Cooking with laser again - a classic meatball recipe from Apicius

It's winter, the weather is gross, and I want comfort food.  Meatballs should do the job, and here is a nice recipe from Apicius, courtesy of the Historical Italian Cooking blog, which is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to explore historical Italian food.  They have delicious recipes, instructional videos, and plenty of advice.

Isicia amulata ab aheno sic facies: teres piper, ligusticum, origanum, modicum silfi, zingiber minimum, mellis modicum; liquamine temperabis, misces; adicies super isicia, facies ut ferveat. cum bene bullierit, amulo obligas spisso, et sorbendum inferes.

Translation: To prepare meatball with starch cooked in a pan: grind black pepper, lovage, oregano, a moderate quantity of silfium, very little ginger, a bit of honey. Dilute with garum and mix. Pour the sauce over the isicia and make them boil. When it boils well, thicken with starch and serve.

This recipe is just for the meatball sauce.  The meatballs themselves are simply minced pork (you can use any meat, pork happened to be cheap at the supermarket), a little ground pepper, and fish sauce, fried in olive oil.  The Historical Italian Cooking article suggested making meatballs this way, as directed in one of Apicius' other recipes.

The Romans used wheat starch for recipes like this, but I used cornstarch because it's what I had in the cupboard, and it worked well.  Silfium is asafoetida, or laser Parthicum as it was known to the Romans.  It is called hing in Hindi, and suppliers of Indian groceries often stock it.  You only want to use a tiny amount, and the same goes for lovage.  If you don't have lovage, use a pinch of celery seeds or chopped celery leaves.  I used celery seeds because that's what I had.  Whichever you use, be careful to use only a small amount so it doesn't overpower the other flavours.  Roman cooking was all about balance and harmony, with every ingredient coming together to make a unified whole.  You also want to be careful to use only a small amount of ginger, for the same reason.  This is why exact quantities are not given in Apicius' recipe - you need to taste the sauce to check if it's good.  I suggest mixing the sauce ingredients in a bowl and, well, tasting it.  If it tastes good, it's good to go.

I cooked my meatballs in a little olive oil, and added the sauce when they were done.  Then I stirred them around while the sauce thickened and plated them.  You do need to be very careful that the honey sauce doesn't burn, and for this reason I suggest cooking the meatballs, adding a little water mixed with starch, then adding the sauce.  The result will be meatballs in a delicious sweet and salty sauce, perfect to share with friends, or just a great way to sample the flavours of the Roman Empire.

Cooking with laser

The Historical Food Fortnightly Rare Ingredients challenge focuses on ingredients that are hard to obtain.  To me, this immediately suggested something made with silphium, or laser as it was called in Latin.  I can't use real silphium because it is extinct, but I can substitute asafoetida - which is itself a bit hard to get hold of in New Zealand (the secret to obtaining it is knowing that Indian grocers often use its Hindi name: hing).

In fact the ancients also used asafoetida in place of silphium.  It was already extinct by the time De Re Coquinaria was compiled, so the recipes that call for it would actually have been made with asafoetida.

Asafoetida comes from the same family as silphium and apparently tastes very similar, but it lacks the medicinal properties that made silphium so sought after.  It's not popular in Western cooking, apparently because people find the smell unpleasant.  I don't mind the smell myself, but I can see why some people dislike it.

I should mention at this point that I have a very poor sense of smell.

Anyway, today's historical recipe is Parthian Chicken, an Apicius recipe which may or may not resemble actual Parthian cooking.  Here is the recipe:

Pullum Parthicum: pullum aperies a navi et in quadrato ornas. teres piper, ligusticum, carei modicum. suffunde liquamen. vino temperas. componis in cumana pullum et condituram super pullum facies. laser [et] vivum in tepida dissolvis, et in pullum mittis simul, et coques. piper aspersum inferes.

Here it is in translation courtesy of the University of Chicago:

Dress the chicken carefully and quarter it. Crush pepper, lovage and a little carraway moistened with broth, and add wine to taste. After frying place the chicken in an earthen dish, pour the seasoning over it, add laser and wine. Let it assimilate with the seasoning and braise the chicken to a point. When done sprinkle with pepper and serve.

Note that this version translates liquamen as "broth".  This is not very accurate; liquamen is our old friend garum, the quintessential Roman flavour.  There are recipes out there for making your own garum/liquamen, but I use nuoc mam fish sauce which is pretty much the same thing.

Neil from Pass the Garum says you can substitute celery for lovage, which is good because in 21st century New Zealand lovage is even harder to find than asafoetida.

I used a chicken breast instead of a whole bird, because there's only one of me, and a Shingle Peak pinot noir.  I don't know how closely Marlborough pinot noir resembles your typical Roman wine.  I tend to find New Zealand wines have more tannin than Italian ones, but whether this was true of wines in the Roman period (or even all modern Italian wines) I can't say.  I imagine there were many varieties of wine available then, just as there are now.


The Challenge: Rare Ingredients.

The Recipe: Pullum Parthicum from De Re Coquinaria by Apicius.

The Date/Year and Region: Fourth century AD Rome.

How Did You Make It: As per the recipe, I braised my chicken in wine and spices, with a little fish sauce.  I cooked the chicken for 20 minutes, at 170 degrees C.

Time to Complete: Twenty minutes braising time, plus the time I took to sear the chicken.  This is a quick and easy recipe.

Total Cost: I already had most of the ingredients on hand, but had to buy some asafoetida/laser/hing and caraway seeds.  These cost $7.50, but there is plenty left over.

