A medieval mustard

 This recipe for mustard comes from Le Menagier de Paris dated around 1393

The recipe is:

Item, et se vous la voulez faire bonne et à loisir, mettez le senevé tremper par une nuit en bon vinaigre, puis le faites bien broyer au moulin, et bien petit à petit destremper de vinaigre: et se vous avez des espices qui soient de remenant de gelée, de claré, d’ypocras on de saulces, si soient broyées avec, et après la laissier parer.

Translated that is:

Item: and if you want to make it good and at leisure, soak the mustard seeds overnight in good vinegar, then grind it well in the mill, and very little by little soak in vinegar: and if you have some remnants of spices from jelly, claré, hypocras or sauces, grind them with it, and then leave to rest.

I chose a white wine vinegar to soak the mustard in (honestly, because it is what I had). 

The next day, it was interesting to see the difference between soaked and unsoaked mustard seeds.

I then ground the mustard with a mortar and pestle. 

Grinding was a slow process

The final product: a quite spicy mustard

I had to make some hippocras!

Ypocras. Pour faire pouldre d’ypocras, prenez un quarteron de très fine canelle triée à la dent, et demy quarteron de fleur de canelle fine, une once de gingembre de mesche trié fin blanc et une once de graine de paradis, un sizain de noix muguettes et de garingal ensemble, et faites tout battre ensemble. Et quant vous vouldrez faire l’ypocras, prenez demye once largement et sur le plus de ceste pouldre et deux quarterons de succre, et les meslez ensemble, et une quarte de vin à la mesure de Paris.

Translation: 

Hippocras. To make hippocras powder, take a quarteron of very fine cinnamon, sorted by the tooth, and half a quarteron of fine cinnamon flower, an ounce of fine white sorted mesche ginger and an ounce of grains of paradise seed, a sixth of an ounce of nutmeg and galingale together, and beat everything together. And when you want to make the hypocras, take half an ounce and some more of this powder and two quarterons of sugar, and mix them together, and a quarte of wine to the measure of Paris.

Of possible period crackers

I am half cross posting this from a discussion on the Medieval and Renaissance cooking and recipes group on Fbook, partly so I will remember to actually give it a try soon. Someone asked about medieval crackers, which turned into a discussion about bread, which turned into a discussion on toast and whether toasted bread would have been served to an English lord in the Saxon period. 

This discussion got me hunting and I found a recipe for "A grilled cake with chicken filling".  This provided me with a lovely opportunity for my favourite hobbyhorse... critical thinking and questioning assumptions.

So let me share the story with you as it happened, because well, I just found the whole discussion fascinating and exciting.


The recipe is from Manuscript W (1213 - from the Herzog August Biobliothek of Wolfenbuttel, Germany) of the collection of manuscripts dubbed by Grewe and Hiatt as the Libellus de arte coquinaria (from the 2001 publicationof the book).

The recipe is for making a thin dough of eggs and flour, frying it and topping it with chicken. Pretty straight forward eh?  

So here is my conversation on it:

Me:  The original text says "Item, nym eigere unde mel; werke daraff eynen dunnen dech. Sette dat uppe eyn iseren unde sla eigere myt mele unde gutdarin". The translation offered by Grewe and Hieatt is "Next, take eggs and flour. Make it into a thin dough: onto a gridiron pour [the] eggs beaten with flour". 
I don't have a word of medieval Low German vocabulary, but I would love to have clarification on the translation of the word 'pour' and whether it could be translated in a different slant, if you think of the dough as being less of a pancake dough and more like a bread dough.... anyone out there have Low German?

Response: sounds like a crepe.

Me: It does indeed, if you pour.. but if you think of the words 'thin dough' as being less a batter and more along the lines of thinly rolled dough (for example pasta dough is just flour and eggs), you can see why the word translated as 'pour' makes such a difference. Is the word 'pour' or is it 'set it' or 'place it' or 'put it', and the context of thinking of it as a batter made the translator translate it as pour? Looking at the original text, I think maybe the word 'Sette' is the relevant word, and the online low medieval German dictionary I found translates that as 'setzen', which is modern German for 'set'. Which gives the possibility of it being a much thicker dough. See what I mean?

