Another Roman Recipe To Delight All

[Pertinax]

:notworthy:

 

May :notworthy: substitute squirrel for hossenpfeffer?

 

Yes , but youll need half a dozen.

 

What is GO smoking nowadays?

[Gaius Octavius]

:notworthy:

 

Trying a pipe these days. Bride :wub: sent all sorts of pipe tobacco from 10uhC. Probably have chocolate.

 

[Pertinax]

I tried some Pecorino Romana (with Bonararda Sangiovese to accompany ), the taste of this most ancient of Roman cheeses is piquante I was moved to find a robust classical dish that uses it to good advantadge.I found this excellent small item in Giacosa's "A Taste of Ancient Rome":

 

Spelt porridge from Lazio:

Using pork rind and jowl. Boil approx 3 ounces of pork rind for about 20 minutes, then chop finely.Boil again in a quart and a half of fresh water. Chop the jowl (pigs cheek-very nice and fatty) finely and fry with garlic and herbs to taste. Add chopped onion. Add the rind pieces in water. Now add 10 ounces of spelt flour and cook for a further 20 minutes. Use grated pecorino as a savoury side dish to compliment the pork.

 

That has a ring of tough authenticiity .

 

So id suggest a short cut of pre-cooked pigs cheek with attached rind , diced, quickly re-fried in garlic and onion and stirred into oat or spelt porridge. The pecorino is (IMO) more subtle than parmesan and has a rich tang to it.

[Pantagathus]

The pecorino is (IMO) more subtle than parmesan and has a rich tang to it.

One of the many cheeses that GO & I enjoyed together when we met last year was a delicious pecorino accompanied by spelt bread

[Pertinax]

Here's a useful link for those who are unfamiliar:

http://italianfood.about.com/library/weekly/aa022704.htm

[Pertinax]

A little further info from Pliny .Romans appear to have appreciated a mature cheese (caseus senescentus) , Pliny mentions caesus bithynus (no Caesar jokes please) which is just such a matured item :

" among foreign cheeses Bythynian is very famous , the meadows there are very salty , which you cannot see , but you notice it from the fact that the cheese turns salty by itself".

Pliny also declared Gaulish cheeses to be most sought after (little change there then!) , mentioning Nemausum (Nimes) Lesur (La Lozere) and Gabalicus (Gevaudan) , though these can only be recommended when young" NH XI

I note that flavouring of new cheeses was achieved with green fir cones and pine kernels (where produced in the Apennines or Dalmatia), and apple wood smoking was very popular.

[Gaius Octavius]

I notice from the above that the Latin for 'cheese' is 'caseus'. The 'Italian' seems to be 'fromaggio'. The Neapolitan is pronounced 'Kaz' (Don't know how to spell it - probably 'cas'.).

 

Once upon a time, I worked in a Neapolitan bakery. People would come to us with pieces of chicken, beef, sausage, salami, etc., to be baked (individually) into 'Italian' semolina loaves. (Great!) Was this a practice of the Romans? No need to make a sandwich (sanguich in broken Nea.).

 

I don't know how Roman 'gorgonzola' kaz is, but my Bride stumbled onto something after I complained about tasteless polenta. She threw 1/2 inch cubed gorgonzola, 1/4 inch cubed mozzarella, finely chopped onions, basil, prosciutto, and ?, into the polenta after it was cooked and cooled somewhat (so that the cheese wouldn't dissolve into the polenta nor would the other stuff cook). I like to eat it cold as I watch the Yankees go down in flames.

 

While I am at it. It drives me to distraction when I hear the current crop of ignoratti mispronounce 'mozzarella'. It's not 'mahtz-ah-rel-la. It's 'moo-tza-rel-la. The latter is the cheese; the former may be a girl's little bottom or a little girl killer!

 

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

Edit. Pay absolutely no attention to the misguided, uninformed barbarian's post below.

Edited June 16, 2007 by Gaius Octavius

[docoflove1974]

While I am at it. It drives me to distraction when I hear the current crop of ignoratti mispronounce 'mozzarella'. It's not 'mahtz-ah-rel-la. It's 'moo-tza-rel-la. The latter is the cheese; the former may be a girl's little bottom or a little girl killer!

 

 

To be most correct, it's "mo-tza-rel-la"...but the silly Southerners who inhabit the East Coast have messed it up for everyone

Edited June 16, 2007 by docoflove1974

[Pertinax]

I dont find any reference (as yet ) to the appearence of the cheeses that I mentioned. I have to suggest that it is at least plausible that a mature cheese (especially when stored in a cool dampish place ie: a cave or cellar) will quite naturally become veined and marbled.