How Successful Was It? This dish is fantastic!  The flavours are subtle, but well balanced.  I now understand why the Romans were so keen on laser - it gives the meat a beautiful savoury taste.  The meat was juicy and tender, but then braised meats always are.

How Accurate Is It?  Of course, I used modern kitchen equipment.  I also used celery instead of lovage, but otherwise I think this is reasonably accurate.  Even using celery isn't totally outside the realms of possibility for a Roman cook.  Every cook has to make do sometimes, no matter what time period they live in.

Apicius' medicinal salts

This fortnight's historical food theme is Descriptive Foods.  Apicius' sales conditos ad multa  or "salts for many ailments" are more of a condiment than a food as such, but they have such a wonderfully descriptive name.  Apicius tells us this spicy salt mixture fights indigestion and colds, as well as all kinds of other illnesses.  And it keeps you regular.

The recipe says:

Sales conditos ad digestionem, ad ventrem movendum, et omnes morbos et pestilentiam et omnia frigora prohibent generari, sunt autem et suavissimi ultra quam speras. sales communes frictos lib. I, sales ammonicos frictos lib. II, piperis albi unc. III, gingiber unc. II, ammeos unc. I semis, thymi unc. I semis, apii seminis unc. I semis (si apii semen mittere nolueris, petroselini mittis unc. III), origani unc. III, erucae semen unc. I semis, piperis nigri unc. III, croci unc. I, hysopi Cretici unc. II, folium unc. II, petroselinum unc. II, anethi unc. II.

Here's a translation from the University of Chicago's website:

These spiced salts are used against indigestion, to move the bowels, against all illness, against pestilence as well as for the prevention of colds. They are very gentle indeed and more healthy than you would expect. Make them in this manner: 1 lb. of common salt ground, 2 lbs. of ammoniac salt, ground, 3 ounces white pepper, 2 ounces ginger, 1 ounce of Aminean bryony, 1 of thyme seed and 1 of celery seed . If you don't want to use celery seed take instead 3 ounces of parsley seed, 3 ounces of origany, 1 ounce of saffron, rocket, 3 ounces of black pepper, 1½ ounces rocket seed, 2 ounces of marjoram, Cretan hyssop, 2 ounces of nard leaves, 2 ounces of parsley seed and 2 ounces of anise seed.

Readers who speak Latin will notice the translation doesn't quite line up with the Latin text, as it has been put together from several sources.  I'm going off the Latin, and thus I get the following recipe:

1 pound salt
2 pounds ammoniac salt
3 ounces white pepper
2 ounces ginger
1 ounce God only knows (see below)
1 ounce thyme
1 ounce celery seed
3 ounces oregano
1 1/2 ounces rocket seed
3 ounces black pepper
1 ounce saffron
2 ounces Cretan hyssop (which likely means marjoram)
2 ounces cassia (see below)
2 ounces parsley seeds
2 ounces anise seeds

Ingredients and substitutions

I quickly discovered just how hard it is to be to get hold of some of the ingredients in this recipe, but I soldiered on anyway because I'm stubborn.  I couldn't get rocket seeds or bryony at all.  However, I found a different translation of this recipe that translates ammeos not as "Aminean bryony", but as "cumin".  I don't know why they say cumin, which is cuminum in Latin, but so far as I know bryony is bryonia so I have no clue what's going on here.

Nard is an interesting one.  There is a school of thought that says the plant known to the ancient world as nard was actually lavender.  See, for instance, Victoria Rumble's book Soup Through the Ages: A Culinary History with Period Recipes.  However, authorities such as Francis Adams say that Apicius' word folium means cassia.  Nard, whatever plant it came from, is spica nardi in Latin, so I'm inclined to think nard could be a mistranslation in this case.

The recipe suggests that the celery seeds and parsley seeds can be used interchangeably, so I used celery seeds only.  I like celery seeds and they are easier to get.

Another ingredient I couldn't get hold of was the ammoniac salt, but I'm not sure I want it anyway.  Ammoniac salt (better known to chemists as ammonium chloride) has some medicinal properties and is sometimes used in food as well, but only in very small quantities.  In large doses it is toxic.  I decided to forget about it and use regular salt instead.

Making the salts

The Roman ounce was a bit smaller than ours, and there were 12 of them in the pound.  I scaled down the ingredient quantities significantly seeing that I didn't really know what the result would be like, so where the recipe says an ounce I used a quarter teaspoon.  After that it was simply a case of mixing everything together.


The Challenge: Descriptive Foods.

The Recipe: Sales conditos ad multa from De Re Coquinaria by Apicius.

The Date/Year and Region: Fourth century AD Rome.

How Did You Make It: As described above.

Time to Complete: Just a few minutes.

Total Cost: I already most of the ingredients on hand.  I bought the rest from www.nutsandspices.co.nz , a retailer I highly recommend if you're in New Zealand.  This cost $15, but I have plenty of the ingrdients left over for other recipes.

How Successful Was It? Honestly, I'm really skeptical of the recipe's ability to combat disease.  Yes, herbs can have medicinal properties, but I doubt sprinkling some on your dinner is going to achieve very much.  I suspect this stuff relied heavily on the placebo effect.  But more importantly, was it tasty?

Yes, it was.  The mixture has a distinct smell of aniseed and I wasn't sure aniseed salt would taste good, but as it turned out I couldn't really taste the aniseed.  It's basically a savoury herb salt similar to celery salt, but with subtle spicy notes.  It would probably work well in any context where you would normally use celery salt.

How Accurate Is It?  Between the ingredients I couldn't get and the fact that I actually left out the primary ingredient on the grounds that it is poisonous, not very.