Roman Inheritance

If you look back far enough, human taste hasn't changed much and you can spot the modern in the ancient and vice versa.

Apicius refers to a collection of Roman recipes compiled somewhere in the late fourth to early fifth century. It's attributed ot Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmand who lived in the first century (and hence the collection is extraordinarily unlikely to have written by him.)

Recipe 89 goes as follows:

Coliculis conditis ut supra superfundes alicam elixam cum nucleis et uva passa; piper asparges.

Over the young cauliflower, seasoned as above, pour boiled spelt with pine nuts and raisins; sprinkle with pepper.

The "as above" refers to an earlier recipe (87) where the sauce consists of garum, olive oil, wine and cumin topped with fried leeks.

Even though the CC has translated coliculis as "cauliflower", it could equally well have been cabbage or broccoli, or even all of them (all members of the brassica family really.) There is considerable leeway here.

You can see the similarities in a classical Sicilian recipe that uses pasta instead of boiled spelt (perhaps couscous would be closer?) with cauliflower, onions (substituting for leeks), anchovies, raisins and pinenuts. The only difference is the seasoning which calls for saffron not cumin, and the tomato paste which is entirely New World for reasons explained here.

The anchovies are the exact replacement for garum which is nothing more than a fish sauce made with anchovies. The Thai nahm pla or the Filipino patis are the closest modern equivalents.

You too can eat like a Roman gourmand. Indulge!


Pasta with Cauliflower, Anchovies, Raisins, Pine Nuts & Saffron

Ingredients

2 cups rigatoni (or penne.)

1 head cauliflower (separated into medium-sized florets)
1 large red onion (chopped)
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/2 cup raisins
6 anchovies (preferably salt-cured)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp saffron

olive oil

sea salt
black pepper

breadcrumbs

Recipe

Toast the breadcrumbs and set aside. Toast the pine nuts until golden. Be careful not to burn them. Set aside.

Heat the olive oil at medium heat. When shimmering, add the cauliflower and fry languidly for 6-8 minutes. Add the onions and fry for a further 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste, and the anchovies and fry. The anchovies will "dissolve" as they fry. Add a cup of water, the raisins, sea salt, and black pepper, and let cook at low heat.

Meanwhile make the pasta until al dente. Drain.

The cauliflower mixture should be just slightly on the wet side. If dry, add some more water.

Toss in the saffron, and the pasta, and mix thoroughly.

Serve with the roasted breadcrumbs on top, and more black pepper if you like.

Summer Frittata

Spaghetti with Spicy Kabocha, Pan Grattato and Pine Nuts

This is the last of the "winter" dishes with the leftovers in the CC's kitchen.

However, it's a masterpiece of texture and flavor. It requires some effort but it gets repaid in spades!


Ingredients

1/4 kabocha (scored and diced into bite-sized pieces)
1 red onion (cut into thin semi-rounds)
1/2 cup sage
2 red chillies

1/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 anchovies
2 dried red-chillies (crumbled fine)

1/2 cup pine nuts

olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Toast the pine nuts in the oven at 375°F until they are lightly toasted roughly 12 minutes. Be careful as they burn easily.

In the meantime, you must prepare the pan grattato with the anchovies and crumbled red-chillies as described here.

Prepare the spaghetti in heavily-salted water until just under al dente.

In a large pan (which can hold both the squash plus the spaghetti) heat up some olive oil. When it shimmers, add the onions and fry for a fit. Toss in the kabocha and fry languidly for at least 3-4 minutes. Toss in the red-chillies, chopped sage, salt and black pepper. Add a small amount of water, and let it cook at a medium-low heat.

When done, toss in the spaghetti, and toss the mixture together.

Serve with the pan grattato and pine nut toppings.

Kabocha Risotto with Fried Sage and Pine nuts

This is just an epic recipe and exemplifies what is best about understanding the science of food. It combines Italian and Japanese elements in a transparent way so that what you get is much much greater than the sum of its parts.