 

This is not strictly kosher here but I thought my fellow bon vivants might enjoy it:

http://www.paxtonandwhitfield.co.uk/

[Pertinax]

I happen to have come by a quantity of ostrich liver. It is advertised as being "like calves liver" (that is veal liver), as veal liver (wrapped in smoked bacon/cured ham )is a favourite of mine, I searched for a Roman recipe to attempt. Sadly I found only the recipe for ostrich ragout, and no real help in the related area of goose liver.

 

Ostrich ragout (venison would be a possible alternative).

 

the original calls for the meat to be boiled, I would suggest frying to seal the flesh first then roasting ,boiling might render the flesh a bit dull.

Make a roux of flour (spelt) and olive oil, add passum (sweetish madiera or similar), stir . Mix cumin, celery seeds (not too many can be salty) dates , garum (nam pla or your own similar choice) , anchovies , mint ...all these in vinegar, honey and more oil (a little walnut might be an idea). Mix the two liquids togetehr and add the meat.

 

Faas suggests:

2 tsp flour

2 tbsp olive oil

300ml passum

3 tbsp garum

tbsp cumin seed

tsp celery seed (no more!)

tsp peppercorns

3 pitted dates

plenty of mint (2 tbsps)

tsp honey

3 tbsp vinegar .

 

Thats a recipe for the stronger flesh.

I suspect that the ostrich liver can be treated like a ripe goose liver , I see that the latter was dedicated to Isis and found this :

"The Capitol was unable to protect the goose from having to give up its liver as an offering to you,Isis, daughter of Inachus" (Ovid Fasti 1-453). Sad.

The likeliest method seems to have been light frying in olive oil , served whole. So I will experiment on behalf of the Forum with a little oil, garum and passum. Its a dirty job, but it has to be done.

 

Benigne, secundam mensam non requiro, nisi antidotum continet.

[Pertinax]

Guinea fowl in the style of Vardanus, as performed "in the field" by Sally Grainger author of Cooking Apicius.

 

Firstly , this is quite a creamy dish without heavy use of spices.The basis of the sauce is the use of egg white rather than flour.As Mrs Grainger says "the original recipe calls for chicken , but early chickens were likely to be much tastier than our modern breeds "Amen to that. So a nice fatty guinea fowl will do the trick.The robust hint of game that comes from a guinea fowl is a usefel property in this recipe.

 

you require:

a guinea fowl

500 ml sweet wine

40 ml olive oil (extra virgin cold pressed)

2 tbsp fish sauce (nam pla will do).

a bunch of fresh coriander leaf

a leek

3 sprigs thyme

plenty of ground pepper

75 g of pine kernels (do not stint on this one)

60 ml goats milk (camel if you are of noble birth)

1 fresh egg white

300 ml stock

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?automo...si&img=1920

your stock is on the boil here

Now cook the fowl, pull it to bits .

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?automo...si&img=1919

this is your pot on the stone oven bench , a decent bird will be falling off the bone in an hour at this heat.

 

Wine, oil and garum in a pan with the flesh.The flesh must be covered by liquid.

 

Take the leek and separate the white flesh, produce 4 evenly cut flattened pieces .Now pay attention. Take two of these pieces and lay on a board with cooking string underneath, fold the coriander to sandwich into the same length as the leek, place the thyme on the coriander then close the "sandwich" with the remaining leek and bind it up.Pop this into the simmering pan with the fowl.

Grind pepper and pine kernels:

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?automo...si&img=1921

using a very rough surfaced mortar with protruberant grit , not the soft barbarian things with a shiny surface.

Add milk to the ground powder, then slowly add the milk.This should now be a soft paste , then fold in the egg (no air!).When cooked pour over the fowl which is now floating in bits of leek and herb, sprinkle with pepper and coriander.

http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?automo...si&img=1922

Delicious.

[Elfers]

All this decadent Roman cooking, give me some Greek meze any day, along with some bread, olives and feta.

 

E.

[Pertinax]

Decadent? That last recipe was virtue itself. Just scroll back on the thread for some real eye-openers.

[Elfers]

I thought I would post this article, I hope it is of interest to the forum (and on topic)?

