#apicius

Happy Valentine’s Day!

@punkenstein-and-jockstar

ROMAN GAME HEN WITH HAZELNUT SAUCE (1st c. AD)

After making a couple of simpler Tasting History recipes, I finally had the time and motivation (I am in between jobs) to make a more complex recipe: Roman Game Hen with Hazelnut Sauce. This recipe comes once again from De Re Coquinaria of Apicius, an ancient Roman collection of recipes from the 1st century AD. Max made this recipe because he wanted to make a recipe using the same ingredients that would have been available to Alexander the Great. Unfortunately, not many recipes survive directly from Alexander's time and place in history, and as a result, a fancy Roman roast recipe is perhaps best to demonstrate Alexander's love for feasting. He was known for throwing lavish feasts, and as he conquered more and more land, he began to incorporate some of the feasting customs of the conquered lands into his own feasts. He was also known for his love of drinking, and accordingly, this recipe's sauce has a red wine base. I must forewarn that this recipe completely conquered me, much like Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greater Iran, Afghanistan, and much of India were conquered by Alexander the Great. Perhaps fitting - learn from my mistakes! See Max’s video on how to make this dish here or see the ingredients and process at the end of this post, sourced from his website.

My experience making it:

I halved the recipe for this one, since Max made two hens and I knew that would be way too much for us. One is enough. I opted to use hazelnuts instead of almonds, saffron instead of safflower, fish sauce instead of garum, and long pepper instead of black pepper. I didn't have any dried mint or calamint on hand, so I used the equivalent amounts adjusted for the fresh mint I had. The red wine I used was a Cabernet Sauvignon from France, and the honey was linden tree honey. As you'll find out later, my major mistake that compromised this dish was buying a frozen hen called a "Suppenhuhn" here in Germany. I'll explain why that ruined my dish further down.

I thawed the frozen chicken earlier in the day, so it would be ready to cook for dinner. An hour or so before we wanted to eat, I began preparing the other ingredients. Firstly, I preheated the oven and measured out the hazelnuts, then I spread the hazelnuts out on a baking tray to roast. While they roasted, I chopped and portioned out all of my other ingredients. When the nuts were toasty, I took them out of the oven and began crushing them with a mortar and pestle (in batches, since mine is quite small). This took a while and caused a light bruise to form in the palm of my crushing hand, but they did smell like Nutella! Yum. Next, I added all the other ingredients except the calamint (or for me, mint) and celery leaves to a sauce pan, mixing and simmering for five minutes. At this point, I realized I had forgotten to add the ground hazelnuts to the sauce, so I quickly poured them in and let the sauce simmer for an extra minute or two. I then took the sauce off the heat and mixed in the mint and celery leaves.

Now came time to prepare the hen. I adjusted the temperature of the oven, then removed the hen from it's packaging - fully thawed! I put the bird breast-side up in a deep enamel baking pan, brushed it with olive oil, stabbed a few slits in it with a knife, and then poured the thick, nutty sauce (which was still pretty chunky) onto the bird, making sure to cover it as best as possible. There was no sauce left after I covered the bird, so I couldn't reserve any to use as a dipping sauce afterwards. I put the bird in the oven and let it roast for half an hour before checking its temperature. For some reason, the temperature was only about half what I expected it to be, so I decided to leave it in the oven for another ten minutes or so. When I took it out again, the internal temperature of the bird was still about ten degrees under what is safe to eat, so I put it back in the oven even though the hazelnut sauce crust on the bird was already reaching an awfully dark colour. Five minutes later, I removed the chicken once again to check the temperature to find out some of the hazelnuts on the crust had blackened. Uh oh. Luckily, the internal temperature had finally reached 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 Celsius) - safe to eat! Amidst the baking, I prepared some broccoli and fried potatoes to accompany the chicken, so I plated those up and presented the slightly-charred bird on the table. It looked a little overcooked due to the charring, but I was confident the chicken inside should be cooked exactly right thanks to the meat thermometer.

My experience tasting it:

As always, I let my husband do the honours of carving the bird. I came to regret this! Using the carving knife, he tried his best to make the usual central incision: it was near impossible to cut through. He's a pretty strong guy, and has never had to fight with a roast in order to cut it to pieces before, but this bird seemed like it was made of pure bone or something! He changed tactics and tried to cut off just a leg. The skin alone was thicker than usual, almost as if there was cartilage casing the entire chicken. I fetched the scissors to see if that would cut through it. It did help, but he was pulling and sawing, and he eventually had to shout a few expletives. I felt terrible by this point, having spent money on several ingredients and several hours of my time only to create a disaster of a bird. Overcome with frustration, I shed a few tears. After a long-fought battle, my husband had finally gotten one measly leg off the damned bird, and we both tried a shred of the rubbery chicken. While it was cooked through, it was flavourless and dense, like chewing rubber.

