[Sca-cooks] Greco-Roman Feast, Course 4

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

This was the second of the two "main" courses

Anahita

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NOTE: All recipes serve 80 to 100

Primera Mensa, Cena Secunda - First Course, Second Table

Ham with Figs in Pastry
Lucanicae - Smoked Lamb Sausages
Sinapim - Mustard Sauce with Ground Nuts
Peaches in Cumin Sauce
Cabbage in the Style of Athens
Pulentium - Barley Polenta


Ham with Figs in Pastry

Original Recipe:
After you have cooked the ham in water, with many dried figs and 3 
bay leaves, remove the skin, make reticulated incisions, and fill 
them with honey. Then work together flour and oil and replace the 
skin. When the pastry is cooked, remove from the oven as it is, and 
serve.
[ ----- Apicius, Book VII, Chapter IX, Recipe 1]

HAM
25 lb. Ham, cut into 10 serving chunks
Water, as needed
3 lb. dried Figs (i used black Mission figs)
30 Bay Leaves
1 cup Honey

1. Simmer ham with water, figs, and bay leaves, until figs are very soft.
2. Slice ham and stuff with figgy bits.
3. Coat with honey.
4. Refrigerate.

PASTRY
30 cups White Wheat Flour (3 cups per serving piece)
1/2 cup Salt (2-1/2 Tb. per serving piece)
Oil, as needed to moisten flour
Water, as needed to moisten flour

1. Make pastry, by mixing flour and salt and cutting in oil.
2. Divide into 10 balls, and roll each one out into large oval.
3. Stack with pieces of waxed paper between them.
4. Refrigerate

At the Feast:

1. Wrap hams in pastry.
2. Bake at 350 degrees F. until crust is golden, about 1/2 hour.
3. Slice and put on serving dishes.

NOTE:
I boiled the hams with the figs and seasonings, but we did not cut 
the ham into table pieces, nor did we wrap them in pastry. Instead, 
at the feast site, we sliced it with an electric meat slicer, plated 
it, and topped it with the pureed figs.


Lucanicae - Smoked sausages

Original Recipe:
Lucanicae made similarly to the above:  crush pepper, cumin, savory, 
rue, parsley, mixed herbs, bay berries, fish sauce, and mix with 
well-beaten meat, pounding it well with the ground spice mixture. Mix 
with fish sauce, whole peppercorns, plenty of fat,and pine nuts, 
stuff into an intestine pulled very thin and hang in the smoke.
[ ----- Apicius, Book II, Chapter IV]

NOTE: These are traditionally made with pork. However, since the 
Prince cannot eat pork of any kind, i wanted a non-pork meat for him 
to eat (and everyone else, of course).

15 lb. ground Lamb (3 oz per sausage)
some Fat
1/4 cup and 1 heaping Tb. ground Cumin Seeds
1 Tb. ground Black Pepper
1/2 cup dried Savory
1/4 cup chopped Chinese Celery Leaves or Lovage Herb
1/2 heaping cup chopped fresh Italian (flat leaf) Parsley
(other herbs)
300 Juniper Berries
1-1/2 cups Tiparos (brand) Thai Fish Sauce
1 Tb. Liquid Smoke Flavoring
1-3/4 to 2 cups whole Pine Nuts
300 whole Black Peppercorns

Before Feast:

1. Mix herbs and spices.
2. Add fish sauce and liquid smoke.
3. Divide the meat and seasonings into quarters to assure even 
distribution of seasonings.
3. Mix seasonings well with ground meat.
4. Mix pine nuts and whole peppercorns with meat.
5. Shape into 80 sausage-kebabs.
6. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until done, turning occasionally.
7. Freeze.

At the Feast:

1. Thaw sausages
2. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until well-heated through.

NOTE: Because i couldn't find bay berries i substituted juniper berries.
NOTE: These were snarfed down with no leftovers and people coming to 
the kitchen asking for more.
NOTE: I wanted to stuff them into casings, but it was not easy to 
find a small quantity of non-pork casings (take a look at the 
ingredients for those chicken sausages in the supermarket - most are 
stuffed into pork casings). While a local halal market could get 
non-pork casings for me, i had to buy a whole package - $45 for 
enough casings for 50 lb of meat - and to use them, one has to soak 
the whole package and then untangle them and you can't save what you 
don't use. And a local butcher, who was going to stuff my recipe into 
casings for me, said that the synthetic casings are horrible. Maybe 
some other time i'll make that 50 lb. of sausages and freeze them.

Sinapim - Mustard Sauce

Original:
To prepare mustard: Carefully clean mustard seed, sieve it. Wash in 
cold water. Soak 2 hours. Squeeze by hand. Put in a mortar and grind. 
Put in a few glowing coals, pour water with natron over it, so 
bitterness is removed. Pour off all the liquid. For banquets add pine 
nuts and almonds, grind together thoroughly. Then add vinegar. Mix 
and strain.
[ ----- Columella, de Re Rustica, 12, 57, edited]

two 2.25 lb jars of Grey-Poupon Dijon Mustard
1 cup Pine Nuts
1 cups ground Almonds

1. Grind pine nuts.
2. Mix with mustard and set aside a clearly marked dish for the Princess.
3. Stir in ground almonds.

NOTE: OK, OK, so i took the lazy way out. It's not that hard to mix 
powdered mustard with vinegar. I made Lombard Mustard to put in the 
Compost i made...


