Egyptian Sweetmeat

This week's recipe is inspired by a reader who made Alexandrian Itria and shared them with us on the Pass the Garum Facebook page.  When another reader asked for a recipe for these sweetmeats, I set off on a hunt.  Quite by coincidence, I was looking through the rather fantastic Horrible Histories books (what an excellent Christmas present), and I chanced upon the very recipe I was looking for! It's not very Roman, and our source is a kid's book, but all the same we're going to have a bit of fun and hopefully make something tasty.

Egyptian Sweetmeats

Ingredients

•  6 or 7 Dried Dates (OR Date Syrup)
• 1 tsp Cinnamon Powder
• 1 tsp Cardamom Seeds
• 3 Handfuls Walnuts
• 2 tbsp Honey

Methods

• Remove the stones from the dates, chop them into small pieces, and mash them up with a mortar and pestle with some water.  You're looking to create a date paste of sorts.  If you have date syrup you can use this instead, or combine the two.
• Break open the cardamom seeds to get at the little seeds inside - grind these with a mortar and pestle to make a powder.
• Add the cinnamon and cardamom to the date liquid, and mix it all together.
• Smash up the walnuts so they're not too big, and add to the mixture.  Stir this all together to create a very festive smelling walnut/date dough of sorts.

• With wet hands, take a bit of this dough at a time and roll it into little spheres.  Mine ended up being ping-pong ball sized, but you can make them smaller or bigger.

• Heat up some honey in a little dish, spoon some cinnamon powder, powdered almonds, and ground pepper onto a plate (or if you're not too worried about being authentic you can use dessicated coconut as I have, or maybe even chocolate powder!).

• Dip each sweetmeat into the honey, and roll it in the dusting of your choice.  Let them set for a little bit, then enjoy! 

Notes

• Be careful not too have too much liquid in the early mixture, as you'll need a LOT of nuts to make it dry enough to mould into spheres.

Results

The nearest 'modern' food I can compare these sweetmeats to is, perhaps, alcoholic chocolate truffles.  The flavours and aromas are all very intense, with the cardamom and cinnamon lending these treats the taste of Christmas.  When coated in cinnamon the initial taste can be quite bitter, but it soon transforms into something more acceptable.  Almond, a taste which I'm not fond of, lends it that marzipan taste, which I'm also not fond of.  Pepper made it pleasantly tingly, but care must be taken not to use too much.  Perhaps the outright winner was the ever-so-authentic coconut covering, which I urge you to try if you make a batch.

Mustard Beans

That food you saw lurking in the background of last week's Roast Dill Chicken recipe was this ever so exciting (ok, not really) Mustard Bean dish.  Needing a side, and with plenty of beans in the cupboard, I figured we might as well cook those.  This Apician recipe calls for Baian beans, and rather unfortunately, nobody knows what type of beans these were.  I have opted for a nice broad butter bean, which has plenty of surface area for the mustard sauce to cling on to.  The original recipe is as follows:

Cook some beans and season them with mustard, honey, pine-nuts, rue, cumin, and a splash of vinegar. - Apicius, 5.6.3

Seems simple enough!  The only issue we (or at least I) have is that 'rue' sitting right in the middle of the recipe.  Rue is still hard to come by (in semi-rural Northern Ireland during winter at least), so it is going to be left out for now.  Everything else is good to go, so let's make a start.

Mustard Beans

Ingredients

• 1 Can Butter Beans
• 75g Pine Nuts
• 2 tbsp Cumin Seeds
• 1 tbsp Black Peppercorns
• 1 tbsp Mustard
• 1 tbsp Honey
• 2 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
• 2 tbsp Dessert Wine

Methods

• Boil the butter beans for a few minutes in a saucepan.  Drain when finished.  Meanwhile:
• Toast the peppercorns and cumin seeds in a frying pan, then grind up in a mortar and pestle.
• Add the pine nuts to the mortar and pestle, and bash them until they make a nice paste.
• Add the mustard, honey, vinegar, and wine to the mortar, and mix everything together.  It should look like so:

• Pour the finished sauce over the drained butter beans, and toss it all together.
• A sprinkle of pepper is the perfect finishing touch.

Results

The pine nut paste which forms the base of this sauce means that it clings very well to the butter beans.  These beans are certainly a very flavoursome accompaniment to a meal, but the vinegar, wine, and mustard create quite a sharp, rich taste, so perhaps it is best not too eat too many at once.  An ideal way to serve them, in my opinion, is with a big hunk of bread - the sharpness of the sauce will counter the heaviness of Roman spelt bread.  Certainly worth a try.