Response (from someone is a native German speaker): Kiriel you are very likely right that "sette" is to set it upon the irons, Like waffles.

Me: Thanks. See now this is one of the things that excites me about medieval cookery! We may well be the first people in 800 years to look at this recipe and see the possibility that it could be cooked this particular and different way. How we experience our own lives affects our vision of these recipes. Someone from say America might see a recipe for something that uses a wafer iron and interpret the content as being a batter, where someone from Belgium might interpret it as a dough (as waffles in Belgium are made from a yeast dough). The key is to try and see all the possibilities and make choices knowingly. Sorry, I am waffling on (pun intended), but I really do get excited by this stuff!

Response: Belgian waffles are risen with yeast, but are still poured

Me: Not in Brussels they aren't - at the street stalls making them they have balls of dough, and you watch them grab a ball and put it on the iron. Definitely NOT poured.

Response:  Hmmm..  If lets say they don't pour the dough and are using a thin dough- and rolled it thin, or spread it thin, or griddled it- it would be a cracker! 

Me: Not necessarily but quite possibly - we should properly check the translation, and you will have to try and cook it and see what comes out - but certainly it looks like the possibility is there! See, isn't that exciting? 

 The next step will be, of course, to try making variations and see what we get.  Watch this space for more on that front soon!  I would love to hear from you if you have had a go at this recipe, or if you want to join me in some experimentation.

A sweet tisane

Le Menagier de Paris was published in 1393 and contains a wide range of advice and information on almost every aspect of life in the 14^th century.

Book 2, article five includes recipes for the ill (Buvrages pour les malades), and one of these recipes is for a sweet tisane.

Tizanne doulce. Prenez de l’eaue et faites boulir, puis mettez pour chascun sextier d’eaue une escuelle d’orge largement, et ne chault s’elle est à toute l’escorce, et pour deux parisis de réglisse, item, des figues, et soit tant bouly que l’orge crève; puis soit coulée en deux ou trois toiles, et mis en chascun gobelet grant foison de succre en roche. Puis est bonne icelle orge à donner à mengier à la poulaille pour engressier.

Nota que la bonne réglisse est la plus nouvelle, et est en la taille de vive couleur vergaie, et la vieille est de plus fade et morte, et sèche.

My translation:

Sweet Tisane. Take fresh running water and bring it to boil, then for every one sextier¹ of fresh water a generous porringer of barley, and it is not important if it has husks, and for two parisis² of licorice, similarly, figs, and then boil it until the barley bursts and then strain it through two or three layers of cloth, and put in each goblet an abundant amount of rock sugar. This barley is then good to give to poultry to fatten it.

Note: that good licorice is the newest, and is in size a bright color and ridged³, and the old is more pale and dead and dry.

The challenging and interesting part of this recipe interpretation wise, for me is the figs. From first reading it appeared that the amount of figs would appear to be the same as the licorice, but as that comes out at less than half a fig, and the recipe clearly uses the plural, that cannot be the case.

One could simply instead say it means “some figs” and randomly put an amount in. But the use of the latin word “item” which does not mean “item” but “similarly” gives me the thought that in fact, we do have some direction as to quantity – that the “similarly” refers us back to the earlier part of the sentence, and the amount of barley. Whilst this may seem a bit of a leap in our modern punctuated sensibility, it does make a lot more sense in quantity. I have therefore used a porringer of figs as well – approximately 7 soft dried figs. I used dried figs, because although the recipe does not specify, limiting this recipe to fresh figs would make it essentially useless for the times of year when people are most likely to be ill – winter! Both fresh and dried figs were commonly available in Europe in the medieval and renaissance.


My recipe


3.7 litres water
160g barley
7 dried figs - chopped into quarters
4 grams licorice – this is the dried stalk of the licorice plant (you might find this in an Indian supplies shop)
Rock sugar


Bring the water to the boil in a large pot.  Add the barley, figs, and licorice stick. Boil gently till the barley bursts (about 45 minutes). Strain through cloth (you might find it easier to do a first draining through a colander) and pour the liquid hot into goblets, into which a small lump of rock sugar has been ground. 

