[Sca-cooks] roman feast
Kathleen A Roberts
karobert at unm.edu
Tue Apr 1 18:58:27 PDT 2008
i can see where that might make a diff. i will certainly
try that. i am pretty much willing to consider any advice
(other than jumping off a pier, of course). 8)
i am still tweaking and playing with ideas. at least
until i get a deadline for proposals.
cailte
On Tue, 1 Apr 2008 16:44:01 -0700
Lilinah <lilinah at earthlink.net> wrote:
> OK, this has been sitting in my out box for quite some
>time, but i
> decided to send it anyway.
>
> cailte wrote:
>>yeah, i can see a lot of spin on the ingredients and how
>>they are cooked (in both senses of the word) in the
>>vehling. but it's fascinating reading.
>>
>>except for the cumin. never did like cumin. boy, did i
>>transplant to the wrong part of the country!
>
> Have you tried pan roasting/dry frying whole cumin seeds
>before
> grinding them? While i generally have no problem with
>cumin, i find
> it has a much more agreeable flavor after it has been
>"roasted".
> (there has got to be a better word... Adamantius?
>anyone?)
>
> When i made the Apician Peach Patina with Cumin Sauce
>(Cuminatum in
> Patina de Persicis : Patina of Peaches in Cumin Sauce
>[Apicius, Book
> IV, Chapter II, Recipe 34 in F&R]) for my Greco-Roman
>feast, i
> roasted the cumin seeds before making the dish (peaches
>in a sauce of
> lovage, parsley, mint, cumin, black pepper, honey, fish
>sauce, wine
> vinegar). The peaches were absolutely superb and the
>dish was
> fabulously yummy, as weird as the ingredients may sound
>to some. I
> had no precedent for this in Roman cooking and i confess
>i did it
> only to improve the flavor of the dish.
>
> The recipes doesn't specify exactly which cumin sauce to
>use. There
> are quite a few in the book. Besides cumin, nearly all
>include black
> pepper, fish sauce, and wine vinegar. Most include mint,
>lovage,
> parsley, rue, and honey. And a few include bay leaf,
>malabathrum,
> coriander, or old wine.
>
>Faas in his book "Around the Roman Table" included the
>Peach Patina
> recipe and one of many cumin sauces (p. 242), but did
>not bother to
> "redact" the recipe, merely commenting, "This is a
>curious recipe.
> Boiled peaches in perfumed olive oil sounds fine - but
>with cumin
> sauce? A challenge to the chef."
>
> Side Bar:
> According to Gernot Katzer's terrific spice pages,
> Malabathrum/malabathron is the leaf of Cinnamomum tamala
>and
> Cinnamomum tejapata, and also called tejpat and Indian
>bay-leaf
> http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/Cinn_tam.html
> Unfortunately, in my haunting of the many local
>Indian/Pakistani
> markets, all i've found is that ordinary bay leaves are
>sold as
> tejpat :-(
>
> Has anyone actually found *real* tejpat?
>
> Anyway, back to cumin and roasted spices:
> In "Cooking Apicius", Sally Grainger's companion book to
>her husband,
> Christopher Grocock's book "Apicis" (long title snipped
>but recently
> much mentioned on this list), she recommends roasting
>various spice
> seeds, although not peppercorns (p. 21-22). She doesn't
>give a
> clearly Roman reason, however. She says, "With the
>exception of
> peppercorn, spices benefit from the release of their
>fragrance by
> roasting before they are ground."
>
> In any case, i suggest giving a try to dry roasting the
>whole cumin
> seeds before grinding them and seeing if it makes cumin
>more
> palatable to you.
> --
> Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
> the persona formerly known as Anahita
>
> My LibraryThing
> http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lilinah
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which
sustained him through temporary periods of joy."
W. B. Yeats
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kathleen Roberts
Coordinator of Freshman Admissions
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM
505-277-2447
FASTINFOrmation at your fingertips -
http://fastinfo.unm.edu/
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list