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| Image by Jake Morton |
Zara Altair writes traditional mysteries set in the
time of Ostrogoth Rule in Italy in The Argolicus Mysteries. Argolicus uses his
observation and reason, with help from his tutor Nikolaos, to provide justice
in a province far from the King’s court. Learn more about Zara and her books at
her website.
Lamb Stew From a Roman
Kitchen
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Simple Tools, Basic
Ingredients, and Flavor
The roman kitchen used simple pottery and metal
cooking pots to create some delicious meals. Even after the Roman Empire had
collapsed, the same tools and recipes continued in kitchens throughout Italy.
Romans loved flavor. They used spices and herbs to
flavor cooking and they also used a concoction of fermented fish called garum
to season just about everything. For modern diners garum is an acquired taste
If you’d like to approximate how the sauce tastes,
here’s a quick way to reproduce the sauce.
Modern Day Garum
1 bottle of Thai fish sauce (approx. 24 oz.)
1 liter of white grape juice
In a large saucepan, simmer the grape juice until it
is reduced to at least half. Cool and store. When you are ready to make your garum,
mix the reduced grape juice with the fish sauce in this proportion: 1/3 grape
juice to 2/3 fish sauce. This will even out the saltiness of the anchovy based
fish sauce to the approximate sweetness of garum made from fresh mackerel. Try
it on vegetables and salads and on grains and legumes like rice or lentils.
In The Roman
Heir Argolicus, the noble sleuth, stops at a small restaurant to rethink
all the tangled threads to solving the mystery. He eats a lamb stew as he
reviews the suspects. With bread to dip in the stew, he digs into the facts.
Many recipes were written by hand and passed down.
One source of recipes that we still have is a cooking book by Apicius. This
chef had several recipes for lamb stew.
They are very similar to Alexandre Dumas’ recipes, which leave a great
deal of discretion to the cook. Here’s how one looks in Latin.
Aliter haedinam sive agninam
excaldatam: mittes in caccabum copadia. cepam, coriandrum minutum succides,
teres piper, ligusticum, cuminum, liquamen, oleum, vinum. coques, exinanies in
patina, amulo obligas.
Translated
Put pieces of kid or lamb in the stew pot with chopped
onion and coriander. Crush pepper, lovage, cumin, and cook with broth oil and
wine. Put in a dish and tie with roux.
Try your cooking with this recipe seasoning the stew
to your taste.
Apicius' Lamb Stew
3 pounds lamb ribs or lamb pieces
1 onion
salt and pepper
cumin
olive oil
red wine
coriander (cilantro)
Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a pot. Then add
lamb ribs and brown all over. Add chopped onion and coriander. Sprinkle on
salt, pepper and cumin. Stir to coat the lamb with spices. Add a generous portion of wine.
Simmer the stew for approximately four hours.
You can understand why a local diner could keep a
pot of this stew going for a long time to serve patrons like Argolicus who
happened in for something to eat. For a Roman experience, don’t forget to
season your bowl of stew with a bit of garum.
The Roman Heir
A naïve teenager. A sister
with secrets. A corrupt patrician. Argolicus unravels the threads.
Argolicus and Nikolaos deliver a gift but arrive
hours after a brutal murder. They look for an answer until they find that a
man’s secrets do not go with him to the grave.
With just days to find the killer before his ship
leaves port, Argolicus must probe the politics of the dying town. But with
every investigation he makes, the circle of possibilities grows. Success seems
out of reach and he must disappoint the family until a ruffian accosts him and
pieces fall into place.