Roast Dill Chicken

 

We have our Dill Chicken Dipping Sauce, and now we're going to use it!  This recipe isn't taken directly from Apicius, but it is based upon plenty which are, so you need not worry about authenticity. Essentially, all that you need for this is some chicken and your dipping sauce (click the link above to get to that recipe).  As I was cooking for just myself I decided to use a chicken breast, but it would work just as well with a whole chicken if you wanted to cook for several people.  You might also have noticed that I served the chicken with some butter beans - that's a little teaser for next week's recipe. 

Before starting, I wish to stress that although I have called this dish Roast Dill Chicken, the chicken isn't actually roasted for the entire time.  To start off with, we poach it in hydrogarum.  This is a lot less fancy than it sounds, and consists of water, pepper, and a few splashes of fish sauce.  It is, in essence, a stock, and boiling the chicken in this hydrogarum adds flavour to the meat before roasting.  Bearing this in mind, let's cook us some chicken!

Roast Dill Chicken

Ingredients

• Chicken Breast
• Dill Chicken Dipping Sauce
• Some Splashes of Fish Sauce
• A Few Grindings of Pepper

Methods

• Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius.
• Fill a saucepan with boiling water, a few splashes of fish sauce, and the ground pepper.  Add the chicken and boil for 10 - 15 minutes.
• Once the chicken has been parboiled, put it on a baking tray or in a casserole dish.  Score several deep cuts into the meat.
• Pour over the dipping sauce, and rub into the cuts.  Make sure to coat the meat well.
• Place into the oven for 30 minutes.  Every 10 minutes, baste the chicken with the sauce again.
• Serve and enjoy!

Notes

• If the sauce reduces too much in the oven, or starts to burn, add a little bit of water and fish sauce to recover it.

Results

Cooking has tempered some of the flavours of the Dill Dipping Sauce, making them blend together that little bit more, but the sauce is still the journey of flavours that it was before.  I'm amazed at how luxurious this chicken tastes, given how simple it is to make.  I'm also amazed at how well the sauce has held up as both a cold dipping sauce and a warm pouring sauce.  If you were willing to sacrifice some of that Roman authenticity, I think this cooked version would work fantastically with rice - cut the chicken into bite size chunks once cooked, serve on a bed of rice, and pour the sauce all over.  However you choose to serve it, just try making it - it is delicious.

Dill Chicken Dipping Sauce

Flicking through Cooking Apicius I spotted the rather tastily-titled 'Chicken in Sweet and Sour Sauce'.  I wanted to know how similar this tastes to Sweet and Sour Chicken as we know it today, so decided that this would be our next recipe.  Hopping over to my translation of Apicius, I soon learned that the 'Sweet and Sour' was added by Grainger, and that the recipe is actually called 'Raw Sauce for Boiled Chicken'.  Suddenly, our exotic sounding dinner sounds a lot less appetising.  Let's see if the ancient recipe can fix that:

In a mortar put some dill seed, dry mint, and asafoetida.  Add vinegar, fig wine, fish sauce, some mustard, oil, and grape must.  Serve.  Also called 'dill chicken'. - Apicius, 6.8.1

'Dill Chicken' - that's something we can work with, so that's what we're making.  This recipe is essentially a two-parter.  For now, we're making the sauce, which can be used for dipping meat into.  Later (in a matter of a few hours), we'll be cooking some chicken in the sauce.  I have decided to break with tradition a little bit and use fresh dill weed, rather than the seed.  I currently have lots of fresh dill weed which needs using, and no dill seed, so the decision is based partly around that. Dill also happens to be a flavour I love, and if the dish is called 'Dill Chicken', it's dill I want to taste.  I've also gone for fresh mint rather than dried mint for similar reasons.  I will come back to this recipe with the proper ingredients in the future, just to see how much of a difference it makes, but for now, we shall start.

Dill Chicken Dipping Sauce

Ingredients

• Handful Fresh Dill Weed
• Handful Fresh Mint Leaves
• 1/2 tsp Asafoetida
• 1 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
• 2 tbsp Fish Sauce
• 2 tbsp Date Paste
• 1 tbsp Mustard
• 1 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 3 tbsp Caroenum or 1 tbsp Balsamic Glaze

Methods

• Wash the dill and mint leaves, add to the mortar, and pound away at them until they become a paste.
• Add the asafoetida and mix it in.
• Add all of the various sauces, syrups, and liquids.  Mix the whole lot up.
• Leave the sauce in the mortar, and serve with cold cuts of meat for dipping.
• Enjoy!

