After our market excursion we made way to my apartment, which was transformed into a Roman kitchen for the evening. We started by laying out all of the ingredients we purchased (in watching the video, you'll see that we used ingredients that we did not purchase from the store--the reason being that I already had them at home).

We started off by doing prep-work: pear cleaning and boiling. While the pears were being boiled we just sort of sat around. Pears take a long time to boil.

These are pears.

These are pears boiling.

For those of you who are not interested in reading the details of the experiment, we also made video, shown below.

We then put the boiled pears through a sieve, which is not fun. It makes what looks very much like pear-y applesauce. Delicious. It smelled great, just like pears. We were very sad that we had to say goodbye to the naive pear. It had to go into a mix with other very horrible things, like eggs and wine and honey. Okay, so they aren't that horrible. But the pears stopped smelling like pears, they smelled entirely of wine. You couldn't get away from that smell. We poured the pear cake mixture (which looked slightly less like applesauce and a bit more like a batter) into a pan which we oiled to prevent sticking. It was at this point that my roommate came into the kitchen and asked what we were doing, to which I made a clever imitation of Dr. Short, which (unbeknownst to me) was caught on film. I figured, it wasn't mean, and actually quite hilarious once I realized that it was on tape. Sorry Dr. Short! Anyway, if you watch the video, I recover from the mishap quite flawlessly and continue topping the pear cake with the authentic cumin and pepper combination. We altered the recipe because that smelled terrible and sprinkled cinnamon sugar on a quarter, and left the remaining quarter plain for a control. This is an experiment, after all. Popped the pear cake into the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes, and began working on the squid balls.

We started off by rinsing the squid tubes, just to make sure there wasn't anything gross hanging off of them. After the tubes were cleaned, we proceeded to mince the squid as the recipe states. Now, you may have never minced squid before, but it's not an easy task. Squid, from beyond the grave, fight for their right to remain whole. It took great effort between the two of us to saw through the squid tubes, but eventually we finished. Now came the daunting task of adding our liquamen (or garum as we say in the video) substitute, fish sauce that smelled very much like dog food. Mike had a very horrible experience with this fish sauce once before and was wary when it came time to add it. We added a measly 5 or so drops into the squid and mixed it up. Didn't seem too bad, not yet.
Before frying the squid, we checked on the pear cake. Was it done? We had no idea. Shook the pan inside the oven to see if it would hold its shape, but it just wiggled around just the same as when we placed it there half an hour ago. So we set the timer for another 30 minutes.
Mike started to place the squid balls into the breadcrumbs, and they didn't seem very promising in holding their shape. Miraculously, the breadcrumbs began to seep into the center of the squid balls and act as a binding agent, giving us surprisingly solid squid balls. The oil was heated in a deep pan on the stove at medium heat, and Mike placed his first squid ball. I called in my roommate to turn the squid for me as Mike continued to roll the squid, since I am terrified of splattering oil. If it was my job to turn the squid balls in the pan, I would have been wearing some kind of long-sleeved shirt and oven mitts for protection. Luckily, she offered her assistance!

The squid fried up nicely and we set them on towels to cool a bit. Once they had all finished frying, we took another look at the pear cake to see if it had... caked. To our dismay, the consistency was unchanged. We said "screw it", since we had no idea what it was supposed to look like. One note: The recipe called for the cake to be baked at 180 degrees for half an hour. Do you know how many ovens actually have a "180 degrees" setting? Not mine. Mine says "warm". So I set it to 200 degrees and it still took an hour before we finally just gave up and took it out.

Our meal had finished cooking and it was now time for the taste test. I tried a squid ball first, with no sauce of any kind. It was nice and hot and the squid was very tender but well cooked inside. Squid has a tendency to become incredibly rubbery if you overcook it, but our skills prevented this. It tasted great. The few drops of garum substitute that we used actually complimented the squid and breadcrumbs. We were surprised and delighted that our first recipe turned out as well as it did.

We ate our squid balls with modern condiments of choice--my roommate ate hers with ranch dressing, and Mike and I ate ours with ketchup. It was a great entree.

Then, of course, it was time to try the pear cake. I sighed and took up my fork. I scooped first from the authentic cumin and pepper side. It was warm and tasted like applesauce mixed with pepper and cumin. It's actually the hardest texture to describe. I tried the modern twist, cinnamon sugar, and again I didn't know what to think. The oddness of the texture was just beyond me. My roommate actually enjoyed it, and Mike thought it was gross.

All in all, though, it was an exciting experiment and we all look forward to trying new recipes in the future!

