[Sca-cooks] Re: Cheese and Leaves

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 12, 2006, at 8:33 AM, wildecelery at aol.com wrote:

>
>
> <I'm not thinking something to replace the baking pan, I'm thinking  
> something to
> make a pretty impression in the crust, which would make a bay leaf  
> plausible.
>
>   By the way, which edition of Apicius are you working from?    
> Contest might
> help us figure it out.  You mention "the original".   Do you mean a  
> latin
> version?  IIRC the "original" was lost a few centuries ago.>
>
> I'm meaning a copy of one the latin variations and then an English  
> translation of  the latin....

As far as I know, and beyond a certain point that ain't much, mind  
you, the original is in Cato's De Agricultura, and not in Apicius.

>
> Personally, I've been doing the oiled bay-leaf thing and it works  
> well, I was just seeking further knowledge
>
>
> <"...folia laurea subdito..." or "...place bay leaves beneath..."   
> While we
> usually use dried bay leaves and they would probably work in this  
> recipe, I
> suspect that the recipe is calling for fresh bay leaves which would  
> provide
> flavor while seperating the libum from the hearth.>
>
> My guess is that this is why the one modern redaction that i have  
> suggests using oiled bay leaves...to re-create some of the moisture  
> and flavoring of fresh
> <The modern recipe is using soft cheese to simulate fresh cheese.   
> When the
> whey is drained, the cheese forms a soft but solid mass that would  
> need to
> be broken apart for the recipe.  A mortar can be the heavy stone or  
> metal
> mortar we are familiar with or it may be a bowl.  The instruction  
> to grind
> may actually be a direction to break up the cheese rather than to  
> pulverize
> it.  Unfortunately, the simple Latin dictionary I have available  
> doesn't
> shed any light on the verb.
>
> We don't know precisely what cheeses the Romans used, but Mark Grant
> describes experimenting with cow's milk curdled with fig sap.  He also
> points out that Roman preservation techniques were to bottle cheese  
> in brine
> or vinegar, dip it in salt, smoke it, or pack it with crushed pulses.>

Pliny mentions some Roman cheeses, and pertinent -passages about them  
are quoted in the ontreoduction to the Flower and Rosenbaum edition  
of Apicius. Cato also talks about them fairly briefly, and Columella  
talks about them quite a lot.

>
> I'm actaully using a "fresh" homemade bag cheese....the modern  
> redcation that I was originall given calls for cream cheese and  
> after three tries, I decided that the texture was a nightmare and  
> started making my own cheese to use.

Chevre works well, if you don't mind the tanginess.

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