Some of the best dishes, I believe, come in the most untraditional and contradictory ways. For example, one of my favorite desserts is a souffle cake. It’s essentially a fallen-in souffle. “This dessert may look a little odd – but it’s delicious.” Same with the recipe I present to you this evening–a wilted salad. Even more so, a wilted dinner sized salad. For a carnivore-leaning omnivore like me, this seems just wrong. But strangely enough, this worked for me, and perhaps you might some value in it as well.

Wilted Mesclun and Chevre with Roasted Tomato and Bacon vinaigrette

Ingredients

3 cups mixed greens and 3 cups baby spinach combined in a large bowl
1 small red onion, peeled and sliced 1/2″ thick
4 strips bacon, cut into 1/2″ pieces
1 large heirloom tomato, cut in half
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped fine
1/4 cup combination of chopped parsley and thyme
3 ounces of crumbled Ile de France goat chevre plus extra for garnish

For the vinaigrette:

1/2 cup cooked, crumbled bacon
1/4 cup roasted tomato skins
3/4 cup dry sherry
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup walnut oil or olive oil
2 tsp honey
1 tsp dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium sized bowl, toss together heirloom tomato, first part of olive oil, chopped garlic and herbs, and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. When thoroughly covered with herbs and oil, place tomatoes on a baking pan, reserving the leftover oil, herbs and garlic in the bowl for the vinaigrette. Place pan in oven and roast for 20 minutes, or until skins are wrinkled. When finished, remove tomatoes from oven and let cool, 6 minutes. Carefully peel the skin and reserve for the vinaigrette.

While the tomatoes are roasting, in a medium sized skillet on medium heat, render the fat from the chopped bacon by cooking, 8 minutes. When bacon is crisp and cooked, remove from pan to a paper towel. Retain at least 2 tablespoons of bacon fat, and while the pan is still at medium heat, cook onions until soft, 10 minutes. Remove onions from pan and set aside. Continuing the pan on medium heat, add sherry and apple cider vinegar, reduce and heat through, 3 minutes. Remove pan from heat and set aside.

In a food processor, add crumbled, cooked bacon, roasted tomato skins, heated sherry and apple cider vinegar and pulse until bacon and skins are rendered to tiny pieces. Add mustard, pulse. While processing, slowly drizzle oil into vinegar blend until fully integrated. Add reserved tomato marinade, pulse. Add honey and pulse. Salt and pepper to taste. When completed, pour finished vinaigrette into a medium sized pan over medium heat and heat through until vinaigrette is gently bubbling. Remove quickly and set aside.

Add cooked onions and goat cheese to the mixed greens and toss gently. Add half of the heated vinaigrette to the greens and fold continuously. Add rest of vinaigrette, if necessary, until all of the greens are lightly coated with vinaigrette and slightly softened. Pile greens on a plate, top with roasted tomato, and add additional goat cheese for garnish.

Bueno! Bella! Lovely. I was very pleased with this wilted dinner entree salad, and it was filling enough. It definitely gave me an excuse and room for a nice scoop of ice cream.

The first time I tried goat cheese, I was a young professional working in South Denver. I had never really been invited to a “co-worker” lunch before, and I was very excited when my supervisor asked our group out to lunch. I remember, as I recall so many of my first experiences with food, the event clearly. So clearly, in fact, that many times I can conjure up the tastes from those experiences, which I could later replicate. This is one of those times. The place was Cucina Leone, a subtle, lovely restaurant I found out later has the best soup in the entire world when you’re sick. On the specials menu for lunch, there was a wilted salad.

“It’s a warm salad,” one of my co-workers explained. On it, it had roasted red peppers, spinach, caramelized onions, and something called chevre.

“What’s this chev–rrree?” I asked.

“CHEV-re. Goat cheese,” my supervisor declared.

“Ah,” I said suspiciously. “What’s cheese normally made from?” Yes, this was before cooking school and after graduate school. The only thing I knew was there was some difference between cheddar and mozzarella.

They laughed (you would have, too). They explained cheese can be made from all kinds of milk, but mainly cows and goats. Man, I felt stupid, but I ordered the salad, anyway. It was, by far, the most amazing salad I have ever had. The cheese was perfectly white and creamy, and melded well with the vinaigrette. Slightly softened by the warmth of the salad, the caramelized onions and red peppers heightening its sweetness, I was converted immediately.