This recipe makes a warming, somehow soft tasting tisane which is both soothing and pleasant.  Give it a try! 

1  In old French a sestier is a measure of wine – approximately one gallon/3.7 litres – I have concluded with research, that sextier is simply an alternative spelling of sestier.

2  A Parisii is a small coin (like a half penny). Searching, I have found that they generally seem to have weighed between 1.6 and 1.8 grams

3  My dictionary of Old French does not contain the word vergaie. I note that another translator of this recipe Jane Hinson (The Goodman of Paris, published 1992) translates vergaie as “greenish”.  The word vergier in old French has a few meanings including young trees, border, strip, cut groove in, ridged and embossed and as good quality reglisse (licorice) has deep grooves along the length of the surface, my decision was to lean towards this interpretation of the word.  I would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on this!

Lait Larde - Part 1

I will start with a warning to readers - this is a long post!

Because I have done a rather hefty bit of documentation for this recipe, I will start by giving you the final product, and then go on to the background. That way if you just want to try making it, you can do so. If you want to know where the recipe came from, read on, and if you want to know more about the history of the ingredients etc. read on further.

What can you do to cheese to make it even better? Add bacon, and fry it!

On the stove, curds separating from the whey

Recipe

• 24 threads of saffron
• 250g smoked speck pieces
• 2 litres of whole (NOT lowfat) milk
• 1 cup of verjuice
• cloves
• pine nuts

Take milk, and put it in a pot, and put it on the fire to heat up. Add the lardons, and ground saffron and gradually raise to boiling temperature. Take off the heat and add the verjuice to curdle the milk.

Allow to cool in the whey. Once cooled, pour it into a piece of straining cloth and form it into a long flat shape. Place a heavy weight on top (I used nested containers and piled up weights on the container on top) and keep in the fridge overnight. The next day, slice into pieces and fry in a pan with a bit of bacon grease. Serve on plates and sprinkle with ground clove and pine nuts.

Serving suggestion: if you strain out the bacon bits after cooking, you will get a more solid cheese, but still with the lovely flavour.

The cheese curds ready to be pressed

The fully monty: Lait Lardé (Larded Milk)

A 14th century French cheese

Recipe source (or... who came up with this idea anyway?)

Le Viandier de Taillevent is a cookbook attributed to Guillaume Tirel (1310 – 1395), who was the cook of Charles V and master of the kitchen stores of Charles VI.

14^the and 15^th century manuscripts of this cookbook are in existence: in the Biblioteque Nationale (France), the cantonal library of Sion (Switzerland), the Biblioteque Mazarine (France), and the Vatican Library (Italy).

Originally I found a recipe in the book “Le Viandier de Taillevent” by James Prescott. This claims to be a translation of a transcription of the Vatican Library manuscript.

Larded Milk

Take some [cow's], boil it on the fire, lift it down from the fire, put it on a few coals, and thread in beaten egg yolks. If you wish it for a meat day, take lardons, cut them into two or three bits, and throw them into the milk to boil. If you wish it for a fish day, do not add lardons, but throw in some wine and verjuice to curdle it before you lift it down. Remove it from the fire, put it in a white cloth, let it drain, wrap it in 2 or 3 layers of the cloth, and press it until it is as firm as beef liver. Put it on a table, slice it into strips the size of a full palm or three fingers, button them with whole cloves, fry them till they are browned, set them out and throw some sugar on top.

However as the word “Lardé” is fundamental I wished to satisfy myself that this was a correct translation of the original French.

I obtained transcriptions (in French) of the Sion, Mazarine and Biblioteque Nationale manuscripts, and was disconcerted to find that none of them contained the recipe at all. I obtained a transcription of the Vatican manuscript but unfortunately it also did not contain the recipe.

After further research I discovered that in 1893 they discovered a second part to the Vatican Library manuscript which contains 23 additional recipes, including that for Lait Lardé.