Notes

• As mentioned before, I've gone for fresh dill weed and fresh mint leaves rather than dill seed and dried mint.
• You can use balsamic glaze as a substitute for caroenum.
• If you don't have date paste, try a bit of honey for sweetness instead.

Results

If ever you wanted the taste of ancient Rome in a quick and easy to make sauce, this is it.  The sauce took just five minutes to make, and the results are spectacular.  Because of the dill and mint, the sauce clings very well to meat, making it great for dipping.  I also believe that this sauce proves, without a doubt, that the Romans didn't overseason food into anonymity.  Chicken dipped, and a bite taken, you immediately feel the tang of the vinegar and taste the sweetness of the date syrup and balsamic.  The flavour then evolves as the savoury of the fish sauce comes through.  The experience is made complete by the lingering delicate flavour of dill.  This isn't overseasoned, but rather it is the perfect balance of flavours, each working with the next.  It is, like all the Roman food I've tried so far, a journey of taste - you start off with one taste, and finish with another.  I cannot wait to see what this sauce is like when cooked with chicken!

Dulciaria (Pepper and Pine-Nut Stuffed Honey Dates)

Thus far we've been dining on hearty stews and heavy breads, which, whilst all very filling and tasty, have done little to cater for those with a sweet tooth.  "Where are all the desserts?" I hear you ask.  "Didn't the Romans enjoy brownies and trifle and Victoria sponge?  What about panna cotta, pavlova, and tiramisu?"  I am afraid I must be the bearer of bad news, because Apicius is largely silent on all things dessert.  This is not entirely surprising when we consider that the Romans had no sugar, no chocolate, and flour better suited to throwing in the bin than into a cake mix.  What they did have, however, they made excellent use of.

Whilst Apicius is largely silent on tasty little treats, it is not without.  One recipe which we do have is the recipe for dulciaria, coming from the Latin dulcis, meaning sweet.  These sweets are made as follows:

To make little home-made sweets, remove the seeds from dates and stuff them with nuts and ground pepper.  Sprinkle salt on the outside, candy them in honey, and serve. - Apicius, 7.13.1

These are all ingredients we've seen before in our Roman cooking - we've used nuts, pepper, honey, and salt extensively.  Now it is time to combine them all in a most delicious way.  I am going to experiment and use dried figs too, just to see how it turns out.  I am leaving out measurements for this recipe because it all depends on how many dulciaria you want to make - use as much as of each ingredient as you think you'll need!

Dulciaria - Little Sweets

Ingredients

• Dried Dates and Figs
• Pine Nuts
• Black Peppercorns
• Set Honey
• Salt

Methods

• Remove the stones from the dates, and cut a pocket in the figs.
• Crush some peppercorns in a mortar and pestle and mix with the pine nuts.
• Stuff the dates and figs with this peppery pine nut mixture.
• Sprinkle the tiniest bit of salt over the stuffed fruit, rubbing it in a little bit to ensure that it sticks.

• Cover a plate/baking tray with some non-stick greaseproof paper.
• Put a few spoonfuls of honey into a saucepan (I used 2 tbsp) and bring to a simmer.  The honey will start foaming up after a little while.  When it does this, take the pan off the heat.
• Stick a cocktail stick/skewer through the first bit of fruit and dip it into the practically molten honey.  It helps to tilt the pan so that it all gathers on one side.  Roll the fruit around a bit to make sure it is covered, before setting it onto the greaseproof paper.  Use a fork to prize the fruit off the cocktail stick/skewer, and repeat.
• When all are done, pour any leftover honey over all of the dulciaria and leave to 'set'.

Notes

• Removing the stones from dates can be tricky - I found it best to chop a bit off one end (the end which the stone is attached to - you'll soon work it out) and squeeze the stone out.
• The honey will be HOT.  Do not put your fingers or toes anywhere near it, and certainly do not try to taste it.
• The honey doesn't 'set' as well as the candy on a candied apple might.  I found it helpful to put the tray in the fridge (once the honey had cooled a bit).

Results

These were quick and easy to make, and a pleasure to eat.  It goes without saying that they are sweet, but the salt on the outside gives them a depth of flavour which means that they taste of more than just honey.  Biting into them, you get the crunch of the pine nuts, followed a second later by the spicy-sweetness of black pepper.  The warmth of the pepper lingers, leaving you with fond memories of what went before.  These sweets remind me of the taste of Christmas (rather anachronistic I know).  The figs and dates both worked equally well, with the figs being juicier and the dates crunchier.  I look forward to seeing your attempts!