I spent a few years afterwards trying different cheeses made from goat’s milk from different countries. My favorites were always from the United States. To this day, my favorite goat cheese is from Cypress Grove in Arcata, California. To be more specific, I have a long-standing love affair with their Humboldt Fog ripened goat cheese. A thin layer of ash ribbons through the middle, calling me to experience its beauty again and again. But I digress. There has always been something about French goat cheeses which, for lack of a better word here, bored me. It seemed as though the best French goat cheese makers packed up their terroir and moved to California and Oregon.

When I was given the opportunity for some free cheese from Ile de France, I immediately wanted to try their chevre. Why not give the opportunity to expand my palate to French goat cheeses with a company that has been selling French cheeses since 1936? Surely, they would have retained some talent!

Chevre on crackers

Creamy yet retaining a solid, consistent texture, IdF’s chevre tastes amazingly well on crackers. It is not an overwheming cheese at all. As a matter of fact, I found it surprisingly mild. A taste, I believe, that could make people who normally don’t like goat cheese, like goat cheese. Or at least, give it another try. Equally good on wheat crackers and water crackers, this cheese was definitely best on a multi-grained flatbread cracker with a bit of garlic to bring the cheese to life.

Considering that one of our local goat cheese companies will close one of its farms soon, perhaps it’s time to reconsider a “stock” goat cheese from Ile de France. I think it definitely has macro-paletability, meaning both seasoned goat cheese lovers and beginners who cannot tell a brie from a Camembert would find common ground to gather around this versatile chevre.

Tomorrow, I will share with you my wilted salad recipe using this terrific cheese.

Dearest readers (all 2 of you by now…),

It has been forever since I have posted, and you’re right, I’ve been dead.  But I’ve come back to life (much to the surprise of the mortuary scientist, let me just say no more on that) to tell you, I’m actually going to be updating this weekend!  I know!  Why, you may ask?  Well, to be honest, I was bribed.  I was bribed with free cheese. 

People give you stuff when you have a blog?

If there was any reason to have a blog, whether food or mechanical pencils, people give you stuff.  In this case, I received a goat cheese from Ile de France.  I thought it was a scam, but it wasn’t.  I thought some strange person was going to show up at my door with a baseball bat and say, “I got’cher chevre right here” but it wasn’t.  As a matter of fact, it showed up on time and in a nice little brown box.  Not only that, but it came in an overnighted UPS package with a little cold pack in it.  Cool!  Literally.

So, yeah… updating.  With a little nostalgic story and a recipe and everything.  You can still say I never gave you anything, though.

The holiday weekend brings thoughts of pork to the table. Personally, I think of hot dogs, and yes, while I occasionally wander to fancies of hamburgers on the grill, I return to pork. My favorite pork product is the tenderloin. Small and juicy, they are neither too sweet or too salty. I know many people cook ham over holiday meals, but I never understood why. Now I know. We can thank the old Norse God of agriculture, weather and (ahem) male fertility, Freyr, for this tradition. The ham over Christmas was a tradition for “Germanic peoples as a tribute… to boars, harvest and fertility.” (Source, wikipedia). For this week’s recipe, we pay our own tribute to Freyr; may it bring us a bountiful harvest and abundant fertility!

If you recall when we first tasted a recipe from De Re Coquinaria by Apicius, we also find Aresty’s Apician Ham and Figs.

289 Fresh Ham
Musteis petasonem

A fresh ham is cooked with 2 pounds of barley and 25 figs. When done skin, glaze the surface with a fire shovel full of glowing coals, spread honey over it, or, what’s better: put it in the oven covered with honey. When it has a nice color, put in a sauce pan raisin wine, pepper, a bunch of rue and pure wine to taste. When this sauce is done, pour half of it over the ham…

I’m saving the rest of the recipe to share later, but first, let’s get to the mods!