Scully's “Early French Cookery” provides the recipe in French:

Lait Lardé

Prenez le lait de vasche ou de brebis, et mectez fremier sur le feu. Et gectez des lardons et du saffran et ayez oeufs (scilicet blanc et moyeaux) bien batuz, et gectez a ung coup sans mouvoir, et faictes boulir tout ensemble. Et apres hostez hors du feu et laissiez tourner; ou sans ouefz les fait l'en tourner de vertjus. Et quant il est reffroidié l'en le lye bien fort en une piece de toille ou estamine, et luy donne l'en quelque fourme que l'en veult, ou plate ou longue, et chargié d'une grosse pierre laissiez reffroidier sur ung drecourer toute nuyt. Et l'endemain laiché, et frit au fer de paelle (et se frit de luy mesmes sans autre gresse, ou a gresse qui veult) et est mis en platz ou escuelles comme lesche de lart, et lardé de giroffle et de pignolet; et qui le veult faire vert, si prengne du tournesot.

 

And  “Menagier de Paris”, contains an English translation:

Larded Milk

Simmer cow's or sheep's milk and add bits of diced bacon and saffron. Take whole eggs, scilicet the white and yolks, beat well and pour in all at once, without stirring, boiling all together. Remove from the fire and let it curdle; or without eggs, use verjuice to make it curdle. When it is cool, fasten it tightly in a piece of linen or cheesecloth and give it whatever shape you wish, either flat or long, and weight it with a large rock, leaving it to cool overnight on a sideboard. The next day, open it up and fry in an iron skillet – it needs no added grease, but you can add some if you wish – and place it on plates or in bowls like slices of bacon, and stick it with cloves and pine nuts. Should you want a green colour, use tournsoc.

This is clearly a very different recipe from the one written by James Prescott, which contains no references to sheeps milk, saffron, uses just egg yolks not whole eggs, uses wine and verjuice to curdle, and sprinkles the final dish with sugar (omitting the pine nuts). I was glad I spent the time to research and find a more accurate description!

However, I decided that I should, in fact, attempt to translate the original French myself. I speak some French so a fair amount of the recipe was understandable to me, however to deal with unfamiliar words and to try to ensure that I was making the minimum of linguistic assumptions, I obtained a facsimile of a 1611 French/English dictionary, which I used to translate. While this dictionary is much later than the Taillevent manuscript it seemed to me a closer bet than a modern dictionary.

Here follows my translation:

Larded Milk (translation by Kiriel)

Take the milk of a cow or sheep, and put in a tub [Mect is translated as a tub or trough] and put on the fire to simmer. Cast lardons [this term is also used in modern French, in which it refers to matchsticks of thick bacon – in 1611 it is read as “the little slice or piece of lard wherewith meat is stucke”] and saffron and whole eggs (Indeed [Yay! The hivemind that is my friends have given me the translation of scilicet, confirming to me that I really need that out-of-print latin-french dictionary!] white and middle), well beaten, and cast this in one blow, without stirring, boiling all together. And after lift off the fire and leave to turn, or if you have not added eggs, use verjuice to turn [curdle] the milk.

And when it is cooled, pour it into a piece of toille [voile – translation is actually tuille] or seiving cloth and give it what form you wish, flat or long, and press with a large rock, leaving to cool under a cover overnight. The next day, open and fry on the fire in a pan (and you can fry it without other grease, or with grease if you want), and place on plates or in a porringer like leaves of bacon, and top with clove and pine nuts; and if you would make it green, then use tournsot [I believe this might be tournesoc, a plant commonly used in period for colouring].

There are not many real differences between my version and the previous translation, however at least one of these is significant – the first sticks cloves into the pieces, whereas my translation says to top with cloves, which could be ground instead. I believe this is a much more likely scenario – why waste entire cloves when you are just after the flavour?

The ingredients: Lait Larde part 2

The ingredients

(wherein Kiriel establishes that lards aint lard, and investigates the pH of verjuice)

This recipe contains few ingredients, but the use of them is not as simple as you might assume! So let's go through each one.

1. Saffron

Saffron was the King of spices in the medieval world. Incredibly expensive, outrageously colourful and equally exquisitely delicate in flavour, these flower stamens remain today the world's most expensive spice. The strands are toasted lightly to dry them out so that they can be ground up and added to dishes. Imitation saffron powder will give a similar colour, however will not give the very specific flavour that real saffron imparts to the dish.