Patina de Persicis - Peaches in Cumin Sauce

Original Recipes:
Peach Patina: Peel some firm peaches, cut in chunks, and cook. Place 
in a patina pan and drizzle with oil. Serve with cumin sauce.
[ ----- Apicius, Book IV, Chapter II, Recipe 34]

Cuminatum: Another cumin sauce: pepper, lovage, parsley, dried mint, 
a large amount of cumin, honey, vinegar, fish sauce.
[ ----- Apicius, Book I, Chapter XV, Recipe 2]

CUMIN SAUCE
1 Tb. roasted Cumin Seed
1/2 cup chopped Italian (flat-leaf) Parsley
1/2 cup Chinese Celery Leaves or Lovage Herb
1 Tb. crumbled dried Mint
1/2 tsp. Black Pepper
1/2 cup Red or White Wine Vinegar
3/4 cup Honey
2 Tb. Tiparos (brand) Thai Fish Sauce

1. Roast cumin seed in a dry pan until fragrant and just darkening.
2. Cool somewhat, then grind cumin.
3. Mix roasted cumin with pepper, lovage, parsley, and mint.
4. Put vinegar and honey in a sauce pan on medium heat.
5. Stir in seasonings.
6. Simmer briefly, stirring, until liquefied and well seasoned.

PEACHES
40 fresh ripe Peaches
1 cup Olive Oil

1. Plunge peaches into boiling water briefly.
2. Drain, then remove skins.
3. Halve, removing pits.
4. Cut in chunks - putting 4 peaches on a separate dish for vegetarians.

Finish Dish
1. Put 4 peaches for the vegetarians in a small baking pan.
2. Put remaining peaches for everyone else in a large baking pan.
2. Toss all peaches with olive oil.
3. Separate a dish of sauce for the vegetarians. Season with a tsp. 
of soy sauce.
4. For remaining sauce, stir in fish sauce.
5. Pour cumin sauce onto peaches in baking dishes, keeping vegetarian 
dish separate.
6. Bake in 350 oven for about 10 to 15 minutes, until just barely 
beginning to bubble.
7. Plate, keeping vegetarian peaches separate.

NOTE:
The peaches were ripe enough to peel without plunging in boiling 
water. We also didn't cook them. We just cut them up and mixed them 
with the sauce.

These were incredibly delicious, in part because of the high quality 
of the peaches which were perfectly ripe. I had bought the case of 
peaches about 4 days before the feast, and kept them in a cool dark 
place until the feast.


Cabbage the Athenian Way

Original:
Cabbage should be sliced with the sharpest possible iron blace, then 
washed, drained, and chopped with plenty of coriander and rue. Then 
sprinkle with honey vinegar and add just a little bit of silphium.
[ ----- Mnesitheus (4th c. BCE), quoted in Oribasius, Medical 
Collections, Book IV, Chapter 4, part 1 (4th c. CE); another version 
in Cato (c. 234-149 BCE) and quoted by Pliny the Elder (24-79 CE)]

Oxymeli - Honey Vinegar
Simmer honey until it foams, discard, the scum, add enough vinegar to 
make it neither too sharp nor too sweet, boil again until it is mixed 
and not raw. For use, mix with water, just as you would mix wine with 
water.
[ ----- Galen, Staying Healthy, Book 4, Chapter 6]

OXYMEL
1-1/2 cup Honey
1/2 cup Red or White Wine Vinegar

Mix honey and vinegar; simmer until well blended; cool.

CABBAGE
10 lb Cabbage - we used 1 head green and 2 heads napa
3/4 cup chopped fresh Cilantro
1/2 cup chopped fresh Rue or Chinese Celery Leaves
2 cups Oxymel
1/4 cup Salt
1-1/4 tsp. Asafoetida Powder

1. Finely shred cabbage.
2. Mix herbs, oxymel, salt, and asafoetida.
3. Toss with cabbage.
4. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Note: Silphium, also known as laser, is no more, alas. However, many 
historians are convinced it was closely related to asafoetida and it 
appears that, in fact, asafoetida was used as a replacement after 
siplhium became extinct.

Pulentium - Barley Polenta

Original:
Vicenis hordei libris ternas seminis lini et coriandri selibram 
salisque acetabulum.

20 librae of barley, 3 librae of linseeds and 1/2 libra of coriander, 
in addition to an acetabulum of salt.
[ ----- Pliny, Naturalis Historia, 18, 73]

2-1/2 lb. Barley Grits (from health food store)
3 gallons Vegetable Broth
1-1/2 cups Flax Seeds/Linseeds
1/2 cup whole Coriander Seeds
additional Salt as needed
additional Water as needed

1. Put all ingredients into automatic rice cookers - this will take 
several batches, not all at once.
2. Turn on rice cookers.
3. When the rice cookers indicates that it is done, check it. It 
might not be. If not, start up rice cooker again, or finish on the 
stove or in an oven.

NOTE: No store seemed to be carrying the Arrowhead Mills barley grits 
i had purchased last year!!! So i bought whole barley with the hulls 
off, NOT pearl barley. Then we ran it through the food processor a 
few times. It never achieved the character of grits but most of it 
was broken up to a greater or lesser extent.

NOTE: The cook in charge of making the polenta decided to do it on 
stove top, rather than in the rice cookers, as i had done before, 
which worked fine. Also the coriander seeds and flax seeds didn't 
make it into the pot with the barley, so we cooked them separately in 
broth, then mixed them into the barley. While the texture of the 
barley was much "chunkier" than at the previous feast because of how 
we had processed the barley itself, it tasted fine.

NOTE: In reviewing the recipe, it appears to me that the flax seeds 
and coriander seeds should also be ground... next time...