Aresty’s original recipe called for…

A canned or precooked ham
1/4 cup brown sugar (and a pinch of ground cloves)
Canned figs (or dried figs, steamed for 20 minutes or soaked in hot water for the same length of time)
1/4 cup canned fig juice

Here are my modifications…

1 8-10 lb. uncooked ham shoulder (smoked)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 cup honey
25-30 dried figs, soaked 20 minutes in 1 1/2 cups hot water, fig water reserved

For the sauce:

2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 to 2 cups basting juices from the ham
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

I added the honey simply because the Apicius’ original recipe said it was best, so we’re going to go with that. Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees F. Place the uncooked ham, revealed flesh-side down, in a shallow baking pan. Coat the top of the ham with brown sugar and cloves, rubbing throughly. Soften the honey slightly in a microwave (warm enough to still touch), then pour over the ham, again, rubbing throughly, until the whole ham is covered in gooey sweetness. If your hands are also gooey, I would suggest washing them before proceeding to the next steps.

Cover the ham lightly with aluminum foil, or to be more authentic, parchment paper, and slide into the pre-heated oven. Allow 18 to 25 minutes for each pound of ham. Mine, being roughly 8 lbs, took around 4 hours to cook. One hour into the cooking, remove the foil, and pour the reserved fig juice over the top of the ham. This will be your basting liquid. I basted once every 45 minutes.

This next step, I found to be completely optional, so disregard if you want. 1 hour before the ham is completed, remove the ham and decorate with figs. From Aresty: “…nip off the little hard end and cut the fig nearly into quarters. Open it and flatten out on the ham in the appearance of a four-leaf clover. The decoration is enhanced if a small hole is made in the uncut center of the fig and a green grape is forced halfway through it.” I had thoughts of this step turning out a lot better than I really imagined it. Personally, I thought of unhappily decorated hams in 1950’s cookbooks, dressed in figgy four leaf clovers with lime green bulbs sticking out of the bright pink skin… Well, it was enough to make me want to *try* to improve it. Sadly, not even I could make this decoration work.

Take out the ham when it is cooked completely and reserve the basting juices. It’s gonna make a lovely sauce. In a pan over medium heat, melt the butter and soften the chopped onions. Add the flour and stir until the flour is covered with the butter. Cook two minutes more. Add the basting juices and stir quickly over medium-low heat until thickened. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Let’s get to the final part of Apicius original recipe:

When this sauce is done, pour half of it over the ham and in the other half soak specially made ginger bread. The remnant of the sauce after most of it is thoroughly soaked into the bread, add to the ham.

Ginger bread, eh? That sounds like fun! I’ve made gingerbread before! We just need… oh, wait… how old is gingerbread? Wow… well, we’d better get to work then, and we don’t have to cook it?? Cool! I used a Medieval recipe recreation from Kristen Sullivan:

* 1 cup honey
* 1 loaf wheat bread, ground into bread crumbs
* 3/4 tsp cinnamon
* 1/4 tsp black pepper
* 1/4 tsp ginger
* cinnamon and red sandalwood to coat (Cynthia’s note: I did not use sandalwood)

Bring the honey to a boil, reduce heat, and allow to simmer for 5 or 10 minutes, skimming off any scum that forms on the surface. Remove from heat and add pepper, cinnamon, and ginger. Add bread crumbs to honey one cup at a time. Mix until honey and bread crumbs are thoroughly mixed (this should require some kneading). Divide mixture into quarters and roll out on wax paper.Cut into 1 inch squares, and dust with mixture of one part cinnamon to two parts sandalwood.

Very, very nice. A little bit on the sweet side, but this was incredibly easy and quick to make. It also came out to be a tasty addition to ham.

But now I love ham!

However… the final mating of the figs and the ham were incredible. The ham, while originally packed in salt water and juices, came out tasting sweet and delectable. I would add maybe a side of mashed potatoes to this and some steamed vegetables (like asparagus, maybe) to make it a complete meal.

