SC - [Fwd: [Apicius] must cakes & doughnuts]

[Decker, Terry D.]

> From: 	Marilyn Traber[SMTP:margali at 99main.com]
> 
> this is from a followup post, i donty have the book she refers to so i
> dont know
> how it stacks up in the grand scheme of documentation
> 
Giacosa's "A Taste of Ancient Rome" seems to be a good source.  It contains
a number of the Apician recipes and recipes from other Roman works, in this
case Cato's On Agriculture.

The recipe and translation from Giacosa are:

Globi

Globos sic facito.  Caseum cum alica ad eundem modem misceto.  Inde quantos
voles facere facito.  In abenum caldum unguen indito.  Singulos aut binos
coquito versatoque cerbro duabus rudibus, coctos eximito, eos melle unguito,
papaver infriato, ita ponito.

Make globes thus:  Mix together equal amounts of cheese and alica.  Then
shape (the globes) as large as you like.  Drop them in hot fat in a copper
pan.  Cook one or two at a time, turning them often with two paddles.  When
they are cooked, remove, cover them with honey, sprinkle with poppy, and
serve thus.


Giacosa refers to globi as fritters, suggest making them of flour and
ricotta, and says that frying them in lard is the traditional method of
cooking.  The glossary defines "alica" as semolina or coarsely ground spelt.

I suspect what we have here are cheesy hushpuppies made with wheat meal
rather than corn meal.  Regular flour very likely makes the end product too
dense.  Cooking in olive oil rather than lard likely makes them soggy.  I
don't see any need for leavening if you are using coarse meal and hot fat.

If I have some time this weekend, I may grind up some wheat I have sitting
around and see what a coarse meal does for this recipe.

Oh yeah, the root of globi and globule is "globus," meaning ball or sphere.

Bear



> >What about trying Roman doughnuts? Also from Cato, they are called
> 'globi' in Latin - not quite so appealing, but they taste great. Make up
> a dough from about 1 cup flour and 1/4 cup grated cheese (I use a fairly
> mild cheddar, but do experiment). Again, use yeast, as it works better
> if you do.
> 
> I tried the Globi from Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa's "A Taste of Ancient
> Rome". From memory (I am not near my references at the moment) it was a
> 1 to 1 mix of flour (I used plain, not self-raising) to cheese (by
> volume, I think) and I used ricotta (as suggested by her) and that was
> all.  The moisture of the ricotta was enough to blend in the flour. The
> translation from the latin that she gave said to use lard to deep fry
> small balls of the stuff (I surmise, possibly inaccurately, that it is
> from the same root word that our term 'globule' is derived) but I used
> olive oil as I had it handy - does everybody else get thru as much of it
> as I do?
> They were well received by the taste crew but I think that they need to
> be served fairly quickly after cooking.  The few left over were hard and
> unappetising 2 days later after being fridged.
> 
> 
> 
> Decker, Terry D. wrote:
> 
> > I would really want to see the original recipe for the "globi", before
> > committing, because this version of the must cakes leaves off the fat
> and
> > cheese found in the original recipe.
> 
> 
> 
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