By this point, my husband had to hold me back from throwing the whole bird out - it was truly a lost cause. I mean, we couldn't even cut it. I half-heartedly tried the sauce, and this was the only somewhat redeeming aspect of the roast. Because it had been in the oven so long, it had mostly dried up, and what was left were chunks of hazelnuts infused with the flavours and sediment of the sauce - quite delicious, in fact. The red wine and herbs had that typical, rich Roman flavour, very savoury and strong. If the chicken had been a normal roast chicken, the sauce would have tasted lovely on it. I decided to read up online about the German "Suppenhuhn" to see what it was. I had trusted that a chicken is a chicken is a chicken, and all would taste roughly the same when roasted - that was clearly naive. To quote Google, a Suppenhuhn is a "12-15 month old laying hen. Their meat is very flavourful, but must be cooked for at least 1 hour to make it tender." So, we had tried to roast an older hen that had a higher amount of fat, and that was why it was so difficult to cut into. So, I class this as a failed attempt, and because of how emotional it made me when it all went wrong and how many hours and ingredients were wasted, I will probably not try this recipe again. I know it's not the recipe's fault, it probably tastes quite nice when it goes well, but I don't know if I have the patience for this one. Either way, I learned some lessons: don't buy a Suppenhuhn unless you're making soup, and don't cry over old hen. If you end up making this dish (successfully or unsuccessfully!), if you liked it, or if you changed anything from the original recipe, do let me know!

Links to harder-to-find ingredients:

Long Pepper

Garum

Roman Game Hen with Hazelnut Sauce original recipe (1st c.)

Sourced from De Re Coquinaria of Apicius (1st c.).

Aliter Ius in Avibus, Another Sauce for Birds: Pepper, parsley, lovage, dried mint, safflower, pour in wine, add toasted hazelnuts or almonds, a little honey with wine and vinegar, season with garum. Add oil to this in a pot, heat it, stir in green celery and calamint. Make incisions in the birds and pour the sauce over them.

Modern Recipe

Based on the recipe from De Re Coquinaria of Apicius (1st c.) and Max Miller’s version in his Tasting History video.

Ingredients:

2 cups (250 g) hazelnuts or almonds

1 tsp ground long pepper or black pepper

2 tsp minced fresh parsley

2 tsp dried or fresh lovage

1 1/2 tsp dried mint

A pinch of safflower threads, or saffron threads

1 1/2 cups (350 ml) dry red wine

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp garum or fish sauce

2 tsp minced celery leaves

1 tsp minced calamint, or catmint or spearmint

Whatever fowl you like, I used 2 game hens

Olive oil, for brushing the birds

Method:

First prepare to roast the hazelnuts or almonds by preheating the oven to 350°F (175°C). Spread the nuts onto a baking pan and bake for about 12 to 15 minutes, moving the nuts around once or twice during the cook time. You can stir them or gently shake the pan. You’ll know they’re ready when you can smell the toasty nutty aroma.

Using a mortar and pestle or a food processor, grind the nuts into a coarse powder.

In a saucepan, stir together the ground nuts and all of the other ingredients except for the celery leaves and calamint.

Bring the sauce to a simmer over medium heat, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the celery leaves and calamint.

You can now serve the sauce forth as-is with cooked poultry, but I cooked my game hens with the sauce for some extra flavor. To do this, first preheat the oven to 400°F (205°C).

Arrange your poultry breast-side up in a baking dish. Brush them with olive oil. Pierce the breast of the birds several times with a knife, then pour the sauce over them, reserving some of the sauce for serving if you wish. The ground nuts will form a layer on the birds that will become a lovely crust.

Did you know when you Google Apicius, they call him a professional chef?

Given that he was the closest thing Ancient Rome had to Betty Crocker or Martha Stewart, we guess it makes sense. These apricots are a fantastic dessert from De re coquinaria (c. 5th cent. CE), arguably the best-known Ancient Roman cookbook. They likely would have been enjoyed at room temperature, but taste fantastic after being chilled. We make this at every rendition of our Ancient Food Day, and it's always a hit.

Latin: duracina primotica pusilla precoquiis purgas, enucleas, in frigidam mittis; in patina conponis; teres piper mentam siccam; suffundis liquids; adicies mel passum uinum et acetum; refundis in patina super precoquia, olei modicum mittis et lento igni ferueat, cum ferbuerit, amulo obligas, piper aspargis et inferes. (De re coquinaria, 4.177)

Translation (by John Liao): Wash firm, early or small apricots, pit them, and put them in the cold [water]. Arrange them in a pan. Crush pepper and dried mint, pour over liquamen and add honey, passum, wine and vinegar. Pour over the apricots in the pan. Add a little oil and heat on a low flame. Thicken [the sauce] with starch while it simmers. Sprinkle with pepper and serve. 