In The Deipnosophistae, a second century BC cookbook written by Athenaeus of Naucratis, we find many references to [cheesecakes] … cheesecakes made of cheese and cheesecakes made of everything but cheese, cheesecakes boiled in oil and dipped in honey, cheesecakes devoted to Olympian goddesses surrounded with figures of lighted torches, and wedding cheesecakes baked over an open fire and drenched with honey…

— Artemis P. Simopoulos

Furthering our culinary tour of Antiquity with the Deipnosophists as our guides, it turns out something modern was mentioned by all of the diners at the Banquet of the Learned: cheesecake. It’s no wonder how this combination of sweetness, cream cheese and eggs got to be so popular. Aresty writes, “The poor man probably hungered most for cheesecake.” The topic has been discussed time and again–everything from history and recipes to blogs and birthdays.

And at long last, after patiently waiting and researching and the making of cheese, I present The Deipnosophists’ Almond Cheesecake! The following recipe was mostly adapted from the New York Honey Cheesecake on the National Honey Board’s website. You can also find the exact methodology I used there.

Ingredients

4 pkgs (8 oz) cream cheese, room temperature (and if you’re one of the cool geeky kids, you’ve made some yourself…)
3/4 cup honey
1/4 cup flour
5 eggs
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 Tbsp lemon zest, grated
1 tsp vanilla

For the topping:

1/4 cup roughly chopped whole almonds
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of fresh grated nutmeg

You may be wondering… why follow a book at all if you’re not going to use the recipes from it? Well, I’ll tell you. Aresty’s recipe calls for 7/8 of a cup of sugar. No big deal, right? Sugar is in a lot of cheesecake recipes, duh. But as difficult and expensive as refined sugar was for the first part of the history of it, I was in the mindset it would be much easier to obtain honey. “The first production of sugar from sugarcane took place in India. Alexander the Great’s companions reported seeing ‘honey produced without the intervention of bees’ and it remained exotic in Europe until the Arabs started cultivating it in Sicily and Spain. Only after the Crusades did it begin to rival honey as a sweetener in Europe.” (Source… you guessed it, Wikipedia).

And if I’m crazy enough to go out of my way to make cream cheese, I’m crazy enough to try and figure out if sugar or honey in the Deipnosophists’ cheesecake is going to be more authentic.

Adding a bit more to the nuttiness

Yes, I can be a hypocrite. I am at times, a culinary relativist. I’ll choose to make something completely authentic, then turnaround and make a crust of Almond sable when it probably wasn’t invented for a couple hundred more years. At any rate, better people would have resisted. Consider me not the better person, but love me and this recipe from Chef Stu Stein. I doubt if hypocrisy ever tasted this good:

Almond Sablés
Yield: 10 to 12 cookies

1 cup Unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup Sugar
1 Large egg
1 Tbsp. Pure vanilla extract
2 cups All-purpose flour
1/8 tsp. Iodized salt
1 cup almonds, roughly chopped

Please see original recipe for methodology.

I used the almond sable as a crust, and put the crust around the individual pie pans. I poured the cheesecake mixture into the pie pans. When the cheesecakes were completely cooked and cooled, I turned them upside down onto plates. I topped them with more crushed almonds, then drizzled the whole cake again with more honey. It turned out a bit like this…

The tasting

I was extremely pleased with both the lightness of the texture and the mildness of the taste. So many times cheesecakes can be this thick cream cheese sweet bomb. This, on the other hand, came out light–almost like cheesecake quiche. (I know, a strange thought…) I was really worried about the runniness of the batter, but it cooked up like a dream.

I have a ton of almond sable dough left. I think I shall make cookies! I think the Deipnosophists’ would definitely approve.

Patience. I should work on establishing at least a passing relationship with patience. The more I read and prepare for these posts, the more I realize cooking takes a lot of work and … that word that begins with “p”. Patience. For example, the next journey just happens to be cheesecake. Out of all of my culinary skills, baking is the least of my talents. But cheesecake… is everyone’s favorite. Everyone knows it. Aresty writes, “The poor man probably hungered most for cheesecake.” Thousands of recipes. Thousands of years. Progress. Convenience. All so I can go down to the grocery store and pick up a block of Philadelphia cream cheese.

But no…

I’ve decided to make my own cream cheese. And not with cow’s milk, either. No. I’ve decided to make cream cheese out of goat’s milk. I’m bucking the system, I’m taking rennet into my own hands, I’m squeezing curds together, I’m raking in the molds! All right, I’m just making cheese for God’s sake. Thanks to Crystal Miller, mother of 8, wife to one.