Just as Taillevent cooked for Kings, so I cook for judges deserved of great esteem, and thefore use a generous portion of this precious spice.

2. Lardons

The 1611 French/English dictionary describes lardons as “the little slice or piece of lard wherewith meat is stucke”. In modern France this remains pretty much the same – lardons are something akin to what we would call “bacon bits”, but in a more of a thick matchstick form.

Whatever form they are in, one thing is reasonably sure – medieval lardons would have been saltier than modern equivalents. Smoking and salting meat was the most common way of preserving meat, as refrigeration options were much more limited for the medieval cook. A well smoked and/or salted ham can be eaten for years – unlike the average slab of bacon you buy in the supermarket now! Try a lovely slender slice of Spanish jamon iberico and be converted forever away from pale and flaccid bacon!

For my initial experiments with the recipes, I tried a supermarket bacon, but it quickly became clear that as one of the fundamental flavours of this recipe, it just did not work.

I tried the recipe again with a mature salt cured speck and the improvement was enormous, but it still was missing the smoky flavour I felt was needed.

I visited two butchers that smoke their own meats and bought a wedge of speck from each. They were very different from each other and both delicious, and choosing which was the better flavour was challenging (oh the sacrifices I make for my cooking, eating lots of bacon flavoured cheese!)

3. Milk

Milk of course in period was not homogenised nor pasteurised. Homogenisation is the process by which the fats (the cream) in milk are broken up and distributed through the milk, where naturally they would slowly rise to the top of the bottle or carton as cream. Pasteurisation is a process whereby milk is raised to a high temperature to kill off bacteria.

What difference does this make to cheesemaking? Ask any French cheesemaker and they are likely to simply throw their hands up in the air and mutter something along the lines of “Philistine!” at the question. Homogenisation does not in my experience in fact make a great deal of difference at least at the level of cheesemaking in this recipe.

Pasteurisation does make a difference. Hundreds of modern French and Swiss cheeses are made from unpasteurised milk. These cheeses tend to have a far stronger smell than any Australian cheese you will ever have tasted, although surprisingly, often a far milder taste than you expect. Unpasteurised milk is hard to get in Australia – you can sometimes buy it as “bath milk” from organic shops.

Other things that also made a difference in period, and in some countries continue to make a difference is the season, and the feed the animals eat. The amount of fat and lactose in milk changes according to the season and the taste and properties of the milk change dependent on the diet of the animal – Vacherin Mont d'Or for example is made from a mixture of milks – one part from when the cows eat spring grasses, and one part from when they eat hay – oh and only from one particular mountain in France. 


I might as well do a bit of myth busting while I am on the subject of milk.
You are sure to have seen in the shops "Permeate free milk" advertised as if permeates are some evil chemical. Well in fact permeates are a mix of  milk-sugar (lactose), vitamins and minerals that are found in milk.  Because the qualities of milk from the cow change seasonally, adding (or not) permeates allows dairies to have consistency in milk across the year, which among other things means that they don't have to make a different nutrition label for every batch of milk, and means that the milk you buy today will have the same qualities as the milk you buy tomorrow. No evil, just consistency.  Whether you feel you want consistency in your milk is another question that I won't get into here.

I tried this recipe with both homogenised and non-homogenised milk, achieving the same results.
You do need to use whole milk though, not skim or non-fat!

I made the decision not to use sheeps milk a) because I couldn't find it and b) I thought it best to try and get a more familiar taste in the cheese.

4. Verjuice

I started this experiment trying both verjuice and wine (as per the James Prescott version of the recipe). With new white wine, the milk refused to curdle. With verjuice it refused to curdle. A few days later the same wine (having sat on the kitchen bench) mixed with verjuice did curdle. I also tried with red wine which worked excellently:

But of course then I discovered that my recipe was wrong, so had to abandon the whole wine experience. I tried again with verjuice and again it failed. I tried with verjuice mixed with lemon juice and had much greater success. So   I decided it was time to investigate the properties of verjuice a bit further.