Ingredients

10-12 apricots (pitted and halved if fresh, rehydrated in water overnight if dried)

1 ½-2 tbsp freshly cracked black pepper (plus extra for garnish)

1 tbsp dried mint flakes

1 tsp garum/liquamen (substitute fish sauce if you can't find/make it yourself)

3-4 heaping tbsp of honey

3/4 cup of red wine

3/4 cup of passum (also known as raisin wine. Substitutes can include cranberry juice (less sweet), grape juice (more sweet), or ice wine (if you don’t have to make this for a school event).

1 tsp of vinegar (2 tsp if you're not using passum/alcoholic passum substitute)

1 ½ tbsp of olive oil

½ tsp corn starch

3-4 tbsp cold water

Our Recipe

Soak halved, pitted fresh apricots in cold water for 15 minutes (skip if using rehydrated fruit)

In a wide pan (at least 3 inches deep), lightly toast the black pepper and mint at medium heat until fragrant.

Add the liquids: honey, passum, wine, vinegar, and liquamen. Bring to a simmer and stir until well incorporated, and the honey has dissolved. Continue simmering to cook off the alcohol. If the mixture begins to reduce too much, add water in small amounts.

Once the desired amount of alcohol has been cooked off, add the apricots. Continue simmering until apricots reach your desired texture (usually 8-12 mins).

Remove the apricots from the pan. Mix cornstarch with cold water into a slurry, and add to the remaining liquid. Stir and cook until thick, then pour over reserved apricots. Let cool.

Serve chilled or at room temperature, with fresh black pepper sprinkled on top.

Below, we served them with libum (Roman cheesecake) and statites (Ancient Greek spelt crepes).

Some more anachronistic ways to serve this can include using it as pie or tart filling, mixing it with Greek yogurt, or serving it with vanilla ice cream while it's still hot (sort of like a poached pear situation).

Some FAQs

Q. "How long do I actually boil the sauce?"

A. As long as you want, depending on how much alcohol you want in the dish (we serve these at school events, so we have to boil it to hell and back to get rid of all the alcohol).

Q. "The ancient recipe says to cook the apricots first, why do you make the sauce first?"

A. When we tried the apricot-first method, the apricots fell apart and turned the whole thing into a jam-like stew because of how long we had to cook the sauce. It tasted great but lacked the nice texture of the whole apricots.

Q. "Can I substitute ingredients 1-1?"

Today, I'll be making a quick side-dish from Rome, as recorded by Apicius! He has a few ways of preparing mushrooms, but this is one of the more flavourful methods he shows us!

In any case, let's now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above! Consider checking out my Patreon page!

Ingredients 500g mushrooms (I used chestnut mushrooms) 2 tbsp red wine vinegar (or malt vinegar) 1 tbsp salt 1 tbsp pepper fresh coriander or parsley

Method

1 - Chop the Mushrooms This is a rather simple recipe, but to begin with, we need to prepare our mushrooms. I used chestnut mushrooms, sliced into thin segments, but button or Portobello mushrooms may also be similar to what was available in antiquity, along with edible morels. If you have smaller mushrooms, you can skip slicing these, and proceed with cooking them as is!

2 - Sauté   Mushrooms Into a hot pot, pour a generous amount of olive oil - enough to coat the base. On top of this, toss your mushrooms. Sprinkle this with a bit of salt to help draw the moisture out of the mushrooms, before placing the pot over a medium heat. Stir everything around gently, so the mushrooms sweat out their moisture. Depending on what mushrooms you use, this may result in them being crushed slightly. Sauté these for about 3 -5 minutes.

3 - Sauté other ingredients When your fungal friends have taken on a bit of colour, toss in some fresh coriander, and some freshly-ground black pepper, and a couple of tablespoons of red wine vinegar, before stirring everything together and returning to the heat for another 3-5 minutes. Be careful not to burn your mushrooms!

4 - Serve! When your mushrooms are cooked, take these out of the cooking liquid, and place them in a bowl. Put the liquid over a high heat and let it boil down and reduce into a sauce.

Pour the sauce over your mushrooms, and dig in with some bread!

The finished mushrooms are super tender and flavourful - the vinegar really amplifies their meaty texture. The chestnut mushrooms I used retained a little bite to them, which was a welcome sensation!