Ingredients

Yield: approximately 2 1/2 cups

1 gallon goat’s milk (store bought cow’s milk will work too!)
¼ t. direct set mesophilic-m culture
2 T diluted rennet (add 1 drop of rennet to 5 T cool water)

I suppose in the grand scheme of things, making one’s own cheese isn’t such an arduous undertaking. But in my convenience-laden body, I could have made and posted this recipe yesterday, and joined the countless other people who make and enjoy cheesecakes everyday. But, I suppose, if I wanted things to be easy, I would not have started this journey. As my partner says, “If you wanted things to be easy, you would be cooking through Betty Crocker.”

Dissecting the ingredients

Mesophilic-m: It’s alive! Alive!! “A mesophile is an organism that grows best in moderate temperature, neither too hot nor too cold, typically between 15 and 40 °C (77 and 104 °F). The term is mainly applied to microorganisms.” (from our friend, Wikipedia)

Rennet: It’s science! Science!! “Rennet is a natural complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach to digest the mother’s milk, and often used in the production of cheese. Rennet contains a proteolytic enzyme (protease) that coagulates the milk, causing it to separate into solids (curds) and liquid (whey). The active enzyme in rennet is called chymosin or rennin (EC 3.4.23.4) but there are also other important enzymes in it, e.g., pepsin or lipase. There are non-animal sources for rennet substitutes.” (Also from our friend, Wikipedia, albeit a little on the TMI-side)

I could also make my own rennet: “Presumably, the first cheese was produced by accident when the ancients stored milk in a bag made from the stomach of a young goat, sheep or cow.” But I just won’t go that far, people. I just won’t. I would do anything for love… but I won’t do that. Hm, I wonder if the ancients had some kind of meatloaf. Well, if I find out, I’ll post it.

Sourcing

Both the mesophilic-m culture and the rennet came from a very modern source, http://www.leeners.com/ They sell “kits and supplies for everything from beer to bubble gum to wine and cheese!” I think a cook in Antiquity would have really enjoyed a website like this. They would have said, “You mean, I don’t have to touch goat’s stomach anymore??”

But they probably didn’t have reliable internet access back then. And they might have trouble reading the page. But other than that, I think they would have liked having access to all of these supplies. It’s also possible a friend of theirs would have introduced them to a 24 hour Wal-Mart and told them about Philadelphia cream cheese. But I digress. If it’s not too late, let’s cheese it up!

The making of the cheese

Ms. Miller’s method of making cheese uses an old pillowcase instead of cheesecloth. I didn’t have any old pillowcases lying about, but as life has its subtle, lovely ways with me, I received some flour sack towels from a friend of mine, which she uses when she makes cheese. Other than that modification, direct from Crystal Miller’s methodology, here is what I did:

In a large pot (I use a 6qt) add goat’s milk. Heat your milk to 80 degrees. Remove from heat and add the mesophilic-m culture and stir well. Add the rennet and stir. Cover the pan and let sit undisturbed at room temp for 12 to 18 hours.

After your time is up what you have in the pot should look like very thick yogurt. Now you will drain and drip your cheese.

Line a colander with your clean pillow case. I set this colander in a large bowl to catch the whey. Now drain your thick yogurt looking cheese into this cloth. Gather up the cloth and tie it tightly. Now you need to hang it somewhere. I have handles on my kitchen cupboard that work perfect for this. Whatever you hang it make sure it is up high enough to allow the whey to drip through the cloth into a bowl below. Now let your cream cheese drain for about 6 to 8 hours. You can speed this process along by stirring your cream cheese up about halfway through the time and you can do it again if you need to.

When it is completed what you have left in the pillow case is your cream cheese! You can salt it a bit or not, that is up to you.

Saaaaay… Smile!

This, I might add, came out beautifully! If you ever want to make cream cheese, I highly recommend the goat cheese. All of the things I love about chevre come out in the taste of this finished product. The texture is that of fresh creme fraiche.

I decided not to salt the cheese, as I wanted it as plain as possible so the whole sweetness and taste of the honey in my cheesecake would shine through.

Next up: cheesecakes!

