PAPS 21.12: Fog Leaf, or a Tale of Lost and Found

 

In recent blogs we have spent some time talking about eminent ancient people such as Aristotle and Cicero, but we haven´t learned very much about what food they ate. Aristotle philosophised about food being life, and Cicero pontificated that “hunger is the best sauce”, but they gave no specifics. So we have to look elsewhere.

We find that at posh banquets the Ancients ate delicacies such as stuffed dormouse and braised flamingo, 

but here is a fairly normal every day recipe from Ancient Rome which might appeal to the Gourmet subsection of Walking WhatsApp group – Roast Lamb or Kid.

‘Marinated kid or lamb: 1 pint milk, 4 oz honey, 1 oz pepper, a little salt, a little asafoetida. For the sauce: 2 fl oz oil, 2 fl oz fish sauce, 2 fl oz honey, 8 crushed dates, half pint good wine, a little starch.’ 

This recipe is from Apicius, a Roman cookery book of different recipes thought to have been compiled in the 1st century AD. The recipe is particularly good with kid if you can find it but otherwise you can use lamb.

Serves 6

Ingredients
• Shoulder of kid or 1.25 kg leg of lamb
• Olive oil

Marinade
• 570ml milk
• 120g clear honey
• 1 tbsp pepper
• Salt
• 1/2 tsp asafoetida powder or 5 drops asafoetida tincture (you can use garlic or onion powder as a substitute)

Sauce
• 8 crushed fresh or dried dates
• 280ml red wine
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp clear honey
• 4 tbsp fish sauce
• A little cornflour (corn starch)

Method
For best results, you’ll want to marinate the meat overnight. Combine the marinade ingredients and leave the meat overnight in the marinade, turning it occasionally to ensure full absorption. At the same time, soak the fresh or dried dates in a little red wine. The next day remove the meat from the marinade, pat it dry, and then roast it in an oven pre-heated to 200°C/gas mark 6, well-seasoned and with olive oil. The timing should be 20 minutes to each 1lb (450g) and 20 minutes in addition. When the meat is nearly ready, pound the dates to a pulp and add to the remaining red wine, honey, fish sauce and oil. Bring to the boil in a saucepan and cook out briefly and then thicken with cornflour (corn starch, you can mix with a little water to avoid lumps). When the joint is cooked, remove it from the oven and leave to rest for 10 minutes before carving thick slices and serving with a little more of the fish sauce on the side.

The fish sauce is very important. Garum as it was called was a major industry – the Algarve region being a main source of the sauce for Romans in those days. The Archaeological Association is always telling us where the garum tanks are. Garum was a fermented mixture of fish entrails and little fish left to rot in the sun. Maybe Antje or Paul will give the recipe a go.

As for Wednesday´s walk, the skies were clear after Tuesday´s rains but we were a bit unclear about how many were going to be breakfasting. The old man behind the bar was told that there would now be 6, not 8 as originally ordered. Then he was told that there would be 7. Sex or septem, seis or seite, choose your language. We were indeed at sixes or sevens. Finally it was decided we would six because Maria was to go off early to attend a birthday party and ChrisW would be joining us after the walk. Luckily, the man behind the bar understood.

The Starters: Yves, Myriam, Antje, Hazel, JohnH, Maria, and Sascha.

After the Starter photo (suitably photoshopped - by the way, Yves being at pains to emphasise that he does not do Photoshop even although he is a semi-professional photographer), we set off on the by now familiar canal walk. Last time we were here there were signs that Silves Camera were taking steps to improve the safety of the road crossings over the canal.

Before : work in progress

After: work done

These have now been completed, so you need not now fear driving your car into the water late at night.

The ladies then paused to admire some coxcomb flowers and compare them with their own attempts at horticulture.

A long loop round and across brought us to a recently discovered track and we made our way to the large communal threshing floor at the top of the hill. (In the words of Rudyard Kipling in one of The Just So Stories, How the Whale got his Throat, “You must not forget the threshing floor, Best Beloved”) - I don´t know if Myriam approves of Rudyard Kipling - a terribly British Empire sort of chap.

Here we and Sascha paused for refreshment, while Yves proudly showed off his newly acquired walking cane which he had spent all of the past week whittling and polishing and completing with a metal tip.

We then followed a roundabout way down to the Clube Nautico where we paused for more refreshment while Sascha had a swim.

On our way home after leaving the Clube, Antje suddenly realised the she was missing her Fog leaF – a curse on this predictive text stuff – she meant Dog leaD.

A quick search back at the Clube was fruitless. Backtracking in our minds, we reckoned that she might have dropped it near the threshing floor (which you must not forget.)

Yves with his stick

Back then along the canal at some speed because the breakfast hour of 10 am was fast approaching. We met ChrisW coming in the opposite direction. Yves then took charge of the leadless Sascha just before the tarmac was reached.

Prompt at 10 am, the Restaurante served up the breakfast, as usual well-prepared by Chef Veronika. And, for once, the lady owner was in a good mood, all smiles as she brought us our food and drinks. Rod would have been amazed ay the transformation.

Hazel then did her greengrocer act, pulling all sorts of vegetables out of her carrier bag – peppers, beans, marrows, cucumbers.

This is a bottle gourd -edible, apparently

Conversation at breakfast, for some reason, dwelt on the word “pukka”.

Pukka Pies were mentioned (although in my opinion, they are a disappointing product – inadequately filled - more cutcha than pukka.)

According to my Hobson Jobson, which is a dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and phrases which describes itself as a “spice box of etymological curiosities and colourful expressions,” “pukka “ is from the Hindustani and means “ripe,” mature,” “cooked,” and hence “substantial” or “permanent” and so metaphorically “genuine.” A good chap is a Pukka Sahib. Its opposite “cutcha” is “unripe,” “raw,” and so “of inferior class,” "not quite from the top drawer."

What with Rudyard Kipling and pukka/cutcha , this blog is all at once redolent of the British Raj, which brings to mind this anecdote:-

Reporter: “What do you think of Western civilisation?”

Mahatma Gandhi: “It would be a good idea.”

The Track and the Statistics

Moving speed 3.4 kph - not too bad

Last week´s quiz

was what comes next in this sequence:

There was one entry a correct one, from Myriam. Her answer was Indurain, who is one of four riders to have won it five times.

I had thought that Yves and Ingrid would have got the answer with the Belgian rider Eddie Merckx perhaps the best known of the three; the other two being Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault. Miguel Indurain deserves to be better known because he won the race five times in a row.

This week´s quiz

is What is the connection between the following four forms of life?

P.S.

Breakfast over, ChrisW was persuaded to drive his pristine Seat over a rough track as we backtracked physically to look for the lost fog leaf which we thought might be somewhere near the threshing floor. 

Success. Lost and Found (now you know why you were not to forget the threshing floor)

P.P.S.

Next day Yves messaged to ask if any one knew where he had left his brand new walking cane – various suggestions and searches were made. As we go to press, the  final results not known. But probably  Lost ?

P.P.S.

Then on the Friday, Myriam found the following left in her car:

Sunglasses , probably Antje´s

Lost and Found.

Only one possible piece of music after all that.