You can make the broth and the risotto with minimal effort. (You may skip the instructions for making the "broth" if you already have some but this recipe shows you how to get away with making it "on the fly".)

But first, you must be aware of this particular culinary trick.

Secondly, you can streamline the ingredients and the pots so that there is very little wastage of either time or effort.

The important thing to note about kabocha is that unlike butternut squash, it doesn't need to be peeled. The skin is thin and edible and delicious. What you need to do is scrape it with a peeler to get the hard bits off. The Japanese adore this particular technique because it renders the squash with alternate dark and light green colors which is visually quite appealing.

Follow the instructions closely, and be amazed at what you can achieve on a weekday when you are "exhausted".

Ingredients

1/2 kabocha
1 large red onion (diced very fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced very fine)
1 cup arborio rice
16-18 sage leaves
4 tbsp pine nuts

4 cups dashi

1 cup parmigiano-reggiano
salt
pepper

Recipe

First, soak the konbu in 5 cups of cold water. Let it sit for 30 minutes or so while you do some prep and/or enjoy a nice glass of wine.

The onion and garlic can be pulsed in a food processor. Just make sure that you don't purée them.

Heat the oven to 350°F and roast the pine nuts for 7 minutes. Set aside.

Cut up the kabocha into large pieces. Don't get too technical. Rough shapes are fine. Also, cut up a little bit of the kabocha into neat little diced pieces. Set aside.

Bring the water to a boil. Pull the konbu off just before it boils otherwise it will taste bitter. Toss the large kabocha pieces in. Let it simmer for 10-12 minutes at high heat to get the squash to soften. When done, blend the mixture in the pot, and keep at a very low simmer.

Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pot. When hot but not smoking, toss in 6-8 of the largest sage leaves. Let them fry for about a minute and fish them out and set aside on some paper towels to absorb the oil.

In the same oil, toss in the onions and the garlic. Fry for 6 minutes or so until they are colored but not caramelized. Toss in the rice and fry for a bit. Add the salt and black pepper. Just before the broth, toss in the neatly diced kabocha pieces and fry for a bit.

Now comes the standardized risotto procedure. Toss in the blended kabocha broth and stir. Toss and stir, toss and stir, toss and stir.

Finally, the mantecura. Put in the parmigiano-reggiano and stir well.

When done, garnish the risotto with the fried sage leaves and the roasted pine nuts.

Pasta with Butternut Squash, Sage and Pine Nuts

This utterly simple dish is dazzling array of textures and of tastes, and yet is so beguilingly easy that can easily be made at a moment's notice.

Interestingly, as my dinner companion pointed out the dish follows all the aesthetic and culinary rules of Japanese washoku inspite of the fact that the dish is Italian, of course. The rules of go shiki (five colors) and go mi (five tastes) and go ho (five ways = different methods) are effortlessly satisfied.

It's success is precisely that it's visually arresting (Toulouse-Lautrec might be jealous) and texturally and tastewise different with every bite.

Ingredients

1 large red onion
2-3 cloves garlic (chopped into thin segments)
4-5 dried red chillies
1 butternut squash (diced into large-ish cubes)
salt
black pepper
1/4 cup sage (chiffonaded)
1/2 cup pine nuts
olive oil

2 cups pasta
grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

Toast the pine nuts in a skillet. Set aside.

In a pot, heat some olive oil at a medium-low heat. Fry the onion, garlic and red chillies. Do not hurry this process. When the onions are limp but not caramelized, they will rerelease the oil they have absorbed. Add the butternut squash and fry languidly. Add the salt, and liberal amounts of black pepper.

Add some water, and cover and let the squash soften. The mixture should be just slightly on the wet side.

Cook some pasta al dente in heavily-salted water.

When the pasta is done, add the sage to the squash mixture, and toss with the pasta.

Add the parmigiano-reggiano and the toasted pine nuts as toppings.