While I wait patiently for some items to come from leeners.com, we’re going to skip ahead a few pages and maybe a century or so to Apicius’ time. According to our text, De Re Coquinaria is “the earliest cookbook in the strict sense of recipes.” Apicius was a Roman culinarian, gourmand and all-around banquet thrower, so it makes sense we would move from the banquet of the learned to banquets of the learned who actually wrote recipes down so people could follow them. The recipe I am attempting to re-create/modify is called In Pullo Elixo ius Crudum. Translated as “Boiled Chicken in rough sauce”, but Aresty calls it “Apician Dilled Chicken.” Other recipes from the cookbook can be found here.

A footnote in Book I of a translation I found posted by Bill Thayer from a publication of De Re Coquinaria by Walter M. Hill, states, “This [section] illustrates how sparingly the ancients used the strong and pungent laser flavor [by some believed to be asa foetida] because it was very expensive, but principally because the Roman cooks worked economically and knew how to treat spices and flavor judiciously.” Book 6 finds our short recipe:

235 Raw Sauce for Boiled Chicken
In pullo elixo ius crudum

Put in the mortar dill seed, dry mint, laser root, moisten with vinegar, fig wine, broth, a little mustard, oil and reduced must, and serve.Known as dill chicken.

Clearly, the original recipe offered ingredients, but no exact quantities. (I’m glad someone used to write recipes like I currently do…) But in this case, I will give you my even-more modernized version–with exact quantities.

Ingredients

Two cornish game hens

1/4 cup of fresh dill, roughly chopped

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup of sherry + 1/2 cup of fig juice from hydrating figs (or just 1 cup of sherry)

1 teaspoon asafoetida

Oil for browning chicken

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

5-7 leaves of fresh mint, whole (or 1 teaspoon of dried mint)

For the “raw” sauce:

1 tablespoon butter + 1 tablespoon of flour (for roux)

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

About 2 cups of reserved braising liquid

8 to 10 1/2″ cubes of a strong, soft cheese (I used Camembert, but brie would also work)

In Aresty’s recipe, she eliminated the asafoetida and replaced it with Worcestershire sauce. While I find this makes some sense, I tried to find it myself, anyway, because sometimes, I make no sense. She describes it as “a pungent flavoring not to modern tastes.” If you’d like, you can sub it, too (with 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire), but I’m going in search of it.

According to our friend, Wikipedia, asafoetida “has a foul smell when raw, but in cooked dishes, it delivers a smooth flavor reminiscent of leeks.” That doesn’t sound too out there. Apparently, it’s used often in Indian dishes with cauliflower. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find, considering the last time I visited the Indian grocery for some fig leaves, they had everything else imaginable.

(A little while later…)

I’m extremely happy to report the Indian grocery called India’s Grocery in Boulder, Colorado had several different kinds of asafoetida, including some in tablet form. I bought the smallest bottle they had in powdered form for $7.99, then proceeded to buy an unpriced bag of basmati rice for $39.99. If you go, don’t be like me and have the cashier ring you up before you ask how much an unmarked item is.

At any rate, Aresty was correct in the odor of the substance. Even through the bottle it smells… weird and a little off. It doesn’t smell like a chemical. But it also doesn’t smell like a food item, either. I think it just doesn’t smell familiar at all, so I have nothing to place it together. It’s going to take a little bit of trust on my part to be sure this dish has the right balance of flavors. I have already decided to open the bottle, shake out my desired amount and reseal it outside, just in case any of it decides to escape from me. Oh, and I’m also going to then put it back into a resealable air-tight container.

The cooking of it all

We happen to have a nice little dutch oven with a heavy lid from Le Creuset, and it will hold two cornish hens quite nicely. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. Heat up the dutch oven on the stove top to medium high, then add about a teaspoon of oil. Season the hens inside and out with salt and pepper, then brown them, breast first in the dutch oven. Turn them over and brown the other side. Mix together the rest of the ingredients, then pour them over the hens. Cover, then bake in the oven for 1 hour. Halfway through the cooking, Aresty suggests, turn the hens over from its back to its breast. Strain the braising liquid and reserve.