Alexandrine Gourd

This Alexandrine Gourd recipe is one which keeps catching my eye - it sounds both delicious, and exotic.  Situated in Egypt, some 1200 miles from the city of Rome, Alexandria and its food had the same charm for the Romans as Asian food does for us.  That alone makes this a dish I want to try.

There is, however, one big problem.  The majority of gourds, squashes, and pumpkins are native to the Americas and were thus unknown to the Romans.  Wanting to stay true to the original recipe, I set off on the hunt for the vegetable they might have used.  I asked gardeners, asked farmers, and asked botanists, and the only thing that we could come up with was the Bottle Gourd, which I quickly set off to buy.  I soon learned, however, that semi-rural Northern Ireland is not the ancient Mediterranean, and alas, I came back empty handed.  My solution?  I cheated.

To all who came here wanting nothing but authenticity, I apologise.  We've had a good run, but I'm afraid now is the time to unsubscribe.  To everybody else, I say the following:

• The draw of this dish is not the 'gourd', but the 'Alexandrine'.  Most gourds are pretty tasteless, meaning that it is the seasoning and cooking methods which matter most - those we can stay true to.  We can recreate that Alexandrine feel.
• If I struggled to find an authentic gourd, I imagine that most of you will too.  The point of this blog is to make Roman cuisine accessible, and to inspire others to try it out.  That's not possible if we stick to obscure ingredients which few can find.
• The dish sounds damned tasty and I want to try it.

In the end I came back from my shopping trip with both a pumpkin, and with what I think is an acorn squash.  I didn't use the pumpkin in this recipe, but given that they are cheap and plentiful right now, anybody wanting to make this dish could use one.  The presumed acorn squash, which I did use, is completely tasteless, meaning that I'll be experiencing the full effect of the 'Alexandrine' cooking method. So, without further ado, the original recipe:

Boil some gourd, squeeze the water out of it, and place in a baking dish.  Sprinkle with salt, and ground pepper, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, mint, and asafoetida; season with vinegar. Now pour in the date wine, pine nuts ground with honey, more vinegar, and fish sauce.  Measure out some condensed wine and olive oil, pour these over the pumpkin, and cook it all in an oven.  Sprinkle with pepper before serving.  - Apicius, 3.4.3

Let's preheat the oven to 180° Celsius and get going:

Alexandrine Gourd

Ingredients

• 1 Small Gourd/Squash/Pumpkin
• A Pinch of Salt
• 1 tsp Black Peppercorns
• 1 tsp Cumin Seeds
• 1 tsp Coriander Seeds
• 1/2 tsp Asafoetida
• A Handfull of Pine Nuts
• A Small Bunch of Mint
• A Splash of Red-Wine Vinegar
• A Liberal Helping of Dessert Wine
• A Drizzle of Olive Oil
• 2 tbsp Runny Honey
• 1 tbsp Fish Sauce
• 1 tbsp Date Syrup

Methods

• Peel the gourd/squash/pumpkin, chop it up into bitesize bits, and boil in a saucepan.  Add the pieces to an oven proof dish.
• Toast the pepper, cumin, and coriander before grinding it up in a mortar and pestle - this smells delicious!  Sprinkle this heavenly mixture over the gourd along with a pinch of salt and the asafoetida.
• Remove the mint leaves from their stalks, give them a wash, chop them up, and add to the dish.
• Add a splash of red-wine vinegar.  Drizzle the runny honey backwards and forwards over the gourd a few times.  Do the same with the date syrup, the oil, and the fish sauce.  Pour a good bit of dessert wine over the whole lot, and a bit into a glass if you fancy a drink.
• Finally, add the handful of pine nuts to the whole concoction and toss it all around.
• Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes, and serve immediately.

Notes

• Apicius says to squeeze the water from the gourd - I only succeeded in scalding myself.  If you work out a good way to do this, let me know.

Results

If this is how they cooked in Alexandria then it's little wonder that the Romans wanted to eat the Alexandrine way.  If you recall, in a previous post I said that a common criticism of ancient cuisine was that it is overseasoned.  If this dish and the previous dishes I have cooked are anything to go by, then I would say that they are perfectly seasoned.  No one flavour dominates here - the dish has a lovely minty undertone, the wine, honey, and date syrup add a delicious sweetness, the fish sauce and asafoetida work the savoury taste-buds, the crunch of the pine nuts compliments the softness of the squash, and the tingle of the vinegar reminds you that this is indeed an exotic meal.  I can see why this recipe came to have a home in Roman cookbooks.