Verjuice is unfermented grape juice produced from early season grapes – picked before they are fully ripened. But the acidic qualities of verjuice differ from grape to grape, and within the season Menagier de Paris states that “in July old verjuice is very weak and the new is still too sharp. After this time, during the harvest, a mixture of half old and half new is best”. (recipe 279).

It was common in period too, to have substitutes for verjuice, since its unfermented nature meant that it did not preserve well. In the Italian period cookbook Libro della Cocina, it is advised that you could use lemon juice, orange juice or rosewater as substitutes. Menagier de Paris even provides a recipe for a sorrel based verjuice.

I concluded that the verjuice I had (Maggie Beer) was probably a bit more sophisticated and less acid than period verjuice. To test the acidity of my verjuice, I sought out testing strips. After some searching I had to settle on purchasing a set of strips to test swimming pools and spas. Unsurprisingly the acidity of lemons is rather off the scale compared to that of the average swimming pool but it still provided some useful data. 

 

I compared Maggie Beer verjuice, Anchor verjuice, (squeeze) lemon juice, and later, vinegar.

The Maggie Beer tested slightly differently to the Anchor verjuice, which showed equivalently to the lemon juice in both alkalinity and pH. Interestingly the Anchor showed very low traces of free chlorine, and the vinegar's pH test result was outright bizarre.

So from then on I used the Anchor verjuice, to much better effect. The taste of verjuice in the cheese is quite different from lemon and very pleasing.

5. Cloves

Freshly ground cloves – ah that smell, redolent of mulled wine and easter buns! An absolute staple in every sophisticated medieval kitchen, cloves were among the most prized and necessary spices. Every cook would have a pouch of cloves and they were an essential ingredient in the classic medieval spice mixture, powder forte.

You may feel wary that something as spicy and strong as cloves would overwhelm this dish, but have faith... there is something magical that seems to happen when you combine cloves and speck...!

6. Pine nuts

There are many species of pine that produce edible pine nuts. As an ingredient in my research I have seen them mainly being used in period Italian and French cookery.

A brief mention of tournsoc:

This is Gozophoria tinctoria, a lichen – it is naturally blue but turns red in acid situations and blue in alkaline – presumably the combination of it and saffron creates the green mentioned in the recipe.

References:

Secondary

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Vatican manuscript
Le Viandier de Taillevent – Sion manuscript

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Mazarine manuscript

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Biblioteque Nationale manuscript

A dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), by Randle Cotgrave

Tertiary

Early French cookery – Scully

The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages – Terence Scully

Le Viandier de Taillevent – James Prescott *I do not recommend using this!

Renaissance Cheese Fritters

This simply gorgeous recipe is redacted from a translation of "The art of cooking, composed by the Eminent Maestro Martino of Como".  This 15th century manuscript showcases some of the finest Italian renaissance cuisine, and has been published as "The art of cooking: the first modern cookery book" by the University of California press.

The recipe is called "Fritters made with egg whites, sifted flour, and fresh cheese"  The main recipe and technique is from the previous recipe for Elderflower fritters, so I will give you the relevant bits of that recipe as well.

Recipe 1:  Take some good fresh cheese, and a little aged cheese, and crush well, adding a bit of sifted flour to them and the necessary amount of egg whites; likewise, a little milk and some sugar; and grind all these things well together.. [bits about elderflowers removed]. so you can form the round fritters using your hands, or in whatever shape you like, and then fry them in good rendered lard or butter, or in good oil, and serve very hot. 

Recipe 2: Follow the directions and method  described in the previous recipe, but add neither milk nor elderflowers to these fritters. 

Here is my version.

Fresh Cheese Fritters


250g ricotta cheese
60g parmesan, grated
2 egg whites
60g white flour
sugar

Take the ricotta and grated parmesan, and put them in a bowl. Gradually add the sifted flour, the egg whites and just a pinch of sugar.  Form round fritters using your hands, and fry them in a little oil. Serve them hot.  (hint: I found that having wet hands made it easier to stop the dough from sticking to the hands)

Incredibly easy, and quite incredibly delicious.  Makes approximately 12 fritters.