To make the “raw” sauce, saute the garlic with a little bit of olive oil in a small pan until softened, 3-4 minutes. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the butter until melted. Add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon until somewhat of a thick paste is formed. Cook another 3 minutes, stirring. Do not burn the flour. Add the reserved braising liquid 3/4 cup at a time, stirring quickly to integrate the roux with the liquid before adding more. Stop adding liquid when a thick, but smooth sauce is formed. Add the cheese four or five pieces at a time, and stir until integrated. Add the rest of the cheese, and stir again until integrated. Pour over chicken and your chosen starch.

Add a garnish of fresh mint and dill, if you’d like (because I like garnish–especially pretty dill flowers).

A taste of ol’ yummy

Aresty suggested a starch to pair with the chicken, and I chose some pre-packaged gnocchi from Cost Plus World Market. It was a perfect match with the somewhat game-like taste to the game hens and the zingy presence of the dill. The asafoetida was not even noticed by my partner, who just absolutely adored this dish. It goes without much saying I also enjoyed this meal. The one thing I learned most about this dish is sometimes you have to trust the ancients. Maybe they did know what was going on.

Thanks, Apicius.

]]> http://cookofages.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/antiquity-recipe-the-iv-apician-dilled-hens/feed/ 3 Cyn Apicius Dilled Hens in a Camembert veloute with Gnocchi http://cookofages.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/antiquity-recipe-the-i-shrimp-in-leaves/ http://cookofages.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/antiquity-recipe-the-i-shrimp-in-leaves/#comments Sun, 15 Jun 2008 23:38:58 +0000 Cynthia http://cookofages.wordpress.com/?p=10 ]]>

“For spring the chromius is best;
The anthias in winter;
But of all the fish the daintiest
Is a young shrimp in fig leaves.”
– Ananius from The Deipnosophists

The first recipe I come across in our textbook, “The Delectable Past” by Esther B. Aresty is called Shrimp in Leaves. She writes that it’s much easier to come across grape leaves, but I rarely do anything the easy way, so I attempt to find fig leaves instead. Come on… I mean, grape leaves are easy enough to find– the ubiquitous dolmade, for example. Those little tasty bits of rice and herbs wrapped up in a brined grape leaf? But fig leaves, therein lies a challenge!

According to The Produce Hunter, “the fragrance of Fig Leaves is reminiscent of coconut.” This, my friends, would make a natural match for shrimp, yeah?

Ingredients

Raw jumbo shrimp, shelled and vein removed
Canned grape leaves (1 leaf per shrimp), or fresh fig leaves
A marinade of 2 parts vinegar to 1 part oil
(for 20 shrimp: 2 tablespoons oil and 4 tablespoons vinegar)
Pinch of oregano in the marinade

The recipe’s method calls for lapping the leaf around the shrimp, and arrange them close together in a shallow baking dish. Of course, she says to place the “lapped” leaf side down to prevent opening during cooking. For, at least some of you might know, shrimp (especially deveined ones) have the tendency to expand in a 375 degree oven. So, what I might also suggest is leaving a little shrimp leeway–room for expansion. Kind of like Thanksgiving Day pants. But more like your mom’s than your uncle’s.

Who were the Deipnosophists, anyway?

Before I get into actually cooking this recipe, some research is in order. Deipnosophists, according to our text, is translated as “Banquet of the Learned,” and this text was complied around 230 A.D. According to our friend, Wikipedia, Ulpian was the “host of a leisurely banquet whose main purpose is literary, historical and antiquarian conversation.” Doing a bit of searching online, I also find that the sophists were a “class of itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in ‘excellence’ or ‘virtue,’ speculated about the nature of language and culture and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others.” More searching reveals that the modern day use of the word is essentially an argument based on the intent to deceive someone. Socrates was among the “anti-sophists” of his time.

Shrimp in Antiquity

Outside of the possibility that the poet Ananius was day-dreaming about his height-challenged servant dressed in Adam’s Calvin Klein’s, I suppose shrimp has always been popular. I also wonder what shrimp might have looked like back then. Were the normal shrimp we buy today considered the “bay shrimp” while prawns were considered regular sized? Were prawn ancestors the size of your head? I wonder because fig leaves are quite large, so I do wonder if Ms. Aresty was underestimating our fine swimming Sizzlerites by using common shrimp (21-30s) instead of prawns. Or maybe her intent was to introduce the cooks of the 1960’s to say, “Oh, shrimp–I eat shrimp. Maybe this book isn’t so intimidating after all!”

