SC - olives

[Stefan li Rous]

Kiri said:
> There's also the possibility of using a tapenade made of olives.  I found
> something that looks, smells and tastes like a tapenade in A Taste of Ancient
> Rome...a recipe by Cato, that one of my protege's redacted.  It's called
> "Epityrum", and the recipe is:
> 
> Make Green, black or varicolored epityrum in this way. Pit the green, black or
> varicolored olives.  Season them thus:  Chop them, and add oil, vinegar,
> coriander, cumin, fennel, rue and mint.  Put them in a small jar, with oil on
> top and they are ready to use.
> 
> It's really good, especially when eaten with cheese.  We made a flat bread
> similar to foccacia (from the same source), and served a kind of soft cheese
> spread (same source) and this olive paste.  People loved it!

Thank you this sounds like a wonderful recipe. I'm not that fond of
olives, but this might be worth trying. 

A while back, Ras brought up olives and that raw olives were pretty
awlful tasting. This was the first time I realized that most of what
is seen in the stores is not raw. Did you use olives that had already
been pickled or were they fresh? Since these do seem to be pickled
in this recipe in oil and vinegar it may not matter but if fresh
they probably aren't "ready to use". The recipe may mean they are
ready to use in that they need no more preperation though, rather
than that they can be eaten an hour later.

My file on olives is rather small for the importance they had in
period around the Mediterranean. If folks have other period olive 
recipes or recipes where olives play a major part, I'd love to see 
them posted. How well are olives eaten in the SCA?
- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****