Offella: medieval Italian cheesecake pastries

Cooking from original medieval and renaissance recipes can be challenging but fun. Most recipes don't come with any real guidance on quantities of the ingredients, leaving it up to the maker to decide on the balance of flavours they desire. This suits me well, as when I am inventing original recipes that is how I cook, and it takes me quite some concentration to remember to note the measurements I make!

These tasty treats are reminiscent in flavour to a strudel or cheesecake. Because the recipe contains no added sugar, I recommend leaving the mixture in the fridge overnight to allow the sultanas to sweeten it. You do have to be a bit brave to try this recipe, as it contains parmesan cheese which seems an odd ingredient for a dessert, but just place your trust in me, and go for it!

From "The Art of Cookery: the first modern cookbook", translated and annotated by Jeremy Parzen. University of California press.

Take some good Parmesan cheese that has not been overly aged, and a bit of another type of fresh cheese, and grate, adding some egg whites, whole raisins, some cinnamon, ginger and a bit of saffron. Mix all these things, incorporating well, and make sure that this filling is slightly thick. Then take a thin dough, like that used for making lasagne, and wrap the offelle in this dough, making them large, medium sized or small, as you wish, giving them some yellow colouring on top with saffron, or whatever other colour you wish, and cook them in the oven, and be careful that the oven is not too hot, because they should not be overcooked.

250g cottage cheese
3 egg whites
50g grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
10 threads saffron
100g sultanas

1 batch pasta dough.

Mix the ingredients. Cover and keep cool overnight. Cut out rounds of pastry, brush the edges with water. Place a generous teaspoon of the mix in the centre, fold in half and press the edges to seal.

Bake in an oven at 200 degrees until golden. Better served warm, but tasty either way!

Shared redaction: Roman sauce for grilled tuna

This recipe is from book 10, chapter 1, recipe 13 of Apicius - a Roman 1st century cookbook. The translation is by Grocock and Grainger.

The original recipe has no quantities and is translated as:

Pepper, lovage, oregano, green coriander, onion, de-seeded raisins, passum, vinegar, liquamen, defrutum, oil and cook it. This sauce is also suitable for boiled fish. If you wish, add honey too.

No quantities, no hints, just that.

So.... how did we turn this into a recipe that you and I might use? After all there are some ingredients here that you are unlikely to be able to buy off the shelf! Well with a bit of research you will find that liquimen is a form of fish sauce also known in roman recipes as "garum garos" & "muria". An acceptable replacement for every day use is Thai fish sauce. Defrutum is made from reducing sweet wine or sweet grape juice (must) to 1/3 of its original volume. Passum is sweet raisin wine (muscat is the perfect thing).

So, my friend Steve and I got busy playing with his beautiful new craticula - a Roman stove, based on one found in Pompei. He also has a lovely matching Roman pot to use as well.

Here is the recipe we came up with - it is very easy and we decided a definite two thumbs up from all of those who ate it. The sauce is enough to go with fish for four people.

3 tsp Thai fish sauce

1 cup muscato reduced to 1/3

1/3 cup muscat

1/4 cup of red wine vinegar

3/4 cup water (Roman vinegar was much weaker than our modern 5% acid vinegars)

2 tblspn chopped coriander (we used 1 because one of our eaters is not keen on coriander)

2 tblspn lovage (we couldn't find lovage in fact on the day, so used 3 tblspn flat leaf parsley)

1/3 cup raisins

1/2 a large onion

1 tsp freshly squeezed pepper

1/3 cup oil

1 tsp dried oregano (if using fresh then 2 tblspns)

700g tuna

Slice the onions into fine rings (you can chop finely instead - we did the first time but think the sliced rings would be prettier).

Place all the ingredients in a pot. Raise to a slow boil and simmer for about half an hour. Grill your fish and then serve with the sauce on top. You can stir a little honey in if you like a little sweetness in your sauces.

We tried this both with tuna and a milder flavoured fish (haddock) and recommend you stick to a good meaty fish as the haddock was overpowered.

This was so yummy that we sopped up the left over sauce with bread... mmm....