[Sca-cooks] Seeking Opinions

[Volker Bach]

Sue Clemenger schrieb:
>
> I don't know about Niccolo, but I've never heard of it before....and the
> original sounds yummy....Can anyone post the recipe? I'm a big fan of
> chicken anything (well, except mcnuggets and kin, but that doesn't
> really count as food, does it? <g>)

Note that I haven't tried this before (I'm not
much with poultry), my pocket translation of
Apicius gives the following:

"Briefly brown the chicken, season it with a
mixture of /liquamen/ (the infamous fish sauce)
and oil and a bundle of fresh dill, leeks, bean
straw (I am fairly sure this is something else,
but I haven't the time to try my hand at the Latin
just now - probably what German cooks know as
/Bohnenkraut/. Anyone got the English word handy?)
and fresh coriander and stew (?) it in this. When
it is done, take it out (of the pan, I guess,
though the Latin simply uses a prefix structure
here), put it on a plate and pour /defrutum/ over
it."

I'd say that's fairly clear.

/defrutum/, by the way, is new wine boiled down to
either half (Pliny the Elder) or a third (Varro,
Columella) its volume. I am fairly sure cooks
involved all kinds of spices, but I haven't tried
this one yet.

How would everybody go about cooking this? I'd say
use chicken pieces and a skillet or deep frying
pan. Has anyone tried anything like this with a
whole chicken, and how much success have you had?

> --maire, dying for some good, period food (please notice the comma, both
> adjectives are modifying "food," so I'm not in the least drawing weird
> distinctions between good food and period food, even if there does seem
> to be an awful lot of that in my area these days *sigh*)

Don't go too alien on them at first. Newbies
especially react well to 'almost modern' things
like almond tart, saffron rice or almond cream
leeks in my experience :-) Anyrthgibng else, and
you will have them asking for 'some good modern
stuff next time'

Ave atque vale

Giano