Celebratory Pelican meal

Alaric and Nerissa had Robert and me over for dinner this past Friday - Alaric had offered, as a celebration of my Pelican elevation, to make the meal of my choice, with my choice of guests, just as he'd done for Robert's peerage.

Since Alaric's speciality is Roman cooking, I suggested a meal out of Apicius and on my last visit I'd picked out a menu - which had promptly gone right out of my head, so the dishes were a happy surprise when we arrived. 

I invited thorngrove as another Roman foodie who'd enjoy it, and exmoor_cat and zmiya_san too - people who liked yummy food, and were core to the shire. I'd invited goncalves too, but his car repairs ate his train ticket, which was a bummer.

So Friday was the appointed day, and Alaric and thorngrove had been hard at the prep and work in the kitchen for hours before we arrived.

Reading through Apicius in advance, I found that the core ingredients for flavouring were garum or liquamen (the famed fish sauce in different forms, either 'raw' or enzyme-cooked), salt, wine (or cooked-down wine, in varying proportions) and honey. It was hard to find a recipe that didn't have these core items in some quantity.

Menu was as follows:

Wine for travellers - honey-enriched wine.

There was a pitcher of mulsum (sweetened wine reduced by between 1/4 and 1/3 in volume) on the table, for cutting with either regular wine, or water, or both.

Semolina porridge - I can't find the recipe for it, but it was semolina, cheese and possibly milk, intended to be drunk in a pass-glass. We each had a dollop on our plates, lacking a glass to share. It was intended as a starter, and some form of porridge was the staple of the Romans, before they developed a taste for bread baked with (imported) wheat.

I think it served the crackers-and-cheese role in the meal, though we ate it at the table. (We ate at the table, since A&N don't have the requisite banqueting room, and slaves to wait on us. Yes, we're barbarians....)

Pine-nut and honey pancakes - these were incredibly rich, made with the better part of a kilo of pine-nuts. They're one of Nerissa's favourites. Pine-nuts and chopped nuts, with honey, pepper, liquamen, milk and eggs, cooked in a little oil.

Patina of peas, and a chick-pea and leek frumenty - the 'patina' refers to a dish reminiscent of a frittata: a bunch of ingredients, held together with eggs in a deep dish. In this case, the peas were really broad beans, and after cooking Alaric broke eggs over them and cooked the whole open dish in the oven.

The chickpeas, leek and onion frumenty was wonderfully rich.

Tuna with a wine and raisin sauce. The raisins soaked up all the flavour of the sauce, but were unbelieveably sweet.

Parboiled then pan-roasted chicken with a topping of pine-nut sauce, again very sweet. Alaric noted that if he'd done this on the craticula (the Roman portable BBQ/stove, bit like a hibatchi on steroids) it would have had a more smoky flavour. I could only manage a taste of it, as I was getting dangerously full.

Peaches poached in wine and cumin. This was perhaps the dish that prompted the most varied reactions - I thought it was brilliant, G and A both ate theirs, and thorngrove couldn't stand them. It was the cumin combined with the peaches that was so distinctive, and there seemed little middle ground in opinion.

Lordy we were stuffed - we were stuffed halfway through, experienced feast-eaters all, and we still had to find room to taste everything. It was extraordinary.

My overall impression was of richness and sweetness; I don't think I've had such a combination of dishes that were cumulatively so sweet. I like biscuits and sweets like the average person, but I don't think I could live with quite so much honey all the time - though of course this wasn't everyday food, I don't think.

Alaric looked happy as a pig in mire feeding people to the gills, and we got to hear a bit about G and A's trip to the far east for a recent wedding.