Oh, the Insanity (and the much gnashing of teeth)!

Finding fresh fig leaves is not as easy as it might sound, especially if you don’t live in the southern-ish parts of the United States–or California. I visited Whole Foods, Cost Plus World Market, and various Asian shops to find figs leaves… but alas, none was found. Grape leaves–grape leaves were in abundance. The people I asked (even gourmet food shops and cheese shops) said, “Fig leaves? What are you going to use those for?” and then “For cooking? I’ve never heard of that before!” sigh. At any rate, a friend of mine just happens to have relatives in California, so she has offered to get a dozen or so good shaped leaves for my culinary experiment.

It looks as if I’m going to have to wait for a little while, however. A bit more searching online reveals swiss chard leaves are also a good substitute. Ah, well… you win some, you have to wait some.

The Depressing modifications

I am a cook. I am an Aries. This means I am inpatient. I should have waited until I had the right ingredients. Oh well… whatever. Here’s the modified recipe:

Cook of Ages Shrimp in Chard Leaves

1 lb. 16-20 shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 head of swiss chard (8-10 whole leaves), deveined; “brined” in red wine vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper (brining optional)

A marinade of 2 parts vinegar to 1 part oil
(for 20 shrimp: 2 tablespoons oil and 4 tablespoons vinegar)
Pinch of oregano in the marinade

8-10 dried black mission figs (rehydrated with hot water for 20 minutes until soft), halved

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. In a swiss chard leaf, place two shrimp split-side up next to each other. Place one-half of the rehydrated fig inside each split. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roll, place in lightly greased baking dish. Continue until all shrimp and leaves are rolled up. Take marinade, and pour over the wrapped leaves. Place in oven for 20 minutes.

The eating

“Garnish each shrimp with a thin half-slice of lemon crossed with a thin strip of pimento. The diner will press the lemon juice into his leaf-wrapped shrimp with his fork if you demonstrate and lead the way–the leaves are edible, of course… serve it with sesame wafers.” I decided instead to serve this dish with a couple of slices of fresh avocado, and a rice pilaf made with chopped black greek olives, pimento, and chopped pecans.

This was good, and surprising in a way that it was both familiar and exotic at the same time. The avocados gave a much needed creaminess, and the lemon was unnecessary for much of the “zing” came from the vinegar. I will make this dish again in the future, using fresh fig leaves (and God willing), fresh figs!

My search for fig leaves is so far fruitless. I’ve found brined grape leaves, brined vine leaves, dolmades, and lingerie. And I’ve been to an Indian market, a Mediterranean market, an Asian market, Whole Foods, Cost Plus World Market, and called the cheese importers and the Truffle. I am beginning to despair.

You may be wondering who’s this geeky girl behind such an ominous and pretentious name? Well, I’m really not quite as snobby as the title of this weblog seems. I am, in fact, quite a good cook, I gave it up as a profession and ran back into the comfort of office life. But I wanted a goal again… I wanted to feel myself coming alive again.

Inspired years ago by the Julie/Julia project, and having a fondness for old recipes and ingredients, I decided to embark on a similar task. I decided to attempt to cook all of the recipes from a 1964 book called “The Delectable Past” by Esther B. Aresty. I picked it up inexpensively at an old bookstore and immediately fell in love with it. Less like a cookbook and more like a tasting tour of a vast, impressive and rare cookbook collection, I was immediately inspired.

The recipes focus mostly on 16th through 19th century recipes along with a small brush on Antiquity and the Middle Ages. My hope was I would also be able to inspire other cooks along the way. Gems like “The Joy of Cooking” and “A Feast of All Seasons” have been passed down from one generation to another, and many recipes we still use today seem to be derived in some way by these recipes Ms. Aresty writes about in this book.

With that, thanks for visiting. Please enjoy your visual meal, and feel free to share any information which might help me on my journey.

Fish, to taste right, must swim three times – in water, in butter, and in wine. – Polish Proverb