[Sca-cooks] Apicius' polenta recipe

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 8, 2005, at 9:07 PM, Terry Decker wrote:

> You already have it in the Florilegium.  I posted it almost 8 years  
> ago during a discussion we were having.  Just to refresh the list,  
> here are the recipes:
>
> Fried Creamed Wheat

<snip>

> inferes.  Melius feceris, si lac pro aqua miseris.
>
>
>
> Another sweet dish:  Take flour, cook in hot water so that it  
> becomes a very
>
> firm polenta, then spread it on a plate.  When it has cooled, cut  
> it as for
>
> sweet cakes and fry in oil of the finest quality.  Remove, pour  
> honey over,
>
> sprinkle with pepper and serve.  You will do even better if you use  
> milk
>
> instead of flour.

Ya mean "milk instead of water", by any chance?

The first thing that comes to mind here to me, more than fried mush,  
is gnocchi a la romana...

I had originally asked about the connection between fried mush and  
polenta and Apicius because while this thread was starting, I was  
involved in a private discussion wherein some equivocation was made  
between polenta and corn/maize-meal-mush. Which is not the be-all and  
end-all of polenta, but it's the first thing most moderns think of.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04