 

 

------

 

It's all Greek to me

 

Bee Wilson

 

Published 23 April 2001

 

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Food - Bee Wilson in search of real Hellenic cuisine

 

Grey mullet roe; tender vine leaves; astringent tzatziki; veal shin so yielding you could cut it with a spoon; saffron-coloured fish soup with boiled potatoes; succulent young kid; cuttlefish stifado, cooked for ages in its own black liquor; figs and honey. The Real Greek restaurant in Hoxton market is a fine advertisement for the soft excellence of good Greek cooking, which makes you instantly forget the hardness of kebab-shop pitta and the rubberiness of taverna cheese. When he first opened his carpet-curtained doors two years ago, the chef, Theodore Kyriakou, caused a minor stir on the letters pages of the Daily Telegraph concerning the true nature of Greek food. Some Greek correspondents wrote in to say that Kyriakou's food was too fancy to be authentic. Kyriakou, however, says that he makes the food he was brought up on. In his cookbook, he suggests that "Real Greek" food stretches all the way back to the gastronome Archestratus, in the fourth century BC. But what did the ancient Greeks really eat? One can't help feeling that, whatever it was, it was unlikely to be as nice as what you get from Kyriakou's kitchen.

 

In Sir Alfred Zimmern's immortal judgement, the Attic dinner of classical Greece consisted of two courses, "the first a kind of porridge and the second a kind of porridge". Like all great aphorisms, it is too neat to be entirely true, and too witty to be entirely false. It is true that the Greeks prized frugality in eating and contrasted their own simplicity with the spiced food of the supposedly decadent Persians. Greeks were, moreover, very dependent on barley-meal, and often they made it into a kind of soft dough mixed with milk; many paupers may indeed have eaten barley mush followed by barley mush for dinner - and that's if they were lucky. Another kind of porridge, called kykeon, is mentioned by Homer. Kykeon, which was rather a liquid food (or a solid drink, depending on how you look at it), contained white cheese and possibly honey, although we can't be sure how it was made. It was taken from a cup and seems to have been richer than barley porridge. None the less, the citizen-diners of Athens would have been deeply insulted by the claim that all they ate was porridge. In fact, "porridge-eaters" was the name the Greeks reserved for their barbarian neighbours, the Romans. Greek men proudly called themselves "bread-eaters".

 

Wealthy dinners, began, as they do at the Real Greek, with a basket filled with different shapes of bread. Greek bakers were famous for their inventive loaves, such as the mushroom-shaped boletus or the plaited streptice. With a kind of Aristotelian reasoning, meals were divided into that which was bread and that which was not bread. That which was not bread - opson - could include almost anything: cheese, olives, vegetables, meat and all kinds of fish. (Archestratus was very keen on fresh tuna, which he cooked with a little oregano in vine leaves.)

 

In Athens, the opson, or not-bread, increasingly came to include lots of little bits and pieces, relishes (paropsides), to be picked at by each guest - in other words, something very like modern meze. Non-Athenian Greeks sometimes responded to this mixture of small plates with dismay. One observer, Lynceus, said of the Athenian dinner: "While I am eating this, another is eating that; and while he is eating that, I have made away with this. What I want, good sir, is both the one and the other, but my wish is impossible . . . Such a layout as that may seem to offer variety but is nothing at all to satisfy the belly." You don't have to look far to find those who feel exactly the same frustration with plates of mezedes - just so much fidgety finger food when what you want is a good square meal.

 

The fundamentals of Greek eating were then, as now, simple: bread, olives (and oil), grapes (and wine), figs, honey and cheese. This is the kind of food that needs no cooking, and which symbolised the restrained civic values of Solon's republic, without being as self-flagellatingly nasty as the patriotic black broth of Sparta. Then, as now, Greeks worried that this simplicity might become corrupted. In the fourth century BC, Antiphanes wrote about the new cuisine: "Do you see what things have come to? Bread, garlic, cheese, maza [meze] - those are healthy foods, but not these salted fish, these lamb chops sprinkled with spices, these sweet confections and these corrupting pot roasts." Doubtless there are those who feel the same about the Real Greek. But real or not, it is infinitely preferable to those authentically British tavernas, where a Greek dinner all too often consists of two courses: the first, a kind of oily dip; and the second, a kind of slimy kebab - instead of porridge followed by porridge, we get grease followed by grease.

[Pertinax]

Thank you Elfers, if you are a devoted Attic foodie I can split the thread at a later date to give it a specific Grecian focus, and this message certainly applies to anyone who wishes to go non-Roman but classical.

BTW the version of the Guinea fowl dish I enjoyed did not have the fancy "parcelling" of the leeks , they were chopped fine .I couldnt complain about the result at ll.