[Sca-cooks] Apicius birds stuff with olives

[Stefan li Rous]

  Johnnae replied to my questions with:
> Actually this is one of those recipes that can be googled easily--
> Here are some online versions--Chicken stuffed with olives
>
> Bird: Put broken fresh olives in the cavity, sew up and boil. Remove 
> the
> olives when cooked. Apicus
>
> 6oz black olives, preferably pitted
> 1 small, fresh chicken
> 2 bay leaves
> salt
> 10 black peppercorns
> 1 onion
> 1 carrot
> 1 celery stalk
>
> l Chop the olives roughly and stuff the chicken with them. Using a 
> large
> darning needle, sew up the cavity with cotton thread or fine cooking
> string.
> l Place the chicken in a saucepan and cover with water. Add the bay
> leaf, salt, peppercorns and vegetables. Bring to the boil and simmer 
> for
> 1.5 hours until tender.
> l Remove from the water and cool slightly before carving.
>
> Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2005
>
> http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=18369&cat_id=5
>
> There's a version in Dalby's The Classical Cookbook.

Okay, but that doesn't answer my questions. And it opens a few more, 
although they probably just get into personal opinions on redacting.

That is someone's redaction, which is okay, but just because this 
person used black, pitted olives, doesn't mean that that is what 
Apicius meant. I was thinking of some type of the green ones, myself. 
But would "black, pitted olives" be considered "fresh olives" by 
Apicius or his readers? Is it necessary to pit olives before cooking 
them in food?  Although in this case, Apicius says "chopped" olives, so 
I imagine those are pitted.:-)

As for the redaction, Apicius doesn't mention "bay leaves", 
"peppercorns", "onions", "carrots" or "celery stalks". But perhaps like 
salt they can be assumed?

Stefan

> Stefan li Rous wrote:
> >>     F&B: ANOTHER WAY TO COOK A BIRD.  Stuff the bird with chopped
> >> fresh
> >> olives, sew it up, and boil.  Afterwards, remove the cooked olives
> >
> > Would these be treated olives? Or would these be the raw, untreated
> > olives straight from the trees? From earlier discussions here, raw
> > olives are bitter and they need to be treated in one of several ways.
> > Wouldn't this same, unwanted flavor be transferred to the bird if the
> > raw olives were used?
> > I was also thinking that this would take a large amount of olives
> > which would then be thrown out. But I was thinking of chickens and 
> for
> > smaller birds this makes more sense since the body cavity volume to
> > meat would be much less.
> > Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
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