Our breakdown of the recipes is below. The way we measured was on a scale of 1-5, 1 being unbearable and 5 being delicious. The four categories are taste (how did it taste?), edibility (could you stomach it? this includes texture), availability of ingredients (could I find everything in my local grocery store?), and need for alteration (was the authentic recipe bearable, or do you need to add a modern twist?)

Here's the breakdown:

Squid Balls

Taste: 5
Edibility: 5
Availability of Ingredients: 4 (you might have a hard time finding the squid, or the fish sauce)
Need for Alteration: No, but if you didn't like the Italian breadcrumbs you could have easily used plain ones and if you didn't have the fish sauce you could have used salt.

Pear Cake

Taste: 2
Edibility: 1 1/2
Availability of Ingredients: 5
Need for Alteration: Yes, but we haven't figured out how to make this thing not taste disgusting.

Salvete!

2009-09-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I would like to thank you for reading.

Secondly, I will tell you who "I" is. "I" represents the entire Classics club at the University of Texas at San Antonio. We are enthusiastic students and faculty with a taste for adventure. We love what we do, we love what we learn.

We also love food.

In order to torture ourselves as well as expand our culinary minds, we have elected to do an experiment. Lately certain films may lead you to believe that we are attempting a "Julie & Julia" remake. Well, in some ways, this is true. We will be testing classic Roman recipes such as those recorded by Apicius. We will make selections from each section of whatever book we choose to use (there are several out there, but the we will be taking most of our recipes from "Around the Roman Table" by Patrick Faas).

When you look at these recipes, they seem a bit intimidating. I'll give you an example of two ingredients required for a few recipes:
Lamb's brain
Fish testicles

Whether or not we attempt to recreate these recipes relies entirely on the availability of the ingredients specified. Of the recipes we can find ingredients for, we will then pick the most interesting of the bunch. We will record our progress from shopping for said ingredients, preparing the meal, and (most importantly, the final verdict) tasting.

We will write detailed posts about our experiences, but also make a succinct breakdown of the recipe and our opinion at the end of each post.

Our first recipe will be coming very soon!

Julia & Julius

Ancient Olympians on the Atkins Diet (776 BC)

Sweet Wine Cakes

1,800-Year-Old Roman Multitool

Past the ‘Best Before’ Date (ca. 400 BC)

Oedipus... Starring Vegetables

Pass the Caesar Salad, Please… (ca. 264 BC – 440 AD)

Salve! Spartacurtus ibi!

Too many designations in the kitchen

Too many designations in the kitchen

At first blush, the UNESCO project for culinary heritage seems a good thing. On closer examination, it's plagued with problems, not the least of which is the very possibility of preserving cuisines.

Agamemnon versus Legolambnon

Veni, Vidi… Vomit? (1st C BC)

Jus porro frigidum in porcellum elixum

A guide for epicureans who don't do Chianti

From Variety Magazine-

News

Posted: Sun., Oct. 24, 2010, 4:00am PT

Where to eat

A guide for epicureans who don't do Chianti

By MONICA CORCORAN

Please sir, I want more eel spleens

Please sir, I want more eel spleens

The Romans can teach us loads about the flavour and freshness of food. What d'you reckon, Jamie?

Le château met les petits plats dans les grands

Bonjour~

The castle put dishes in large

Wednesday, parents and children are invited to the table of the castle.Their host, Marie-Jose Baldwin, will be running a session test kitchen.

Marie-José Baldwin hosts workshops and conferences around the kitchen through the centuries. PH. "NA"

Toasting the Toast Mosaic

Ancient Romans preferred fast food

Ancient Romans preferred fast food

POM Wonderful "Aphrodite" TV Commercial

Asafoetida Adventure: a Parthian Meal

Dulcia Domesica

Garum - Veni, Vidi, Vomui

Canstruction

Asparagus, and Coriander Crusted Fish

Silphium Asafoetidaque

Julie and Julia and Julius.

Meus Hortus

McRoman’s Happy Meal: Fast Food in Ancient Rome (1st C AD)

ISICIA OMENTATA (a kind of Roman Burgers)

Translation:

Bulgarian Archaeologist Comes Across Ancient Rock Stove

Bulgarian Archaeologist Comes Across Ancient Rock Stove

Moretum - E Pluribus Unum

Epityrum album nigrum variumque

National Taco Day

Garum Colatura

In the ongoing discussion of garum, I thought I'd post this from another blog I read, The Kitchn. I've copied the article, and the comments.Is anyone interested in trying this stuff out?

-Spartacurtus

Garum

“But what can be considered of greater authority than the senses?” -Lucretius 100-55 BC

Epicurious

Salvete!

In the ongoing discussion of garum, I thought I'd post this from another blog I read, The Kitchn. I've copied the article, and the comments.
Is anyone interested in trying this stuff out?