Pork and Fruit Minutal

We've finally hit a recipe with an ingredient list the length of our collective arms, making this the perfect opportunity to test the theory that the Romans liked to over-season everything.  We've also finally hit a recipe with that infamous fish-sauce garum, or more accurately liquamen - there are differences between the two which I'll go into in a later post.

I was browsing through Sally Grainger's Cooking Apicius, as I am wont to do these days, and spotted her Pork and Apricot Minutal.  This sounded so delicious that I immediately went in search of the original recipe, which is as follows:

Put some oil, wine, liquamen (fish sauce), diced cooked pork shoulder, and finely chopped onions in a saucepan.  When the onions are done, grind some pepper, cumin, mint, and dill, and add to the pan with honey, passum (raisin wine), a splash of vinegar, the juices from the cooked meat, and more liquamen.  Remove the seeds from some fruit and add this fruit to the pan.  Bring the mixture to the boil, and when cooked, skim the fat from the top, bind everything together, sprinkle with pepper, and serve.  - Apicius, 3.6

This differs somewhat from Grainger's take on the minutal.  I have decided to stick to the original recipe's ingredients and methods whilst using Grainger's ever-useful measurements.  I have also, as you can see from the last post, used tracta from Cooking Apicius as the thickening agent for this dish.  Without further ado, let's start this hearty stew.

Pork and Fruit Minutal

Ingredients

• 500g Pork Belly
• 1 Medium Onion
• Several Scallions/Spring Onions
• 300ml Water
• 375ml White Wine
• 2 tbsp Fish Sauce (nam pla)
• 50ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 tsp Cumin Seeds
• 1/2 tsp Black Peppercorns
• A Few Sprigs of Fresh Mint
• A Few Sprigs of Fresh Dill
• 1 tbsp Set Honey
• 2 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
• 1.5 tbsp Raisin Wine
• A Handful of Dried Figs and Apricots.
• 3 Tracta Discs

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180°C.
• Rub the pork belly with olive oil (not from the 50ml of olive oil) and salt, and cook in the oven for approximately half an hour or until done.  When finished, leave to cool.
• Add the water, wine, fish sauce, and olive oil to a saucepan, then bring to the boil.  I advise giving it a taste, just because it's so deliciously unusual.  When it is boiling, add the onions and the pork, and reduce to a simmer.

• Whilst the onions are cooking, toast and grind the cumin seed and the black peppercorns.  You know that they're toasting once the cumin starts giving off its distinctive smell.  Don't overdo it!  Chop the mint and the dill up together also.
• Add the above to the pan alongside the honey, vinegar, raisin wine, and a splash of fish sauce.  Give it a stir, bring to the boil briefly, and let it simmer once more.
• Add in the roughly chopped dried apricots and figs.
• Take three of the tracta sheets you fought so hard to make, and watch that hard work turn to nothing as you break the tracta up into fine pieces.

• Add the tracta to the pan whilst stirring.  Stir for maybe 5 minutes and watch the minutal thicken.  Taste for flavour, season if necessary, and serve with a loaf of freshly baked bread.

Notes

• My liquamen was simply a shop bought nam pla or fish sauce.  You'll find it alongside the Asian food.  If yours is too dark or too salty then you can adjust the salt levels by mixing it with white grape juice reduced to half of its original volume.
• The passum was a nightmare to find.  Grainger likens it to a modern raisin wine, but says that a dessert wine such as a Muscat, which I have used, will work too.
• Tracta are a nightmare to make - if you can't be bothered, add some cornflour instead.

Results

There are not enough adjectives in the English language to describe the beauty of this minutal.  The acid from the vinegar and the sweetness from the different wines made it almost tingle in  the mouth.  The delicate flavours of the dill were surprisingly distinctive, and the mint provided a subtle background to the meaty, savoury aspects of the dish.  Because the figs and apricots were only briefly stewed they retained a lot of their fruity flavour, and it was nice to alternate between bites of pork and bites of fruit.  The texture was, thanks to the onions and tracta, quite creamy, which meant that it clung well to the bread I ate the dish with.

To those who say that the Romans overseasoned everything I say try this dish - I have never before seen ingredients compliment each other so well as they do in this recipe.  The flavours are at once homely and exotic, leading to a profoundly satisfying meal which I will serve for years to come.